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| Biographical Sketch:
Cynthia Leibrock, MA, ASID, Hon. IIDA is an award winning author, an international lecturer, and a designer with over thirty years of experience. Her mission is to improve the lives of older and disabled people through design. She is the principal/founder of EASY ACCESS TO HEALTH, LLC located in Livermore, Colorado. The firm offers consulting services in patient centered design, planning for independent living, product analysis, and judiciary witness services. Prominent projects include The Betty Ford Center, the UCLA Medical Center , automotive interior design for Toyota, and a universal design exhibit for the Smithsonian (with Julia Child). She has also completed a showroom for the Kohler Company in which over a million consumers have learned about universal design, and a "living laboratory" in Fort Collins researching the environmental needs of older people. She offers keynote presentations and workshops internationally, including multiple lectures for many of the Fortune 500 companies. She has served as a lobbyist for people with mental disabilities, as a judiciary witness in code compliance and accessibility cost estimation, and as a research associate on the dean's staff at Colorado State University. For the last ten years she has taught courses in the architecture department at The Harvard University Graduate School of Design and has conducted healthcare design research in Scandinavia, Northern Europe and Japan. Numerous publications have resulted from her sponsored research including her books Design Details for Health, Beautiful Barrier Free: A Visual Guide to Accessibility, and Beautiful Universal Design, co-authored with James Evan Terry. Because of this work, she has twice been awarded the Polsky Prize for literature.
Cynthia founded REHABITAT using church volunteers to retrofit housing for older and disabled people. Beautiful Barrier Free: A Visual Guide to Accessibility was released in Japanese and Cynthia completed a lecture tour of Japan followed by a design research trip on aging. Design Details for Health will be published in Japanese in 2004. Cynthia served on national advisory boards for the NCIDQ and Altera, one of the world's largest assisted living providers. EASY ACCESS TO HEALTH completed two years of design research on finishes and furnishings for older people at Collinwood Assisted Living where their offices were located. The residents of Collinwood tested products for corporate sponsors including DUPONT, INTERFACE, and DESIGNTEX. The universal design exhibit at The Smithsonian National Design Museum includes three kitchens which Cynthia worked on with Julia Child through The Rhode Island School of Design. Cynthia has offered a keynote presentation at the International Universal Design Conference in New York City with 20 nations represented. She was awarded the 2002 Change Maker award by The National Symposium of Health Design, and the 2002 “Design for Humanity” award, a lifetime achievement honor from The American Society of Interior Designers. For the last eighteen years Cynthia has taught courses at The Harvard University Graduate School of Design including “Design Research on Aging”, "Innovative Design Strategies for Health Care: A Researched Based Perspective", “Universal Design and the New ADA/ABA”, and "Advanced Training in ADA, UFAS, and The Fair Housing Amendments Act." Cynthia has just completed the universal design of The Laguna Honda Replacement Project. With a $400 million budget and a six year completion schedule, the campus will offer rehabilitation and skilled care to over 1200 patients. She is also planning the universal design of The Toronto Rehabilitation Institute with an $87 million budget. Partial List of Clients Trained by Leibrock
Cynthia Leibrock in the press
Chicago Sun Times 4/12/91 P.5
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