Career Transition Panel

Join us for a conversation with Qudsiya Naqui, Yohana Valdez, and Hannah Zack on navigating legal careers amid a shifting political landscape. They’ll share how their lived experiences as disabled professionals have shaped their paths, decisions, and approaches to change. Together, we’ll reflect on the creativity, adaptability, and resilience that define our community.

Hannah Zack (she/her)

Hannah Zack (she/her) is a disabled advocate and first-year law student at Suffolk University Law School committed to advancing civil rights, disability equity, and meaningful access to justice. She serves as Operations Manager at Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD), where she helps lead a national movement of lawyers working to protect democratic norms and the rule of law. Hannah was appointed to serve in the Biden-Harris Administration at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, where she supported federal civil rights enforcement. She previously designed and supported educational programming for incarcerated learners at Concord Prison Outreach, grounded in the belief that dignity and opportunity should extend to every person. Hannah earned her B.A. in Sociology from Wheaton College (Massachusetts), where she also led campus-wide efforts to expand disability inclusion and accessibility. She grounds her work in lived experience, coalition-building, and a commitment to strengthening democracy through equity, accountability, and justice.

Image Description: Hannah is smiling into the camera. She has medium-length auburn hair, is wearing hoop earrings, and is dressed in professional attire, including a dark blazer over a black top.

Qudsiya Naqui (she/her)

Qudsiya Naqui currently serves as Assistant Professor at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clark School of Law. Her work aims to center disability justice and the disabled experience as tools that catalyze transformative cultural, legal, and policy change towards a more just, accessible, and equitable society. From 2023-2025, Qudsiya served as Senior Counsel in the Office for Access to Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice. She led efforts to improve access to justice for disabled people and developed the first-ever federal learning agenda on access to justice to drive evidence-based policymaking across federal agencies. Prior to federal service, she was an Officer with The Pew Charitable Trusts Courts and Communities project, where she led empirical research on the intersection of courts and technology. Qudsiya also produces and hosts the acclaimed podcast, Down to the Struts—a collection of conversations about disability, design, and intersectionality aimed at uncovering the building blocks for a more just, inclusive and accessible world. She was recently selected as a 2025-2026 USC Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellow. Her work has appeared in Vox, Oxford University Press, the UCLA Law Review, and the Disability Visibility Project. Qudsiya holds a JD from Temple University Beasley School of Law and a BA, magna cum laude, in political science and human rights from Barnard College.

Image description: Qudsiya Naqui, a South Asian woman with dark eyes and curly, shoulder-length dark hair, smiles at the camera. She is pictured in black and white, wearing a dark suit and a tie against a white backdrop.

Yohana Valdez

More information coming soon.