Bio

Ted Kennedy, Jr. is the Co-Chair of the Disability Equality Index (DEI), the leading corporate social responsibility, accountability and ESG benchmarking tool that scores and tracks businesses on their disability inclusion policies and practices.

As an amputee and childhood bone cancer survivor, Ted has been an active leader in the disability rights and independent living movements nearly his entire life. Since his appointment to the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities under President Ronald Reagan, to his role as immediate past Chair and current Member of the Board of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), Ted has fought to expand job opportunities and to advance the economic independence of people with disabilities. He knows that businesses can play a pivotal role in ensuring that people with disabilities have the same rights as everybody else, and how inclusion drives business success.

Ted believes that disability equality and inclusion is the next chapter of responsible capitalism and ESG investing, and he is spearheading the adoption of the Joint Investor Statement on Corporate Disability Inclusion. Signed by over 30 of the world’s largest institutional investors and financial services organizations, this shareholder engagement strategy represents a new, concerted effort in the disability rights movement, recognizing the unique role that companies play in the creation of a more just and equitable society.

Ted is a health care attorney and partner in the law firm Epstein Becker Green, where he advises many of the nation’s foremost health care companies on the key legal, regulatory, reimbursement, coverage issues and emerging policy changes facing hospitals, post-acute providers, government and commercial insurance entities, and life sciences companies. From 2015 to 2019, Ted also served as a State Senator in the Connecticut General Assembly.