Four colleagues, including a man with Down syndrome and a woman with a white cane, sit together around a round wooden table in a bright office, smiling and collaborating over a tablet and printed charts.

ABOUT NABWIS

The National Association of Benefits and Work Incentives Specialists (NABWIS) is a membership organization. The majority of our members are benefits planners (often referred to as benefits counselors or community work incentives coordinators). Other members come from a diverse group and includes program managers, program funders, and training/technical assistance program staff.

Benefits planners typically serve Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and/or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)[1] beneficiaries who are pursuing employment or return-to-work goals. Because of the complex and numerous interactions between cash benefits, health care (including Medicaid and Medicare), and a range of federally supported benefits, many individuals with disabilities are discouraged from working as they fear doing so may cause a loss of disability payments or healthcare coverage.

Throughout the United States, hundreds of benefits planners are trained to provide information and in-depth analysis to disability beneficiaries so they can make informed choices about employment. Their funders include the Social Security Administration’s (SSA’s) Work Incentives Planning and Assistance (WIPA) program; Employment Networks funded through SSA’s Ticket to Work Program; State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (funding their employees or private venders of service); Medicaid waivers (including many state Home and Community-Based Services waivers); private community rehabilitation programs; and a growing number of other sources unique to a state or region of a state. These funders and the NABWIS members they support are committed to seeing that people with disabilities get the highest quality information available to support choices regarding work and increased economic self-sufficiency.

The profession of benefits planning is a growing field -- taking its place as a critical employment support service for individuals who receive disability benefits. Twenty years into our existence as a membership organization, NABWIS continues its work to support benefits planners.

[1] As used in this summary, SSDI includes disability benefits for a wage earner and disability benefits for dependents of the wage earner who is now disabled, retired, or deceased. Dependents benefits include Childhood Disability Benefits for adult children of the wage earner and Disabled Widows/Widowers Benefits. Often these benefits are collectively referred to as Title 2 disability benefits.

Taking a look back...

The National Association of Benefits and Work Incentives Specialists (NABWIS) was founded in 2006 by three individuals who were determined to make benefits planners (often referred to as benefits counselors or community work incentives coordinators) a true profession and a vital part of an individual with a disability's work goal or return to work. Susan Daniels, former Associate Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), Thomas Golden, Executive Director of the Yang Tan Institute at Cornell University, and Mary Ridgely, former Director of Employment Resources, Inc. (ERI), Wisconsin, met in Baltimore in 2006 and decided a trade organization to help bring benefits planners together was the way to begin.

NABWIS was formally incorporated in the State of Indiana on November 21, 2006, with the Articles of Incorporation creating an initial three-person Board of Directors (i.e., Susan Daniels, Thomas Golden, and Mary Ridgely). These early directors developed NABWIS bylaws, providing for a 13-member board. Thus, a first order of business was to recruit 10 additional board members during the early part of 2007. Thomas Golden served as the first NABWIS president and early meetings of the board took place in September and November 2007. Initial work focused on efforts to show SSA and Congress how important benefits planning was to any recipient of benefits, based on disability, who wanted to work or return to work. While this important work was underway, membership growth began.

A New President, a First of Many Conferences

Following several years of Thomas Golden’s presidency, Amina Donna Kruck of Arizona was then elected president of the still growing and blossoming NABWIS. During Amina's final term as president NABWIS grew to an organization of over 300 members and its new board was determined to hold its first national conference. This October 2016 conference was held in Columbus, Ohio and was a complete success. Amina presided over the conference while Thomas Golden gave our first keynote address. Speakers from across the nation were selected by the conference committee to address the 250 attendees, mostly benefits planners, who attended from dozens of states. The quality of speakers, addressing all aspects of planning services, financial literacy, and how to take care of oneself while doing this job, helped make the conference a great success.

After a group "whew!", the conference committee began planning the second conference, also held in Columbus in spring 2018. Under NABWIS's third president, Raymond Cebula, new committees were formed to organize membership, board governance, and legislative education. The second national conference echoed the success of the first and was graced with a keynote presentation given by Marie Strahan, formerly of SSA Baltimore and now, while retired, a strong advocate for return to work efforts. Again, reviews for this conference and its speakers were exemplary and revealed the special rewards that came from meeting others from the far corners of the country that all did similar work.

Our third and final in-person conference in Columbus took place in the fall of 2019. This event saw Josh Basile present the keynote address. Attorney Basile, a strong advocate for "life" and himself a person with a disability, inspired every one of the 250 attendees with a story of perseverance in the face of adversity. Once again, the board sat to review exceptional speaker evaluations, and comments on the ability to spend time with benefits planners from other parts of the country. This meeting also saw the first director's round table which allowed directors from across the country to share experiences.

COVID 19 Pandemic and New Approaches to Business

The pandemic forced NABWIS to rethink how it connected members, delivered training, and conducted board business. What began as an emergency response ultimately expanded the organization’s reach and shaped several long-term practices.

Our first virtual conference. In March and April 2020, planning had already started for another in-person conference in a new location. When it became clear that a fourth in-person conference would not occur in 2021, the conference committee pivoted and began planning a first virtual conference to be delivered using a Zoom format. The fourth NABWIS national conference and first using an online format was delivered in the spring of 2021 and attended by more than 400 persons.

Board starts using Zoom for monthly meetings. All Board members experienced the use of Zoom or similar formats in the workplace for individual and group meetings. So, it was only natural that we’d start using Zoom for monthly board meetings and NABWIS committee meetings. Using the Zoom platform turned into a net positive for the customary teleconference meetings, as board members now got to see each other – in some cases for the first time. During 2026 the board started using Google Meet for its monthly meetings and many committee meetings.

Virtual conferences in fall 2022 and spring 2024, with an in-person conference in fall 2025. For a variety of reasons, NABWIS and its conference committee were not yet comfortable taking the financial risk associated with another in-person conference. Following its longstanding practice of a new event every 18 months, we planned and delivered our fifth and sixth national conferences in 2022 and 2024 as virtual events.

Then finally, in the fall of 2025, we again delivered an in-person conference in Denver, Colorado.

More than 400 persons attended each virtual conference and more than 200 attended the 2025 in-person event. We learned two important lessons from these experiences: first, that we will likely get better attendance at virtual events, where registration fees are less and employers can afford to send more staff to them; and second, that many of our now more than 600 members will, at least periodically, attend an in-person event.

A new timetable for conferences. Moving forward, NABWIS now plans to do a new conference every 12 months while rotating between in-person and virtual events. A virtual conference was planned for October 2026, and an in-person conference planned for October 2027.

A renewed focus on webinars. Over the years, webinars of 60 to 90 minutes have been a periodic free service to members. During recent years, our goal has been to offer four quarterly webinars each year. Our focus has been to offer webinar topics not typically available to all members, topics offered by NABWIS some years ago but now updated, topics covering a new policy or policy edit, and specialty topics by presenters that are not typically available to members.

A Transition to New Leadership, Paid Part-Time Staff, an Improved Website, and Other Key Changes

During the second half of 2025 and continuing through the first half of 2026, the NABWIS board engaged in strategic planning. Using an outside facilitator, the board began to implement key changes, including:

Debora Wagner elected new president of NABWIS. Debora was elected by the board at its July 2026 board meeting. Long-time president, Ray Cebula, will continue on in a new, non-board member position of immediate past president. In addition to her many years on the board, Debora brings a wealth of experience to her new position including many years as a legal services and disability rights attorney, benefits planning program director and, most recently, as a member of Cornell’s Yan Tan Institute’s training and technical assistance team.

Term limits for board members and officers: Starting in 2027, board members will be limited to two consecutive, three-year terms and officers will be limited to two consecutive, two-year terms.

New Board Member Orientation. A detailed new board member toolkit, with links to key NABWIS policies and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), will now be provided to each new board member.

Updated bylaws, board SOPs. This effort was spearheaded by the NABWIS governance committee. The bylaws were edited after a careful review of the Indiana Nonprofit Law, then the SOPs were done as a practical guide to day-to-day decision making for present and future boards and their committees.

New paid staff. During late 2025 and early 2026, NABWIS hired its first part-time paid staff.
- Vikki Ortiz started work as our new Website Specialist/Developer. Vikki continues to do similar work in her home state of Colorado, working for the Colorado Office of Employment First.
- Jolene Wyler began work as our new Director of Operations. She recently retired as Utah’s Work Incentives Planning and Assistance (WIPA) program director and State ABLE Program director. Jolene also served on the NABWIS board for many years, most recently as our vice president.

A fully updated NABWIS website. Vikki has worked with Jolene and the NABWIS website committee to identify improvements needed and to select a new website platform to best achieve those needs. The updated website promises a newly designed look, easier navigation for visitors, and better arrangement of resources for use by visitors and our membership. We also will provide visitors with opportunities to comment on what they like about the website and how we can improve it. The new website was launched in late 2026.