LILLY GROSSMAN
Making Disability Policy Human
Navigating Today, Redesigning Tomorrow
Founder and CEO of Beyond The Box Advocacy
Disability Policy and Systems Strategist

Lilly Grossman is a disability policy advocate, systems strategist, and researcher focused on how public systems shape access, independence, and opportunity for Americans with disabilities. She is the Founder and CEO of Beyond The Box Advocacy, a nonpartisan disability policy and systems organization examining how disability systems function in practice.

​

Her work centers on a core structural problem: disability support services do not follow people across geography. She developed the Disability Support Service Portability Framework to examine how place-based eligibility restricts movement, employment, and stability. She also introduced the concept of "geographic lock-in" to describe how public systems constrain where people with disabilities can live and work.

​

She further developed the Enforced Barriers Umbrella, a framework that identifies recurring structural patterns across disability systems, including enforced dependency, enforced immobility, enforced insecurity, and enforced invisibility. This framework is used to analyze how policy design limits autonomy and shapes long-term outcomes.

Across her work, Lilly analyzes how fragmentation across programs, eligibility constraints, and administrative design shape real world outcomes. She partners with individuals and families, nonprofits, healthcare systems, and policymakers to design solutions that reflect how people actually live. Her work focuses on strengthening systems so they support stability, mobility, and access.​​

​

Her research with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research examines population-level mobility patterns using national survey data and evaluates how Medicaid and home and community-based services influence decisions, access to support, and geographic mobility. She has also contributed to policy writing with the USC Equity Research Institute, where her work examined geographic lock-in and its impact on mobility and economic participation. Her work has also been featured in Forbes and on the Pushing Forward with Alycia podcast.

​​

She brings lived experience, policy expertise, and strategic communication to her work. As a woman with a disability, she approaches advocacy with clarity, urgency, and precision while remaining grounded in practical policy solutions. Her work is rooted in the belief that people with disabilities should be able to move, work, and build their lives without risking access to essential supports.

​

Lilly is currently pursuing a Master of Social Work degree at the University of Southern California and is working toward becoming a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She plans to pursue doctoral study with a focus on disability policy and systems design.

​

Through her writing, consulting, and public speaking, Lilly contributes to national conversations on how disability policy is understood and implemented with a focus on expanding access, mobility, and economic participation.