Toledo resident Douglas Kidd was never one to give up, even after an accident that almost took his life.

“I am driven to recover as much as I can,” he said.

On May 17, 2005, Mr. Kidd was on his way to Maumee Bay State Park for a round of golf. Talking on his phone while at the wheel, he failed to yield and got in a serious car accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury.

That day nearly 17 years ago set him on the path he finds himself on today, as a whirlwind of hospital stays, speaking engagements, graduate degrees and employment changes have led Mr. Kidd to Disability Rights Ohio, where he was appointed to the board of directors in September.

Disability Rights Ohio is a largely federally funded nonprofit with reach around the state. Through a board of directors consisting entirely of people with various disabilities, the Columbus-based organization works for the advocacy of those with disabilities of all sorts especially with respect to legal, civil and human rights.

For Executive Director Kerstin Sjoberg, the primary source that her organization gets its direction from is one of many aspects that makes her organization unique.

“Many other organizations in this field will work maybe more with caregivers or family members, as well as people with disabilities,” Ms. Sjoberg said. “It's not that we don't collaborate with caregivers or family members, but we take our primary direction from people with disabilities, from our board to our client to the way that we get input on what the community needs are.”

Ms. Sjoberg plays an ancillary role in the choosing of new members for the 15 member board of directors, of which six new individuals were appointed within the last few months. Through this process, she became very familiar with Mr. Kidd, his experiences, and what he represents.

“We were just all very impressed, with Douglas’ passion, his knowledge, his personal and family experience with traumatic brain injury, which was a perspective that we were interested in.”

Mr. Kidd was actually recommended to the Disability Rights board by a former director at the Ability Center Greater Toledo, where he served on the board from 2008 to 2018. One of the criteria for selection to the board is that members represent different areas of the state, and the northwest Ohio area happened to be lacking which left a good opportunity for someone like Mr. Kidd.

In the decade and a half since the accident that fully erased two months of his life through amnesia, and left him unable to walk without assistance for 18 months, Mr. Kidd has been very active as an advocate for those with traumatic brain injuries and a teacher of the ills of distracted driving.

In addition to his time with the Ability Center, in 2011 Mr. Kidd founded Undistracted Driving Advocacy, an LLC that he uses to sponsor speaking engagements at the university, as well as national and international conferences on safety and disability.

Mr. Kidd has had articles published as far afield as the Universitatea Petrol-Gaze din Ploiești, in Ploiesti, Romania, and in May, 2018, he delivered a presentation to the Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Disability Studies and Disability Activism in Sliema, Malta.

“I'm driven to share my lived experience or traumatic brain injury, not so much for the brain injury itself, but the central point of my advocacy is to warn away from a completely avoidable accident,” he said. “If everyone decided not to use their cell phone while driving, then accidents like mine wouldn't happen.”

Since 2014, Mr. Kidd has worked at Harbor Behavioral Health in Toledo as a therapeutic behavioral service social worker and a peer support specialist, where he is currently a case manager for six traumatic brain injury survivors as they navigate recovery.

This experience in the service sector was a big plus in the Disability Rights board’s consideration of Mr. Kidd.

Over the next three years, he is set to serve on the Disability Rights Ohio board, Mr. Kidd is looking forward to using the broad platform to continue the advocacy he has devoted his life to.