AXSChat Podcast

LaMondre is a motivational speaker, mentor, and professional figure in the area of people with disabilities. As CEO of Billion Strong, he leverages skills that enable him to inspire audiences to embrace diversity and create communities where people feel more welcome.

By his second birthday, LaMondre was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, which compelled him to take steps to improve himself regardless of the incongruity, into new circumstances, and even in every situation.

LaMondre was recently inducted into the Susan Daniels Company's Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame, Class of 2020, for his commitment to civil liberties, social justice, and care for the disabled community.

Her belief is, "When people come together and learn about the world of individuals with disabilities, it produces a shared sense of trust, optimism, and unity for the whole community."

In disability communities, individuals with disabilities can give form to their personal stories, developing confidence. Focusing on experience is most significant when we can dive deep into our identities.

We all benefit from sharing our stories and informing others of what's going on globally. A great deal of progress has been made, but a lot more work remains to be finished.

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Helen Wilson has worked in the digital community for over 20 years as a Digital development and Web designer, Learning Technologist, Digital Design FE Teacher and more recently in local authority digital content at Worcestershire County Council. 

Helen has Masters degree qualifications in Education, as well as Online and Distance Education. Her passion is focused on the experiences of the end-user and those everyday practitioners who create content. This could be documents created by local authority staff for residents or handouts and guides created by teachers for their learners on a VLE.

She is the creator of SCULPT for Accessibility that came out of research she conducted at Worcestershire County Council. Her aim with SCULPT was to support a whole workforce approach to wider awareness of digital accessibility and digitally inclusive practice. Helen advises on accessibility best practices as well as develops and supports the development of inclusive web content.

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As IBM Z’s Chief Penguin, Dr. Melissa Sassi created her own IBM job title, job description, and leads Student & Entrepreneur Experience worldwide within the IBM Z division of IBM. This role includes being the Founder & Global Head of IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator, an IBM program focused on empowering early-stage startups to build and scale via business and technical enablement. Dr. Sassi has 100 startups in her existing portfolio with 40% early-stage fintechs. Dr. Sassi’s Accelerator also includes celebrity Producer & multiple-Grammy award winning startup – Beatclub – Timbaland’s latest music startup.

Dr. Sassi is also a Call for Code Judge – a tech4good hackathon, startup competition, and coding camp rolled into one – focused on solving the world’s wickedest challenges such as climate action via tech innovation. 

Prior to IBM, Dr. Sassi was an impact investor at Microsoft focused on building and scaling internet and energy access solutions and bringing digital skills to the newly connected.

As Founder & CEO of MentorNations, Dr. Sassi created a youth-led digital skills movement teaching tens of thousands of youth changemakers to code in twelve countries. Dr. Sassi is Chair of IEEE’s Digital Skills & Readiness Working Group and Founding Member of Coalition for Digital Intelligence with WEF, OECD, IEEE & DQ Institute. She holds several Board positions in digital inclusion nonprofits.

Dr. Sassi’s doctoral research is on the digital inclusion of underserved and underrepresented communities and the tie that access, skills, and utilization of technology play to make meaningful use of the internet. She serves on a UN Round Table for the High-Level Panel for Digital Cooperation, chaired by Jack Ma and Melinda Gates with advisory leadership from Vint Cert – the Father of the Internet.  Dr. Sassi is an avid speaker on startup innovation, digital skills and inclusion, tech entrepreneurship, tech4good, community building, youth empowerment, imposter syndrome & personal branding. You can find Dr. Sassi on Twitter at @mentorafrika.

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Sumita Kunashakaran

Zero Project Manager, Civil Society

Sumita Kunashakaran is the Manager of Civil Society outreach at the Zero Project. In effect, she manages the civil society engagement portfolio at the Zero Project, which boasts partners in over 180 countries. In addition, she actively manages the Impact Transfer program, a joint program between the Essl Foundation, Fundación Descúbreme and Ashoka. The program is the first accelerator to support the internationalization of innovative disability solutions for a barrier-free world.

 Sumita is the former Advocacy Lead with the Disabled People’s Association (DPA) based in Singapore. As such, she is interested in policy matters regarding intersectionalities and marginalised communities. She led the working group for Singapore’s first ever parallel report for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and has also published several papers for Universal Periodic Review (UPR) processes, Gender Equality Reports, and position statements for policy and legislative issues in Singapore and ASEAN. With her background in Terrorism and Security, her past research has also been featured by the Contemporary Security Policy journal.

 Sumita Kunashakaran holds an M.Sc. in International Relations from the University of Edinburgh, and a B.A. in Sociology from the University at Buffalo, SUNY.

 Craig Spence

Chief Brand and Communications Officer at International Paralympic Committee

 Spence previously worked as communications manager for the Rugby Football League (RFL) until May. Within the IPC he is responsible for the creation and implementation of a comprehensive communications strategy as well as acting as the official spokesperson for the organization.

 Educated at the University of Central Lancashire, Spence also has experience working as an account manager at public relations agency Ptarmigan and PR executive at major UK-based water company Yorkshire Water.

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Jenny McLaughlin has worked within the airport industry for over 19 years. This began at East Midlands Airport as an Environment and Safeguarding Officer achieving ISO14001. The last 14 years have been at Heathrow Airport in a number of departments including Environment, Airside and now Infrastructure as a project manager. 

Jenny has delivered a number of business changes, from new aircraft de-icing process, introducing new IT applications, building a remote coaching gate in the middle of a live terminal, to significant maintenance work to the Northern runway. 

Jenny is the Lead for Heathrow’s Disability Network and brings that to her PM role. Jenny advocates that each person should have an equitable seat at the table and creating a safe environment to challenge and improve the way we interreact and build the world around us.

Jenny is dyslexic and has ADHD and believes that “the way that my brain is wired differently is an asset”. Finally, Jenny is a speaker at a number of industry events on ‘Systematic Inclusion’, bringing to life the criticality of accessibility if we are to truly ‘Build Back Equitable’.

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 Maria Ferraro was appointed Member of the Executive Board and Chief Financial Officer of Siemens Energy AG and Member of the Executive Board and Chief Financial Officer of Siemens Energy Management GmbH effective May 1, 2020. Prior to her appointment, she held several senior management positions in Corporate Finance within Siemens in the United Kingdom, as well as in Canada, Germany and the United States. Before being appointed Chief Financial Officer of Siemens Energy, Maria Ferraro held the position of Chief Financial Officer for the Operating Company Digital Industries as well as Chief Diversity Officer at Siemens AG. Maria Ferraro was born and educated in Canada. She is a designated Chartered Accountant and spent her early career with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Nortel Networks, holding a variety of roles in Canada and on a global level whilst gaining in-depth experience in European and Asian markets. 

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Kathy Martinez an internationally recognized and disability rights leader, joined Disability Rights Advocates as President/CEO in March 2021 after having spent six years as SVP, Head of Disability and Accessibility Strategy for Wells Fargo. While with Wells Fargo, Kathy helped to weave disability into the overall diversity agenda to expand the bank’s capabilities and programs to better serve both employees and customers with disabilities.
Previously, she served as Assistant Secretary of The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) at the U.S. Department of Labor. Martinez led ODEP in putting policy priorities into practice through several innovative grant programs. These include Add Us In, through which a nationwide consortia worked to increase the capacity of small businesses to employ people with disabilities. The grant program also included the Employment First State Leadership Mentor Program, through which several states received support to promote community-based, integrated employment as the primary outcome for people with significant disabilities.


She is currently serving on the board of The American Association of People with Disabilities and has served on the boards of The National Council on Disability, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the State Department’s advisory committee on disability and foreign policy.
A graduate of San Francisco State University, Martinez speaks and publishes on a wide array of topics related to disability employment, including the emergence of disability as an essential component of workplace diversity and inclusion and the importance of expectation in ensuring youth with disabilities grow up with an assumption of work—a topic on which Martinez, who herself was born blind, offers compelling and personal perspective.

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Phyllida is an appearance activist and CEO of Face Equality International. After sustaining life-changing facial scars in a car accident in 2015, she set out to reshape the negative narratives that dictate the public perception of scars and facial differences. She is a passionate face equality campaigner, aiming to gather momentum for the equity and inclusion of the facial difference community. She is a TEDX speaker, occasional artist, and a model with Zebedee Management.

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Morten Bonde is a skilled senior art director with twenty years of experience developing advertising campaigns for brands in Denmark and abroad. He’s worked with both large and small companies and most recently has been responsible for a number of successful LEGO commercials and animated short films. Oh, and he’s legally blind!

Morten has an incurable eye disease, causing him to slowly lose his sight. In 2016, his vision was so severely reduced that his life couldn’t continue as before. His whole world collapsed.


In his book Sentenced to Blindness – Now What? Morten shares how he decided to see possibilities rather than limitations. With research into the human mind, the practice of mindfulness behavior and meditation and four challenges in four months to reprogram his subconscious mind, he shares how he decided to grow bigger than his greatest life-challenge. BLINDNESS!

Today Morten has an active career in the LEGO Group, and is a published author and motivational speaker on self-management and self-motivation.

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 Beatriz Gonzalez Mellidez is an inclusive user experience professional based in Germany, Certified Professional in Web Accessibility CPWA (IAAP's WAS+CPACC) and User Requirements Engineer (CPUX-UR). 
Her current role is Principal Product Designer at SinnerSchrader, an Accenture Interactive company. She has worked as a UX consultant across several countries and in five languages. Her passion is problem solving for all, no exceptions. As a member of the German UPA (UXPA) she is mostly active in its accessibility working group, which she leads, contributing to best practice publications and the fronta11y.org article series for GAAD in German. Her interest in accessibility dates back to her teenage years creating websites with plain HTML in Spain. 

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axschat https://bsky.app/profile/axschat.bsky.social

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