Claudia L. Gordon

Gordon was part of the Presidential Delegation of Barack Obama sent to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the Opening Ceremony of the 2016 Summer Paralympics.

Gordon became a member of the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2017. During the Presidency of Barack Obama, she served as the Special Assistant and subsequently as the Chief of Staff to the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs Director in the United States Department of Labor. She was also the associate director at the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Notably, Gordon was deployed to Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 where she served as the disability and elderly  populations’ civil rights subject matter expert at the Joint Field Office (JFO). While there she developed and executed technical assistance and training to JFO staff and coordinate resolutions of discrimination and accessibility issues.

Claudia L. Gordon is the first deaf Black female attorney in the United States and the first deaf graduate of American University's law school. She currently works as a Senior Accessibility Strategy Partner at T-Mobile within its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team. Prior to joining the telecom industry, Gordon held various roles in the public sector from 2002 to 2017—most notably as the associate director in the White House Office of Public Engagement, where she advised White House offices and senior officials including former President Barack Obama on disability issues. This political appointment made Gordon the first deaf person to work at the White House in a detailee capacity.

Gordon has been active in both the black deaf community and the cross disability community. She was the national vice president of the National Black Deaf Advocates from 2002 to 2005. She has served on multiple boards, including American Association of People with Disabilities and Gallaudet University.

In 2000, Gordon became the first deaf student to graduate from the American University, Washington College of Law. She was one of the only approximately fifty qualified deaf lawyers in the U.S. and Canada back then. While at WCL, she bagged the Myers Law Scholarship twice as well as the  J. Franklin Bourne Scholarship.

In 1995, Gordon graduated with honors from Howard University. Along with her Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, she also earned a spot in The Patricia Roberts Harris Public Affairs Fellowship, Golden Key National Honor Society, and Political Science Honor Society.

Gordon was born in St. Mary, Jamaica in March 1972.