Disability Without Poverty established the Clare Li Research Collective not as a eulogy but as a living engine to continue the kind of fearless, community-rooted research and systems accountability that Clare Li embodied in her life and work.
Clare wasn’t just an advocate, she was a bridge-builder between lived experience and structural change. As the Manager of Customer Accessibility at Air Canada, she helped steer our national airline toward accessibility practices that were informed by the real lives of people with disabilities, not just compliance checklists. For Clare, accessibility wasn’t a side-project or a slogan. It was a mission she lived and articulated publicly, as someone living with disability, demanding dignity and equity from industry leaders.
Her leadership at Air Canada was recognized beyond her immediate workplace: she was featured as one of Elevate Aviation’s Women of Inspire, a testament to her commitment to sustainable, people-centred accessibility work.
Yet Clare’s impact was never limited to corporate corridors.
She brought her voice, her presence, and her vulnerability into national social justice movements, including the campaign for the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB). Clare was visibly present on Parliament Hill, standing alongside others to articulate why inclusion must go beyond rhetoric to deliver economic security for people with disabilities. In a powerful moment, she delivered public testimony in both English and French. Despite personal fear, she said “yes” to advocacy that placed her front and centre.
Her journey wasn’t smooth or easy. Clare lived with chronic health conditions from childhood and later faced metastatic breast cancer, yet she used her own story not to centre herself but to illuminate structural inequities, inviting others into shared understanding and action. DWP’s podcast recounts how writing, community, and self-expression moved her from the margins to leadership.
She was also a leader in other spaces: a founding member of Asians in Aviation, a co-chair of Air Canada’s Disability and Accessibility Employee Resource Group, and the only non-dancer in Ill-Abilities, Luca Patuelli’s internationally known inclusive dance crew. Clare reminds us that leadership and belonging take many forms.
Clare changed minds as deftly as she challenged systems. Colleagues noted how even internal Air Canada conversations shifted after Clare spoke. She had a rare ability to invite empathy without apology, expectation, or guilt.
Clare’s work revealed three glaring truths:
- Policy alone doesn’t shift outcomes, evidence does. Policy frameworks like the Accessible Canada Act and the Canada Disability Benefit hold promise, but without rigorous, community-grounded data on lived realities and gaps, they remain abstractions. Clare showed that research must amplify lived experience to shape better systems, not just inform them.
- People with disabilities must be at the table from the start. Her leadership inside and outside formal structures demonstrated that voices shaped by life in accessible and inaccessible worlds are indispensable in designing inclusive solutions.
- Learning and legacy should fuel movement, not mourning. Clare’s life was a testament to the power of saying “yes” to visibility, to collaboration, and to uncomfortable truth-telling. A memorial fund alone wouldn’t honour what she modelled; ongoing research and action would.
The Clare Li Research Collective exists, therefore, to transform her courage into collective leverage, advancing research that centres disabled lives, informs effective policy, and holds institutions accountable for material improvements in equity and economic security. It is a living tribute, because Clare’s life was lived forward.