In this episode of the Courageous Public Health Podcast, Syreeta Nolan shares what it looks like to claim your full identity and build systems that honor every body and mind — even when those systems were never designed for you.
This is a conversation about disability justice, prevention, and power — and what becomes possible when we stop asking people to fit broken systems and start redesigning systems to fit people.
Meet Syreeta Nolan
Syreeta Nolan is a Black Disabled, bisexual, kink-friendly systems thinker and relentless advocate for equity in higher education. She didn’t just return to college after a decade away — she returned demanding change and not to be taken for granted.
Her journey through fibromyalgia and mental health trauma didn’t silence her. It lit a fire.
She co-founded Disabled In Higher Ed to build the space she’d never had: where disabled students could be seen, heard, and equipped to lead. As Principal CEO, she has partnered with institutions, policy leaders, and community organizers to reimagine access from the ground up — centering storytelling, trauma-informed systems, and collective accountability.
Now, she’s in a new season — one where rest is resistance, prevention is power, and healing is a form of design.
She is in the midst of writing BOOK, a poetic memoir for the soul-centered grievers and radical feelers. And she’s developing a national credentialing pathway for BSW-level professionals focused on preventive, relational mental health care.
She researches mental health prevention and trauma care. She speaks truth in spaces that weren’t built for people like her.
She leads from the grey: between light and shadow, pain and purpose. That’s where the real work happens.
Conversation Highlights
- Disability as identity, not luggage — Syreeta explains why she claims “disabled” as an identity, not something she “has,” and how person-first language can erase lived reality rather than honor it.
- From broken systems to preventative care — She shares how years of living with severe mental disability led her to design the Mental Health Preventative Care Act — shifting mental health from crisis response to lifelong, upstream support.
- Turning pain into policy — Syreeta walks us through the moment she left a 1 a.m. voicemail for a U.S. Senator’s office… and how it led to a next-day briefing with the Senator’s health policy team.
- Generative AI as disability infrastructure — She reframes ChatGPT not as cheating or replacement, but as “generative, augmentative cognition” — the same kind of access technology as curb cuts or texting.
- Intersectional courage in hostile systems — As a Black, disabled, bisexual woman in higher education, Syreeta names how ableism shows up even inside equity spaces — and what it takes to stay visible, proud, and politically powerful anyway.
“My disabilities are not something I carry like luggage. I am a disabled woman — that is my identity.”— Syreeta Nolan
Stay in Touch
With Syreeta Nolan:
Email: syreeta_nolan@brown.edu
Request the MHPCA one-pager, share feedback, or connect about disability justice, mental health prevention, and policy advocacy.
With Dr. Kristi McClamroch:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristi-mcclamroch/
Website: www.CourageousPublicHealth.com
Subscribe to Weekly Courageous Public Health Podcast Updates: http://eepurl.com/jcgQv6
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