Speaker: Serena Lowe

Living as a disabled person in Pennsylvania is a full-time job. Whether it’s by speech, ASL, writing, or assistive technology, advocating for yourself to meet our unique needs takes communication skills. Equally important is knowledge. We need to know what services meet our specific requirements, where and how to obtain those services, and how they are paid for. Finding the services in our area is the easy part. The difficulty lies in finding financing.

The Commonwealth provides waiver programs to assist disabled people to live in the community if they so choose. The waiver programs are like strings tied into a knot holding all the services in place. We must know which string to pull to loosen the knot and have our needs met. Some cords aren’t for us because we don’t qualify. Others may not be correct because they do not provide the services we require. How can we know which to pull? Serena Lowe is here to help us untangle the Pennsylvania waiver system. She will teach us what waivers there are, the requirements for them, and how to best advocate for the services we need. She will give us the knowledge to back our advocacy.

Join us for our upcoming Community Lecture Night! Due to the upcoming holiday, this lecture will be online only. Registration link: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMlfu-hpzIjH9JHA1eUxsiWkV8pJdPcd87F

• When: November 25th from 6:00-7:30 PM
• Where: Zoom AND streaming on YouTube
• Meeting Accessibility:
  • There will be sign language interpreters and closed captioning available on Zoom. 
  • Chat will be disabled on Zoom during the lecture to better serve people using screen readers. Participants will still be able to message the hosts.
  • When it comes time for the Q&A, people may ask by messaging in the chat so the host can read it out loud or by raising their hand on Zoom so the host can call on them to ask by voice or by ASL.
  • For more information, check out our Technical Info page.

If anyone has any other access needs please contact accessmobpittsburgh@gmail.com as soon as possible, but no later than November 20th.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Serena Lowe has spent the past 25 years furthering public policies that promote the socioeconomic advancement of low-income working families, individuals with disabilities, older adults, children, asylum seekers and other at-risk populations. Serena has served in a variety of leadership roles in the fields of public policy reform, systems-change and commercial planning, including a Fortune 100 global biopharmaceutical company, a top 20 national lobbying firm, a national non-profit managed care entity in the Medicaid space, two foreign governments, two national nonprofit organizations, Congress, and the federal executive branch. Serena is the Founder and Principal at AnereS Strategies, LLC, and currently serves as a subject matter expert to several Federal and state governments focused on systems-change initiatives aimed at improving quality of life outcomes for individuals with disabilities through the provision of value-based, high quality home and community based services.

Serena previously served as the Senior Policy Advisor at ACL and was the chief HCBS Liaison to CMS, responsible for working with all 50 state Medicaid agencies and their sub-operational entities on the implementation of the 2014 federal HCBS regulation; expanding community options through various Medicaid 1915/1115 authorities; aligning policies, practice and payment toward evidence-based person-centered models of service delivery; and co-leading the initial work behind the CMS HCBS Recommended Quality Measure Set and the National Center for the Advancement of Person Centered Planning and Systems.

Serena has also previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor at U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, where she led the ground-breaking Employment First State Leadership Mentoring Program and also co-led several workforce development initiatives aimed at advancing the HCBS direct care workforce. Serena was the first Executive Director of the Collaboration to Promote Self-Determination and served as Interim Executive Director for TASH in 2020. Most recently, Serena was the Senior Director of LTSS Innovations & Community Life at CareSource.

Today, Serena continues to serve in a number of roles providing technical assistance to state and Federal entities, including serving as an SME and advisor to the parties in the oldest open Olmstead case (U.S. v. Puerto Rico, 2000), the Olmstead & Community Life Division of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, the President’s Committee on Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (PCPID), and the DCW Strategies Center.

Serena possesses a B.A. in International & Public Affairs at Westminster College; an international studies program at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics; two graduate degrees (M.P.H. in International Health Policy and M.A. in International Development Policy) from George Washington University; and a PhD in Public Administration from American University.

Funding for this lecture comes from a grant from the Three Rivers Community Foundation.