An Interview with Lauren Pearcy

Breaking Ground Interview: Lauren Pearcy

Executive Director, Tennessee Council on Developmental Disabilities
Interview conducted May 2, 2025

Q: Looking back on your time in Tennessee's disability community, what stands out as the single most important milestone you witnessed or helped create?

A: The very first project I worked on was bringing the concept of supported decision making to the light, if you will.

Before about 2016, no one was really talking about how important it is for people with disabilities to make their own decisions, and we were just sort of assuming that a lot of people needed conservators or other people making decisions about people without even bringing them along on that process.

It taught me that it's not necessarily passing a piece of legislation or launching a program that makes a lot of change.

Sometimes one of the biggest impacts we can make, especially at the Council, is helping people think differently. And that's really what that project was about.

Q: How did that moment change the day-to-day lives of people with disabilities and their families?

A: I think what it boils down to is that conversation helped people realize they weren't alone, and they weren't doing anything wrong. It was the system and the information, the lack of information that was wrong.

Just helping people acknowledge, "Yeah, it is OK for me to let people in my life make their own decisions. It is OK for me to insist on making my own decisions or insist that I am given information about decisions that are being made for me."

And then if you flip it to the family perspective, "It is OK to let that person in my life make their own decisions, even if I don't agree with them or I think someone's going to judge me for it."

That's not a tangible law that changed, but it's a really big deal for day-to-day life, I think.

Q: What lessons from that experience should today's advocates keep in mind as we move forward?

A: Not to keep saying the same point over and over again, but I do think it's a really big deal - to realize and accept that you don't have to change a policy or launch a program to make a big impact on people and on the system.

Sometimes this idea of culture change or thinking differently or pushing a certain philosophy that is embedded throughout existing programs and the way we implement laws is one of the biggest ways we can make change.

In fact, I think you could argue that nothing else matters without that. You have to have both. But legislation is only the tip of the iceberg. I mean, it doesn't matter what you pass into law if it's not implemented well, and if people don't know about it.

Q: If everything went exactly the way you hoped, what would disability services and inclusion in Tennessee look like in 20 years?

A: If things went exactly the way I hoped, disability would not be an afterthought in the policy making process. It would just be fully embedded into the people around the table at the governor's team and cabinet level agencies and really throughout from that top all the way down. It just wouldn't be out on its own or reacting afterward to the way things are not working, it would just be so permeating.

 I really want people with disabilities to feel like we don't have to fight every single time we need some change made. It's just already considered.

Q: What concrete steps should we take this year toward that vision?

A: I really come back to this idea that Pathfinder kind of embodies, which is that there has got to be a central place where people come together and figure out navigating disability. Because if we're all doing it separately, we'll never get to that vision that it's just all part of the big picture and the first steps of planning instead of trying to clean it up afterward.

So this one stop shared place where all roads lead, I think for me, is the steps that we take immediately. While we're in this situation where there's this labyrinth of disability afterthoughts that we're navigating - we need to all be working on that together from the same place, so that we're not just pointing people in different directions and they're just reaching dead ends over and over again.

Q: What is your personal connection to Tennessee and how has that shaped your perspective on disability issues here?

A: My connection to Tennessee is moving here [partly] because this is where my husband grew up and we moved here from DC, but really, I had met the Tennessee team from the disability world at this conference from my job in DC.

I met leaders from what's now DDA and leaders from mental health and vocational rehabilitation and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center and the council - all the same ecosystem of service leaders that I work with now as peers, which I never would have dreamed of, but I met them all while I was working in Washington DC at this conference that I was helping organize for the National Governors Association.

So, I also feel like my connection to Tennessee started before I even moved here, in the disability field. It was the most welcoming field, and they really seemed to work so well together.

We are known for that in Tennessee. We're known nationally for working so well together, especially across the developmental disability programs. So, I could feel that even before I moved here.

Q: What drew you to this role at this point in your career?

A: A great mentor, and that refers to Wanda. I have not aspired to roles in my career. Ever.

I have just taken this advice that my dad gave me when I was graduating college and he said "just walk through the doors that open."

I just find myself when I'm presented with an opportunity, if my gut says this is worth trying, I just walk through that door that opened and my career has been a series of those. Totally unexpected.

I never thought I would work in the disability field. I never thought I would work at the Medicaid agency. I never thought I would be an executive director. Mentorship and having doors open that makes sense for the time and context - you have to be willing to take a leap of faith and walk through those doors.

Q: Which existing milestones or legacy do you feel most responsible for carrying forward and how will you make it your own?

A: This "same team" mentality that Wanda was a master at. That is the model that I watched and admired in Wanda, of "we're going to be on the same team whether we feel like we are or not. We are going to figure out a way to be on the same team and work on this together." That is the mentality that I want to carry forward as a legacy of the Council.

As far as making it my own... I want to simplify what we focus on. Historically, we have been able to focus on so many things and a huge breadth of topics.

And I foresee that in the near future sort of narrowing, so that we can go an inch wide, mile deep versus a mile wide, inch deep. Right now we try to keep track of so many topics and do a little bit of something in each one.

The other thing I really want to carry forward and focus on is lived experience leading our work. There is nothing more important than Council members and partners, graduates and alumni, and our own staff's lived experience guiding our way.

Q: If you can give one piece of advice to the next generation of leaders in our field, what would it be?

A: Stay on the same team. Stay on the same team as your peers within the disability community. Don't let yourself get involved with infighting and territorialism, and "I think this is more important and this person's working on this" or whatever it is. Just stay on the same team.

And then extend that to the folks you feel like are on the other side of the issue from you. Figure out a way to put the problem on the other side of the table so that you and whoever you're working with can be on the same side tackling it.

It may not be the way that you would prefer to tackle it, or enough of the problem that you feel like needs to be tackled, but find some way to be on the same team and don't lose sight of how important that is.

Q: What keeps you motivated when work feels hard?

A: I have to believe that everyone is doing their best. And when I stop believing that, I think I'll give up. If I have to continue to believe that everyone is doing their best and stay with the humility that I don't know what's going on with that person.

Sometimes it takes a lot of just having that blind faith, and thinking “but I'm just going to believe that they're doing their best and that this is all gonna work out somehow." Then that's what keeps me motivated.

Q: What is your vision for the next chapter of the Council and what's guiding it?

A: Our bread and butter is connecting real people to decision makers and letting them lead. I want to focus on that lived experience piece as the foundation of everything else. All of our topical work, whatever we decide to work on, flows from there.

That’s specifically what's guiding it besides just organically [through] Partners in Policymaking where we learn so much about what's on people's minds [as well as from] our current Council membership at any given time.

The joint needs assessment that we completed is going to be a huge part, I think. That is a snapshot data set that we will keep coming back to help guide our work, too.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to share about the Council's 50-year history or future?

A: I think it goes back to the beginning, actually. This whole concept that really hit me over the head at some point that influencing the way people think is a really important job of somebody to do. And the DD Act as a whole has been described to me as a beacon that leads the rest of the field, and that's a really big deal.

These programs can be thought of as sort of small scale, relatively small budget.

We have a very small staff, but I think that the role that we play is just so monumental... It's lightning in a bottle.