About Us

Our Mission

The DISH Disability Advocates Network helps to encourage an atmosphere of understanding, respect and support for employees who personally live with illness, pain or disability, or who are caregivers themselves. In addition, we aim to positively impact employee families, our customers, our company, and our communities.

About DDAN Podcast

DDAN Founder & President, Wayne Connell

Your Advocacy Starts Here!

Are you a Dish employee with a passion for helping others? Have you wanted to share your ideas of how to make the world a better place? Have you ever needed a helping hand or been the first to extend one yourself? If you answered yes to any of these questions, consider joining us as a member, a volunteer, a leader; a part of the DISH Disability Advocates Network.

DDAN NATIONAL BOARD

Wayne Connell

Founder & President

BIO

In 2016, Wayne Connell joined the team managing the telecom assets for DISH Network‘s satellite broadcast network and Sling TV and currently serves as the Senior Manager of the telecom infrastructure team.

In addition to his work at DISH, Wayne loves volunteering! Wayne founded in 1996 the Invisible Disabilities® Association, a 501c3 international non-profit, out of the desire to educate friends and family about his wife, Sherri’s debilitating illness. Along with his wife, He is co-author of the book, But You LOOK Good, How to Encourage and Understand People Living with Illness and Pain.

Wayne spends most of his evenings, weekends, vacations and holidays, volunteering for IDA as the President and CEO. He loves sharing about the great work of IDA and advocating on behalf of all people living daily with illness, pain and disability. Wayne has had the opportunity to speak nationally at many organizations and businesses over the years about invisible disabilities as well as share via local and national TV and radio interviews. He has also held volunteer leadership positions for Employee Resource Groups focused on disabilities as President of Qwest Friends and Vice-President of Level 3 Friends. Wayne is thrilled and honored to co-found DDAN and serve as President.

Wayne and Sherri have been married since 1994. They do not have any children, because of Sherri’s illness, but they do have two very loving and entertaining pets, Pumpkin and Cookie, who are Nigerian dwarf goats.

Chelsey Brinkerhoff

Vice-President

BIO

Chelsey Brinkerhoff joined DISH in 2015 and loves her work as manager of the administrative team in our Utah Sling office. She has always had a passion for helping others both mentally and physically, and spent years working with special needs children and seniors in hospice. Her perception of life with mental and physically disabilities was greatly enhanced when her brother recently became a paraplegic in a tragic cycling accident. She is excited to work with DDAN nationally as a board member and support employees, families, and communities.

Marc Paladino

Executive Sponsor

Jen Puga

National Board Member

Heather Varney

National Board Member

BIO

Heather Varney is a Sr. Instructional Designer for DISH’s Sales Training and Support team based out of Englewood, CO. Heather has been with DISH for 23+ years and brings over 15 years of learning and development experience from various training departments within DISH, including In-House Services, Customer Experience Operations, Manufacturing and Distribution, and now Sales. As a result, Heather brings a variety of perspectives and a way of looking at both the bigger picture and finding the root causes. Her passion is helping develop people for success.

Heather also has a progressive hearing loss that started when she was about 16 years old. As it became worse, it necessitated getting hearing aids and later adding work accessibility accommodations in order to effectively communicate with coworkers and perform certain job tasks. Throughout this process, she has learned that advocacy is needed to bring awareness and understanding to the workplace for those with invisible disabilities because this was largely missing when she went looking for solutions to meet her needs.

Over the past decade, Heather has connected with an HoH/Deaf community group to learn more about the culture and learn American Sign Language (ASL) and has learned how creative, patient, adaptive, and fun the HoH/Deaf community is. Outside of DISH, Heather enjoys reading books, hiking/camping, and doing various craft projects while being supervised by her cats and dog.

Abigail Doolen PhD

National Board Member

BIO

Abigail Doolen joined the DISH TV product group in Englewood, CO in 2023 as a User Experience Researcher. Abigail has a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and is a specialist in understanding the way people think, learn, and interact with their environment. Abigail prioritizes vulnerability and honesty to form authentic connections and deeply understand people, digging beyond the surface to meet people where they’re at and identify what they need in order to do life better.

Having many family members with severe physical and mental disabilities has shaped the way Abigail faces work and life. Emergency room trips were common occurrences and hospital rooms were a second home at times during her brother’s 25+ brain surgeries for hydrocephalus. Doctors and care providers became family. Abigail carried a surprising burden of guilt that comes with the privilege of good health and success while watching her brother’s dreams get crushed and living in constant pain. It wasn’t until recently that Abigail began to experience limitations of her own due to a variety of mental and physical health challenges that are prevalent in the general population. At that point, she realized that many people like her don’t even realize they have a disability because they may have an idea in their head of what a “real” disability is or because they don’t realize how much it impacts their life. Because of that, reported statistics on the percentage of people with disabilities, ~20%, is likely much lower than reality, meaning that disability advocacy groups like DDAN can have that much more impact in the community.

Abigail is passionate about using her talents and career to create inclusive experiences and improve ease of life. Abigail is excited to serve the DDAN community as a board member. She plans to build a partnership between our community and the designers and researchers at DISH who can make the changes necessary to improve the accessibility of DISH products.

Will Linder

National Board Member

BIO

Will Linder joined Dish in 2020 as part of the Boost Mobile family. Will has close to 17 years in the wireless world. As Retail Sales Manager in 2004, to a Retention Specialist in 2008 to the Escalations manager and Point of Contact for Training and communications from 2010-2014. Since 2015 as a Boost Mobile Indirect Account Executive.

Growing up, with a brother diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome consistently had the passion of helping others and being the voice of his brother to properly communicate with their parents. Assisted as the caretaker of his father who was diagnosed with dementia. Will struggled throughout High School, With ADHD but has returned and recently returned to complete his bachelor’s degree in Business in night classes. Will has always made sure that concerns were heard to better their situations.

Will is excited and honored to be a part of the Board for DDAN to use this to help others and make a difference for others and letting everyone know they are not alone, and together we can advocate for all abilities!

About Us

Our Mission

About DDAN Podcast

Your Advocacy Starts Here!