Cara Elizabeth Yar Khan

[Image Description: Gold centered text on a black background with gold confetti reads, “The D-30 Disability Impact List. Below, centered black text in a gold box reads, “2020 Honoree”. Below, right, white centered text reads, “Cara Elizabeth Yar Kha…

[Image Description: Gold centered text on a black background with gold confetti reads, “The D-30 Disability Impact List. Below, centered black text in a gold box reads, “2020 Honoree”. Below, right, white centered text reads, “Cara Elizabeth Yar Khan”. Below, centered in a gold box, black text reads, “United States”. To the left, a color headshot of Cara with a white outline. In the bottom right corner, the white Diversability logo with “#D30DisList” centered below in white text.]

Cara Elizabeth Yar Khan (she/her)

Entrepreneurial Humanitarian

USA

Since Cara was diagnosed with HIBM at age 30, she has used her platforms to break glass ceilings for people with disabilities. With UNICEF Haiti, Cara was the first person with a severe impairment to serve in an Emergency Operation. She promoted the rights of children with disabilities in some of the poorest countries to the UN COSP on the CRPD. She’s producing a documentary film about breaking down barriers. Even her pro-bono work with the Valuable 500 is dedicated to advocating for people with disabilities to be included and empowered. This year, Cara, who is now quadriplegic, was the closing guest speaker, and only speaker wheelchair user, at the TED Women conference. Her talk, The Beautiful Balance Between Courage and Fear which has been viewed almost 2 million times in just 5 months, artfully discusses the challenges of living with a disability, The family-friendly talk is a powerful medium that shatters stigma and stereotypes of people with disabilities, giving a face to a community otherwise not represented on this global stage. Watch her talk.

Diversability