About the Author

AL ETMANSKI is a community organizer, social entrepreneur, and writer. He is an Ashoka social enterprise fellow and a member of John McKnight’s Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) network. He became a parent activist in the disability movement after his daughter Liz was born. Liz was the first person with Down syndrome to graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She is now a full-time artist and occasional poet.

Al led the closure of large institutions that warehoused people with developmental disabilities in his home province of British Columbia and helped close segregated schools and integrate students with disabilities into regular classrooms. He was behind a successful Supreme Court judgment that secured the right to treatment for a young boy who a lower court had determined was too disabled to feel any pain and should be left to die. The case established a legal precedent. He also helped establish Canada’s first Family Support Institute and a grassroots alternative to costly and intrusive legal guardianship.

In 1989, he cofounded Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network (PLAN) along with his wife, Vickie Cammack. PLAN was developed to help people with disabilities to live a good life, particularly after the parents die. They didn’t realize it at the time, but it is the first time in history that a generation of people with disabilities are outliving their parents, and governments and service providers are not prepared. PLAN facilitates a network of friends for individuals and maximizes their financial resources. It also works at the policy level to eliminate the poverty and social isolation experienced by too many people with disabilities. The PLAN approach has spread to more than forty locations around the world. While at PLAN, Al proposed and led the campaign to create the world’s first savings plan for people with disabilities, the Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP), in 2008. The collective RDSP deposits total more than $4 billion, benefiting close to two hundred thousand Canadians with disabilities. The money can be used on whatever the individual chooses, can’t be clawed back, and doesn’t have to be reported.

Fifteen years ago, Al left PLAN to immerse himself in the emerging field of social innovation. He wanted to understand why so many of his initiatives started with a big splash and seemed to be successful, but in the long term they barely made a difference. He became part of a countrywide initiative to introduce concepts of social innovation and social finance to Canadian changemakers. His last book, Impact: Six Patterns to Spread Your Social Innovation, highlights six deep patterns of change making that he observed groups using to close the gap between short-term success and long-term structural and cultural impact.

Al believes that extraordinary acts are not reserved for the special few and that everyone’s actions are important to make a world that works for everyone. He is optimistic about what we can do together. He says that magnificence occurs when we sprinkle our work with beauty and love.

He has received numerous awards, including the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, and the Big Picture award from his peers in the disability movement.

Al and Vickie have a blended family of five children. The Power of Disability is his fourth book. He blogs at www.aletmanski.com.