Our Team

Investigator

Andy Anderson joined Disability Rights North Carolina in January 2020 as an advocate for the Disaster Recovery project. In March 2021 he moved to the Protection & Advocacy for Beneficiaries of the Representative Payees team. Anders…

Communications Coordinator

Jen Andrew joined Disability Rights North Carolina in June 2022 as the communications coordinator. She has over 15 years of experience advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, education justice, and racial equity. Her background includes work in…

Accounting Assistant

Charlie Barnes joined DRNC as the agency’s chief financial officer when it became the state’s Protection & Advocacy agency in 2007. Barnes has over 35 years’ experience in nonprofit accounting. Before DRNC, he worked 23 years with No…

Supervising Investigator

Gabby Bush joined the DRNC team in 2010 as its first outreach specialist. In that role she met thousands of North Carolinians with disabilities and presented on topics such as the history of the P&A system and how to be a better self-advo…

Bilingual CASE Intake Advocate

Vivianette Ortiz Caraballo joined the DRNC team in 2021 as a bilingual case advocate. Her work focuses on coordinating and administering DRNC’s statewide intake process and providing program support, as well as assisting Spanish-spea…

Investigator

Katerin Castro joined DRNC in July 2019 on the Protection and Advocacy for Beneficiaries of the Representative Payees team. Her work focuses on investigations involving Social Security beneficiaries and their representative payees.…

Attorney

Reighlah Collins joined DRNC in August 2018 as an attorney on the education team. Collins grew up in Zebulon, N.C. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina-Asheville where she interned for th…

Law Intern

Originally from Pontiac, MI, Cortnei is a 1L at North Carolina Central University School of Law. She attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University for her undergraduate career where she studied psychology and cri…

Attorney

Joonu Coste joined DRNC in September 2019 as the agency’s first Equal Justice Works Fellow. Coste’s work focuses on the civil rights of children living in psychiatric residential treatment facilities in NC. She graduated from Campbell U…