Melinda Mast

For the past 18 years, Ms Mast has consulted throughout the US on using a customized approach to employment and services for people with disabilities. She is a partner in Employment for All, an organization dedicated to the ideal that access to employment should be available to all persons with disabilities regardless of severity or label. She served on the faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University’s RRTC on the Social Security State Partnership System’s Change Initiative and worked actively with the Texas Supported Employment Changeover Initiative. In recent years she has focused on providing training and technical assistance to projects systems that implement individual choice, support and control of resources. Ms. Mast was project director for several research and demonstration projects including the NIDRR- funded projects “Developing Individualized Employment Portfolios for Job Development Representation by People with Severe Disabilities” and Research & Demonstration Project on Supported Employment for People with Physical Disabilities. She assisted in the development and field-testing of a self-directed supported employment curriculum and served as technical assistance provider for UCP’s Assistive Technology and Systems Change project, the Choice Access, and the DOL “One-Stop to Success” Project.

Ms. Mast is a frequent speaker, consultant and trainer on strategies and technology for including people with disabilities into the employment and social life of the community. She is a contributing author for national disability journals and texts. Ms. Mast lives and works from her office in Louisville, Kentucky.