Rosemary Noelke

About Rosemary

Rosemary Noelke is a queer, neurodivergent disability advocate and caregiver based in Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area in Canada. Drawing from her personal experience with ADHD, a learning disability, and other disabilities, as well as her experience as a caregiver to a family member with Autism and an intellectual and developmental disability, she has been an advocate for accessibility and accommodations in the school setting and continues to raise awareness about systemic ableism.

Rosemary is currently pursuing an Honours Bachelor of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa in Conflict Studies and Human Rights. She has pursued this degree in both the co-op and French Immersion stream, gaining bilingual proficiency (FR/EN) and relevant work experience in the Canadian Public Service. She has worked in various fields in the federal government including immigration and refugees, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) policy and public safety.

Throughout her undergraduate studies she has also had the opportunity to pursue her passion in research, working closely with various professors as a research assistant. She has written various case studies and blog posts for “the blended finance project”, an academic lead project critiquing public-private foreign aid strategies, advocating instead for pro-public aid. Rosemary also worked as a research assistant for the “unborderED Knowledge” project which aims to widen, deepen and institutionalize equitable access to education and research opportunities for people with lived experiences of forced migration in Canada. She aims to utilize her passion for writing and research to contribute to further projects, while sharing her current work in blog format.

In addition, Rosemary aspires to utilize her lived experience as a caregiver and disabled person with her passion for public speaking, leadership, and change-making to break barriers within higher education. Through public speaking, consulting, and training, she aims to raise awareness of accessibility issues in all levels of education and to advocate for alternative accessible measure. Moreover, Rosemary is a passionate advocate for alternative perspectives to disability studies. Challenging the traditional medical model of disabilities, Rosemary takes on a sociological and decolonial lens with hopes to challenge traditional western conceptions of disabilities which create barriers in accessibility.