Vice President for Economic Citizenship and Disability InclusionAccion
Mr. Goldstein was part of the team that founded the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion in 2009. He is a Vice President and Program Manager for the Center's "Financial Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities" initiative. He has spearheaded the development of the Framework for Disability Inclusion and helped launch the Framework at Fundacion Paraguaya, an award winning microfinance institution (MFI) in Paraguay and Skoll awardee. He is also overseeing a partnership with 5 MFIs in India and the disability support organization v-shesh that have had great success implementing disability inclusion best practices there - and in August 2014, received a national award from the NCPDEP for this achievement.
In 2014, the Center published a series of disability inclusion tools and trainings, based on the work in Paraguay, which are open source and immediately available to MFIs and other interested financial service providers, as are the tools and trainings that have been customized for India. In 2015, Nigeria, Uganda, and Ecuador have become vibrant centers of new disability inclusion initiatives.
As the Center’s global advocate for disability inclusion he gives talks on disability at conferences around the world and works closely with the United Nations. In 2015, he has put a new emphasis on including persons with psycho-social disabilities.
Mr. Goldstein writes a blog post series for the Center as "Mr. Provocative." He is also a playwright, with several plays produced in London. He taught a playwriting course at Boston University for 12 years.
His activism and passion for social change began in his teenage years when he took to the streets to protest the American war in Vietnam.
Mr. Goldstein is a graduate of Yale University.
jgoldstein@accion.org