Heta Pukki Biography

Heta Pukki is autistic, with both impairments and cognitive strengths related to her autistic characteristics. She has progressive late onset visual impairment that has started affecting her life significantly in her fifties. She is the mother of two daughters who also have disabilities.

Heta has been actively involved in building autistic people’s activism, self-advocacy and peer support in Finland and internationally since 1997. She has held the roles of Chair of the Board in the Finnish national association for autistic people, and board member of the umbrella organisation Autism Finland, as well as board member of the UK-based Autscape Organisation. She is currently member of Finland’s Advisory Board for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the national coordinating mechanism for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Since late 2019, following three years of participation in the networking and preparations leading to its creation, Heta has held the position of President of the European Council of Autistic People (EUCAP), the European umbrella organisation for autistic people’s organisations. As a representative of EUCAP, she wishes to promote full and direct involvement of autistic people in disability discourse and advocacy in Europe, and better recognition of disabilities associated with developmental neurological conditions in general, as people with such disabilities face widespread exclusion, denial of their needs and breaches of their rights as disabled people. 2

Heta has studied biology (M.Sc.) at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and special education (M.Ed.), with a focus on autistic adults, at the University of Birmingham, UK. She has worked in a variety of roles associated with autism, as an independent educator and writer, translator, consultant, NGO coordinator and project coordinator, most notably in the international Autism&uni project (2013-2016) which promoted the accessibility of higher education for autistic students. Before her vision became limiting, Heta also occasionally worked as personal assistant for people with mobility impairments or learning disabilities, adding an understanding of the practical realities of service provision to her academic and NGO perspectives.