Stephanie Swanson – Founder, CEO & Board of Directors Chairperson

Stephanie is the founder of The Empower Network and currently working as an ICF Credentialed Coach specializing in chronic illness and disability. After developing Long COVID in 2022, she retired from aerial acrobatics and academic medicine leadership. Now an ambulatory wheelchair user, she finds joy in helping others navigate the challenges of unexpected limitations. As a mom, biosystems engineer, and founder of “The Empower Network,” she advocates for the disability community with a unique perspective on resilience, adaptability, and redefining success. She delivered a TEDx talk in April 2025, “The Inevitability of Disability”, discussing how to embrace our limits with wisdom and self-compassion.

Rheanna Nutter – Chief Operating Officer

Rheanna is a business strategist, success coach, and founder of The Chronic CEO. With over 20 years of experience and a degree in organizational dynamics, she helps shape the systems and strategy behind The Empower Network. Her work centers sustainability, clarity, and care for entrepreneurs navigating chronic illness and disability.

Jordan Joyce – CFO & Board of Directors Treasurer

The Empower Network represents an important mission for me personally. After graduation from college, I had to leave the traditional workplace and everything I had planned with my degree due to chronic illness. I am now much happier and healthier in self-employment, but making and navigating that decision alone was scary.

The Empower Network will provide others in the same situation a community and a network of resources to make that transition a bit less terrifying.

Rebecca Schroeder – Social Media & Events Lead

Rebecca brings more than ten years of administrative, creative, and coordination expertise to her role with The Empower Network. As the founder of Texrolina Marketing and Events, she has spent the last several years supporting small businesses that need strong marketing without the cost of an in-house team. Her work centers on helping business owners stay visible and confident while she manages the moving pieces behind the scenes.

Living with complex disability and chronic illness has taught me to turn challenges into strengths. I want other entrepreneurs to know that even severe limitations can become tools for empowerment — and that rest is not only valid but necessary. As a member of The Empower Network, I’m committed to helping others build careers that honor both ambition and well-being.

Ella Doyle – Intern, Social Media Team

Ella joins The Empower Network as a disability studies undergraduate student with a growing focus on accessibility, policy, and community-centered design. She is currently part of a research initiative in Chicago examining the impact of sidewalk curb cuts on mobility, safety, and public space equity. Her work explores how infrastructure can either support or limit disabled people’s daily lives, and how thoughtful design can open the door to fuller participation.

At The Empower Network, Ella supports our social media and storytelling efforts, helping translate complex disability issues into clear, engaging content. She brings curiosity, a strong equity lens, and a genuine passion for disability justice to everything she works on, and we are thrilled to have her learning and building alongside our team.

Melissa Taylor – Video Storytelling / Content Coordinator

Melissa Taylor is the founder of Sjögren’s Social Club on Instagram, where she builds connection and visibility for people navigating life with Sjögren’s and chronic illness. With a background in film and acting, she brings both creative vision and human storytelling to her role leading video storytelling at The Empower Network. Melissa is passionate about amplifying real voices and helping our community’s stories be seen, felt, and remembered.

Angela Schupe, Community Moderator

Angela Schupe is the founder of Sketchual Healing, where she uses art to process trauma, chronic illness, and life’s hardest seasons, grounded in her own lived experience. As a Community Moderator at The Empower Network, she brings a calm, compassionate presence that helps create spaces where people feel safe to show up honestly and connect with one another. Angela believes in the healing power of creativity and community, and works to ensure every voice is met with care and respect.

Christina Accardi – Director of Curriculum & Board Secretary

My path, including classroom teaching and doctoral research in social justice education, has shaped my commitment to challenging the structures that marginalize people living with chronic illness and disability. The Empower Network is important to me because it shifts the narrative from surviving within inaccessible structures to thriving through community-led, flexible, and values-based entrepreneurship. 

Having navigated chronic health challenges alongside a career shift, I bring a lived understanding of how important it is to build work around real life, not the other way around.

Jason – Disability Curriculum Specialist

Jason is a Learning and Development professional with nearly a decade of experience designing and facilitating training programs that strengthen organizations and empower diverse communities. His expertise includes curriculum design, adult learning theory, and accessible training strategies, as well as public speaking for audiences ranging from nonprofit leaders to corporate professionals.
His perspective is also shaped by lived experience navigating systemic barriers, which informs his commitment to equity, workforce inclusion, and second-chance opportunities.