Angela Amado Retiring from ICI

Angela Amado, who has promoted person-centered approaches and social inclusion for more than 30 years, will retire from ICI at the end of March 2018. She has worked for the Institute since 1995. Her numerous contributions to the field will be honored March 1 after the screening of Valuing Lives: Wolf Wolfensberger and the Principle of Normalization at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (see related story). "It has been a privilege and joy to work at ICI with the freedom, flexibility and shared commitment to expand my two strongest passions - person-centered approaches and social inclusion," says Amado. "My ICI projects have resulted in hundreds of community members befriending, including, and coming to love individuals with disabilities."An overview of Amado's ICI projects from the past 20+ years confirm her commitment to the work: She has promoted person-centered planning, consumer-controlled housing, self-advocacy, service quality, employment for people with disabilities, faith, and friendships. Beginning in the early 2000s, she joined the Institute's Research and Training Center on Community Living and worked on projects such as Quality Mall  and Self-Advocacy Online to leverage what was then a powerful new tool - the World Wide Web - to support people with disabilities. A few years later, she helped plan national (e.g., Reinventing Quality) and international conferences (e.g., State of the Science) that pushed the boundaries on service quality. She then studied how people with disabilities could find friendships (e.g., Friends: Connecting People with Disabilities and Community Members )  and jobs. "People have gotten jobs, their own homes, and are now seen in more valued ways. Thanks to all my partners in this!" she says.