Success Stories

Advocate Analyst Michele Lee

Michele LeeIt took Michele Lee a few years to adjust to her injury, but she eventually directed her frustration into accessibility and representational activism, and now she can’t be stopped.

The Will to Look in the Mirror and Then Hold It Up to Others

The first few years after a 2003 car accident that resulted in C5-6 complete quadriplegia, Michele Lee, 38, couldn’t even look at herself in the mirror.

“I didn’t recognize myself as that paralyzed person in the wheelchair. I couldn’t accept the permanence of the situation,” says Lee. “But after a while, I resigned myself to my fate. I thought, “F— this. It is what is. I’m going to be in this wheelchair because what’s the alternative? Eventually, I had to go shopping and find clothes, so mirrors were unavoidable, and slowly I started looking the mirror and seeing me and not just the chair. It was a gradual reconciliation and realization that the wheelchair doesn’t define me. It wasn’t like one day I just thought, ‘OK, I have this disability, great.’”

When she reached that place, she was also dealing with the reality of her injury in other parts of her life. She’d returned home to Chicago after a few years in China exploring eastern medicinal therapies and was meeting other people with SCIs living their lives for the first time.

Once she met more people with disabilities, Lee found her community and realized there were people out there that were just as frustrated and fired up to change things as she was. The experiences helped her come to terms with her injury and get more involved in issues. Instead of protesting, Lee chooses to speak to authorities from within their own boardrooms.

“I advocate for more accessibility because I’m angry that things are not accessible, and they should be by law,” says Lee. “I live in the city, wheeling distance from my office, and still just getting around to live my life — meeting friends, trying new restaurants and hanging out with my boyfriend — is really difficult because of the accessibility issues with transportation, and so on.”

Michele Lee
Photo © Lynn Renee Photography

Today, Lee works for international financial solutions provider Aon as a senior financial analyst for the corporate treasury. Her job gives her a venue to channel the frustration she has about her injury into fixing the inequities she sees disproportionally affecting the disability community. She created a disability resource group for her office. The group now has between 200 and 300 people with and without disabilities. Colleagues come to her for resources when onboarding new employees with disabilities, and she was asked for input on how to make their Chicago office more accessible.

Michele Lee “I wanted to create a safe space to discuss disability issues, to make these conversations less awkward, more inclusive and more accessible,” says Lee. “Ultimately the goal is to get more people with disabilities hired.”

Beyond Aon, Lee serves as a member of the ADA Advisory Committee for the Chicago Transit Authority and the Chicago Department of Aviation’s Airport Advisory Committee, which helps increase accessibility at both O’Hare and Midway airports. And most recently, she joined Chicago’s COVID Recovery Task Force to make sure the vaccine rollout is accessible.

“Whether I serve on a committee or you chain yourself to a bus, the problem is we have no power. People with disabilities need people in power, but how do we get there? We need to support each other to rise up and have that power, and I think getting to know the people already in power is helpful in the meantime because it means they can put a face to our issues and think about them more.”

Italy was less of a culture shock than China says Lee, pictured with her boyfriend, Daniel Kufer, in Rome.
Italy was less of a culture shock than China says Lee, pictured with her boyfriend, Daniel Kufer, in Rome.

Lost in Translation

Shortly after her injury, Michele Lee’s aunt convinced her to travel to China to explore eastern medicine as a way to improve her function. However, being a person with a disability in China wasn’t easy.

“China was a jarring experience. You don’t see people with disabilities. I think it’s because it is shameful to show weakness in Asian culture. Everyone would stare at me like, ‘What are you doing out in public?’ They wondered why I wasn’t home. I didn’t speak the language, so everything was through a translator. There was zero accessibility. There were no curb cuts on the sidewalk, so I would roll my wheelchair in the street. It was interesting to them that I was American because everything in America was cool, but they were also like, ‘What the hell are you doing out here in a wheelchair?’ Initially, I was angry, but I grew a thick skin and eventually didn’t care. I would just say, ‘Hey, I want to eat here,’ and they would recruit a bunch of people to carry me in. They were confused, but they knew I had money to spend, so it didn’t matter.”

How are you killing time during COVID?
Besides stress eating junk food, I’m also taking a creative writing class because it’s a way to flex a different muscle.

Michelle_outdoorsWhat’s your ideal outing?
I love a picnic in the park on a warm summer evening with music in the air and stars in the sky.

Best advice for hiring an attendant:
Gauge their ability to be flexible, and realize that nobody knows everything and no one can read your mind, so be specific.

Why I joined United Spinal:
It took me a while, but I’m finally ready to know more people with spinal cord injuries.