Using Supported Decision-Making to Avoid a Guardianship

Viviana is a San Juan, Puerto Rico native passionate about mental health and disability justice.

As an Equal Justice Works Fellow, sponsored by the Florida Bar Foundation, Viviana is currently working to protect and restore the civil rights of people with disabilities in Miami-Dade County by expanding Supported Decision-Making as an alternative to guardianship.

In 2017, Viviana earned a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar.

In 2014, she graduated with the highest distinction from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, earning a BA in journalism with a minor in entrepreneurship. In 2011, she co-founded Rethink: Psychiatric Illness, a student organization aimed at raising awareness about mental illnesses and increasing help-seeking behaviors among students. In this role, she spearheaded the creation of the university’s first-ever mental health advocacy training, which had attracted over 700 students as of January 2017 and earned the organization the 2012 Diversity Award.

In the journalism field, she has experience as a writer, photographer, videographer, researcher, translator, and editor. Her work has been published in numerous publications including USA TODAY College and the Center for Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico.

Dana Lloyd is Program Director at the Georgia Advocacy Office. She manages the Supported Decision-Making Project and development Disabilities Program.

Julie Coleman Kegley is the Senior Staff Attorney at Georgia Advocacy Office.

David M. Godfrey, J.D., is a senior attorney to the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging in Washington DC. He is responsible for the ABA’s role in the Administration on Community Living funded National Center on Law and Elder Rights and for producing the ABA National Aging and Law Conference. David’s expertise includes supported decision making, advance care planning, health care decision making, legal service delivery, legal ethics, and LGBT aging. Prior to joining the Commission he was responsible for elder law programming at Access to Justice Foundation in Kentucky.

Mr. Godfrey earned his B.A. with honors at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and his J.D. cum laude from the University Of Louisville School Of Law in Kentucky.