Posted on: April 25, 2022; Updated on: April 25, 2022
By Carol J.G. Ward ward8@mailbox.sc.edu
When Lorri and Dan Unumb’s son Ryan was almost 2 years old, they noticed he wasn’t behaving and developing like other children. The couple was living in Washington, D.C., where they both were employed as lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice. After appointments with several specialists, Ryan was diagnosed with autism shortly before his second birthday.
“They all said the same thing: For a child with this degree of autism, you need to get him into a very intensive program right away,” Lorri Unumb says. “I didn't even know what autism was. Because 20 years ago, it just wasn't the household word it is now. I didn't even know what they were telling us to do. But we were going to do it. Whatever it was they were recommending, we were going to do it.”
Two decades later, Unumb, a University of South Carolina alumna (’90 journalism and political science, ’93 law), is an internationally known autism advocate who has written ground-breaking autism insurance legislation and co-founded, with her husband, a nonprofit center for families affected by autism in South Carolina. In 2019, she became CEO of the Council of Autism Service Providers, an association of organizations serving people with autism.
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