Disability Pride Week: Keynote Speaker Eddie Ndopu

Join us for a keynote by Eddie Ndopu as we celebrate Disability Pride Week!

The event will be hosted in Schine 304 and via Zoom. Complete the Zoom event registration.

#SUDisabilityPride2023

About Eddie Ndopu
Described by TIME Magazine as “one of the most powerful disabled people on the planet,” Eddie Ndopu is perhaps best known for his human rights advocacy with respect to advancing disability justice at the forefront of the international development agenda. An award-winning and internationally acclaimed humanitarian, storyteller, public intellectual, and disability practitioner, Eddie is a thought leader and advocate for social equity, sustainability, and disability-based innovation. Ndopu describes himself as a queer, Black, disabled individual, fighting for social equity and the environment, and his influence is felt worldwide. A Global Changemaker, Eddie actively champions climate justice, fights global poverty and demands equity for the world’s most marginalized segments of society in his capacity as one of the UN Secretary-General’s 17 official advocates for the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Ndopu is a highly in-demand speaker for his insights about the intersections of disability, sustainability, and how we can best work together to make meaningful change for our planet’s future.

Ndopu is the Founder of A Billion Reasons, a groundbreaking social impact incubator established in partnership with the World Economic Forum to tackle the U.N.’s SDGs through a lens of universal design and disability-based innovation. Eddie serves on several global Boards, including as a member of the board of directors of the United Nations Foundation. He also sits on the advisory boards of The Valuable 500, IMAGINE and Verizon’s Global Advisory Board for Accessibility and Disability Inclusion. He formerly served as a member of both the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council for the New Agenda for Social Justice and the World Economic Forum’s Partnering for Racial Justice in Business Initiative. Eddie’s debut memoir, Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw, which chronicles his challenging experience as a disabled student attending Oxford University, is slated for global release on August 1, 2023.

Featured in a profile by TIME, and recognized as one of Pacific Standard’s “Top 30 Thinkers Under 30,” Ndopu receives rave reviews after speaking events, and is sought-after for keynotes and conversations at venues such as Facebook, Amazon, Discovery Health, the COP26 Climate Change Summit, The World Economic Forum, the GlobalCitizen Summit, and Salesforce’s Dreamforce event, where he was described as, “one of the most powerful voices on the planet right now.”