Lydia X. Z Brown

Lydia X. Z. Brown is a policy counsel for the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology and director of policy, advocacy and external affairs at the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network. They are a disability justice advocate, writer, attorney and strategist whose work focuses on interpersonal and state violence against disabled people and algorithmic discrimination — systematic decision-making that privileges on group over another.

Brown founded the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival and Empowerment. They are an adjunct lecturer and core faculty in Georgetown University’s Disability Studies Program and adjunct professorial lecturer in the American Studies program at American University’s Department of Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies. They serve as a commissioner on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights and the chairperson of the association’s Civil Rights & Social Justice Section’s Disability Rights Committee, and are board co-president of the Disability Rights Bar Association.

Previously, Brown was chairperson of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, Holley Law Fellow at the National LGBTQ Task Force and visiting lecturer at Tufts University. Lydia has been featured in Them.’s Now List 2021, the Gold House Foundation’s 2020 A100 list, NBC Asian America and other outlets. Their writing appears in several publications and scholarly journals.