From Advocacy to Ambassadorship: A New Chapter Begins with LaunchPAD

There are moments in life that don’t just add to your story — they shift the course of it. Being selected as a LaunchPAD Ambassador was one of those moments.

On 16 May 2025, I joined a room filled with other postgraduate students and researchers from across Ireland, each of us carrying not just academic hopes but also personal journeys as disabled learners. We were there for the first in-person LaunchPAD Ambassador workshop — a milestone event that signalled both a continuation and a beginning.

Before arriving, I had mixed feelings. I had spent the past two decades immersed in education advocacy in Malaysia, working at the intersections of pedagogy, policy, and inclusion. But this was different. This was Ireland — my new home. A place where I am still finding my feet, learning new systems, new norms, and in many ways, learning to find and use my voice again.

So when I applied for the LaunchPAD Ambassador role, I wrote honestly: I might have long experience as an advocate, but what I needed now was to develop new skills and networks to navigate this new terrain. I hoped LaunchPAD would be that turning point — and it was.

The Bigger Picture: Why LaunchPAD Matters

The workshop began with a contextual presentation that laid bare the structural gaps we are facing in Irish higher education. According to HEA figures, 12.4% of all new entrants in 2021 identified as having a disability. This exceeded the 8% target set by the National Access Plan in 2015. A sign of progress — on the surface.

But that optimism dimmed slightly when we looked deeper. Of those students, only 6% pursued postgraduate studies. And among that 6%, the numbers dropped again when it came to engagement with institutional disability services. It became clear that while access to undergraduate education had improved, the pipeline to postgraduate study remained full of silent barriers — barriers that were invisible to many but deeply felt by those of us navigating them.

That’s where LaunchPAD steps in.

Launched as a partnership between AHEAD and the National Disabled Postgraduate Advisory Committee (NDPAC), LaunchPAD aims to transform these numbers — and beyond that, to transform how institutions see and engage with disabled students. PAD stands for Postgraduate, Academia, and Disability. It’s a strategic intervention with lived experience at its heart.

The goals are simple yet profound:

• Year One (now underway): Build a strong community where disabled postgraduate students feel a sense of belonging.
• Year Two: Use research and policy mapping to influence how decisions are made, ensuring that lived experience shapes system-wide change.
• Year Three: Sustain this community and institutional engagement so the work becomes embedded, not just experimental.

As we learned during the presentation, LaunchPAD isn’t only about advocacy. It’s about co-creation. Research outputs, conference participation, symposia involvement, and even policy contributions are all part of what we, as ambassadors, are expected to be involved in. We’re not just sharing stories — we are building systems.

Reframing My Journey in Ireland

For me personally, being in that space brought with it a kind of reckoning.

In Malaysia, I was a visible public figure — an educator, writer, speaker, and advisor to national policy committees. I spoke with confidence, guided teachers, wrote books, and helped shape the country’s education discourse. But here in Ireland, as a postgraduate student with ADHD, I often found myself in unfamiliar roles. A newcomer. A student again. A disabled learner in a system that, while progressive in many ways, still held pockets of inaccessibility and assumptions.

LaunchPAD offered me a rare bridge between those two worlds.

It validated my prior experiences without demanding that I perform them again. It acknowledged the realities of navigating postgraduate life with a disability while also trusting that we — the ambassadors — are capable of shaping the future. Not in spite of our diagnoses and impairments, but often because of the clarity they give us about where the system needs to change.

Building a Community, Not Just a Network

What struck me most during the workshop was how quickly trust was formed among us. This wasn’t just networking. It was community-building — consciously and intentionally.

We came from diverse academic disciplines: science, humanities, education, psychology, policy. Our disabilities were diverse too — neurodivergence, chronic illness, sensory impairments, mobility challenges, and more. But we spoke a common language: one shaped by lived experience, one that didn’t require disclaimers or long explanations.

One of the most meaningful aspects was the space created to listen and be heard. There was no pressure to be “inspiring” or to “overcome” anything. Just an invitation to be whole, honest, and involved.

That alone was a radical act.

Disability Makes Barriers Visible

One of the most profound insights shared during the workshop was this: “Disability makes barriers visible.”

It’s a deceptively simple idea, but its implications are vast.

When a system appears to be working for most people, its flaws often go unnoticed. But when someone with a disability enters the picture, suddenly, inaccessible buildings, inflexible timetables, ableist assumptions, and limited support structures become starkly visible. And once seen, they can no longer be unseen.

LaunchPAD is not trying to fix disabled students to fit the system. It’s trying to fix the system to serve all students — including us. And that distinction makes all the difference.

The Turning Point: Coaching with Adrian Langan

The second day of the LaunchPAD Ambassador workshop was led by Adrian Langan, and it transformed how I view not only advocacy but also communication as a craft. Adrian, a seasoned communications coach, brought over two decades of experience to the room. But what stood out most wasn’t his expertise — it was his deep belief in empowering us to speak from within, not just perform from the outside.

The agenda was intense, structured around a full-day strategic communications bootcamp tailored for us as Ambassadors. It wasn’t just about how to give a speech. It was about purpose. Strategy. Self-awareness. Impact. Adrian broke it down into guiding questions we can carry into any advocacy context:

• What am I trying to do?
• Who needs to hear this?
• What do I want them to know?
• How will I reach them?
• How do I measure if it worked?

These weren’t just rhetorical prompts — they were working tools we used throughout the day, whether we were pitching LaunchPAD to a university committee, telling a personal story at a panel, or handling tough questions from stakeholders.

We were guided through exercises that covered the full spectrum of strategic communication:

• Storytelling: using the Set-up / Conflict / Resolution model to convey lived experience with emotional clarity and purpose.
• Presentation building: structuring our argument with Exposition / Argument / Resolution, then delivering with poise and presence.
• Pitching: learning to start with Outcome, follow with Process, and close with a clear Call to Action — essential for quick, impactful communication on social media or in meetings.

We even worked through STAR case studies (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to transform our lived experiences into strategic narratives. What I found powerful was how Adrian challenged us to bring both our analytical minds and emotional truths to the table. Advocacy, after all, is not just policy — it is persuasion, empathy, and timing.

There was also a moment of affirmation in Adrian’s final message to us:

“Being good at public speaking is not the engine of your life: what is in your heart and head is that. But being good at it is an accelerator — it will help you more speedily achieve your life goals, whatever they are.”

That sentence has stayed with me. It captured exactly why this training mattered so much — not just for LaunchPAD, but for me personally.

After years of speaking on stages, writing books, and engaging with policy, I found in Adrian’s session a sharpening of skill, but more importantly, a recalibration of intent. In my new home, Ireland, I am learning to be fluent again — not in a language, but in voice, purpose, and connection.

Moving Forward

As LaunchPAD Ambassadors, we now carry both vision and voice into the spaces we occupy. Whether at symposia, university meetings, conferences, or community events, our role is not just to represent, but to reshape.

This journey, for me, is a bridge between my past as an advocate in Malaysia and my future in Ireland. It is a journey of humility, strategy, and bold reimagination.

To everyone who has ever struggled to find a place or platform to speak from — know this: your story has power. And with the right tools, it can move mountains.

Rizal is a postgraduate student in Diversity and Inclusion at Trinity College Dublin, a neurodivergent writer, educator, and advocate for inclusive education. Follow his journey and reflections on Medium and across his social media platforms [LINKTR.EE].