Our Story
Values Into Action was founded in 2005 on a simple belief: people with disabilities should have the power to direct their own lives.
Co-founders Marian Frattarola-Saulino and Paul Saulino started Values Into Action after seeing firsthand the limits of traditional service systems. They believed that people deserve more than programs and services. They deserve choice, control, meaningful relationships, and opportunities to fully participate in their communities.
What began around a kitchen table with a small group of committed allies grew from a shared vision: supports should be built around the person, not the system.
From the beginning, Values Into Action has worked alongside people with disabilities, families, advocates, and community partners to create pathways to greater self-determination, community inclusion, and citizenship.
What We Believe
Your life. Your choices. Your future.
We believe that:
- People are the experts in their own lives.
- Every person has gifts, strengths, and contributions to offer.
- Meaningful lives are built through relationships and community.
- Choice and control should drive decisions about supports and services.
- Supports should adapt to people, not the other way around.
These beliefs continue to guide everything we do.
Leading Change
For more than 20 years, Values Into Action has been a leader in advancing self-direction, person-centered planning, and participant-directed services.
Through partnerships with self-advocates, families, universities, providers, and system partners, we have helped expand opportunities for people to direct their own supports and pursue lives of meaning, connection, and possibility.
Our work includes leadership in supports brokering, transition planning, self-direction networks, training initiatives, and disability advocacy efforts at the state, national, and international levels.
Where We Are Today
Today, Values Into Action supports more than 800 people and employs more than 120 team members across Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
We remain committed to our founding vision: building a future where people with disabilities are recognized for their strengths, welcomed as valued members of their communities, and empowered to pursue the life they choose.
We don’t start with services. We start with people.
We don’t manage lives. We support people to direct them.
That’s Values Into Action.