Connie Vandarakis

Connie Vandarakis (she/her)

Connie Vandarakis is an international disability inclusion consultant, inclusive arts expert, and movement educator who identifies as a person with non-apparent disabilities and bilateral hearing loss. She is a Zero Project Ambassador (2023) and serves on the founding steering committee of the Zero Project Inclusive Arts Division, contributing as a disability inclusion expert and mentor advancing cross-sector innovation, policy transfer, and disability-led community building.

Connie has extensive engagement with the United Nations Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (COSP), participating as a speaker, performer, and Zero Project delegate from 2019 through 2024. Her work has been featured in the UN Disability and Development Report 2023 and the Zero Project Policymaker Forum, where she emphasizes relationship-based inclusion, co-creation with disabled communities, and the role of trust and belonging in effective CRPD implementation—particularly in inclusive arts, sexual health and reproductive rights, and accessibility.

She is the CEO of Our Motion, an international consulting practice supporting governments, cultural institutions, and civil society organizations to embed inclusive movement, arts, and wellness into policy and practice. Central to this work is Connie’s ability to build durable communities of practice, connecting policymakers, educators, artists, and disabled leaders through shared learning, mentorship, and embodied experience. She serves as an expert on multiple European Union–funded initiatives, including the MOVE and MOVE ON projects, collaborating across Austria, Italy, Portugal, Tenerife, and Grenada to develop locally grounded yet internationally scalable models of inclusive education and cultural participation.

With over 30 years of senior leadership in higher education, Connie served as Associate Dean and Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she cultivated inclusive academic communities by centering student voice, faculty collaboration, and care-based leadership. In the United States, she currently serves as Special Projects for Disability Pride Pennsylvania, leading statewide cross-sector programming that strengthens connection, visibility, and collective identity through inclusive arts, outdoor access, and sexual health education.

Across her work, Connie is known for combining policy fluency with deep personal presence, translating lived experience into shared understanding and sustainable action. Her approach strengthens disability-led leadership, nurtures belonging across difference, and advances international collaboration in alignment with the UN CRPD and EU inclusion frameworks.