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Team


White woman with long brown hair and a nose ring, wearing a tan leopard-print blouse and posing in front of lots of plants.


Allexa Laycock (she/they)
Creative Director

[email protected]

Allexa Laycock is a filmmaker, editor, and a Creative Director at Rooted in Rights. Allexa has presented on accessible media at Netroots Nation, for the City of Seattle, and to non-profits and other organizations around Washington State. She also leads training on creating self-produced, accessible advocacy videos. Previous training includes partnerships with the DO-IT program at the University of Washington, of which she is a Comparative History of Ideas and Dance alumni, and Mental Voices Africa, a Kenyan advocacy organization for those with psychosocial disabilities.

 

 


White woman with chin-length light-brown hair and a nose stud, wearing a blue-and-white stripe shirt and posing in front of a galaxy background.


Courtney Cole (she/her)
Creative Production Assistant

Courtney started at Rooted in Rights in 2016 as an intern, then accepted a position as a Creative Production Assistant in 2017. Courtney works on the creative development and editing of videos. She also played a key role in developing Rooted in Rights Audio Description practices to make our videos more accessible, leading to Rooted in Rights receiving the American Council of the Blind’s Audio Description Award in 2018. She’s passionate about mentorship, and participates in supporting high schoolers with disabilities through the University of Washington’s DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Inter-networking, and Technology) program. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Washington in June 2022. Courtney performs stand-up comedy and playing music in her spare time.


 

 


White woman with cropped short blonde hair, wearing a pink-and-white sleeveless top, with a visible power chair headrest, chest strap and cushions, posing in front of a brown-and-purple watercolor background.


Vanessa Link (she/her)
Creative Production Assistant

Vanessa’s involvement in disability rights started when she participated as a camper and intern at DO-IT, a technology-focused college prep camp at the University of Washington for college-bound high school students with disabilities. After high school, she followed a passion for graphic design to an Associate in Technical Art Degree in Multimedia and Interactive Technology from Skagit Valley College. In 2016, she joined Rooted in Rights as an intern, working from her home on Whidbey Island to aid the creative team in the production of graphic design projects for disability rights organizations across the country. Currently, she is pursuing a B.A. in Disability Studies at the University of Washington.


 

 


Outdoors, day. I'm a proudly fat, brown-skinned Black non-binary woman in my early 30s. Seen from the hips up, I'm wearing dark red lipstick. glasses and my hair is in an afro. I have a fake, pink flower in my hair on the side. I'm wearing a cow print top (white top with black and light gray cow pattern and pink, bedazzled collar). I'm in front of trees at Central Park; the sun is out. I'm looking up and away from the camera, not smiling.


Denarii Grace (she/they)
Editor in Chief, Rooted in Rights Blog

New York–based activist/artivist Denarii (rhymes with ‘canary’) Grace is a Black, bisexual, proudly fat, multiply disabled, poor, femme, witchy, non-binary/agender woman. She’s a blues singer-songwriter, poet, essayist, screenwriter, public speaker, community educator, and Editor-in-Chief of the Rooted in Rights blog, a publication by and for disabled people. Denarii is a former non-fiction editor at The Deaf Poets Society, an online journal featuring literature and art by D/deaf and disabled people. As a freelance writer, they have written for Bitch Magazine, Black Youth Project (BYP100), Brooklyn Magazine, Everyday Feminism, Black Girl Dangerous, and The Establishment, among several others. She founded Fat Acceptance Month in January 2019. As this bio demonstrates, Denarii Grace’s pronouns are she/they and they strongly prefer that people mix it up regularly, if one can remember to do so. You can find her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and her website.