Isabella Gliatti, a UofL student majoring in biology and exhibit volunteer is a Originally from Lebanon, Ohio, Gliatti lives with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which affects collagen production and leads to chronic pain, joint hypermobility, tachycardia, and fatigue, among other symptoms.

“It’s good for the public to see the unique richness of people with disabilities and that just because people have disabilities, doesn’t mean that they can’t accomplish all different types of things,” Gliatti said.

Training compassionate health care providers

The exhibition was curated by , an international organization founded by award-winning New York City-based photographer Rick Guidotti. The organization collaborates with hospitals, medical schools, museums and more. Guidotti, who once photographed supermodels, wanted to show the unique beauty and ability within disability.

More than 30 local participants were photographed to create the exhibit at UofL.
Each face in the gallery also displays a digital link to a brief video introducing them in their own words.

Through partnership with Positive Exposure and funding support from the UofL Health Sciences Office of Health Equity and Engagement, the exhibit was brought to Louisville as a collaboration between the UofL School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics and the  Kornhauser Library, and includes students, volunteers, physicians and staff.

Faye Jones, pediatrics professor, said the project supports UofL’s mission. “Our holistic approach creates an environment where varied perspectives and backgrounds are valued and ensures that the workforce is equipped to address the health needs of an increasingly diverse population.”

Vida Vaughn, director of the Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, helped to coordinate efforts to bring Positive Exposure to Louisville. “Providing space for this important exhibit aligns perfectly with our goal of promoting patient values as a component of evidence-based practice,” she said. “The beauty of diversity is not just about what makes us distinct, but about how those distinctions create new opportunities for connection and understanding.”

For UofL Department of Pediatrics professors Corrie Harris and Sarah Korte, Positive Exposure became a way to view inclusiveness through the lens of training future compassionate physicians.

Harris, a pediatric hospitalist who works at Home of the Innocents, became familiar with Positive Exposure about six years ago at a conference, and was moved by the message of focusing on the humanity behind diagnosis.

“We really want to remind providers that every patient is a person first — before we get caught up in all the diagnoses and treatments,” she said. “We don’t want to lose sight of the humanity of medicine.”

Korte first discovered the Positive Exposure website during the height of the Covid pandemic when searching for ways to engage students remotely.

She created a project for medical students to choose a participant video from the website and write a reflection, later joining an online discussion group about what they learned. That exercise became a permanent component of the curriculum.

“As health care providers, we often come in with preconceived notions about what we think a patient wants or what we think they should accomplish and don’t ask them what they want,” said Korte. “We need to address our implicit biases and give the patients autonomy to make those decisions about what they want for themselves.”

Recent medical school graduate Sean Woods was the student lead for the Positive Exposure project. He began a residency in pediatric neurology at UofL Health in July 2025.

Woods said the curriculum reflection exercise was revelatory for some and reinforcing for others.

“It’ll make us all better physicians in terms of building relationships with our patients to get an understanding for who they are and what their goals are, and to really work together,” he said.

Reaching the Cardinal community and beyond

Gliatti was invited to volunteer for the project and share her story as a member of .

The club is a UofL coalition of disabled students and their allies that work to foster a safe and inclusive environment, promote student led advocacy and provide a space for disabled students to build solidarity.

Gliatti said the Positive Exposure exhibition helps to increase awareness and inclusiveness around both invisible and visible disabilities. She said she has been pleased to not only share her own story but hear the stories of so many others.

“I hope that someone who is in a similar boat can hear my story and think, ‘Hey, this girl has all these struggles, but she’s in college. Maybe I could do that, too?’”

Learn more about the

Updated Nov. 6, 2025

Committed to advancing the science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) community, the SOA is focused on a strategy to build a STEMM workforce that reflects the culturally rich, innovative and diverse talent pool of the United States.

SOA has engaged hundreds of partners to implement STEMM Equity and Excellence 2050: A National Strategy for Progress and Prosperity, with the goal of helping 20 million people from historically excluded and marginalized communities enter, contribute to and thrive within STEMM fields.

For UofL, this is a transformative effort that includes the College of Arts & Sciences, College of ����ֱ�� & Human Development, J.B. Speed School of Engineering, and School of Medicine in networking with national foundations, companies and the federal government to offer scholarships and expand the opportunity for STEMM careers to more students.

“For too long, many students have had to swim upstream to pursue careers in STEMM and UofL is joining the vital effort to seek fundamental, systemic change. Complex problems require multifaceted, creative, and innovative solutions, which are best addressed with diverse teams bringing distinct perspectives to achieve scientific excellence,” said James Orlick, director of grant writing and innovation for UofL’s Office of Institutional Equity. “Equity and excellence are connected.”

Professor Oluwaferanmi Okanlami encouraged attendees to ask that question at the 2024 health equity keynote: “Disabusing Disability: Demonstrating that Disability Doesn’t Mean Inability.” Okanlami, whose mission is to close the gap among the diverse members of our society to create a more equitable and promising future for all, highlighted shortcomings in how most of society views disabilities and what must change.

Born in Nigeria before immigrating to the U.S. at a young age, Okanlami attended high school at Deerfield Academy and went on to Stanford University where he also ran track & field, serving as captain his last two seasons and achieving Academic All-American recognition. Okanlami earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan before matching into orthopedic surgery residency at Yale University. At the beginning of his third year of residency, he experienced a spinal cord injury, paralyzing him from the chest down. After two surgeries and intense rehabilitation, he recovered some motor function and navigates the world as a proud wheelchair user.

Today, Okanlami is director of student accessibility and accommodation services at the University of Michigan, where he oversees the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, two Testing Accommodation Centers and the Adaptive Sports & Fitness Program. He also is an assistant professor of family medicine, physical medicine & rehabilitation and urology at Michigan Medicine and an adjunct assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In addition, he earned a master’s in engineering, science and technology entrepreneurship from the University of Notre Dame and completed his family medicine residency at Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Indiana.

As an accomplished athlete, he is passionate about adaptive sports and fitness and champions access to physical fitness and inclusive recreational and competitive sports for all.

At Research!Louisville, Okanlami’s topic provided insight into creating a health system which is accessible to and inclusive of both patients and providers with disabilities, as well as providing provisions necessary for students and employees with disabilities in higher education.

The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a person with a disability as an individual who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment. Okanlami’s work emphasizes that disabilities do not fairly identify individuals, but more than likely perceptions of disabilities can lead to artificially placing limits on people who have just as much or more to contribute to society.

As a disabled, Black, Nigerian, immigrant, cis-gender heterosexual, male, physician and athlete, Okanlami doesn’t just speak from an acquired knowledge-based perspective. He has experienced firsthand the difficulties of being identified in a culture that does not understand his main message that “disability does not mean inability.”

In his talk, Okanlami illustrated how each individual with a disability has unique needs for accommodations.

“When you have met one person with a disability, you have met one person with a disability,” he said.

Okanlami said that everyone must recognize that we live in an ableist world and we need to provide reasonable and appropriate accommodation for people that identify has having disabilities, whether those disabilities are visible or invisible.

“The health care system is ableist by definition. The medical model of disability teaches us that disability is pathology. It is something that is broken that should be fixed, prevented or cured,” Okanlami said. “The social model of disability does not see the problem living in the individual, it sees the system we are in as being inaccessible. If someone is born without the ability to walk, that shouldn’t be a problem if we have access to the resource they need to be able to navigate.”

But he encouraged everyone to take action.

“What is it we can do to make someone’s tomorrow better than their yesterday?” Okanlami said. “There is something that each of you can do, even if it is a tiny little bite, but the impact that little bite can have could be something that makes a profound impact on someone else’s life.”

Okanlami’s Research!Louisville presentation on Sept. 19 at the University of Louisville Health Sciences Center was led by the HSC Office of Health Equity and Engagement and the School of Medicine Office of Community Engagement and Diversity. To watch his entire keynote discussion, visit the .

Betty Coffman contributed to this story.

Every child can rise

As president of ​ (HCZ), a world-renowned education and poverty-fighting organization based in New York City, Canada has made it his life’s work to help young people from under-resourced communities succeed. , HCZ now serves more than 34,000 students and families living in a 97-block area of Central Harlem in New York City.

Growing up in an impoverished south Bronx neighborhood, Canada said he has seen firsthand the result of young people not receiving quality education.

“It’s life and death,” he said. “My mother had four sons, but only three made it. At 72-years-old, not one of my friends I grew up with is alive today,” said Canada. “It means the ability to take care of your family or fall into a black hole that sucks you in and destroys lives.”

Canada’s keynote speech was a commentary on the state-of-affairs in education and a rally cry to educators to change their perspective on what it means to stand up for every child.

Aftermath of COVID-19

Today’s educators, schools and students face daunting challenges, many exacerbated by the upheaval and trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Learning loss is real, and many kids have not caught up academically and never will unless we do something,” said Canada. “We may think things have returned to normal, but our children have not recovered. What we are doing is passing along a whole generation of kids who don’t have the ability to be college ready.”

Canada said that makes it more important than ever to offer programs like UofL’s newly launched , which reaches out to youth in middle and high school to equip and nurture them with essential skills, mentoring, supports and networks they need to be ready for the higher education experience and success in life.

“We need to give these young people just a sniff of the American dream so they can believe there is a way for them to make it,” he said.

Through his hard work with the Harlem Children’s Zone, Canada’s efforts have resulted in placement of nearly 1,000 kids in college – kids who never thought college could be part of their future. Canada said changing expectations is key to shifting that culture from believing college is not for them to believing college is definitely for them.

“When 1,000 kids come home in the summer from college, they see people they know and start to think, ‘If he can go to college, I could go to college.’ It becomes normal,” Canada explained.

Thinking creatively  

Although Canada attended one of the worst schools in the nation as a child, he said unfortunately not much has changed.

“If you go in those schools today, they start and end at the same time, and kids are taught the same way, even though we know that for 60 years, it hasn’t worked,” he said. “We must do different things.”

In an effort to lead change, Canada created a charter school in Harlem where there are after-school supports until 7 p.m. Saturday school also is available throughout the year for struggling kids. These efforts, he said, have yielded considerable progress in closing achievement gaps in math and reading.

“Why do we think we can teach the same way to everyone? What are the diverse ways we can save these young people? We can save some kids through academics, or athletics, or art, or mental health or physical health, or parents, grandparents or siblings,” he said.

For university educators, Canada believes they, too, need to continue figuring out what is working and what is not, especially for young people with little exposure to college.

“These are complicated times, but our mission cannot change, and we cannot sit on the sidelines,” said Canada. “We have to take a stand.”

“With the name ‘Cardinals Rising,’ I immediately thought of a nest,” Mahone said. “How do we build a nest for our students so that when they graduate high school, they are ready to come to UofL, or ready to go into their careers? At UofL, there’s a nest here to help them nurture and hone their skills and abilities so they can succeed in a higher learning institution.”

, which was announced Aug. 28 at the , is designed to serve students in grades 8-12 and will bridge the educational divide for underserved, low-income and first-generation students and their families to help build a thriving college-going culture. The program is a collaborative effort with UofL’s academic colleges and resources that will provide year-round engagement and ongoing development through mentorship and enrichment activities.

“Our mission is to empower students by creating and cultivating pathways to higher education through an infrastructure of intentional relationships and strategic investment,” Mahone said. “We want to create a future where every student, regardless of background or circumstances, has equitable access to higher education and the opportunities that it brings.”

The initial phase of the program will focus on recruiting a pilot group of male students from and connect them with UofL Cardinals Rising ambassadors. Later phases of the program will introduce opportunities for female students and broaden the scope.

The first participation goal is to attract 200 JCPS students to be evenly placed across the grade levels from 8-12 with 15-20 UofL ambassadors made up of students, staff and faculty recruited for mentorship matching. JCPS principals, counselors and Family Resource Center staff will help recommend and recruit youth for the program.

Once the first cohort of ambassador-student matchups is identified, Mahone said they will meet with parents and host getting- to-know-you sessions with families in spring 2025. Next, the summer academy will offer a weeklong immersive experience on Belknap Campus filled with dynamic college-level activities. Cardinals Rising ambassadors also will meet with students at their own schools and offer holistic support that empowers entire families with tools needed for success.

Mahone said he hopes to eventually expand the program to all JCPS schools and every county in the Commonwealth.

“Our vision is a community where the talent and the potential of all students is recognized and nurtured, and they contribute to the workforce of the city and state through collaboration and innovation,” he said.

.

This summer, eight Muhammad Ali scholars embarked on a transformative, two-week international learning and cultural experience in South Africa. Sherry Durham, director of the , said the scholars are asked to be active in building awareness of social justice issues, not just on a local level but national and even internationally.

“That was one purpose of the trip,” she said. “Muhammad Ali was very committed to service and empowering his community. We want to help build future change agents. Whatever the student is passionate about, we connect them with real people who are doing that work, and they come up with some type of solution.”

Durham, along with Marian Vasser, associate vice president for , and Muriel Harris, retired faculty member from the , led the students abroad.

One stop on the journey included a tour of Robben Island, the infamous site of the prison where peace activist Nelson Mandela was held during apartheid. While talking with a tour guide and former prisoner, the group gained insight into South Africa’s arduous journey to democracy, and the resilience and spirit of the community.

“Through dialogue and conversation, we helped the students connect what they learned from the community and from the history in South Africa to their research projects,”  Durham said. The director said she also was interested in connecting the dots from seemingly other disparate historical events around the world, like instances of genocide in various countries. “Even though these are very different events, it’s some of the same mistakes that we’ve made throughout history over and over again, regardless of race or ethnicity.”

Muhammad Ali Scholar and  student Kaamraan Iqbal said he appreciated the conversations with local residents.

“Everyone I spoke to who was affected by apartheid were extremely welcoming in sharing their stories and how they coped,” he said. “The people of South Africa should have a medal of honor for perseverance with all the stories I heard.”

Additionally, Durham said she welcomed the opportunity to see how other cultures experience their worlds.

“I wanted everyone, not just the students, but everybody, to recognize their privilege on so many levels. For example, in America you might be an ally, or a part of the LGBTQ community, but in Africa, that’s frowned upon in a lot of places,” said Durham. “I felt blessed to be able to see a broader perspective versus what we see here in our little bubble in the United States.”

Iqbal said the Ali Scholars program has opened his eyes to so many possibilities.

“For anyone who’s trying to find themselves, who’s wanting to be more than what they are right now, who wants to make a change but doesn’t know how, the Muhammad Ali Scholars program can help you reach that goal,” he said.

Created in 2004, the Muhammad Ali Scholars Program is designed to create a community of scholars who embody Muhammad Ali’s legacy, becoming transformative leaders who positively impact the community. Through a commitment to service and social justice, the scholars inspire change and become future change-makers. The two-year program of social justice leadership development, academic research, community engagement and service also requires undergraduate students to research a social justice issue where they wish to make an impact.