Board of Directors
The Alliance of Disability Advocates Board of Directors is an active board that is crucial to our success as an organization. Each member brings an important viewpoint to all conversations and is a valued member of the ADA team.
Board Members
Ali Ingersoll
Board Chair
Ali Ingersoll is a day trader, consultant, disability advocate, writer, blogger, editor, and public speaker. She started her advocacy mission after being repeatedly denied medically necessary equipment by insurance companies over the last 10 years since becoming a C6 quadriplegic and full-time wheelchair user after a shallow water diving accident.
Ali’s passion lies in coaching people with disabilities on how to improve their quality of life by teaching them to self-advocate in order to live a life of independence, dignity, and grace.
Ali has a firm philosophy of paying it forward by giving back to the community through outreach, working together, and building each other up. She believes it’s important to band together as one in order to affect the greatest change on the national stage and in local communities.
Crystal Johnson
Treasurer
Crystal Johnson was born and raised in Raleigh with a deep, meaningful connection with the NC community. Crystal has worked in the finance & accounting field since 2013.
Her goal as an ADANC board member is to strengthen the disability community by using her finance and accounting experience. She’s volunteered for Habitat for Humanity since 2009 and the Special Olympics Spring Games held in Raleigh.
Shefaali Keegan
Board Member
Shefaali is a Managing Director at the Kara Group where she has worked extensively with executives on strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, operations improvement, and reorganizations. Prior to the Kara Group, Shefaali was Vice President at Inova Health System, a $2.5B nonprofit healthcare system in Northern Virginia, helping the system to improve employee and patient experience.
She is passionate about a number of community issues including alleviating poverty, providing access to education, and enabling those who are underserved to achieve their full potential. In addition to working with ADANC, she is also on the Board of Directors for InStepp Inc., where she served as Chairman for 2 years.
Lee James
Board Member
Lee James, who sustained a C5-6 spinal cord injury and near-drowning at the age of 15 in a diving accident, is a licensed LCMHC counselor/therapist with 19 years of highly successful experience providing effective, evidence-based mental health services, including extensive individual and group psychotherapy and case management.
He earned 2 degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill, a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 1999, and a Masters of Science from the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Counseling in 2002, with internships as a staff therapist in the UNC Department of Psychiatry, all achieved as a manual wheelchair user.
Since graduating in 2002 Lee has been honored to work in community mental health, specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) based interventions with dually diagnosed individuals via outreach team modalities with XDS Incorporated and UNC Center For Excellence In Community Mental Health of Chapel Hill. He is currently in private practice in Chapel Hill/Durham specializing in working with disability and other diagnoses.
Kèliy Grobbelaar
Board Member
Kèliy Grobbelaar is a graduate student at the University of Carolina, Chapel Hill studying Social Work, with a concentration in organizational leadership, and disability studies. Following graduate school, which she will complete in May 2022, she hopes to continue her work in the field of disability justice by working with organizations to build, reimagine and restructure programs, trainings, and environments that center the voices of the disabled communities they serve.
Her goal as a Board member is to extend outreach and advocacy further into the community, ensuring that people of all backgrounds, cultures, and communities are supported and the voices of the most marginalized are centered through ADANC’s work.
Kayli Miller
Chief Financial Officer
(Non-Voting)
Vicki Smith
Executive Director
(Non-Voting)
Want to Join?
The ADA Board of Directors is currently seeking new members from Durham, Franklin, Johnston, and Orange counties.
The ideal candidate is passionate about the right of people with disabilities to live in a community of their choice.
The make-up of the Alliance Board of Directors is to mirror the ethnic, racial, geographic, socioeconomic, and disability diversity of the counties we serve. 51% of the Alliance Board of Directors must have a significant disability.
The Responsibilities of an ADANC Board member include:
- Attend quarterly Board meetings
- Approve minutes
- Approve financials
- Approve programmatic report
- Receive training on ADANC’s responsibilities are a Center for Independent Living (CIL) and their obligations as Board Members of a CIL.
- Participate on a committee and attend committee meetings
- Attend any specially called meetings
- Assist with/attend Alliance fundraising events
- Attend conferences, meetings, and trainings as needed.