Monica Ren-Wen Huang

Monica Huang is an Occupational Therapist on the Transition Ready Agency Collaborative (TRAC) within Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools. She works with disabled, transition-aged high schoolers (ages 14-22) to achieve post-secondary outcomes of employment, education and daily living. Monica is committed to ensuring disabled adolescents’ access to communication, self-advocacy and identity affirmation as essential representations of diversity to be valued and visible within communities. As an autistic self-advocate and member of the disability community herself, Monica is passionate about dismantling social stigmas and confronting identity discrimination (especially at the intersections of race and disability). She is justly devoted to her students’ agency in creating meaningful lives of their choice, their belonging and their leadership in society.  Since joining the team, she has worked hard to innovate a curriculum inspired by her background in community mental health and focus on student perspectives of disability identity, disclosure and social justice. 

The TRAC initiative is a unique, multidisciplinary secondary transition program. The first of its kind in North Carolina, TRAC was developed to equitably and comprehensively distribute transition services to all students with disabilities as a means of promoting quality of life beyond high school and into adulthood. TRAC blends the domains of Vocational Rehabilitation with the NC Dept of Public Instruction. The program, rooted in school and community-based instruction, educates, empowers and supports students’ self-determination and life goals through learning experiences focused on post-secondary education, career counseling, employment, and life.