Cartoon-style Bitmoji avatar that looks like Alejandra, smiling and waving while sitting in a manual wheelchair, with short dark hair and glasses, wearing a long sleeved blue top, black pants and sneakers.

Alejandra Ospina

is a first-generation native New Yorker with roots in Colombia. She has been active for many years in advocacy and performance projects locally and beyond. In her youth, she was a founding member of the Fearless Theater Company in NYC, performing with Itzhak Perlman at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in Claire’s Broom Detective Agency: The Mystery of the Missing Violin.

In recent years, she has had the opportunity to re-engage with the stage, including as a member of the inaugural cohort of the Theatre for All intensive program for emerging actors with disabilities at the Queens Theatre (2018).  She has since performed in several projects via Queens Theatre (including a summer 2020 staging of Emily Driver’s Great Race Through Time and Space!), as well as through its partnership with the Phamaly Theatre Company in Colorado.

 She has previously trained and performed in physically integrated dance work (Infinity Dance Theater, Heidi Latsky Dance, ZCO Dance Project).

She sings regularly with the Peace of Heart Choir, and sometimes with other folks, too.

She works regularly as a media access provider on a variety of projects, for which she might create content as an audio describer, translator, or closed caption provider.

Alejandra is the Program Coordinator for Dark Room Ballet with Krishna Washburn, an ongoing educational program that prioritizes the needs of blind and visually impaired dance students at introductory and advanced levels.

She is also pursuing narration and voiceover projects, and can be heard as the primary narrator for the audiobook version of Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the 21st Century (Edited by Alice Wong, Vintage Books, 2020).

Places you might find me: 

Facebook, Twitter (public),  LinkedIn (CV of sorts is there), Flickr, Tumblr (sometimes). I have also loved and lived in Second Life.

Something worth sharing:

My birthday is this month! (October 2021)

I’ve decided to raise funds on behalf of the Disability EmpowHer Network. Why?

Among other reasons…

  • Disabled girls have significantly lower high school graduation rates and higher unemployment rates than their non-disabled peers.
  • Girls and women with disabilities are less likely to have successful disabled women mentors.

Through multi-stage skill-building, empowerment, and mentoring programs, the Disability EmpowHer Network tackles these issues, while also empowering disabled young women to live to their fullest potential and have the confidence to lead.

This is the kind of organization, movement and support I would have benefited from greatly, if it had existed when I was growing up. Luckily, it exists now, and I’d like to support them in this way if I can — with YOUR help!

Learn more about the Disability EmpowHer Network on Facebook, Twitter and online at disabilityempowhernetwork.org

Contribute to Alejandra’s Birthday Fundraiser for the Disability EmpowHer Network on PayPal

Image description: Outside on an overcast day, a diverse group of women and girls of different ages and races poses for a photo in front of a wooden cabin and a tree-filled area behind it.They are standing and sitting in wheelchairs in 2 rows, with one person in the front of the rows sitting cross-legged on the ground.

A woman in the center of the picture is wearing a poncho. Many of them have their arms around each other, and all of them are smiling or laughing. They are all wearing purple t-shirts featuring the Disability EmpowHer Network logo, and text that reads: “When Disabled Girls LEAD, We All Succeed”

On the building behind them, an American flag hangs on one side, a wooden lettered sign above the entrance reads “John Dillon Park” and a white banner hanging underneath it reads “2021 EmpowHER Camp”