Diane Coleman, J.D., M.B.A.
Diane Coleman obtained her law degree and a Masters in Business Administration, focused on public and not-for-profit management, from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1981. While working as an attorney for the State of California for seven years, she served on the California Attorney General's Commission on Disability and on the Board of Directors of the Westside Center for Independent Living, one of the largest nonresidential independent living centers in the country. In 1989, she relocated to Tennessee, where she worked as the Client Assistance Program Coordinator for Tennessee Protection and Advocacy, assisting people with disabilities to obtain employment-related training and services. She then became Co-Director of the Technology Access Center, an assistive technology service center funded, in part, through the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. For two years, she served as Policy and Funding Analyst for the Tennessee Technology Access Project, funded under the Technology Related Assistance for Individuals With Disabilities Act of 1988. While in Tennessee, she also served on the State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the Advisory Committee to the Tennessee Human Rights Commission, The Statewide Independent Living Council, and on the Boards of Directors of the Tennessee Health Care Campaign and the Center for Independent Living in Nashville. She is currently employed as the Executive Director of the Progress Center for Independent Living in Oak Park, Illinois. Since 1987, she has volunteered as both a state and national organizer of the American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, the disability rights group also known as ADAPT. She has been disabled since birth and has used a wheelchair since the age of eleven. Her writings and presentations on the topic of assisted suicide include the following:
Coleman, Euthanasia and People With Disabilities: Considerations under the Equal Protection Clause and the Americans With Disabilities Act. Presentation at Valuing Life, Valuing Autonomy: Living,, and Dying with a Disability (April 13, 1994, and ethics conference co-sponsored by the Hastings Center, University of Chicago Center for Clinical-Medical Ethics, Northwestern University Ethics and Human Values Program, Access Living of Chicago, and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL).
Participant, The Schoolhouse Summit on Disability and the "Right to Die" (Tennessee, July 17-18, 1993, sponsored by The Schoolhouse, Inc.).
Coleman, The Problem of Euthanasia: A Disability Perspective. Presentation to The Fund For Southern Communities, Atlanta, Georgia (June 19, 1993).
Coleman, Withdrawing Life-Sustaining Treatment from People With Severe Disabilities Who Request It: Equal Protection Considerations, Issues in Law & Medicine, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Summer, 1992).
Coleman, Growing Support of the Right To Die: A Worrisome Trend, Community Voices, Nashville Banner (May 10, 1990).