Texas Shows Up Big for Community Options.....

The Dallas Morning News and CBS 11 have recently become Official Media Sponsors of our 5th Annual Conference, Advocacy - Connect. Share Live. The conference will be taking place at the W Dallas on September 27, 2010- September 30, 2010. This conference will be the culmination of a years worth of work by parent groups that have been assembled across the country to improve access and resources for children with disabilities and their families.

Distinguished Keynotes

Community Options has also received commitments from two very distinguished women who are advocates for children with disabilities and we are incredibly proud to have them join us.

Judy Woodruff



Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff has covered politics and other news for more than three decades at CNN, NBC and PBS. Most recently, she signed on as a senior correspondent for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

For 12 years, Woodruff served as anchor and senior correspondent for CNN, anchoring the weekday political program, "Inside Politics." Woodruff also played a central role in the network's political coverage and other major news stories.

At NBC News, Woodruff served as White House correspondent from 1977 to 1982. For one year after that she served as NBC's Today Show chief Washington correspondent. She wrote the book, This is Judy Woodruff at the White House, published in 1982 by Addison-Wesley.

Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women's Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustee of the Freedom Forum, the Newseum, and Global Rights: Partners for Justice. She also serves as a member of The Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and the board of the National Museum of American History. Woodruff is a graduate of Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita.


Laura Shumaker



Laura Shumaker is the author of A Regular Guy: Growing Up With Autism, a memoir about raising her autistic son, Matthew, to young adulthood. She is a regular contributor to NPR Perspectives and writes a nationally recognized autism blog for the San Francisco Chronicle.

A columnist for www.5minutesforspecialneeds.com, her essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Contra Costa Times, The Autism Advocate, on cnn.com, and in myriad anthologies including Voices of Autism, Cup of Comfort and Gravity Pulls You In. Laura speaks regularly to schools, book and disability groups and lives in Lafayette, California with her husband, Peter, and her three sons.

Please stay tuned to our website at www.comop.org for more information about the conference, registration and scholarship information!