Jim Sinocchi has a 40-year history with disability inclusion strategies since 1976, when he joined the IBM Corporation. After his retirement, he joined JP Morgan Chase in 2016.

Jim spent 6 years with the bank as its first head of the “Office of Disability Inclusion.” He established policies and strategies to oversee and provide accommodations, accessibility and assimilation solutions for employees with disabilities worldwide. He also led, created and developed business processes, to ensure people with disabilities would assimilate into the bank’s robust culture, whether joining as a new employee or as a current employee at the firm.

During his tenure with the bank, Jim worked closely with senior managers to develop consistent policies and strategies across JPMorgan Chase & Co. that better supported employees with disabilities. This work was done with employees, managers and executives – including senior executives -- who were essential to the success of the mission to include disability as an equal platform within the diversity, equity and business inclusion model.

Background: Jim sustained a spinal cord injury early in his business career while employed with IBM at the age of 25. He made championing the “abilities” of people with disabilities an imperative in his life. Throughout his career, he actively created awareness and understanding of disability inclusion through his blog, “View From the Chair.” He has served on several boards, including Jawonio, Respectability, The Viscardi Center, and others during his activism.

At IBM, Jim served as the corporate communications director for IBM's diversity workforce communications organization, working with disability advocates to ensure the company was a technology leader and employer of choice for the disability community.

Jim holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University. He is married to his wife Maggie, and boasts a son and daughter, and their two grandchildren.

Lisa I. Iezzoni, MD, MSc is Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and based at the Health Policy Research Center, Mongan Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Iezzoni has conducted numerous studies examining the health care experiences of persons with disability. Her book Making Their Days Happen: Paid Personal Assistance Services Supporting People with Disability Living in Their Homes and Communities was just published. During the 2022-2023 academic year, she is the Sally Starling Seaver Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Dr. Iezzoni is a member of the National Academy of Medicine in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

John Hendrickson is a Senior Editor at The Atlantic and the author of Life on Delay: Making Peace With a Stutter, coming January 2023 from Knopf.

Life on Delay is a reported memoir that grew out of his Atlantic feature "What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say," which was read by more than 2 million people and named one of the best stories of 2019 by Longform.

John has spoken about stuttering, politics, and journalism on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, and at colleges and universities across the country. Before joining The Atlantic, he wrote and edited for Rolling Stone, Esquire, and The Denver Post.

He lives in New York City with his wife.

Caroline has been involved in the disability advocacy world since 1999 as an independent case manager, skills trainer and advocate. She is a co-founder of Vertical Harvest and served as its first Director of Human Resources. During that time, she facilitated teaching and training of her Grow Well Employment Model. That model focuses on innovative teaching techniques and hands-on learning to enhance employees’ professional and personal lives and strengthen community connections. In her free time, Caroline enjoys spontaneous adventures with her family in the Tetons.

This episode features Crocker Stickney, a team member at Vertical Harvest. Here's a little bit about Crocker, in his own words: "My name is Crocker and I am a 34 year old disabled worker. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 22, and have been dealing with it ever since. I was introduced to Vertical Harvest via my sister who took a tour first and told me about the company. I have been with them for almost three years. My family live close by in Idaho, and I am a proud new uncle to an amazing nephew who makes me laugh. In my free time I enjoy movies, books and music. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about history but also enjoy anything well written."

A few things to keep in mind while listening, from the VH team:

1. "Clams" are the packaging we use to sell our products. So "clamming" is getting a lot of packages ready for delivery

2. Jackson Hole is an area in western WY; just south of Yellowstone National Park. The greenhouse is located in Jackson - one town in the area; the main town you can say.

3. Driggs, ID, where his sister lives is about a 55 min drive over the Teton mountains

4. We grow lettuce, microgreens, and tomatoes

This week we sat down with Dr. Rhoda Bernard, the Managing Director of the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Education (the only organization of its kind in the world) and the Assistant Chair of Music Education at Berklee College of Music.

Dr. Bernard holds a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in government from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Music with academic honors in jazz voice from New England Conservatory. She earned both her Master of Education and Doctor of Education degrees from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Bernard regularly presents keynote presentations and research at conferences throughout the United States and abroad, and she provides professional development workshops for educators in local, national, and international forums. Her work has been published in several book chapters and in numerous journals, including Music Educators Journal; Music Education Research; Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education; Mountain Lake Reader; and Arts and Learning Research Journal.

An active arts education advocate, she is the immediate past chair of the Arts Education Advisory Council of Americans for the Arts, and she serves on the Education Advisory Council for the Kennedy Center. A vocalist and pianist who specializes in jazz music and Jewish music in Yiddish and Hebrew, she performs regularly with a number of klezmer bands and has recorded two CDs with the band Klezamir.

Our guest is Interim Regional Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs and Vice Provost at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus, Deni Elliott.

She also holds the endowed Eleanor Poynter Jamison Chair of Media Studies and Press Policy in the Department of Journalism and Digital Communication. Dr. Elliott began her work with USF in December 2003. She has served as Department Chair for the Department of Journalism and Digital Communication and has served as the campus Ombuds.

Dr. Elliott is Chief Project Officer for a multi-institutional multi-disciplinary research consortium, the National Ethics Project, that studies how students in higher education learn ethics. She serves as the elected public member on the American Psychological Association Ethics Committee. She is a subject matter expert for the National Center on Disability and Journalism.

Prior academic appointments include University of Montana: Mansfield Professor of Ethics and Public Affairs (1992-1996), University Professor of Ethics (1996-2004), Professor of Philosophy (1992-2004), and Founding Director, Practical Ethics Center (1996-2004); Dartmouth College: Director, Ethics Institute (1988-1992), Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy (1988-1992) and Associate Research Professor, Department of Education (1988-1992). Dr. Elliott’s first tenure-track appointment was in Utah State University’s Department of Mass Communication (1984-1988). Dr. Elliott also served as Ethics Officer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (2004-2012).

Dr. Elliott is the author of more than 200 articles and book chapters for the scholarly, trade and lay press. The books for which she is author, co-author, editor or co-editor include Ethics for a Digital Era (Wiley/Blackwell, 2018); Ethical Challenges: Building an Ethics Toolkit (Authorhouse, 2009); Ethics in the First Person, A Guide to Teaching and Learning Practical Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), The Kindness of Strangers, Philanthropy in Higher Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Contemporary Issues: Journalism (ABC-CLIO, 1998), Ethics of Scientific Research, A Guidebook for Course Development, (UPNE, 1997), Research Ethics: A Reader, (UPNE, 1997); The Ethics of Asking: Dilemmas in Higher Education Fundraising, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), Parts and Parity: Ethics and Organ Transplantation (Institute for Study of Applied and Professional Ethics, 1995) and Responsible Journalism (SAGE, 1986). She has also co-produced three video-documentaries: The Burden of Knowledge, on ethical questions of pre-natal genetic testing, and A Case of Need and Buying Time, which both cover ethical issues of news media coverage of medical and financial need. All three documentaries are distributed by Fanlight Productions. From February, 2003-June, 2006, Dr. Elliott wrote and co-hosted Ethically Speaking, a weekly 2-minute radio show for Montana Public Radio with some shows syndicated through PRX (Public Radio Exchange).

Dr. Elliott has a B.A. in Communication from University of Maryland, M.A. in Philosophy from Wayne State University and an Ed.D. in Philosophy of Education from Harvard University that included work through Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Department of Philosophy, Law School and Graduate School of Education. Professors Sissela Bok, Lawrence Kohlberg, Martin Linsky, and Israel Scheffler served as her doctoral examination committee members.

Dr. Tessa Charlesworth is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard University Department of Psychology. Dr. Charlesworth recently completed her PhD at Harvard where she was advised by Professor Mahzarin R. Banaji. Her research tackles questions such as: How and why do the attitudes of our society shift towards or away from prejudice? Why do some attitudes change while others remain stagnant? What are the forces in society that can shift our collective minds? To address such questions, Dr. Charlesworth integrates methods from across cognitive, social, developmental, and quantitative psychology, including laboratory experiments, natural language processing, time series, and big data analyses. Her research has been featured in top journals in psychology including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, and American Psychologist, and her dissertation was recently awarded the top dissertation award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.