Meet the woman who helped inspire major advances for disabled travelers

Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th Secretary Pete Buttigieg has made unprecedented advances for people with disabilities during his tenure at the Department of Transportation. He has spearheaded disability events at the White House and has ushered in changes to air travel that will make airplane bathrooms more accessible and widen airplane aisles to accommodate personal wheelchairs. Airports, train and bus stations across the country have made improvements to increase Americans with Disabilities Act compliance.  These are not new issues for Buttigieg, and they featured heavily in his 2020 presidential primary platform. He was not the only Democratic presidential hopeful to have a disability platform, but his was one of the first to be released.  His commitment to disability policy is personal, thanks in no small part to his longtime friendship with Emily Voorde, 31, who met Buttigieg when she was in high school and he was running for mayor of South Bend, Indiana. She worked on Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and went on to work for the White House.  Buttigieg credits Voorde with his interest in disability rights. It is something he has always cared about, but knowing Voorde brought it closer to home for him, he said.  “I’ve always recognized the importance of disability work in policy, but there’s no way that I would have the same understanding of it. I would like to think that I’d pay just as much attention to it no matter what. But there’s no question that my understanding of it was shaped by Emily’s experience and her expertise,” Buttigieg told The 19th.  Voorde, for her part, is humble about the influence she had on Secretary Buttigieg. “I feel really fortunate to have had that proximity to him. I think in some ways, even if they were small, I made disability more tangible,” Voorde told The 19th.  Despite Voorde’s impact, few people know her name.  Voorde was born in South Bend, Indiana, the younger of two children. Her mother was a nurse and her father served on the city council. Voorde was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic condition that makes bones brittle and impacts growth. Voorde uses a wheelchair to get around.   Advocacy since childhood Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th Emily’s mother, Cathi Voorde, used to give demonstrations at school to explain Emily’s condition. She called it the “spaghetti talk.” “I would take some spaghetti and chicken bones and say, ‘The chicken bones, these are like your bones, they bend a little bit,'” she would demonstrate. Then, she would bring out dry spaghetti and bend it, to show how much more easily it would snap. “Emily’s bones are like spaghetti. They break.”  Despite the risks, Emily Voorde was an active child. She played volleyball and participated in gym class with the other students. When the local public school pulled her from gym, her parents enrolled her in Catholic school, where she got more individualized attention and was more purposefully integrated by school staff.  “We thought public school would be the best option since she would have a [legally mandated individualized education plan], but it turned out it just wasn’t the experience we’d hoped for. There was an incident when she was in gym class, bouncing a ball with an occupational therapist. The gym teacher yelled, ‘Get that child out of my gym,'” Cathi Voorde recalled.   Voorde’s parents were invested in ensuring that she had full access to everything other children had.  “I was certainly the only … wheelchair user in my peer group growing up, the only one in my grade school, the only one in my high school,” Voorde said. However, her parents were careful to introduce her to other people with disabilities, including her own disability. “Very early on my parents instilled in me self-advocacy and using my own voice,” Voorde said.  Voorde’s parents took her to conferences organized around osteogenesis imperfecta and got her connected with local disability groups. This gave Emily a sense of independence and gave her parents possibility models for her future. Seeing other children and adults like their daughter was a powerful experience. Voorde’s mother particularly remembers hearing a baby cry at one of the first osteogenesis imperfecta conferences she attended.  “I had tears in my eyes because that baby sounded just like my Emily,” Cathi said.  Voorde first met Buttigieg when he came to speak to her high school government class about civil engagement. “He was not only one of the most articulate people I’d ever heard speak, but he was approachable and clearly passionate about [South Bend] and making it better. At the time, South Bend was kind of on the decline or at least on a plateau. Seeing this young guy, not much older than me, who had already been out in the world and who chose to come back, to run for mayor — I was just really impressed,” Voorde said.  She volunteered for Buttigieg’s mayoral campaign and, during college, interned in his office for a summer.  “She’s just somebody who impressed everybody around her right away with her talents. She makes any workplace, any team stronger. She has a relentlessly positive way about her,” Buttigieg said.  After her internship, Voorde completed an undergraduate degree in political science at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend and went on to pursue a master’s degree in education. An unexpected opportunity