Our Team
Our Board of Directors and Project Teams are led by Teach Access members from industry, advocacy, and academia.
Teach Access Staff
Kate Sonka
Executive Director
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Kate Sonka has served as the Executive Director of Teach Access since 2019. She holds a Master’s degree in Bilingual/Bicultural Education from DePaul University.
Teach Access programs and resources have continued to grow under her leadership impacting thousands of faculty and students across the United States and beyond. Kate is a mentor, advocate, and leader whose career spans industry, higher education, and non-profit organizations. She works to create meaningful and inclusive teaching and learning experiences through faculty support and development, immersive learning experiences, and strategies to encourage broad adoption of accessibility knowledge.
Kate lives in Lansing, Michigan with her husband, two cats, and 24 house plants.
Leslie Johnson
Program and Operations Manager
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Leslie Johnson joined Teach Access in February 2022. As Program and Operations Manager, Leslie is responsible for leading many of the Teach Access projects and supporting organizational needs.
Leslie has 10 years of experience working in Higher Education, with 8 years in Higher Education Disability Services. Prior to joining Teach Access, Leslie served as a Teach Access volunteer from her role at Michigan State University (MSU) as Assistant Director of the MSU Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities (RCPD). In her MSU RCPD role, Leslie led efforts to increase accessibility on campus and managed all Assistive Technology purchases, adoption, and training.
For her undergraduate education, Leslie studied Retailing and Merchandising Management at Michigan State University and completed graduate degrees in Master of Business Administration and a Master of Education, Adult Education and Training. In addition, Leslie also completed a certificate in Assistive Technology Application at California State University, Northridge.
Leslie is a technology enthusiast and finds excitement learning about new technologies and sharing that enthusiasm and knowledge with others. She believes that technology can have a positive impact and improve our abilities to thrive in all aspects of life, which is why it is important for technology to be accessible to all.
Mindy Kolin
Director of Development & Industry Partnerships
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Mindy joined the Teach Access team in August, 2022 and has spent more than 25 years serving in the non-profit sector directing development, marketing, and public relations efforts for non-profits that served individuals with disabilities, seniors, victims of domestic violence, and animal welfare.
Mindy holds a Master’s degree in Counseling from Long Island University and also worked in higher education in both graduate admissions and career development as well as within the communications department for a large K-12 district in Colorado Springs.
In late 2020, Mindy started noticing a change in her vision and learned she had developed closed-angle glaucoma and cataracts. After multiple laser surgeries, Mindy still experiences “ghost images” and double vision, and has been using assistive technology since 2021.
Mindy will be expanding fundraising efforts to help Teach Access reach 1 million students by 2030 and create a future where technology is born accessible.
Rolando Méndez-Fernández
Director of Education
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Rolando joined the Teach Access team in February 2023 and brings 18 years of experience in higher education. Rolando worked at the InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico in various roles related to teaching and learning, faculty development, instructional design, student services, quality assurance, and technology adoption. He also taught management, Human Resources, Communications, and academic writing courses. For the past six years, Rolando has been engaging educators in Puerto Rico in adopting inclusive, user-centered practices and creating learning experiences that accommodate the needs and preferences of all learners.
Rolando is currently completing a doctorate of Management in Organizational Leadership. His research identifies organizational, managerial, technological, and learning design factors that facilitate knowledge creation and learning in small and medium enterprises.
Julius Patto
Teach Access Intern
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Julius is a senior at Michigan State University, studying User Experience Architecture and Professional & Public Writing. His studies practice and emphasis topics of user experience, inclusive design, research, and content writing.
Julius has worked with MSU’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences as a Digital Accessibility Intern, remediating the college’s course content to fit accessibility standards and provide all students with accessible learning content.
He believes in creating digital products that are not only functional but also cater to diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, making technology usable and welcoming for all.
Sherrye Zhong
Teach Access Intern
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Sherrye Zhong is a third-year student at Michigan State University, studying Graphic Design and Experience Architecture. She is passionate about storytelling and design, using her interests in UX research, international program management, and advocacy to create meaningful experiences.
Outside of school and work, Sherrye enjoys choreographing and performing Asian-inspired dances with her group, Jade. She is dedicated to designing user-centered solutions that connect with and inspire diverse audiences.
Toyin Renike Akinwolemiwa
Salesforce Administrator
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Renike joined Teach Access in January 2024 as a Salesforce Administrator intern and became a full-time team member in January 2025. She brings expertise in Salesforce configuration, process automation, and data management to support the organization’s mission of advancing accessible technology education. Renike’s contributions have been key in improving systems, including implementing tools like Volunteer for Salesforce (V4S) and customizing features to streamline donation tracking, grant management, and reporting processes.
With a Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and over four years of Salesforce experience, Renike specializes in managing and maintaining high-quality data. Her work ensures data accuracy, consistency, and accessibility, enabling Teach Access to make informed decisions and advance toward its goal of reaching 1 million students by 2030.
Outside of work, Toyin enjoys exploring innovative technology solutions, continuous learning, and contributing to impactful projects that merge technology and social good.
Teach Access Board of Directors
Laura Allen
Chair
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Laura Allen serves as Director for Accessibility & Disability Inclusion at Google, within Google’s centralized Products for All team. Laura and her team drive internal and external facing programs across the world, and work cross-functionally across teams to improve the accessibility and usability of Google products and processes, also making Google a more accessible and equitable place for people with disabilities. In addition to her core role, Laura is the Global Head of Operations of the Disability Alliance Employee Resource Group. Due to her personal experience with low vision, she believes that technology has more power now than ever to transform lives, and progressing accessibility and disability inclusion is her true passion and purpose.
Prior to her central role within Products for All, Laura served as the Senior Accessibility Program Manager for the Chrome and Chrome OS teams at Google. For over 6 years, she collaborated with engineers, designers, product managers, and researchers to make the Chrome family of products more accessible and usable across platforms, for people of all abilities.
Laura also represents Google in the Teach Access organization, where various technology companies, higher education institutions, and disability advocacy organizations come together to drive the inclusion of accessibility in core computer science, design, human centered interaction programs, and other key disciplines to close the accessibility skills gap. As of 2020, she serves as the Chair of the Teach Access Board of Directors. Since 2017, Laura has also served on the board of directors for the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Since 2020, she also serves on the board of the Alphapointe Foundation, an organization centered around empowering individuals who are visually impaired to achieve their goals and aspirations and gain meaningful employment. And in 2023, Laura joined the board of inABLE Africa, an organization striving to empower people with disabilities across Africa.
For her undergraduate education, Laura studied International Business, Marketing, and Music at Georgetown University. She also completed an Executive Leadership graduate program at Stanford University in 2021.
Meena Das
Vice Chair
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Meenakshi ‘Meena’ Das is a software engineer at Microsoft working on building accessible frontend experiences. Through her accessibility expertise she has advised several individuals and organizations on how to make their products accessible to people with disabilities. She is the founder of ‘Working with Disabilities’ support group for working professionals with disabilities which has over 3000+ members on social media. For her tech inclusion work, she was inducted into the National Susan M. Daniels National Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame, named a DO-IT Trailblazer for changing the way the world views people with disabilities, and recently awarded the Disability:IN NextGen Leader of the Year. In addition to serving on the Teach Access Board, she is also a member of the Accessibility Leadership Committee and the NextGen Council of a non-profit organization named Disability:IN, and has been featured by the Times of India, ABC News, CNET, Forbes and Tech Times for her views on disability inclusion in tech. You can follow her on Instagram where she shares Accessibility tidbits and experiences from her personal life.
Sean Keegan
Treasurer
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Sean Keegan is the Director of the Office of Digital Accessibility at Stanford University. He leads a team in providing technical expertise, training, and best practices across the Stanford community to deliver accessible websites and digital solutions for people with disabilities. Sean is also the program lead for the Accessibility in IT community, a pillar of Stanford’s IDEAL IT initiative, focusing on building awareness, allyship, and accountability around digital accessibility at Stanford.
Prior to his current role, Sean was the Director of the CCC Accessibility Center, an initiative funded by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and located at Butte College. There, Sean helped build a system-wide resource delivering training, technical support, and guidance in the areas of assistive technology, alternate media, and web/IT accessibility for students, faculty, and staff in the California Community College system.
Sean is the past president of the Access Technology Higher Education Network (ATHEN) and recipient of the 2019 CSUN Center on Disabilities Strache Leadership.
Yasmine Elglaly
Secretary
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Yasmine Elglaly is an assistant professor of computer science (CS) at Western Washington University. She earned her Ph.D. degree in CS from Virginia Tech, where she worked closely with blind students and blind scholars on the accessibility of touch screens for reading and studying purposes. She has founded the KIND (Komputing for INclusion, and Disability) lab that focuses on accessible computing research. Dr. Elglaly, with her students and collaborators, investigates how software development tools may better support the creation of accessible websites and mobile apps. She also studies the various ways of teaching accessibility to graduate as well as undergraduate computing students, and the inclusion of accessibility knowledge in fundamental computer science courses. You can read about her work on ResearchGate.
Elglaly is passionate about inclusion and she focuses her service on inclusion-related efforts. In addition to her engagement with TeachAccess, Elglaly is an active member of the Special Interest Group Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), which organizes annual forums for CS educators. She is the Co-Chair of SIGCSE’s Universal Design Committee, with the mission of creating an accessible and inclusive participation environment for all SIGCSE members. Elglaly is also a Community Ambassador at Western Washington University for supporting diversity, equity, and inclusivity. She actively engages CS students from under represented groups in her research projects, such as women and students with learning disabilities. Many students co-authored research articles and were supported to present their work in top-tier conferences.
Lainey Feingold
Member
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Lainey is a disability rights lawyer who has worked to make the digital world more accessible since 1995. She helped negotiate the first web accessibility agreement in the United States in 2000.
Lainey developed and practices Structured Negotiation, a dispute resolution and collaboration strategy that avoids lawsuits and focuses on lasting change and relationship-building. Structured Negotiation has been used to advance accessibility in the public and private sector for more than a quarter century. Lainey is also the author of Structured Negotiation: A Winning Alternative to Lawsuits (2d edition 2021).
Lainey is also a consultant and an international speaker and trainer on topics including collaborative problem solving, the digital accessibility legal space, accessibility ethics, accessible procurement, and best practices for baking digital accessibility into policies and practices of organizations large and small. In 2017 Lainey was selected as an American Bar Association Legal Rebel – a group of “innovators who are remaking the legal profession.” More information on Lainey’s website.
Reginé Gilbert
Member
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Reginé Gilbert is a user experience designer, educator, and author with over ten years of experience working in technology. She has a strong belief in making the world a more accessible place that starts and ends with the user.
Reginé’s areas of research focus are digital accessibility, inclusive design, and immersive experiences.
In 2019, Reginé’s first book, Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind, was released through Apress publishing. In addition, Doug North Cook and Reginé Gilbert are working on a book titled Human Spatial Computing, which Oxford University Press will publish in 2023.
Larry Goldberg
Member
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Larry Goldberg is a leading accessible media and technology expert and consultant. With more than 35 years of experience as an innovative leader, entrepreneur, inventor, advisor and mentor, he has advanced access to a wide range of media and technology for people with disabilities, driving inclusive policies, processes and organizational infrastructures for large and small, for-profit and non-profit, public and private sector institutions.
Larry began his consulting career after eight years at Yahoo, as Senior Director and eventually, Head of Accessibility. As Head of Accessibility, he directed a dedicated team of accessibility professionals and coordinated with thousands of designers, developers, engineers, product managers and executives to ensure that Yahoo’s many products, services and media offerings were as accessible as possible to people with disabilities.
Larry was also a co-founder of:
- WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
- Teach Access
- XR Access
- Procure Access
Jeff Wieland
Member
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Jeff Wieland currently works in product management for the Social Impact org at Meta, and previously was the Head of Accessibility at Meta. He started the Accessibility team at Meta and grew it into an award-winning multidisciplinary product group. He has worked in product management, user research and technical program management and has over 16 years of experience in the tech sector. Jeff is also a co-founder of Teach Access.
