Siyu (Suzanna) Chen

she/they

Disability Advocate, Student

Award category:

Grassroots Community Advocate

Siyu (Suzanna) Chen is an autistic person passionate about disability equality and youth leadership in education and beyond. Her activism involves everything from exhibiting photographs at a neurodivergent creativity conference, facilitating events for local autism nonprofits, representing disabled students at University College London (UCL), to representing disability-focussed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) campaigns by international charities during United Nations events. Having noticed both a lack of young people in disability advocacy and disabled people in youth activism, Siyu is actively working to bridge the gap by advising on youth issues within Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) and ensuring disabilities are included in campaigns for children and youths. She is also keen on exploring creative ways of advocating for disability rights, exemplified by her work on facilitating a data visualisation project that contributes to lessening the information gap on health outcomes of D/deaf communities in Nigeria as a committee member of the nonprofit Viz for Social Good.

“Being recognised as one of the Disability Power 2024 is a massive boost to my motivation as a disabled advocate! I will continue to work towards a more inclusive world for disabled young people and ensure our voices are heard.”

Q&A

Siyu (Suzanna) Chen

As a role model, what advice would you give a disabled person at the start of their career?

It might feel like your efforts are not appreciated or impactful at times, but remember that your advocacy as a disabled person does not have to take any specific form or achieve instantly measurable outcomes to be important to yourself and others.

How has your work impacted the disabled community or raised awareness about disability issues?

What are your future goals or aspirations in your field or in disability advocacy?

I want to keep raising awareness of issues relevant to disabled children and youths on policymaking platforms and empower young disabled advocates to start their activism journeys.

What do you do to switch off and have fun?

I love to do creative activities like photography and design.

What or who brings you joy?

Being recognised and valued for my thoughts and insights brings me joy, as my neurodivergence has not always been appreciated in the past.

Do you prefer dogs or cats?

I have dog and cats at home, but I prefer cats as I feel like they enjoy the same kind of company as I do.

What is the one thing you would change if you could?

I would erase and re-introduce the word “disability” as a neutral word if I could, but that is something we have to work slowly towards in our advocacy.

What barriers do you think still need to be addressed to improve the lives of disabled people?

I think disability-inclusive education is still an immense issue. We need to improve how we provide education to both disabled and non-disabled students to ensure all young people are taught how to interact with each other respectfully and challenge current stigmas associated with the different conditions.

Useful links

Siyu (Suzanna) Chen

Areas of expertise

Accessibility, Art, photography, Charity, social enterprise, Children and young people, Disability Advocacy, Education, Equality

Disability Power 100 profile information is self-submitted by the profile subject. Shaw Trust understands and respects that disability and impairment descriptors and language use varies from person to person. Shaw Trust assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or discrepancies in the content of this, or any other, profile page.