Brenda Premo, MBA
Brenda Premo, MBA, is the founding director of Western University of Health Sciences, Center for Disability Issues and the Health Professions.
Before founding CDIHP Premo worked four years as director of the California State Department of Rehabilitation during Governor Pete Wilson’s administration. She was deputy director of the department’s Independent Living Section from 1991 until Governor Wilson appointed her director in 1994.
Her advocacy work began in earnest when she was director of the Dayle McIntosh Center, the Independent Living Center in Orange County, California from 1977 to 1991.
Her work in civil and disability rights drew the attention of several prominent government leaders, including President Ronald Regan, who named her to serve on the National Council on Disability in 1986. As a Council member she helped develop language for legislation which evolved into the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed by Congress in 1990. She continued her ADA work while with the State Department of Rehabilitation, serving as a senior management lead in the public and private sectors on the ADA and its implications.
The California State Senate honored here as “Woman of the Year” in 1988 and in 1998 she received the National Rehabilitation Awareness Foundation’s “Special Achievement Award.”
Premo graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from California State University at Long Beach and earned her MBA from Pepperdine University. In addition to work with the Center for Disability Issues and the Health Professions.
