What’s my story?
“Do not follow the path. Go where there is no path to begin the trail.”
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On a pink tint overlay, there is a black & white headshot photo of Sulaiman, a wholeheartedly Disabled AF and British-South Asian man with buzz-cut hair. He is smiling and he’s joyful. DESCRIPTION ENDS.
Sulaiman R. Khan
سلیمان راشد خان
My (current) Disability pronouns are: Disabled[1]/wheelchair user.
My (current) pronouns are: he/him/his/Disabled.
Multiple Award-Winning Disabled AF: Founder, Speaker, and Activist.
ADVENTURER AND CONTINUAL WIP. CREATING RELATIONSHIPS, STORIES, AND JOY.
Daringly integrating Disability. Sulaiman R. Khan radically always centres Disability (and Disabled people, especially Disabled People of The Global Majority or colloquially “people of colour”), daringly. Sulaiman believes in the imagination of Disability and always doing everything in service of Disabled people for our collective liberation.
This Regenerative Leadership and Regenerative Being Custodian, Sulaiman [he/him/his/Disabled] is a socially conscious Disabled Entrepreneur and a Disabled Oracle.
The anti-ableist and Disability liberation maestro. The radical, badass Disabled friend and lover you wish you had.
Through his infinite imagination within limitations, Sulaiman uses his intersectional, anti-ableist, and Disability Justice lens, as Founder and Chief Radical Officer of ThisAbility Limited, a Disabled and Person of The Global Majority[2]-owned Disability Justice business, and a Certified B Corporation™. ThisAbility® Limited helps socially conscious brands divest from ableism and enact Disability liberation, by integrating Disability culture.
The igniter of hearts creatively, a British-Pakistani Disabled wheelchair user[3] adventurer, a continual work-in-progress, and a multiple award-winner, Sulaiman loves to create relationships, stories, and joy. A highly acclaimed, sought-after radical speaker – Sulaiman is a joyful activist from his first breath, with every breath until his last breath.
With over four decades of lived experience of Disability and over a decade and a half of experience with the creative industries, he is fierce in working to daringly integrate Disability (and, in turn, Disabled people) in everything he creates.
Sulaiman is infinitely a radical with Adrak (ادرک), Haldi (ہلدی), Zafran (زعفران), and Chambeli (چمیلی) badassery. Sexy, spicy, and sacred existence. Always.
Ultimately, my life’s work and my life’s goal are to create radical, infinite, interdependent ecosystems of care (and curiosity), Access Intimacy for collective liberation, and acts of daily revolutionary LOVE®.
Beyond Work.
Sulaiman. Graduate BA (Honours) in Advertising & Brand Communication in 2012 at UCA Farnham. Creative Collaborator: An Exploratory Storyteller and Adventurer. A multiple award-winning mind. Ignited by creativity, technology, regeneration (beyond sustainability), design, justice and liberation, collective/community care, collective/community healing, activism (even before it became a hashtag, primarily Disability Justice and Environmental Justice), storytelling, rest, interdependence, love, and collective liberation.
Some examples of subjects that I have come across and become fascinated in include:
+ Neuroplasticity in creativity.
+ Edwardian culture.
+ Japanese mythology.
+ Disfluency.
+ Mobile creativity (my undergraduate dissertation topic).
+ Documentary film.
+ Travel / new cultures.
+ Universal / industrial design.
+ New technologies.
+ Human behaviour.
+ Science/medicine.
+ Depth Psychology.
+ Human stories/storytelling.
I strongly believe that the more input you collect, the more output you can connect. That's the core of having original and innovative ideas.
Get in touch if you're interested to chat, and maybe share an adventure or two. "I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are. " ~ Toni Morrison
ONWARDS and UPWARDS!
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
[1] Personally, I use Disabled interchangeably with Crip (a term only to be used by the Disabled community and in no way by not-yet-Disabled people) as I’m done making my Disability palatable for an ableist world. I don’t wish to erase my Disability or Disabled identity nor be a part of the “overcoming Disability” and “Disability Paradox” narratives – I haven’t “overcome” my Disability; I have overcome ableism and ableists. I prefer not to use problematical person-first language such as “person with a Disability”, and I am not keen on using ableist language such as “differently-abled,” “handicapped,” “wheelchair-bound”, or “special needs” that worsens my internalised ableism. This is my personal choice and may not reflect all Disabled people nor the whole Disability community across the world. We are all on different journeys in our Disabled identity journey, and that’s okay. If in doubt, ask the Disabled person directly.
[2] People of the Global Majority: ccoined by Rosemary M. Campbell-Stephens MBE is “a collective term that first and foremost speaks to and encourages those so-called, to think of themselves as belonging to the majority on planet earth. It refers to people who are Black, African, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or, have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities'. Globally these groups currently represent approximately eighty per cent (80%) of the world's population, making them the global majority now, and with current growth rates, notwithstanding the Covid-19 pandemic, they are set to remain so for the foreseeable future. Understanding that singular truth may shift the dial, it certainly should permanently disrupt and relocate the conversation on race.” (R. Campbell-Stephens, 2020). This aligns wholeheartedly with my Disabled AF, British-Pakistani existence.
[3] I am wheeling away with zero tolerance to your ableism, racism, patriarchy, anti-blackness, anti-fatness, colonialism, capitalism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, classism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, hegemony, heteronormativity, carceral ideology, anti-abolition, subjugation, supremacy, toxicity, and all systems of oppression. You can put it where the sun doesn’t shine. And I have never been able to walk whatsoever and don't want to ever walk, so as a power wheelchair user, “wheeling away” is my cheeky take on “walking away.”