Emily Ross
Program Manager
As Project Manager for Disability Rights Oregon’s Plan for Work project, Emily oversees a team of Community Work Incentives Coordinators (CWICs). The Plan for Work project provides no-cost work incentives planning and assistance or benefits counseling to people who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and/or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits and want to work. Emily joined Disability Rights Oregon in 2017 as a CWIC before taking on her current role of in 2022.
As a former recipient of SSDI and benefits from other state programs herself, Emily fuels her team’s mission to get Social Security recipients on their own paths to financial independence from personal experience.
Emily was born with a genetic eye condition, Aniridia, which caused statutory blindness. Throughout her lifetime, Emily has found solutions to obstacles and barriers she’s encountered and worked through them with the encouragement of family. Emily holds a bachelor's degree from Willamette University. In her free time, Emily enjoys spending time with family and friends, baking her famous molasses cookies in the fall, playing with her dogs, and finding creative ways to decorate her new home.
