Diane Coleman, JD
Adjunct Research Assistant Professor |  | | Phone | 708-209-1500 / ext 11 | | Fax | | | Email | ndycoleman@aol.com | Bio
Diane Coleman obtained her law degree and Masters in Business Administration from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1981 and worked as an attorney for the State of California for seven years. During this time, she also served as a member of the California Attorney General’s Commission on Disability. Relocating to Tennessee in 1989, she became Co-Director of the Technology Access Center of Middle Tennessee and served as Policy Analyst for the Tennessee Technology Access Project, funded through the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. She served on the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the Advisory Committee to the Tennessee Human Rights Commission. Ms. Coleman is currently the Executive Director of the Progress Center for Independent Living in Forest Park, Illinois, a nonprofit nonresidential consumer-directed center advocating on behalf of people with disabilities. She currently serves as a member of the Illinois State Medicaid Advisory Committee, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Illinois Campaign for Better Health Care.
Ms. Coleman is a person with significant disabilities who has used a motorized wheelchair since the age of eleven. Since 1982, she has served on the governing boards of numerous national, state and local disability-related organizations and policy-related committees, has authored numerous articles on disability-related topics and spoken extensively on topics pertaining to disability rights and health care issues. Beginning in 1987, she volunteered as an organizer for the American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT).
In April, 1996, she founded Not Dead Yet, a national grassroots disability rights organization opposing the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. She has twice presented invited testimony before Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives (April 29, 1996, July 14, 1998 and April 19, 2005). Ms. Coleman is a well-known writer and speaker on assisted suicide and euthanasia, and has appeared on Nightline, McLaughlin, The Rolanda Show, The Charles Grodin Show, CBS Up To the Minute, ABC World News Tonight, CNN (Connie Chung, Paula Zahn, Headline News), The Catherine Crier Show,Court TV, CBS Evening News, MSNBC’s The Abrahms Report, Fox News The Neil Cavuto Show, Fox and Friends and National Public Radio, as well as local broadcast outlets in several states. She co-authored Amicus Briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Not Dead Yet and ADAPT in the matter of Vacco v. Quill (1996) and in the Conservatorship of the Person of Robert Wendland in the California Supreme Court (2000). In 2003, she joined the adjunct faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago to co-teach a series of graduate courses in disability and medical ethics.
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