Sarah Tuberty

Dr. Sarah Tuberty, OTR/L has the lived experience of a congenital hand difference, meaning she was born without fingers on her left hand and was a patient of the Shriners Hospital for Children – Northern California. After earning a BS in Biology from Saint Mary’s College of California, she became an AmeriCorps volunteer, and then a flight attendant.

Her life has been a journey of adaptation and understanding of the disability experience. These have been incredible assets to her professional education. She earned her Doctorate of Occupational Therapy from Boston University, ranked #1 in Occupational Therapy by U.S. News and World Report. She is nationally registered and licensed to provide therapeutic services in the state of Pennsylvania. Her doctorate project was the development of the Congenital Hand Differences Resource website, which is an online resource for parents of children with hand differences. She has expanded this project into the Hand Book: An Informational Guide for Parents of Children with Hand Differences, published by the American Society for Surgery of the Hand this past spring. Sarah has fallen in love with this work and has started her Ph. D. of Occupational Therapy at Texas Woman's University last fall.

Sarah’s particular interests surround the social and emotional aspects of growing up with physical differences. Her work includes co-founding and co-hosting Disarming Disability, a podcast on deconstructing the social construct on disability and an author of Super-Abled Comics, featuring 6 short stories of superheroes with limb differences written by authors who have limb differences.

She is an internationally trained aerialist with an emphasis on adaptive aerial arts, incorporating disability into her performances to help rewrite the narrative we have on disability. She co-founded and is a co-producer for Watermelon Bathtub Theatre Company in Philadelphia, producing the award-winning show "Bodies." This theatre company seeks to increase accessibility in theatre productions and showcase authentic stories told from the communities themselves.

She works to provide consulting services on disability-related topics, modeling, and has presented at multiple events on topics around inclusion, disability stigma, and lived experience with a congenital hand difference. All of these efforts are to create a true and positive narrative of disability, where we can all be proud of who we are, what our bodies look like, and how they move.

Here's to creating a more inclusive and understanding society!