Joan Durocher is the National Council on Disability’s General Counsel and Director of Policy. The National Council on Disability (NCD) is an independent federal agency charged with advising the President and Congress about the broad spectrum of issues impacting the lives of people with disabilities. She has previously served as NCD’s Interim Executive Director and Senior Attorney/Advisor. In these roles, she has overseen the development and publication of hundreds of recommendations and myriad reports on issues affecting the lives of people with disabilities.
Ms. Durocher served for almost a decade as the Designated Federal Official for International Watch, a Federal Advisory Committee tasked with advising on the development of policy proposals that will advocate for a foreign policy that is consistent with the values and goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Since then, Ms. Durocher has spoken and written nationally and internationally on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD); US foreign assistance; and international development and represented NCD on the United States International Council on Disabilities (USICD) and served as the Chair of USICD’s membership committee for many years.
The President of the American Bar Association (ABA) appointed Ms. Durocher to be a Commissioner on the ABA’s Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law from 2002 – 2005, and was appointed for another term from 2008 - 2011. She also served as Chair of the Women’s Business Law Network, and Chair of the ABA Business Law Section’s Subcommittee on Lawyers with Disabilities. In this capacity, she designed the Business Law Diplomat Program which was developed to demonstrate the Section’s commitment to lawyers with disabilities and promote opportunities for their advancement within the ABA and the legal profession. She served three terms on the board of Business Law Today, a publication of the American Bar Association and as a Member of the Standing Committee on Publishing Oversight. She currently serves as Chair of the Section of Business Law’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She has previously served on the editorial board of the ABA’s GP/Solo Magazine and on the Board of Editors for the ABA Journal, the flagship publication of the American Bar Association.
Ms. Durocher has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Michigan State University and received her law degree from the University of Maryland, where she was awarded an Asper Fellowship and received the BARC Community Service and Leadership Award for her work at the Maryland Disability Law Center in Baltimore. In 2002, she was awarded the National Disability Policy Fellowship by the National Council on Disability. She is a member of the State Bar of Michigan and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.