Free. Virtual. Live. All are welcome.
This year’s unconference themes include: humanity, healing, resistance, community
Event Schedule
Thursday, March 21
4 to 6pm PDT: What We Owe Each Other: an exploration of love and solidarity with Toni Solaru
Friday, March 22
4 to 6pm PDT: Angie Phenix and Isla Emery-Whittington
Saturday, March 23
10 to 11am PDT: Welcome and Healing will introduce our purpose and offer us a blessing in this time of pain and grief
11am to 1pm PDT: Acts of Resistance features community members and healthcare workers (11 presenters and 2 student art shares) worldwide sharing how they resist oppression and persist through dance, art, photography, spoken word, and protest
4 to 6pm PDT: Community Gathering offers an opportunity to connect with disruptors from around the globe in small group discussions
*all times listed in Pacific Time (PDT), click to find your local time
Meet Our Speakers
Adeola (Toni) Solaru [They/Them]
Toni is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee, in addition to a functional cognition specialist working in Chicago, IL at Shirley Ryan Ability Lab. Toni’s practice background includes community-based and inpatient psychiatry, stroke, TBI and brain injury, and cognitive rehabilitation. Additionally, Toni is the co-founder and Chair of Diverse-OT National, a national organization dedicated to advancing the cultural climate within the occupational therapy profession and strives to foster a strong community of critically reflexive occupational therapists and students. Preview slides from What We Owe Each Other and resources.
Isla Emery-Whittington [Ia/She/Her]
Isla is of Rereahu, Ngāti Kauwhata, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa tribes. She is a parent, clinician, educator and research fellow and is decolonising. Isla writes and narrates the colonialism experienced in everyday occupations from the perspective of a Māori woman that trained as an occupational therapist within a settler colony that denies colonialism. Isla co-founded the Māori Occupational Therapy Network and is passionate about disrupting theory, practice, research, governance and education. She has tribal obligations and responsibilities to community and lands.
Joe [He/Him]
Joe [chosen pseudonym] is a Palestinian occupational therapist based in the West Bank. He is known as a disruptor in his field. From the beginning of his life in Palestine, Joe has faced numerous hardships and challenges. However, he has always been stronger than his circumstances, eventually achieving his dream of becoming an occupational therapist. Joe's passion for his work stems from his deep-rooted connection to his homeland.
Indrani Ghosh nee Chaudhuri [She/Her]
Indrani works at IBM as a technical content professional. In her spare time she loves to write, read, dance, travel, and meet new people. Having trained in Indian classical dance from a very young age, Indrani has retained her passion for it, and explores it whenever she gets the chance. She has performed, produced, and directed several theme-based dance performances. Indrani lives in Kolkata, India with her husband who is her best friend, worst critic, and sparring partner. A practicing Buddhist, the challenges of people’s lives and a compassionate way of helping them forms part of her long-term goals. Find her online, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn.
Angie Phenix [She/Her]
Angie Phenix is a mother, Métis woman, scholar, educator, and occupational therapist. She has spent most of her career working in rural, remote, and often Northern regions of Canada, across both health and education. Since the beginning of her career, Angie noticed the tension and problematic nature of using a Western-based model of practice in Indigenous communities. Her life, educational, and career experiences have helped to identify a lens to critically analyze how political, social, moral, historical and economic structures co-exist to create different realities for those who live on these lands, creating privilege/empowerment or oppression/disadvantage.
Rosita Villarroel [She/Her/Powerful]
A child of political exiles from Chile who fled the violent dictatorship of Pinochet and a proud Mapuche. I grew up in the Bay Area starting my career in healthcare as a surgical technician for over 15 yrs eventually going back to school and becoming an RN. I have dedicated myself to fighting colonial systems of oppression in the medical institutions and the community. I have been an organizer with the nurses union as well as a community organizer for the liberation of Palestine with Union Nurses for Palestine and a few other organizations. I continue on my journey of decolonization with my Indigenous siblings. Liberation from colonial bonds is not gifted but fought for by the masses.
Victor Alochi [He/Him]
Victor Alochi, President of the Uganda Association of Occupational Therapists, brings a depth of experience as a Community Occupational Therapist, with notable contributions in mental health, physical rehabilitation, and humanitarian emergency response, particularly in conflict and disaster settings.
Throughout his tenure as CPD Association Focal Point, the second alternate Ugandan delegate to the World Federation of Occupational Therapists, and the OTARG Students Representative, Victor consistently showcased exceptional leadership and advocacy skills, further solidifying his commitment to advancing the field of occupational therapy within Uganda.
Sari Omer [He/Him]
Sari Omer is a Sudanese photographer looking at Sudan through his camera lens to show the world beauty, stories and art. He is currently a freelance photographer. Learn more about Sari’s photography: http://sari.photo
Ann Sena Fordie [She/Her]
Ann Sena Fordie works as an occupational therapist in a Pediatric and Adult Mental health setting in Ghana. She is currently the President of the Occupational Therapy Association of Ghana, the Clinical head of OT Department, Pantang hospital, and Clinical Director with SENA Pediatric therapy Center (an NGO aimed at supporting children with disabilities with therapy services and offering teacher and parent training to facilitate inclusive education in Ghana). Ann also is an Occupational therapy lecturer at the University of Ghana and is committed to encouraging social inclusion for children and adults with disabilities in Ghana.
Ramona J. Adrien Cédemé
Ramona is a Haitian OT doing a master's degree in Health sciences at Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. She is currently in her research's data collection process in Port-au-Prince Haiti. She also serves as a course assistant teacher and teacher at her alma mater, Faculté des Sciences de Réhabilitation de Léogâne (FSRL) where she got her bachelor's degree in 2019. Ramona is passionate about Haiti and occupational therapy, prior to starting her master's she worked as a Pediatric and school therapist in one of the cities just outside the capital. Ramona has great interest in education for all and her research aims to bring a light on school access for children with disabilities and how OTs can make their way in the Haitian school system as collaborators.
Patrick Bongoy
Patrick Bongoy was born in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1980. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa and moved to South Africa in 2013. Now based in Cape Town, Bongoy has built a multi-disciplinary practice whose central feature is his industrious and highly textural reuse of rubber from the inner tubes of tyres. Mixing this with other waste products such as hessian sacking, industrial packaging and textiles, he cuts and weaves his materials together to create complex, layered sculptures and three-dimensional reliefs. His painstaking process draws on traditional basket-making skills while referencing the physical labour that defines day-to-day life in the DRC.
Thank You Sponsors
Sponsor Spotlight: Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project
Sponsor Spotlight: Adolph Mukasa Nursery & Primary School
Educational Contributor:
Unconference Playlist
This powerful playlist was made with love by Anna Braunizer and Sara Abdo.
FAQ
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Our vision of an unconference is for everyone to have access to critical information and education without having to pay or travel. All are welcome, meaning you don't have to be an occupational therapist or healthcare worker to attend. All content is intended for a general audience to understand and benefit from.
There is no keynote speaker or panel of experts. All of our participants are equally valued and appreciated; that's why they are compensated. We move away from traditional lectures and involve or immerse the audience as much as possible. This year's event features participation from members of the community, not just healthcare professionals. We have aimed to do this for a long time, and believe we found a way to learn from community members without exploiting them.
This year's unconference themes include humanity, healing, resistance, and community.
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We do not record events to protect the safety and intellectual property of our speakers.
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We will be using the Zoom webinar platform which has auto captions available with translations in 35 language choices to allow more people to access live content. As our events are free, we do not have a budget for sign language or other live interpretation services.
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Our events are volunteer run by only a handful of people. We do not have the capacity to track attendance and create certificates. As our events are free, we hope to draw in a community of people that come to learn and grow together rather than be motivated by credits to join.
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DisruptOT Unconference is happening at the same time as American Occupational Therapy Association’s annual conference in Florida, and that’s not a coincidence. AOTA disregarded the concerns of occupational therapy professionals and students who stressed the risks to their safety by traveling to Florida, the only “do no travel” state in the U.S., based on legislation that infringes on human rights. NAACP, League of United Latin American Citizens, Human Rights Campaign, and Equality Florida have issued travel advisories for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQ+ community members, religious minorities, immigrants, international visitors, people with accents, people that can get pregnant, educators, and healthcare workers.
DisruptOT is a global movement, and our event is a protest against all western institutions that maintain the violent status quo, perpetuate harm, ignore and exclude minoritized peoples, and gatekeep knowledge from historically/presently harmed and exploited groups. We are resisting and disrupting by providing a safe and accessible alternative. Our unconference is free, requires no travel documents, all are welcome, and we compensate speakers.
Check out these informative posts from DiverseOT on occupational injustices in Florida:
⚖️ https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs2WZPgMZeK
⚖️ https://www.instagram.com/p/CtkUYEPRO4h
⚖️ https://www.instagram.com/p/Ct44si2RRxA
Additional (re)sources:
📚 https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/22/23733060/desantis-florida-naacp-travel-advisory-lulac-equality
📚 https://floridatraveladvisory.com
📚 https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/14/florida-passes-extreme-6-week-abortion-ban
📚 https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/gov-desantis-signs-slate-of-extreme-anti-lgbtq-bills-enacting-a-record-shattering-number-of-discriminatory-measures-into-law
🗺️ Anti-Trans Legislative Risk Map https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/june-anti-trans-legislative-risk
Registration
Register once for all events. The same Zoom link will be used for all event days and time.