In this episode Attorney Tara Rampersad Doucette takes us on a journey of what it was like for a young Trinidadian girl to navigate the American educational system. Taramattie Doucette’s journey led her to advocating for the rights of people with disabilities. This passion began during her first year in law school when she successfully secured disability benefits for her very first client. Taramattie graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1988, went to work at Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS), and has been there ever since. She has devoted her legal services career to enforcing the rights of people with disabilities. Taramattie is a senior attorney at GBLS and was a former co-managing attorney of the Elder, Health and Disability Unit at GBLS. In 2007 she co-founded the Children’s Disability Project and for the past fourteen years she has been CDP’s project director, advocating on behalf of low-income children with disabilities. Taramattie’s work to secure benefits for these children as well as adults involves representing them at various administrative levels of appeals before the Social Security Administration and in Federal Court. In 2001, Taramattie started a series of legal rights trainings for residents with disabilities living in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain. During her trainings, no matter what the official topic was, the lack of safe and reliable public transportation came up. The community of people with disabilities had already been engaged in trying to address the problems that they constantly encountered the MBTA. However, their efforts to resolve the problems using normal advocacy tools just did not work. The community knew it was time to take legal action. Taramattie identified critical barriers to transportation access which disrupted the lives of people with disabilities. She has been a lead counsel on the class action lawsuit Daniels-Finegold, et al. v. MBTA, since 2001. This lawsuit, which was settled in April 2006, challenged the accessibility and usability of the MBTA’s services for people with disabilities and was filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act. As a result of the lawsuit, the MBTA signed a Settlement Agreement and has invested an estimated $300 to $500 million to improve public transportation access and services for people with disabilities. For over a decade, Taramattie has been overseeing the enforcement of the Settlement Agreement. Taramattie takes great pleasure in training and mentoring law students, advocates and consumers on enforcing the legal rights of people with disabilities. Over the years she has trained and mentored hundreds of law students and is confident that many will continue to pursue this advocacy work. Taramattie is grateful to GBLS for providing the opportunity to practice in an area of law that she is passionate about and work with a community that inspires her. Taramattie Doucette's contact info is: Tdoucette@gbls.org