Ramirez June Developmental Disabilities Navigator
NYS Department of State
Cynthia Stewart ’19g leads the Ramirez June Initiative at the New York State Office for New Americans (ONA) within the New York State Department of State. The ONA Ramirez June Initiative is a first-of-its-kind in the nation, which has built capacity to increase access to services for new Americans with developmental disabilities (DD) since 2019. In her role at ONA, Stewart has worked to decrease barriers for new American disability communities by hosting over 130 outreach events in multiple languages, creating and sharing free multilingual resources, collecting data about barriers the community is facing, and sharing recommendations with key stakeholders at the local, state, and national level.
Stewart graduated with a Master of Science in mental health counseling from SUNY New Paltz in 2019 and received her Bachelor of Arts in literature from SUNY Purchase in 2012. Stewart taught English in an elementary school in South Korea from 2014-15, hiked 1,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail in 2013 and 2014, and studied literature in New Zealand for a semester as an undergraduate. She also studied Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist art during a summer program in Tibet.
