Deborah Urbanski crusades for equality with the Differently Abled Advisory Group
Formerly an attorney with a flair for the arts, JSC’s Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity (OEOD) Deborah Urbanski came to JSC by way of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. There, Urbanski ran their Alternative Dispute Resolution Program, which segued nicely into her new role at the center.
“My passion is about resolving conflict early,” Urbanski said. “I would do anything for people not to have to go down that road of filing a complaint. I want them to think of that as their last resort—and how we can help them have a meaningful discussion with a mutually beneficial outcome.”
The pursuit of fairness and equality drives Urbanski. As the executive sponsor of JSC’s Differently Abled Advisory Group (DAG), she is able to help facilitate a lot of the positive changes on-site for people who need accommodations for disabilities and other challenges.
The DAG, which became a model for the current Employee Resource Groups, came together with the goal of reasonable accommodations for all JSC team members.
“When people were coming in asking for help for those kinds of things, we realized they were telling us about accessibility issues that we didn’t know about,” Urbanski said. “We needed a group to be out there—helping to let us know when things needed our leadership and, perhaps, even change.”
The OEOD sent out a call recruiting members, and interest in the DAG was overwhelming and positive.
“If you were going to go out and try to build a diverse group … you couldn’t have built one better than how they came to us, grassroots,” Urbanski said.
Together, Urbanski and the DAG have worked tirelessly to make JSC an inclusive and welcoming environment through a variety of initiatives. The DAG was involved as a focus group that took part in a cultural awareness survey. With help from the Employment and Disability Institute, Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell University, many recommendations and consequent fixes have been made to improve the accessibility of our center. The partnership has also helped with Innovation Day booths, special speaker events and more.
“A couple years ago we had the people from the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services come in,” Urbanski said. “They help provide tools for people with disabilities in the workplace, and they usually come in annually to showcase their technology. What’s really kind of great is we like technology here, so it’ll draw people who don’t even have disabilities. We also have an aging workforce, so people who need things that they didn’t even know are available are seeing those things, and they’re free to low cost through this effort.”
It could happen to anyone … even you
“[Disability awareness] is moving in the right direction, and this group has helped us be that voice here at JSC,” Urbanski said. “It’s been a thrill for me to be their executive sponsor, because it touches everybody.”
Indeed, it’s the only group that anyone could belong to at any given moment in time.
Before coming to JSC, Urbanski had her own brush of misfortune that would forever affect her work and lifestyle.
“It did change life a little bit, but it made me appreciate things a lot more,” Urbanski said. “l was sitting at a light, waiting to go back to work one day, and somebody on drugs in a huge vehicle slammed into me. So you just never know.”
“It’s sometimes hard to do some of the active things I used to do … and I do have a little bit of a short-term memory problem, but they’re really good about accommodating me here,” Urbanski said. “They know that I have to bring lists in and use stuff like that. And lights. Overhead lights are really troubling to people with head injuries, so in my office I only have lamps and we’ve cut down the lights in here.”
Urbanski also cannot wear contacts like she used to, and some of her favorite pastimes like shopping and golf aren’t as doable for her anymore. Instead, she relishes in more peaceful pursuits, like fishing and the arts—from ballet or Broadway plays.
While Urbanski and her husband don’t have children, they do have an Australian Shepherd they adopted after their other Australian Shepherds had passed away. A self-confessed would-be “dog lady,” Urbanski spreads her love and warmth through her family, including a horde of nieces and nephews.
“There’s nothing really special about me; I’m a happy person,” Urbanski said in a self-deprecating manner.
However, considering the people she’s helped over the years—including those who are differently abled and just want to be able to work on the frontlines of human spaceflight—many would beg to differ.
Catherine Ragin Williams
NASA Johnson Space Center