As part of our 40th Anniversary Campaign, the Academy hosted its 40th Anniversary Gala on the evening of June 9, 2026, in Washington, DC. The evening brought together Members, partners, and leaders from across sectors to honor the Academy’s legacy and look ahead to what’s next.
As part of the celebration, we honored two extraordinary leaders with the 2026 Robert M. Ball Award—Ai-jen Poo and Lex Frieden—whose work has expanded our understanding of care, dignity, inclusion, and what becomes possible when we build systems that recognize our shared humanity.
We celebrated Casey Doherty, Sabrina Davis, and Will Raderman with this year’s Frances Perkins Next Generation Award, recognizing emerging leaders shaping the future of the field.
And we presented the inaugural Robert Pear Award for Excellence in Social Insurance Journalism to Julie Rovner, recognizing the vital role that thoughtful storytelling plays in helping people understand the issues that shape our lives.
Meet the 2026 Robert M. Ball Awardees
Ai-jen Poo
Ai-jen Poo is an organizer and advocate who has built a movement to change the way our country values and supports caregiving and care work. She is the President of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, President of Care in Action, and the Executive Director of Caring Across Generations.
Poo began her career organizing domestic workers in New York City. She helped create Domestic Workers United, a coalition of nannies, house cleaners, and home care workers that was instrumental in winning the New York Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (2010), the first law in the US to guarantee basic protections for domestic workers.
In 2007, Poo co-founded the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) alongside domestic worker leaders from across the country. Under Poo’s leadership, NDWA grew into an alliance of 70 local organizations and a community of over 400,000 workers and won domestic worker bills of rights in 13 states, two cities, and the District of Columbia.
In 2011, Poo launched Caring Across Generations, a national organization driving change in our culture and policy to elevate and support caregiving at every stage of life. Caring Across has led the charge for authentic representation of care in film and television, helped secure care investments in states across the country, and helped enact the most sweeping executive order on care in history.
Lex Frieden
Lex Frieden is widely regarded as a chief architect of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and a founder and leader of the independent living movement in the United States. An educator, researcher, and lifelong disability rights activist, Frieden has spent decades ensuring that people with disabilities can participate fully in American life — work that remains as vital today as ever.
Frieden served as Executive Director of the National Council on Disability (NCD) in the mid-1980s, an independent federal agency charged with making recommendations on disability policy issues to the President and Congress. In this role, he oversaw the writing of the first drafts of what was to become the ADA. President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law on July 26, 1990.
Mr. Frieden, a quadriplegic due to spinal cord injury, has been involved in the organization of several groups of disabled individuals including the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, and the Houston Coalition for Barrier Free Living. He is past Chairman of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD).
Introducing the Robert Pear Award
The Academy is proud to debut the Robert Pear Award for Excellence in Social Insurance Journalism, recognizing the essential role journalism plays in helping the public understand the programs that underpin economic security in the United States. The inaugural award will be presented at the Academy’s 40th Anniversary Gala on June 9th in Washington, D.C.
The award is named in honor of Robert Pear, the legendary New York Times reporter and longtime Academy Member whose decades of coverage set the standard for rigorous, fair, and deeply informed reporting on health policy and social insurance. Over the course of his career, Pear brought clarity and depth to some of the nation’s most complex policy issues, helping policymakers and the public alike better understand the stakes of decisions affecting millions of Americans.
Julie Rovner
We are thrilled to announce the inaugural recipient of the Robert Pear Award: Julie Rovner, Chief Washington Correspondent at KFF Health News. Previously, she spent 16 years as a health policy correspondent for NPR, where she helped lead the network’s coverage of the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Over the course of her career, Julie has helped millions of Americans better understand the systems that shape their health and economic well-being.
Meet the 2026 Frances Perkins Next Generation Awardees
Sabrina Davis
Sabrina Davis is a Policy and Communications Strategist at Social Security Works, where she advocates every day to protect and strengthen Social Security. She is a regular on Social Security Works’ Instagram and Facebook pages, where she films short-form content designed to reach people from all walks of life. Sabrina has also participated in multiple Academy panels focused on elevating Gen Z perspectives on Social Security and challenging common misconceptions about young people’s relationship with the program.
Will Raderman
Will Raderman is a Senior Policy Advisor at the Searchlight Institute. He previously worked as a Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center, where he focused on employment and social insurance policy, particularly unemployment and disability benefits. For years, Will has been a leading voice in social policy debates. He has testified before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Work & Welfare and his work has been featured in the Washington Post, The Hill, Health Affairs, and more.
Casey Doherty
Casey Doherty is a policy analyst for the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress where she works on issues related to SSDI, SSI, Medicaid, IDEA services, and other programs that shape access and economic security for disabled people. Prior to joining CAP, she served as a paralegal specialist at the Federal Trade Commission and as fellowship alumni liaison at Partners for Youth with Disabilities, where she facilitated a national fellowship program for young people with disabilities.
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