Lehigh University's College of Education

Spring/Summer 2008

DIANA MTK AUTIN , Esq. is the Executive Co-Director of the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network (SPAN). SPAN works to educate, empower, and engage families and concerned professionals on health, education, and human services issues affecting children from birth to age 21. SPAN’s primary commitment is to children placed at greatest risk due to disability, poverty, discrimination, immigrant or language status, or other special circumstances. Nationally, Ms. Autin is the Alliance for Parent Centers Parent Fellow on Urban Education. She is a member of the Board of Family Voices; the National Center for Cultural Competence Workgroup on Assessing Cultural and Linguistic Competency in Family Organizations; and the Technical Assistance Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health Consultant Pool. She co-directs the Region I Parent Technical Assistance Center, providing support to federally-funded parent centers in the NE United States. In that capacity, she represents parent centers as the Parent Facilitator of the LRE Part B Community of Practice; a member of the Creating Agreement and Response to Intervention (RTI) Workgroups of the IDEA Partnership; the Project Forum Advisory Board; the Advisory Committee for the National Technical Assistance Center for Children/Youth who are Deaf-Blind; and collaborator with the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative on the Research brief, Parental Engagement: A Comparison of School District and Parent Center Expectations, published in 2007. Autin also represented the perspective of parent centers on the IDEA Partnership's Discipline, Procedural Safeguards, Early Intervening Services/Response to Intervention, and Monitoring and Enforcement Dialogue Guides.

In New Jersey, Autin serves on numerous committees and task forces, including Build-NJ for Early Learning Core Team, the Early Intervention and Special Education Steering Committees, Prevention Subcommittee of the Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect, and Center for Healthy Schools, Families & Communities Advisory Committee. She served on the New Jersey Planning Team for the Summit on New Directions in Student Support, facilitated by the UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools. She is President of the Board of the New Jersey Association of Partners in Education. She directs/manages numerous projects at SPAN, including the Parent Training & Information Center, NJ Inclusive Child Care and Early Intervention Procedural Safeguards projects, Family WRAP (Wisdom, Resources, Advocacy, and Parent to Parent Support), which includes NJ Statewide Parent to Parent and the Family-to-Family Health Information Resource Center/Family Voices-NJ; Transition to Adult Life project; and Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health Chapter. Autin directs SPAN’s collaboration with the Pediatric Council on Research and Education of the American Academy of Pediatrics on Adolescent Immunization.

Ms. Autin was awarded the 2004 Advocate of the Year Award by the Association for Special Children and Families, the 2003 National Family Week Family Advocate of the Year Award by the Family Service League, the 2002 Distinguished Service Award by the New Jersey Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and an Al Harrison Public Health Award by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services in 1999 for her participation on the Early Intervention Stakeholders’ Task Force. She has written numerous reports and advocacy guides on education, and is the author of The Grassroots Guide to Public Policy Advocacy and Segregated and Second-Rate: “Special” Education in NYC. She is a contributor to Still Separate and Unequal, a report of the New Jersey Council on Developmental Disabilities focusing on special education in New Jersey. Other awards include selection as a Rockefeller Foundation “Next Generation of Leadership” Fellow; an Advocacy Institute Senior Leadership Fellow (1994); Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow, Harvard University Law School (1993); New York State Advocate of the Year, Disabilities Awareness Coalition (1993); and Revson Fellow on the Future of New York City at Columbia University (1987-1988).

Her thirty years of social justice advocacy include serving as Managing Attorney of Advocates for Children of New York; General Counsel, NYC Bureau of Labor Services (equal employment contract compliance); Executive Director, Fund for Open Information and Accountability (public access to government information); attorney & organizer, Downtown Welfare Advocacy Center; and Business Agent/Senior Steward, Transportation Employees Union.

In her community, Ms. Autin is the Health & Wellness Liaison to the Montclair Council of PTAs, Co-Chair of its Health and Wellness Advisory Committee and Healthy Adolescent Partnership, and Parent Training & Newsletter Coordinator for the Special Education Parent Advisory Council. She is the mother of multiracial adopted children ranging in age from 15-31, two of whom have special needs.