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United States Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner to Deliver Keynote at National Conference

(Disability, Employment, Families, Social Services)

August 18, 2011– (Princeton, New Jersey) – Community Options, a national nonprofit organization with the mission to develop homes and employment for people with disabilities is preparing for its 6th Annual iMatter Conference on Families.

The three-day conference will take place at the Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Monday, September 19th through Wednesday, September 21, 2011. Community Options has been providing services for people with disabilities and their families in Pittsburgh for over fifteen years.

The organization has recently confirmed that Commissioner Sharon Lewis of the Administration on Developmental Disabilities of the United States Department of Health and Human Services will be the distinguished Keynote speaker.

Sharon Lewis was appointed Commissioner of the Administration on Developmental Disabilities in March 2010. Prior to her appointment as Commissioner, she served as the Senior Disability Policy Advisor to U.S. House Committee on Education & Labor, advising members of the Committee on legislative strategy and disability-related policy issues in education, employment and healthcare, and as a Kennedy Public Policy Fellow for U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children & Families. Sharon is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2010 Distinguished Leadership in National Disability Policy Award and the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Chairman’s Award.

“We are honored to have Commissioner Lewis as our Keynote for this very important conference,” says, Robert Stack, President and CEO of Community Options. “Participants of the conference are sure to be engaged and bring back with them a plethora of resources that they can apply to their own lives as a result of the Commissioner’s keynote,” he added.

Other speakers of the conference include Dr. Colleen Wieck, Executive Director of the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities; Marc Cherna, Director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services; and advocates Reed Timmer and Chris Chittick of Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers show. For a full line-up of speakers of the iMatter Conference, please visit www.comop.org/conference.

For more information about Community Options, please visit www.comop.org or join them on Facebook at Facebook.com./communityoptions.

About Community Options: Community Options is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1989 by Robert Stack that works to develop homes and employment for people with disabilities. Community Options operates in 37 cities across 10 states supporting thousands of people with disabilities and their families with the help of over 2,500 employees. ###