FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



DR. MARC MAURER

President

National Federation of the Blind

Dr. Marc Maurer was born in 1951. His blindness was caused by overexposure to oxygen after his premature birth, but he and his parents were determined that this should not prevent him from living a full and normal life. He began his education at the Iowa Braille and Sight-Saving School, where he became an avid Braille reader. Maurer went on to enroll as a student at the Orientation and Adjustment Center of the Iowa Commission for the Blind. In 1969 he attended his first convention of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB).

Maurer graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1974. Maurer was elected president of the Student Division of the National Federation of the Blind in 1971 and re-elected in 1973 and 1975. He then enrolled at the University of Indiana, School of Law, where he received his Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1977. In 1978 Maurer moved to Washington, D.C., to become an attorney with the Rates and Routes Division in the Office of the General Counsel of the Civil Aeronautics Board. He soon advanced to dealing with international matters and then to doing research and writing opinions on constitutional issues and board action.

In 1981 he went into private practice in Baltimore, Maryland, where he specialized in civil litigation and property matters. Increasingly, he concentrated on representing blind individuals and groups in the courts. Today he is one of the most experienced and knowledgeable attorneys in the country regarding the laws, precedents, and administrative rulings concerning civil rights and discrimination against the blind. He is a member of the Bar in Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and Maryland, and a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In Kansas City in 1986 Maurer was elected as President of the NFB. He has served in this role ever since. From 1997 to 2000 he also served as president of the North America/Caribbean Region of the World Blind Union, and he chaired the WBU Committee on the Restoration of the Louis Braille Birthplace in Coupvray, France.

As President of the National Federation of the Blind, Maurer is leading the organization boldly into a new test of its resolve, beginning with the visionary expansion of the National Center for the Blind—the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute, a $20 million, 170,000 square foot research and training facility adjacent to the existing national headquarters building. The Institute is the first of its kind, conceived and built by the blind for the blind. It provides innovative education, technologies, products, and services that support independence for the world's blind. Maurer’s unswerving determination to succeed and his absolute conviction that the organized blind are the best-equipped people to solve the problems facing them has set the tone and is guiding the organization into this exciting new period of growth and accomplishment.

Maurer has received countless honors, including the Maryland Black Caucus's Leadership Award in 1985, the United States Presidential Medal for Leadership in 1990, the 1990 Heritage Award from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, the Baltimore Business Journal's 1999 Innovation Award for Excellence in Workplace Technology, the 2002 VME Robert Dole Award, and the Daily Record's 2002 Innovator of the Year award. He joined President George W. Bush in the Oval Office in July of 2001 to celebrate the success of the NFB Everest Expedition and once again when President Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

An important companion in Maurer's activities and a leader in her own right is his wife Patricia. The Maurers were married in 1973. They have two children—David Patrick, born March 10, 1984, and Dianna Marie, born July 12, 1987.

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