Georgia Bondy

They/them or She/her
Founder CEO, Activist and Performing Artist
Well Adapt

Award category:

Sports, Health and Wellbeing

I’m a relentless advocate for the notion that happiness and disability are not mutually exclusive. The idea of disabled joy; joy stemming from disability not in spite of it, guides everything I do. My career has been a slow mingling of intersectional advocacy, entrepreneurship, teaching and the performing arts. I’m now lucky enough to get to use all of it to empower disabled people like myself to build lives they love using my social enterprise Well Adapt, performances and speaker work.

Growing up, my mum often repeated the platitude “There’s always a way” which has stood me in good stead for disability advocacy. She didn’t mean that anything is possible, but rather if you’re committed to keep searching for solutions, you can usually make things happen. This approach has seeped into every facet of my work and life, from the inception of Well Adapt to everyday problem-solving with health challenges.

In the last 12-18 months, Well Adapt has grown to support hundreds of users. Well Adapt is an online platform that transforms the chronic illness journey, empowering chronically ill people with mentorship, community, and courses to become active managers and experts in their own wellbeing. The platform has been recognised with the Innovate UK Young Innovators Award and the Plan for Peace ChangeMakers Award.

My efforts to promote disabled joy and support within the community have reached tens of thousands through various media, including interviews on ITV News, articles in the Evening Standard, and talks from LSE to Oxford Brookes. I was lucky enough to be part of a UK-wide government campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated, something particularly close to my heart as an immune-suppressed person.

Initially, my motivation was personal fulfilment – systematising my life to foster a sense of purpose and authenticity. Now, it’s evolved into a commitment to serve my community. When I centre my work listening to the needs of the disabled community, everything seems to fall into place.

If I could leave people with any message from my life and word it’s this: happiness and disability are not mutually exclusive; disabled joy exists.

Disabled people deserve better than surviving on the bare minimum. We must challenge the idea that disability is the end of the road in terms of happiness. Disability will be part of most people’s lives eventually. Society must understand not only that disability joy exists, but that it can become the norm.

Q&A

Georgia Bondy
If you have the privilege of choice (i.e. you’re not in immediate danger of becoming homeless or starving): If you can’t be honest about who you are, including your disability, it probably wasn’t the right job anyway. If you don’t have the privilege of choice: If you’re in survival mode right now, that’s okay. From somebody who’s been there, survival mode won’t last forever. You will figure out a better life for yourself, just take it one day at a time. If that feels unmanageable, take it one minute at a time.
My efforts to spread awareness about disability issues have seen me popping up in various media spots—from Radio 4 to ITV News and even the pages of the Stylist Magazine. Discussing topics from sexual assault and disability to health inequity, I’ve tried to put the spotlight on areas often overlooked. During the national vaccination campaign, I was part of an initiative that reached millions, bringing the conversation about disability to front rooms across the UK. In the past year, I’ve rolled out Well Adapt, a platform crafted to help those managing chronic illnesses. We’ve welcomed over 300 users so far, each looking to reclaim a bit of control over life with chronic illness. It’s a small community, but I hope it’s a start towards something bigger—towards a space where people feel understood and supported, rather than sidelined by the mainstream healthcare system. I share a lot about “disabled joy” in my talks and performances, trying to paint a picture of disabled life that’s full, not just misery or inspiration porn. Together, these events have reached thousands of people. I often hear from audience members that I’ve helped them think about life from different angles and started them thinking about what they have power over. I hope that over time, that is part of changing the narrative we have about disability and happiness.
I want to build Well Adapt as a system of support to help anybody disabled in any part of the world to build a life they love. I want to be part of changing the way the world sees disability and happiness. I want to talk more about disability, sex and pleasure in my work about disabled joy. I’m currently researching disabled experiences with alternative sexual practices like kink. I’m so grateful for everything I’ve learned about the ways we can use disability for pleasure and I’d like to bring this conversation in the light. Sex is part of health and wellbeing; disabled people have every right to a fulfilling sex life.
I love pole dancing. I’ve been a pole dancer for the last 6 years and it’s a wonderful form of self-expression.
Getting to be exactly who I am while serving my community. Also sex, food and singing.
I would not have one without the other. They are both wonderful for their own reasons.
I would bring in universal basic income. I think the world would be a much better place if we weren’t all scrambling around trying to meet our basic needs for food and shelter. So many disabled people sacrifice health and happiness just trying to stay afloat or care for others.
Our health system needs to be set up to deal with chronic issues, not just acute ones. An acute-medicine-focused system infantilises disabled people who are viewed as “new” to their health issues (their own lived experience!) every time they interact with this system. I.e. doctors as experts, patients as de-facto children. A chronic health system would centre disabled and chronically ill people as the experts in their own needs and health as we are the people who live it daily. Doctors would be experts in facilitating self-management. There needs to be a cultural shift where disability is seen as a natural part of life, not an unlucky aberration that at best needs to be fixed or at worse is grounds for suicide. Once we accept that disability is part of most human experiences, we can go about building a world with disability in mind; not as an afterthought.
a black and white photograph of an afro-haired person with playful line drawings on their face

Areas of expertise

Accessibility, Business, Charity, social enterprise, Community, Disability Advocacy, Equality, Health and wellbeing, Performing arts

Disability Power 100 profile information is self-submitted by the profile subject. Shaw Trust understands and respects that disability and impairment descriptors and language use varies from person to person. Shaw Trust assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or discrepancies in the content of this, or any other, profile page.

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