Meet the Team
Our Staff
Our staff engage with community directly, plan and host an annual Disability Day of Mourning, lead and facilitate peer spaces virtually, on social media, and in person, teach self advocacy workshops, provide direct peer support, case management, and resource coordination, oversee large volunteer and mutual aid networks, engage in legislative and community advocacy efforts, interface with partner organizations, speak at public events regarding disability, provide training to businesses, schools, organizations, and peers, and respond to needs of community as they arise. Get to know them below.
Opal M
Executive Director
Opal is a longtime community leader, with over 35 years of experience in community organizing, social work, and other helping and leadership roles across disability, queer, youth, faith, and immigration spaces. Opal is an autistic, trans, non-binary, and multiply disabled parent of autistic, disabled, queer, and trans children.
They lead with empathy, precision, and tenacity. Opal facilitates the largest mutual aid network in the region (Disabled Pittsburgh Mutual Aid, or DPMA), and is deeply committed to working for a world that is equitable, joyful, and just.
Outside of work, Opal enjoys singing, birding, hiking, Hallmark movies, faith-based projects, and planning for Christmas year-round.
Daeja Baker
Director of Advocacy
Daeja is a tireless advocate, a years-long activist, and a social worker born and raised on the north side of Pittsburgh. In 2017, she founded Pittsburgh Feminists for Intersectionality, a group that continues to support our city’s most marginalized neighbors. Daeja utilizes her background in social work and writing to help elect progressives up and down the ballot. Her political efforts uplift our most vulnerable in Allegheny County. She is the new school board director for Shaler Area School District, Region 1.
We are thrilled to add Daeja’s lived experience as a black disabled queer woman to her work with us at PCDJ.
Bex Merhar
Peer Support Specialist
Bex Merhar (she/her) grew up in Boston, MA, and studied at Simmons University in Boston, MA, and Palo Alto University in Palo Alto, CA. She brings 8 years of education and 11 years of experience working in the mental health field, supporting people in day programs, individual therapy, group homes, and the community. In 2019, she became a Certified Peer Specialist in MA and is working towards her certification in PA.
She is Queer, Disabled, and a Bonus Parent to a Nonbinary Autistic Teenager.
Her personal interests include knitting, reading, board games, and attending festivals. She collects dragons, sea glass, and yarn. She jokes that purple is her natural hair color, and hopes to get more tattoos and piercings.
Adrienne Totino
Outreach Coordinator
Adrienne is a longtime advocate and recent mutual aid organizer. She is most skilled at building relationships, connecting people, writing, and teaching. Her neurodivergence and dynamic disabilities bring lived experience to this work.
From a young age, Adrienne has been passionate about social justice. She immediately felt at home joining DPMA (Disabled Pittsburgh Mutual Aid, a project of PCDJ), and took on a leadership role in the community as soon as she could.
In her spare time, Adrienne’s head is either buried in a book, or she is enjoying the outdoors, in awe of the natural world.
Advisory Board
PCDJ is moving with intention through the process of building our advisory board. If you are interested in joining the board, please reach out to our Executive Director, Opal, at opal@disabledpgh.org.