Bloom 2025

Brooke Brown - Educator, Advocate, Mother

Brooke Brown is the mother of four children, and her youngest son is rocking an extra chromosome. As the 2021 Washington State Teacher of the Year, she is an advocate for inclusion and belonging for all children and works tirelessly personally and professionally to make sure that dream becomes reality. Brooke is a board member for 321 Buddy and works to support programming and events and partnership between the community and local school district where she works as an instructional equity specialist.

Liz Paschich - Business Woman, Advocate, Mother

Liz Paschich is the Outreach and Inclusion Advisor for 321 Buddy, a role she earned due to her advocacy for quality inclusion for individuals with Down syndrome, and her focus on outreach within the medical and educational communities. A goal of creating an environment that supports, embraces, and encourages inclusion has been Liz's journey since she received her son Lincoln's diagnosis of Down syndrome while he was still in utero. Liz has found her people with 321 Buddy, and A Place For Me has helped her son to find his people.  Liz believes that, when it comes to inclusive practices for people of differing abilities, our community members have good intentions which are sometimes limited by their own experiences, and that our job is to pave a path to new perceptions of what inclusion looks like. 

Amber Rojas is a dedicated single mother of five, committed to supporting and uplifting families in the special needs community. For the past seven years, she has shared her family’s journey openly, offering encouragement and solidarity to others navigating similar experiences. Her work has been recognized by major media outlets, including People, Parents, Women's Health, and BuzzFeed, which named her family’s story one of the "Top 17 Inspiring Health Stories."

Amber has also co-hosted a first of it’s kind virtual event that brought together over 100 moms from around the globe to discuss the power of community, the unique challenges faced by special needs siblings, and the importance of diversity—not only in terms of race, but also within the special needs community itself.

As the creator and host of the podcast Diversity and Down, Amber provided a platform for families within the Black and Brown disability communities to engage in candid, often difficult conversations. The podcast invited listeners to embrace discomfort in order to foster understanding and connection.

Most recently, Amber served as a speaker at the Dear Mom Conference and then went on to  lead a group of single mothers to discuss the challenges of raising children with disabilities alone.

Awarded the “Our Favorite Pediatrician Award” by Parents Magazine, Dr. Rebecca Partridge earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing and worked as a pediatric nurse while attending medical school at University of Utah. She completed a pediatrics residency at University of Utah followed by a three year fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at Vanderbilt. After a four year appointment as Assistant Professor at University of Washington in pediatric emergency medicine, she joined Virginia Mason Medical Center in 2012 to create the Down Syndrome Program. She collaborates with Benaroya Research Institute's Bernard Khor, MD, PhD, in enrolling patients in BRI's Down Syndrome Biorepository as well as providing clinical expertise.

Her most important role is parenting her son Joshua and daughter Megan.

Michelle Hammel is a mother of an amazing 7 year old individual with Down syndrome.  She is a wife, mother, business owner, and advocate. Michelle was not a part of the Down syndrome community until her son, Mehki was born.  She has committed to advocating for her son and ensuring that he is able to achieve anything he wants, believing that the sky is only the beginning, not the limit.  Michelle has a unique way of engaging the community through her transparency and connections.  She does not hide the bad or the good of this journey.  Through her advocacy work she joined forces with other mothers in 321 Buddy and has helped to build a large supportive community within the county, in addition to being a key role in opening the local free resource center, A Place for Me, that provides guidance and support for individuals with Down syndrome and their families.