Joshua Friedman

Joshua is a 2004 graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, where he earned his BA in Government & Politics. While attending college, Joshua was President and Founder of the Association for Disability Advocacy. He was active in promoting increased campus awareness as well as community responsiveness and related issues encouraging fair and equal treatment of the disabled. Joshua was instrumental in the passage of a groundbreaking bill providing services to disabled students, and received the President's Student Disability Achievement Award  for Outstanding Contribution to Disability Issues.

Joshua is also a recent graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law where he received his JD in 2007.  Prior to starting law school, Joshua was appointed to be a Member of the Maryland Governor's Advisory Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.  Joshua is now serving his second term with the Governor's Advisory Council.

Currently, Joshua has passed the Maryland Bar, and will be sworn in Dec 2007. Joshua is also an MBA Candidate at the University of Baltimore Robert G. Merrick School of Business, where he expects to complete his MBA in 2008 .

Joshua is hearing impaired.

Executive Director
Trisha Fink

As Executive Director, Trisha runs all of NCSD's day to day operations and was instrumental in bringing the organization through its recent expansion. She also serves as webmaster for the http://www.NCSD.org, http://www.PeopleResources.org and http://www.TheAbleCrew.org web sites. Trish has a diploma in Computer Information Systems and is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.

Trish has ADHD, Auditory Processing Deficit and Learning Disabilities. She grew up at a time when there was little knowledge of these problems and was characterized as "lazy" and a "problem child." As a single parent, she supported herself and two boys through a variety of jobs and small businesses. Both of Trish's sons now hold advanced degrees and have families of their own.

Trish put herself through school in her mid-forties. She knows only too well the problems and frustration of having an invisible disability. Her experiences compel her to do everything in her power to make NCSD a successful non-profit and to assist the members as much as she can.

Trish is also on the Advisory Committee for the Neuroscience Initiative

Secretary
Andrew Ewens, PhD

Despite Andrew's multiple learning disabilities, he received his doctorate degree in pharmacology from the State University of New York at Buffalo, through the Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Dr. Ewens works as toxicologist for Constella Group LLC. in Durham North Carolina, a health and environmental contract organization.  Dr. Ewens works on three main contracts for the federal government.  For the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences/National Toxicology Program, he helps to write the 12th Report on Carcinogens.  For the Environmental Protection Agency, he is the task manager for data extraction for a quantitative structure toxicity relationship analysis contract.  For the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he provides technical consultation for the tier III personnel of the three tier call center, 1-800-CDC-INFO.  

Dr. Ewens was the technical producer for the first episode of the Able Crew.

Dr. Handa is currently an MBA student in North Carolina.

Dr. Handa was previously the Section Head of the Tissue Resources in the Department of Pathology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN. He was a Research Assistant at the University of Memphis, Memphis, TN.

Dr. Handa has served as the President of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Alliance, which is a non-profit organization working to develop a community of compassion and understanding towards people suffering from PTSD. Dr. Handa brings a unique combination of medicine, technology and management in a non-profit environment to the organization.

Gary C. Norman, Esq. Is the Vice President, Legal Chair and Spokesperson for NCSD. He is licensed in Ohio and Maryland .  He presently works for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, but his future goal is to establish his own firm that he is contemplating calling Public Access Consultants, PC.  He foresees the firm will provide mediation and arbitration services on a range of issues, animal law and policy services, wills and estate administration, disability law and policy, services regarding elder access issues and transactional matters.  His goal is for the firm to proactively recruit and hire attorneys and/or law students with disabilities.

In summer 2007, he completed a one-year term as a Fellow of the Leadership Academy of the Maryland State Bar Association.  He equaled the lead co-author of the report that the Leadership Academy of 2007 issued as part of its larger project on youth violence prevention.  To find the report, visit www.msba.org, proceed to committees, and, then to the Leadership Academy .  As follow-up to the Leadership Academy , he was appointed to be a member of the Special Committee of Editorial advisory, which establishes policy for and helps to edit the Maryland Bar Journal.  He also serves on the Animal Law Section of the MSBA.  Being a guide dog handler, he has direct interest in increased access rights.  As such, he established, and serves as the CEO and president of the Maryland Area Guide Dog Users, Inc.

Finally, he has been accepted to be an American Marshall Memorial Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States .

He is also an author, with such publications, as an article on a specialized legislative issue related to service animals that was published in the August issue of the Maryland Bar Journal.  He is at work on a law review article on the certification and accreditation of service animals.  Originating from Cleveland , Ohio , he attended college at Wright State University , (Class of 1997), and law school at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, (Class of 2000).

Matthew Allen was born and grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana. He attended Texas A&M University, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.S. in Political Science. Matt received his law degree from Tulane Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mr. Allen is also currently working on a Masters of Arts in Political Science from Virginia Tech University.

Licensed to practice law in Louisiana, Mr. Allen is an attorney with Legal Services of North Louisiana, Inc. (LSNL), in Shreveport, Louisiana. LSNL is a nonprofit law firm dedicated to providing free legal assistance to the indigent of North Louisiana. Mr. Allen's practice areas include: Social Security and public benefits law, family law, elder law, estate planning, and tax law.

Mr. Allen is admitted to practice law before the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Federal District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, the United States Tax Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and the U.S. Court of International Trade. He is a Louisiana Bar Foundation Fellow and a member of the Louisiana, Shreveport, and American Bar Associations. Mr. Allen is also an associate member of the Harry V. Booth and Judge Henry A. Politz Inn of Court.

Brenda has worked for the Southeast Louisiana American Red Cross since 1976. She has worked as a trainer in safety, health and disaster courses. She has done instructor training in Safety and disaster courses.

She has certifications and training in:

Records and Reports Director
Mass Care Director
Damage Assessment Director
Staffing Director – for both volunteer and paid staff
Job Director up to level 3 disaster
Assignments in various types of disasters and in various states.

Fayssal is a Sr. IT Consultant with several years of experience in various industries and companies in Texas. He has a masters degree in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University where he served as a Teaching Assistant in the Engineering Energy Laboratory.

Having been involved in community service and non-profit sector, he will be contributing
to NCSD's goals in providing members the most assistance possible using my technical expertise and his passion to public service.

Fayssal uses his computer expertise to help maintain and create NCSD's three web sites.