Natalie Webb

Natalie Webb is the Audio Description Coordinator at MindsEye Radio. She joined the team in January of 2023 after previously working in the area of language access. Natalie holds a B.A. in Strategic Communication from Maryville University. In her free time, she enjoys hanging out with her dog, Merlin, reading, drawing, and binge watching her latest shows.

Perse Grammer

Perse Grammer (they/them) is a multidisciplinary writer and theatre artist based in Chicago. Currently, they are earning their BFA in Playwriting and a minor in Creative Writing at DePaul University. They were awarded the Zach Helm Endowed Playwriting Scholarship in 2024 for “working to illuminate narratives of the exploited, oppressed, and marginalized”. Grammer’s latest full length play, Left Unheard, will have a mainstage educational production at DePaul University in the spring of 2025. Other plays include Burn My Body Before They Find it, GAPS, and Missing Milligans.

Grace Everett

Grace Everett (she/her) is grateful to be speaking at this year’s Inclusive Theatre Conference! Grace is a playwright and performer based out of both Chicago, IL, and her hometown of Dallas, TX. Grace received a formal autism diagnosis at age 18, and theatre has always been her happy place, so naturally, she made it her mission to make the theatre world more accessible.

In summer of 2024, Grace wrote her first commissioned play: The Adventures of Spectrum Sparks, in collaboration with CenterStage Theatre Works and Frisco Discovery Center in Frisco, TX. The Adventures of Spectrum Sparks is a sensory-inclusive play that follows a lost robot attempting to navigate an unfamiliar world on his own. The robot befriends a group of kids who help to prepare him for the world with their own unique skills.

In addition to Spectrum Sparks, Grace’s short play The Last Sunrise of August 1973 won the 2019 Texas Thespian Festival PLAYWORKS Competition, and received an Honorable Mention in the 2021 YouthPLAYS New Voices One Act Competition. Her plays Letters for Adelaide, Ice Cream Friday, Painless Regression, and Median have been performed and produced across the country. Performance highlights include Jo March (Little Women), Cat in the Hat (Seussical), and title roles in Peter & the Starcatcher and Carrie the Musical. Grace also originated the lead role in Raven’s Stars, a new musical about an artist with autism.

Grace is in her final year of studying Playwriting at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago.

Ava X Rigelhaupt

Ava Xiao-Lin Rigelhaupt is a writer, DEIA + Autism consultant, and public speaker. As a Chinese, Jewish, autistic, transracial adoptee, Ava shares her lived experiences in a way that’s easily understandable and entertaining for a wide audience. She's a writer for the PBS Kids animated series, CARL THE COLLECTOR, their first series centering an autistic character. She's written and consulted on scripts for 9Story Media (BLUE’S CLUES, DANIEL TIGER’S NEIGHBORHOOD), Apple TV (CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH), and Disney (THE GHOST AND MOLLY MCCGEE). Ava received a Drama Desk Special Award for Authentic Autistic Representation, recognizing her accessibility work as the Autistic Creative Consultant for the Broadway coming of age musical, HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO (follows seven autistic young adults at a social skills center in Ohio as they prepare for a dance. Broadway 2023, UK 2025). As an often called upon public speaker and panelist, she shares best practices working with the neurodiverse community and creating authentic characters, tools for producing accessible events, and how her own identity breaks stereotypes! Highlights: SXSW, Disney, The Kennedy Center, Stanford, ACLU, Television Critics Association, Autism in Entertainment, The Hollywood Reporter, Actors’ Equity.

Kaylee Bays

Kaylee Bays has captivated audiences with her extraordinary journey of resilience and determination. Despite an Ehlers-Danlos syndrome diagnosis in 2018 disrupting her dance aspirations, Kaylee's unwavering spirit and determination saw her make history in 'Rogers: The Musical,’ and as the first woman with a disability to be on "So You Think You Can Dance" and recently, as one of the principal “Top Performers” chosen from around world to perform for the 2024 Paralympics Opening Ceremony in Paris. Through her remarkable talent and resilience, Kaylee is determined to show the world that people with disabilities can excel in dance and achieve their dreams.

Molly Losh

Molly Losh is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on autism and related conditions – specifically on social communication and associated abilities, and how such features may span diagnostic boundaries. Work from Dr. Losh’s lab has helped identify key mechanisms that might underlie the social-communicative impairments in autism; her work is helping bridge the gap between observable behaviors and their underlying biological and environmental factors – a connection necessary for understanding the causes of autism and related conditions.

Dr. Losh directs the Neurodevelopmental Diversity Lab, co-directs the Center for Transdisciplinary Training (in Northwestern’s Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences), and serves as the Associate Dean of Research and the Jo Ann G. and Peter F. Dolle Professor of Learning Disabilities. She is also a faculty associate at the Institute for Policy Research.