Madison Lawson is a journalist and disability rights activist working with New America’s Education Policy Program, writing Navigating Disability in Schools: Stories Across the System. Lawson was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy which shaped her perspective growing up, allowing her to bring her experiences of navigating the education sphere with a disability and her journalistic storytelling abilities to the table. Noticing a lack of representation in media for people with disabilities and looking up to activists like Judy Heumann; the mother of the disability rights movement, it became a goal of Lawson’s to be a part of pushing the needle of inclusion and representation forward with her community.
Lawson attended the University of Missouri where she earned her BA in Convergence Journalism. During her time in college she hosted a two-time Gracie Award winning podcast, “The Obvious Question,” where she shed light on living with a disability in a world not designed with disabled people in mind. Since then, Lawson’s work has been published in a variety of publications including Allure, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Vogue. Her work emphasized the importance of disability representation and has allowed her to build an audience of her disability community members across social media platforms.
What started as a few articles and a dream has created a career for Lawson and eventually led her to being invited to the 32nd Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act held at the White House this past September. Surrounded by disability community members and personal heroes, Lawson was filled with gratitude for how far her community has come, reigniting the fire to continue pushing that needle forward alongside them.