Christina Parasyn

Christina Parasyn is the Technical Assistance Director for the Disability Rights Fund and the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund. She is responsible for leading the implementation of DRF/DRAF’s Technical Assistance Strategy. She works with the DRF/DRAF team, grantees, and partners to ensure grantees have access to technical skills and resources to achieve their rights advocacy goals.

Christina brings 20 years of experience in international development and disability rights. She takes a principled approach to her work and partners with persons with disabilities and their representative organizations, staying true to the disability movement’s motto “nothing about us without us”.  She has brokered important relationships between the disability movement and key government, donor, bilateral and multilateral agencies; international, local non-government, and faith-based organizations; and the private sector. Her work has focused on CRPD and SDGs implementation, training, research, and story collection; disability policies, strategies, and guidelines development; creation of inclusive, accessible organizational systems and processes; and donor strategy, fund, and program evaluations. Christina played a key role in developing and implementing the Australian Government’s first-ever disability strategy for the aid program ‘Development for All’, which set the agenda for Australia’s investment and leadership in disability-inclusive development globally.

She has a Masters of Social Science (International Development), Bachelor of Applied Science (Occupational Therapy), and field experience in the Pacific and Asia.