Rebecca Cokley

Rebecca Cokley joined the Ford Foundation in January of 2021 as the first U.S. Program Officer to oversee a Disability Rights Portfolio and has made over $50 million in grants to disability rights and justice organizations, centering organizations led by disabled and chronically ill people of color. In this role she serves as the Ford foundation's staff liaison to the President's Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy, co-founded by Darren Walker, to drive much needed philanthropic engagement to the disability community.

Prior to joining Ford, she served as the co-founder and Director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress where she worked with 12 different Democratic presidential candidates to develop their disability policy platforms. She implemented campaigns to save the Americans with Disabilities Act, Medicaid, and SNAP and pushed back against work requirements, the public charge, and ableist Supreme Court nominations. At the National Council on Disability she restored NCD’s agency’s reputation as the civil rights voice for the disability community and managed projects on police violence, campus sexual assault, and the civil rights of disabled parents. In the Obama Administration she served at the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And she had the pleasure of serving at the White House as Director of Priority Placement for Diversity in the first term. Every role she’s served in has centered on bringing the disability community to the table on progressive issues and helping the progressive community come to the table on disability priorities.

In 2020 she was awarded the Richman Distinguished Fellow in Public Life for Brandeis University. Cokley has spoken at Netroots Nation, New York City Comic-Con, Yale University, the Women’s March National Conference and given a TedX talk. Cokley has published with The Body Is Not An Apology, Rewire, CNN, Refinery 29, and been a guest on MSNBC and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Cokley sits on the board of directors for Rockwood Leadership Institute, the NY Women’s Foundation, and Common Cause and is an Equity Advisory Board member for Sephora. She was a Karl Pister Scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she graduated with a B.A. in Politics. She is the proud spouse of Patrick, mother of 3, and is working on her first book.