National Leadership Program, Spring 2025
Allen Martsch
Allen Martsch (he/him) is a Philanthropy/Development Fellow in Disability Belongs™’ National Leadership Program for Spring 2025. Disability Belongs™ is a national nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities so that people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community.
Martsch is autistic and grew up in Springfield, Illinois. He graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2015 with a BFA in Traditional Animation. His senior thesis film Bittersweet screened at 26 film festivals across the US, Canada, Germany, Finland, England, and Hong Kong, and continues to screen with Out In Schools’ programming to combat homophobia, transphobia, and bullying in schools. Martsch started his career in animation production in 2016 at Disney Television Animation and was most recently the Pre-Production Supervisor on the five-time Emmy award winning Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. In addition to supporting the show’s creative leadership in their goal of portraying an accurate New York City, as the first openly transgender person on the Disney PRIDE board he organized and participated in various educational events. These ranged from a panel discussion on LGBTQ+ creators’ history with censorship in animation to moderating a conversation for elders of the trans and nonbinary community to share their stories.
His passion for making positive, intersectional representation accessible to LGBTQ+ youth, experience in television production, and love of Excel led him to release a tool he developed to combat unconscious bias in character creation called the Character Compass. Martsch believes “you don’t know what you don’t know” is a key factor when addressing the fight for authentic representation. This philosophy is showcased in his decision to make the Character Compass available for free to the public on his website. Outside of the industry, Martsch has invested time supporting LGBTQ+ youth in Los Angeles, writing and illustrating personal projects, and indulging in his paper craft special interest by folding over 33,000 origami butterflies.
