Mary Lee Vance, PhD was born in South Korea to a single mother. While in S. Korea she lost use of her leg muscles due to polio, lost most of her hearing because of an insect damaging her ear drum., was ultimately placed in an orphanage, and then sent to a hospital for treatment. Although not officially diagnosed, nurses in charge of her welfare believed she was “mentally retarded.” Despite this inauspicious start, Mary Lee was adopted into a Midwestern home to parents of Norwegian, English, Swiss and German background and demonstrated very early her persistence for learning, successfully navigating independently through the public education system (before Section 504 existed) ultimately earning her terminal degree from Michigan State University.

Mary Lee is currently the Director of the Disability Access Center, Testing Center, Disability Cultural Center, and Assistive Technology Lab at California State University Sacramento, where she also served as interim Director for the Office of Equal Opportunity, Title IX and Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation (DHR). Her professional background includes directing student services at UC Berkeley, George Mason University, University of Montana, Michigan State University as well as other public 4-year and community colleges. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses and successfully written federal grants, published in refereed journals and periodicals. She has led edited 5 books focused on educational barriers facing disabled students and employees published by NASPA, NACADA and AHEAD and serves as a reviewer for the AHEAD and NACADA refereed journals. For over 16 years she has taught and continues to teach disability law classes and seminars with Grossman, Axelrod, and Vance.

Her presentations draw attention to the historical intersection of ableism and racism, as well as the intersection between disability and other subject areas as there is a tendency to exclude disability when discussing retention and graduation initiatives for underrepresented populations, with universal design as a running theme that addresses the removal rather than reduction of educational barriers. She was recently elected to the AHEAD Board of Directors to serve as the Equity Officer, and was presented AHEAD’s highest service award, the Blosser. When not working on disability rights or other social justice related activities, Mary Lee enjoys cooking, writing food articles, reading, playing with her cats, and of course eating diverse ethnic food for pleasure.