Question & Answer

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Q: Tell us about your role at NextGen Advocacy Arkansas.

William: I’m the Founder, President, and CEO. That means I set the vision and direction for the organization, but it also means something more personal to me. I built this from nothing because I lived the gaps it’s trying to close. I’m not advocating from the outside looking in. I’m a CES Waiver participant myself. I’m in the system every single day, which means my leadership isn’t theoretical. It’s lived.

Q: Why did you start NextGen Advocacy Arkansas?

William: Because Arkansas didn’t have what self-advocates actually needed. We have plenty of service providers doing important work, but providers answer to state contracts and billing structures. They’re not built to challenge the systems they operate inside of. I kept having conversations with parent advocates, with disability governmental bodies, with self-advocates themselves, and the message was the same every time. We needed something independent. Something that answers to us, not to Medicaid reimbursement schedules.

Q: You didn’t finish college. How do you respond to people who question your qualifications?

William: I tell them my qualifications were earned the hard way. I’ve been navigating disability systems since I was eight years old. I’ve written policy proposals to a sitting governor and the state legislature. I built and led organizations for over a decade before I was thirty. I’ve sat across from a United States senator and held my own. None of that came from a classroom. It came from showing up, doing the work, and refusing to accept that I needed someone else’s permission to lead.

I don’t say this to dismiss education. I say it because lived experience is its own form of expertise, and for too long, that expertise has been treated as less than a diploma. NextGen exists partly to correct that.

Q: What’s the biggest misconception about people with disabilities leading organizations?

William: That we need to be managed instead of empowered. I’ve spent my whole life watching well-meaning systems assume that disabled people are best served by handing decisions to someone else. A provider, a caseworker, a board member who’s never lived our reality. That assumption is exhausting, and it’s wrong. Give us the tools, the platform, and the trust, and watch what happens.

Q: How does your own experience with the CES Waiver shape your advocacy?

William: Completely. I don’t theorize about the provider-participant model. I live inside it. I know what it feels like when a provider thinks partnership means control. I’ve made it a personal rule that no provider dictates my life to me, even though the waiver itself doesn’t legally recognize self-direction in my situation. That tension, between what the system allows and what dignity requires, is exactly why I wrote our policy position paper calling for the Participant-Provider Model. I’m not asking for something I haven’t already tried to build for myself.

Q: What does NextGen Advocacy Arkansas do differently from other disability organizations?

William: We’re not a service provider, and we never will be. That independence is the whole point. We don’t bill Medicaid. We don’t answer to a managed care organization. We answer to our members. That means when we push for policy change, there’s no conflict of interest holding us back.

We also built NextGen Elevate, which throws out the idea that you need a college degree to lead at the executive level. If you’ve got the skills and the drive, we want you in a leadership seat, not stuck outside one because you don’t have a piece of paper.

Q: Tell us about your journey before NextGen.

William: I was admitted to Easterseals as a client when I was eight. A year later, I was appointed an Ambassador. By twelve, I was a Youth Ambassador, meeting people like Senator Blanche Lincoln and Governor Mike Huckabee. I founded musical groups, became a Senior Patrol Leader in Scouting, and built a weather broadcast program from the ground up. People started calling me Mr. President before I even understood why.

In 2015, I founded The Morris Youth Foundation. For a decade, that organization gave me the training ground to learn how to build something real. In 2024, I had the honor of attending the Disability Policy Seminar in Washington D.C. through a UCP National grant, where I met with Senator John Boozman. That same year and into 2025, I served as an AmeriCorps VISTA Member, strengthening a disability service provider’s capacity from the inside.

Every one of those experiences led me here.

Q: Why rebrand The Morris Youth Foundation into NextGen Advocacy Arkansas?

William: Because the mission needed to sharpen. MYF gave me a decade of foundation-building experience, but the conversations I kept having with parent advocates, governmental bodies, and self-advocates made it clear that Arkansas needed something more specific and more urgent. Not another youth organization. A self-advocate-led movement built entirely around disability rights and systemic reform.

Q: What do you want people to feel when they encounter NGAA for the first time?

William: I want them to feel like they finally found a seat that was built for them, not one they had to squeeze into. I want self-advocates to feel like leadership is actually available to them, not just promised in a mission statement somewhere. And I want the state of Arkansas to feel like it can’t keep making decisions about us without us anymore.

Q: What’s your hope for NextGen Advocacy Arkansas five years from now?

William: I want us to be the organization that policymakers call first when they’re drafting anything related to disability rights in Arkansas. I want NextGen Elevate to have placed dozens of self-advocates into real executive roles. I want Pathways to have welcomed hundreds of members who found their place in this movement. And I want the Participant-Provider Model to be more than a proposal. I want it written into how PASSE organizations actually operate.

Mostly, I just want fewer people to have to fight as hard as I did to be taken seriously.

Q: What would you say to a self-advocate who’s hesitant to get involved?

William: I’d say I understand the hesitation. I’ve been underestimated my whole life, and it’s tempting to stay where it’s safe. But you don’t have to have it all figured out to start. You don’t need a degree. You don’t need a perfect résumé. You just need to be ready to use your voice. We’ll help you find where you belong.