Much of my early work, right after the adoption of the Convention in 2006, involved helping institutions understand what they had signed up for and building some of the first inclusion structures and policies.

But people with disabilities around the world continue to experience exclusion as part of daily life: in education, access to resources, housing, migration, and political participation.Working across very different political and institutional environments has taught me that the core challenges are often remarkably similar, whether in Estonia (where I come from), Belgium (where I live) or Uzbekistan (where I sometimes work). What changes is the scale, the resources available and the context.

The post-Soviet region continues to navigate the long and uneven process of decolonisation. The progress may be patchy, but I would like to give credit to the remarkable resilience and perseverance of the amazing disability activists there.

Much of my work today sits at the intersections of topics, or regions, of systems. Inclusion is not a niche topic: I dream of a time when it's embedded in how all societies function. So I see my role as helping build bridges at these intersections to start conversations that would not naturally start. 

I increasingly see my role as helping build bridges between regions, systems and conversations that don’t always naturally connect. In the disability community, governments are our main interlocutors, understandably. We need good policies, funding and oversight. But recently, I have increasingly become interested in the role of the private sector in delivering disability inclusion. Companies shape labour markets, products, services, technology and everyday participation – often more directly and immediately than governments do!