Invited Speakers

Valerie Fletcher is Executive Director of Adaptive Environments, an international NGO, based in Boston and founded in 1978.  It is committed to advancing the role of design in expanding opportunity and enhancing experience for people of all ages and abilities. AE meets its mission through educational and consulting projects from local to international. Fletcher has co-chaired three international conferences on universal design and writes and lectures extensively. She currently oversees projects ranging from universal design at the urban scale, in public transit, in a public agency social welfare system, in affordable housing and collaborates with UN Department of Social and Economic Development on universal design as a framework for the new human rights convention. Fletcher is also the Honorary Executive Director of the Toto Ltd. Universal Design Laboratory in Japan. Her career has been divided between design and public mental health.  She was founder and principal of Fletcher Studio Design.  As Deputy Commissioner of Mental Health in Massachusetts, she oversaw the participatory planning process that redirected $74m from institutional care to community support systems. She has a masters degree in ethics in public policy from Harvard University.