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Howard A. Rosenblum is Chief Executive Officer and ex-officio Board member of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).
The NAD was established in 1880 by deaf leaders who believed in the right of the
American deaf community to use sign language, to congregate on the issues important
to them, and to have its interests represented at the national level. These
beliefs remain true to this day, with American Sign Language as a core value. As a nonprofit federation, the mission of the NAD is to preserve, protect, and promote
the civil, human, and linguistic rights of deaf Americans.
The advocacy scope of the NAD is broad, covering the breadth of a lifetime and impacting
future generations in the areas of early intervention, education, employment, health
care, technology, telecommunications, youth leadership, and more. On the global
front, the NAD represents the U.S.A. as an affiliate of the World Federation of
the Deaf, an international human rights organization.
Mr. Rosenblum comes to the NAD after 19 years as a lawyer, focusing his practice on disability rights and special education law. For the past nine years,
he was a Senior Attorney at Equip for Equality, the designated Protection & Advocacy entity for the State of Illinois. Previously, he worked ten years
as an associate at Monahan & Cohen, a private law firm, and briefly as legal counsel at Access Living, the center for independent living for the Chicago area.
In 1997, he founded the Midwest Center on Law and the Deaf, to address the lack of access to the legal profession for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, and
oversaw its operation as the Board Chair until 2011. In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Mr. Rosenblum to serve on the United States Access Board, which
is responsible for setting accessible design and technical criteria used to promote compliance with federal disability rights laws. Mr. Rosenblum has a bachelor
of science degree in computer engineering from the University of Arizona and a juris doctor degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College
of Law. Born and raised in Chicago, Mr. Rosenblum is a diehard fan of Chicago sports teams. He also enjoys traveling the world to meet deaf people in other countries
and learning their sign languages.
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Bill Stark has been Director of the DCMP (formerly the Captioned Media Program) since 1991.
In 1992, he submitted a "Feasibility Study Relating to the Establishment of a Descriptive Loan Service" to the U.S.
Department of Education, recommending that the program’s captioning services be expanded to also provide description
of educational media for students who are blind or visually impaired. In 2006 this service became a reality, and
the DCMP was born.
Stark holds BS and MS degrees in education and information technology, and is a certified teacher with a decade
of college teaching experience. He has an additional twenty-five years of administrative experience in media and
community service programs in residential schools for the deaf and blind. Professional highlights include directing
the writing and illustrating of the first-ever deaf hero comic book for international distribution, being taught how
to caption films by Dr. Malcolm Norwood ("the father of closed captioning"), and directing national accessible media
awareness campaigns in partnership with such organizations as the National Education Association, Scholastic, and the
Public Broadcasting System.
Stark has received consumer service awards from national organizations and served as a consultant and advisory board
member for many programs. Numerous articles written by him have been published in professional journals and appear online.
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