Published on Show Me Mizzou Dec. 17, 2026
Story by Tony Rehagen, BA, BJ ’01
When Kim Rutledge, BJ ’97, was picking a college, Mizzou was hardly at the top of her list. She’d grown up in Kansas, after all. Her parents were Jayhawks fans.
A visit to Columbia changed her mind. Her interest in journalism drew her to the Missouri School of Journalism. She also found the campus layout far more accessible than any other school she’d considered. Rutledge was born with a physical disability and has been using a wheelchair since she was a toddler.
Today, she is the director of the California Department of Rehabilitation, where she leads the nation’s largest employment and independent living programs for people with disabilities, overseeing a $600 million annual budget and a staff of 1,800 employees in 80 offices throughout California. Rutledge’s journey traces back to the foundation she built at Mizzou, a starting point that shaped the work she’s pursued ever since.
When Rutledge lauds Mizzou’s “accessibility,” she’s talking about more than level terrain and fewer staircases; she’s also referring to the people. Before arriving on campus, she connected with what is today the Disability Center, which was run by a Mizzou alum, Carma Messerli, BS Ed ’83, living with a disability like hers. “It was my first time living independently from my family,” Rutledge says. “There were things I couldn’t do for myself. Between the support of that office and the setup and design of campus, my family felt comfortable with me being far away from home.”
The faculty was more than accepting, she adds. Her teachers and advisors helped when she requested it but otherwise let her be a student. “If there were certain accommodations that needed to be made, they were made. But I was treated the way my peers were treated and given the same opportunities as everyone else,” Rutledge says. “When I was working at The Missourian and it snowed 20 inches, there was never any expectation that I wasn’t going to cover the storm like my classmates.”
Upon graduation, Rutledge took newspaper jobs in South Florida and California before accepting a job at The Sacramento Bee. In 2009, with the newspaper industry in peril, she realized her reporter’s resourcefulness, curiosity and tenacity might help her navigate California’s complicated government programs for people with disabilities. She earned a master’s degree in social welfare from UCLA and transitioned to advocacy. Focusing on California, Rutledge worked with the United Domestic Workers of America union chapter representing nearly 200,000 in-home supported service providers throughout California. After parlaying this work into jobs within state government, she caught the attention of Governor Gavin Newsom. He appointed her to her current role in January 2025.
Rutledge says her disability shaped her early career without defining her work, “then I realized that millions of people must access these systems without the same skills. Knowing how to write, research, understand media and how to ask the right questions, I could help make these systems more accessible. My journalist mindset has served me well.”
To read more articles like this, become a Mizzou Alumni Association member and receive MIZZOU magazine in your mailbox. Click here to join.
