Lawyering with Challenges: Disability and Empowerment By Stuart Pixley – “Stuart Pixley is a Senior Attorney with Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, working on patent licensing matters. Active in bringing disability to the legal diversity movement, Mr. Pixley is President of the recently founded National Association of Attorneys with Disabilities and is a Commissioner for the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Disability Rights. He previously led the disability diversity team for Microsoft’s Legal and Corporate Affairs department and has served on the Washington State Bar Association Diversity Committee.”

“As a senior attorney in Microsoft’s Intellectual Property Group, I have focused on strategic patent licensing for the last six years. Before joining Microsoft, I handled complex intellectual property transactions for software, high tech, semiconductor, pharmaceutical, and biotech companies at large law firms in New York City and Silicon Valley. Because I was born with cerebral palsy, I have significant hearing loss and no functional vision in one eye, and I get around by electric wheelchair. As an attorney with a significant disability, I encounter practical obstacles every day that, for me at least, can be identified and largely overcome with some effort, ingenuity, and planning. More challenging are social obstacles: participation in social functions, lack of meaningful social networks and role models, and popular assumptions about and low expectations of people with disabilities. I owe my success in navigating these challenges as a professional to a few foundational experiences as a child and young adult—my basic life needs were easily met, life and career expectations and aspirations for me were no different than for others, and I was included and supported in both the non-disabled and disabled communities. Today, as the legal diversity movement embraces disability, I see the diversity framework as a compelling way to ensure that others benefit from the same life experiences that I was lucky enough to have.”