Jamie Upshaw, MS, MA

Jamie Upshaw is a Cultural Risk Advisor, autism advocate, and founder of two Pittsburgh-based organizations: Autism Urban Connections Inc. — Pennsylvania's first and only Black-led, family-centered autism nonprofit — and Cultural Empowerment Strategies, LLC. Jamie is the architect of the CES Cultural Risk Framework™ — the first and only proprietary five-pillar governance diagnostic methodology that identifies and quantifies the systemic gaps determining how minority families experience access, care, and support.

With nearly 20 years of navigating systems not designed for the communities they serve, and academic credentials spanning Criminal Justice Administration, Special Education, and Applied Behavior Analysis, Jamie brings what no one else in this space does: a governance-level lens applied to the lived reality of families who have been left behind. Her work doesn't just name the problem — it measures it, maps it, and builds the pathway to fix it.