Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jack Walters, CEO and Co-Founder, HapWare https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-11-02-2026/

In this energizing episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams welcomes back Jack Walters, co-founder and CEO of HapWare. Dr. Adams first met Walters at the Consumer Electronics Show and later invested in HapWare as a limited partner with Adaptation Ventures. Walters says HapWare just won one of Time's Best Inventions for ALEYE, a wearable that communicates non-verbal cues such as hand gestures, body language and facial expressions through the sense of touch, and that the team is adding automatic object detection and text recognition that work with Meta smart glasses and need no prompting. Walters explains that the new investment round gives HapWare the means and the momentum for a successful launch, and Dr. Adams notes that Adaptation Ventures led it. Walters says pre-orders are open at https://hapware.com/preorder, where a $59 deposit secures a 20% discount, that they will probably close December 31st, and that HapWare is looking to build around 750 units in its first batch.

The conversation then turns to employment. Dr. Adams sees HapWare as a workplace accommodation and recalls that the American Foundation for the Blind was the first employer to offer Aira that way, while Walters says HapWare has talked with some employers, is working with distributors, and sees ALEYE as a communication and workforce development tool. Walters credits co-founder Bryan, who is blind, and more than 750 in-person demonstrations since CES with shaping what the team builds. Walters also lists upcoming demos, including Braille Institute in Los Angeles, which he says will serve as a demo center along with the Vista Center, Society for the Blind and San Diego Center for the Blind. Dr. Adams connects ALEYE to the Protactile movement in Seattle's deafblind community, mentions his book, The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion, and the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, and invites listeners to reach out to Walters at https://hapware.com.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. I've been doing the podcast long enough now that I'm starting to have return guests as their projects evolve and develop. And today, I have a return guest, Jack Walters, who is co-founder and CEO of HapWare. Say hey to the people, Jack.

Jack Walters: Hello, hello. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Absolutely. And there's a lot cooking. So I met Jack for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2025. Well, I was wandering the accessibility area and he jumped out. I think he saw the white cane and jumped out and said, "I wanna show you something."

Jack Walters: [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: So it was a wearable that connected to a smartphone or smart glasses, gives blind and visually impaired and neurodivergent people visual information about interactions they're having with other people. And I had actually been told about it by Thomas Panek, who's a friend and colleague who is CEO of Lighthouse Guild in New York. He told me about HapWare very excitedly. And then probably three or four weeks later, I met Jack and was introduced to the technology. And then fast-forward, I guess, a year, I became a limited partner with Adaptation Ventures, which Brittany and Rich Palmer founded, and they invest specifically in disability-related tech startups. And it's a group of angel investors, of which I am one. My first venture into that space. And we have these pitch forums where usually four companies come and spend 10 minutes talking about their project, their initiative, and then there's a process to select who we collectively invest in.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And lo and behold, there was Jack Walters and HapWare at one of the pitch forums. And the group decided to move forward and put some of our investment funds behind HapWare. And just today, I read the Adaptation Ventures monthly newsletter, and there's lots of HapWare information in there. So talked about closing an investment round that Adaptation Ventures proudly said that they led, we led. And then there's some Time Magazine most innovative product accolades. And I know, Jack, you contacted me because there are some great things happening in the space and for HapWare, so glad to have you back. I'll hand the talking stick to you. I'll pop in with a question or two as they occur to me. But the floor is yours.

Jack Walters: Thank you. Yeah, it's great to be back. Crazy to think that that first time we connected at CES was just at the beginning of the year, and now CES in January is coming back in a few months, and we'll be back there. Time has been flying. It doesn't feel like it's been 10 or 11 months. But to give a quick update and share a little bit about who we are and what we're doing, HapWare is—we just won one of Time's Best Inventions, so we are extremely, extremely excited about that. It's great for the accessibility industry as a whole, and we're just honored that we get to kind of be at the forefront of that and help share the story with some of our peers and colleagues and friends.

Jack Walters: But ALEYE is what we won it for, and ALEYE is a wearable that, as Kirk said so well, communicates all the visual information about what people are doing.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And that's A-L-E-Y-E, correct?

Jack Walters: A-L-E-Y-E is right. So any sort of non-verbal cue is what we do, is what we communicate. So this is like hand gestures, body language, facial expressions, is someone reaching out to shake your hand, waving, smiling, all these sort of different things. We communicate that information through the sense of touch, and that is really where we've focused most of our effort on development. But as of recently, we've actually been adding on to some of the features that we have, which are, I think is gonna be extremely excited to share to you today, is that now, instead of just doing non-verbal communication through the sense of touch or haptics on the wristband, we're also adding functionality into automatic object detection, text recognition, and doing it all with no prompting. So recently, I just got to watch my co-founder, Bryan, use some of the new technology that we've been developing.

Jack Walters: And Bryan, for those who are listening, is completely blind, and he's able to wear the device. It pairs with the Meta smart glasses and get all sorts of the information, like when he's going shopping. So knowing what aisle he's on, oh, it's aisle 20. Seeing that it says this is where the potatoes and fruit are, yada, yada, yada. It will tell him what the fruits and vegetables are in front of him. And then it'll tell them when the people are around them, "Hey, someone just walked up and approached you. Someone is waving at you from across the way. Someone just smiled." Or the other thing happened, they walked away from you, or they try to hand you something. So we're really building ALEYE now to be this sort of holistic experience where we can provide more visual information without the need for any prompting. So there's no "Hey Meta" or taking a picture and manually doing it. You just—

Dr. Kirk Adams: How many times, Jack—if I had a nickel for every time I've been talking to someone, social setting, and they have walked away, and I'm still talking. So, beautiful thing.

Jack Walters: Yep. That was one of the number one things that Bryan always said is just, "We need to get the walk away down." And it works really, really well. I see it because I'll test it on him. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. That's great.

Jack Walters: He'll be wearing it and then using it, and then I'll walk away, and then he hears it and says, "Hey, it just told me you walked away." [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: So how does one find out that they are one of Time Magazine's Inventions of the Year? That was—

Jack Walters: It's a good question. You apply for it, actually. And we have this PR guy that we're friends with, Bill, and he told us, he's like, "Hey, you should apply for this. I think that you would have a good shot." So we put in the application and said, "All right, we're gonna do it. Let's see what happens." That was in March. I don't know, it was a long time ago. And then in October, we get an email—maybe it was before October, September. We get an email from a guy, and he's saying, "Hey, I work with Times, would love to just chat about your ALEYE and what you guys are doing." So then we kind of started feeling pretty good, like, okay, this seems like we're past the initial screening.

Jack Walters: And then talked with him, and then he said, "Yeah, if you get it, you'll get a two-week notice sort of email." And then in the beginning of October, we got an email saying, "Hey, this is under embargo, but on October 15th, we're gonna announce the Times Best Inventions list, and you're gonna be on it." So that's it. You apply, you wait six months, and then you maybe hear back, and then we did, and it just ended up being good news. And then we started prepping for how we wanna make sure to—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. How to leverage that.

Jack Walters: Celebrate the invention.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So talk to me about the investment round. I read, like I said, the Adaptation Ventures newsletter talked about oversubscribing a million and a half dollar round. How does that work? What was Adaptation Ventures' role? What is the use of funds? Where do you go next?

Jack Walters: Yeah. The use of capital, it's a great show that people, investors, our community, the people that we're serving all really believe in what's being built. So it really is a testimony to the community. And what this capital really gives us is the means and the momentum and the resources we need to have a very, very successful launch of ALEYE, and the technology and the support and everything else. So that is really what this is gonna be great for. It's gonna make sure that everyone that has pre-ordered and all the distributors that we're working with and enterprise companies, whatever it may be, have all the support they need, the technology's in a good place, and it gives us enough operating margin to grow into a next round of investment if and when that is necessary.

Jack Walters: So it's a great milestone, but it's really used as a stepping stone to just deliver the most world-class technology that we can to our blind and low vision community. So we're just honored to be able to have the belief and that from investors. But it's the next milestone is really what we're using it for. We're using it for development, development, development.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. And you're in pre-order now?

Jack Walters: That's right. We have it available for pre-order. So people can pre-order online, on the website, https://hapware.com/preorder. We've been doing a deposit program, so instead of having to put down the whole price, people can put down $59. And then that secures their 20% discount on pre-order. And then from there, once it's ready to ship, they'll charge the other $300. So it's just a way to kind of secure your discounted price, and we're looking to build right around 750 units to begin with, the first initial batch.

Dr. Kirk Adams: How's the pre-order going?

Jack Walters: It's going well. We're closing it probably in December. December 31st.

Dr. Kirk Adams: There's still some time.

Jack Walters: There's still some time. And then we might do probably a CES or an ATI or CSUN sale since we'll be there. So we'll probably open it up for a few events and before and after shortly, for people that didn't get in the first round. But then that is really the total. That'll become the end of pre-orders. And we've also been working with distributors as well, and that's been very good for us because pretty much every distributor that we go and pitch it to have been really, really on board to wanting to use it and getting it to their catalog since it's such a new and novel technology, and there's a very clear path forward to this being an in-person tool for workforce development.

Jack Walters: So a lot of the vocational rehab agencies that would be the funder see this as, hey, there are tools out there that do stuff with in-person access, but most tools are still digital or big and clunky. So we're kinda building something that's the whole shebang of visual access that you would want in a professional environment. It's got your real-time text recognition, real-time object detection. It can learn the objects, or you can select the objects that you want. So if you work in a warehouse, you can say, "Hey, I need to know when these things are coming up." It will tell you that. It'll give you all the information about the humans, obviously, that you're interacting with.

Jack Walters: So communication with clients, peers, customers, your managers, whatever it is. So it's really got a good angle where you can say it's very holistic communication tool and workforce development tool.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Have you had any conversations with employers using it as a workplace accommodation?

Jack Walters: So this is a good [laughs] question. And you're probably the right person to talk to about this. That is the future, I think, for ALEYE and how we really scale. We've talked to some employers. It's still early, right? Obviously we're still pre-launch, but there is enough early signal where I feel like that is where we see kind of the business model and scale for this to really grow.

Jack Walters: Kind of giving an example, like Aira, for instance, they have the direct-to-consumer business model where people buy minutes, but then really where they become a successful company or a scalable company is through their enterprise and through their accommodations process and selling to businesses. 'Cause businesses can just, at the end of the day, just pay more money or whatever it is. It's more affordable for them than it is individual.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I remember having that conversation with Aira. And since then, a handful of others in the space who tend to come into the space thinking of subscription model, a membership model, B2C. And my experience being around the block a few times is that those models tend to plateau. And then the B2B—Aira's the example you just used. Now if I go into Starbucks and use minutes, Starbucks will pay for it. If I go to SeaTac Airport and use minutes, the airport will pay for it. Making their products and services more accessible to more people.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Back in the day, I used to always use JAWS as the example with Vispero. Everyone uses it, hardly anyone pays for [laughs] it out of pocket. The school, the employer, the library, the cruise ship, someone else is paying for it in many cases. So employment is my jam.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I've been sitting here thinking about the workplace. I was recently in a modern manufacturing facility run by a name-brand corporation everybody knows, and they are wanting to create a pilot to hire more people with disabilities in the workspace, and it's advanced manufacturing, so everything's computerized and mechanized and automated and digital. And they have systems that are not accessible currently. So sighted people are looking at screens and getting data from screens. So I'm just thinking, wow, if HapWare could be tuned in to support people who are blind and visual impaired in those work environments, what a wonderful thing that would be. So sign me up for talking more about that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I remember when I ran the Lighthouse for the Blind here, was the CEO, we opened a plant in Spokane, Washington, and probably 12 or 14 years ago, we paid something like $18,000 for a wearable magnifier product I won't name, but it did help some people with particular visual conditions to have more access to that workspace. But it didn't help everybody. It was very niche. It was very expensive. And I have growing enthusiasm for HapWare as a workplace accommodation. [laughs]

Jack Walters: [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: When I was at the American Foundation for the Blind, we were very, very virtual, and we had many blind individuals working from home. So we were the first employer to offer Aira as a workplace accommodation. That if AFB employees used Aira during the workday for work tasks, we would pay for that as an accommodation. Of course, that saved us tons of money and time and effort, energy, allowing blind people to just deal with their issues independently. So I'm all for it.

Jack Walters: Totally. And I think we could have a long conversation about this, and honestly, HapWare would benefit from it greatly too, is we start navigating some of those conversations and pilots. That's kinda where we're at right now with a lot of these organizations that we're talking to is, hey, let's start with an X sample size. Probably 10, 20, whatever it may be. We gotta get through the process of being approved, which is—I don't know if you had this problem with Aira and at the AFB, but just making sure that a lot of enterprises that have a lot of very, very complex security questions—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes. So, just a little example. National Industries for the Blind had a contract to provide contract closeout with the military, and putting JAWS on machines on military bases. It was quite a process because it linked to the internet and the cloud, so we just had to have versions that just didn't go beyond that person's individual workstation, allowed them to do the work, but didn't tie outside of the organization. So where there's wills, there's ways. But so, Time innovation of the year, closed the investment round, pre-orders are underway, and reaching full subscription. So what else? [laughs] What else great news [laughs] is in the HapWorld?

Jack Walters: Well, we're still doing a lot of demonstrations and demo days. So a lot of in-person events still happening. We have a whole events page on our website that you could go to. We'll be in Northern California in two weeks. Then we'll be in Philadelphia. Then we'll be in Southern California at the end of this week, actually. We have an event we're doing at the end of this week. And then the large events will be at CES again in January, Assistive Technology Industry Association in January, and then CSUN. So—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Where in Southern California? In—

Jack Walters: It's in LA. We'll be at Braille Institute. So the Braille Institute—they've also purchased a couple devices. So when we officially launch, Braille Institute will actually serve as a demo center. So will the Vista Center, Society for the Blind, and San Diego Center for the Blind. So California has been—the nonprofits there have been great early supporters of wanting to demo the technology, and have it in their assistive technology labs, and so on and so forth, for their local communities to come and check out. We're hoping to get a handful more of nonprofits as demo centers, just because we can't be everywhere.

Jack Walters: And I think one of the greatest benefits of HapWare, or one of the most exciting things about it, why I think we've gotten some good recognition is, it's a very touch experience. [laughs] It's a very hands-on experience. It's also one of the challenges that we have is to describe the technology. Because you can talk about it, but feeling does a lot for it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I remember I moderated a panel at American Printing House for the Blind, I don't know, probably 2017, 2018. I remember Mike May was on it, Chieko Asakawa was on it, and it was about indoor navigation. But one thing that really stuck with me is these people who have great knowledge and wisdom around this space were talking about haptics being the next frontier, that most of the stuff designed for us as blind people was audible. And so you had things talking at you, and you get two, three, four things talking at you. It has a diminishing marginal utility, and at some point becomes counterproductive and reduces your ability to function safely and independently. And there was a lot of conversation and excitement about haptics. And then, of course, when I met you at CES and put the band on my wrist and felt some of the signals that indicated various things, and thought, "Maybe I will not have such a problem shaking people's hands at the networking receptions now."

Dr. Kirk Adams: So, [laughs] you've struck a resonating chord, it seems, in the accessibility community. I know Bryan, who you mentioned earlier, is blind, and one of a handful of people who've attained his level of academic achievement in computer science. But talk a little bit about your experience and what you've learned and what you encountered in this space, people who are passionate about making the world more accessible for everybody.

Jack Walters: Totally. I think Bryan's lived experience gives us so much insights onto some of those things, like you mentioned, the handshakes, the walk away. And it really is a critical part of building in this space, the assistive technology and accessibility space, is having people like Bryan really being the leader and making real-life decisions on how things are built. But one of the things that we've learned even from outside of just having someone like Bryan on the team as a co-founder is when we include a lot of other opinions and voices into the development process. So right now, really, since CES, we've completed over 750 in-person demonstrations.

Jack Walters: So 750 individuals have tried different things, that we've asked questions to and have done tests with. We're essentially doing 70 a month of intentional time with people. And we're also doing things not only in person, but also digitally and virtually, where we do beta tests with our app and the functionality there, and how it integrates with Meta glasses. So in tune, it's like you have every month you're visiting with 70, maybe 70, 80 people in person. And on top of that, you're doing stuff virtually, whether it's through using TestFlight and people downloading apps and beta testing them virtually, and then joining our webinars that we do every single three weeks. So every month we're doing webinars with people, and then we have open community forums on social media. So I think from the accumulation of all that, we just get so much feedback and insight on what it really takes and what people want.

Jack Walters: And we focused very, very hard, really, since the beginning of the year on the non-verbal cues. And that was where our bread and butter was. That's kind of our key differentiator. Anyone else that would try to do that, they would have a really, really hard time getting it to the fidelity that we have. But from feedback is where we've learned, hey, to really differentiate and create a more inclusive experience, especially for that kind of workforce angle that we're leaning into, there's a few other things that we could really do to enable that independence. And it was only from the feedback where we've kind of started going down and doing more text recognition, object recognition, customization, haptic customizations, and it all just comes down from feedback.

Jack Walters: So I know that there's a really—not to beat a dead horse here, but the whole "nothing about us without us" is, I think we see it very clearly because all the new things that we've built—Bryan obviously comes up with a lot of things from his experience, but those are all reinforced from other people that we're testing with, so it's not done in a silo. And then we really get a good amount of granular and directional feedback on how these things should be built from just individuals that are collaborating.

Jack Walters: And I think that has been the most exciting part, is that we have a very clear pipeline of what we know this should be like and what the future additions are gonna be. Right? We're on a Zoom call and doing this. We really wanna add virtual meetings to it. And we know from a lot of conversations that people would love that, that work remotely, [laughs] that are blind or low vision, having a tool where they could know that when they're on a virtual meeting, what's someone's facial expression. Right? So we know a lot of the things that we wanna build. They're just all in our entire pipeline. And it all comes down from the collaboration.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I do wanna say I've modernized the "nothing about us without us." I just say "nothing without us." That's clear. [laughs] That's nice and straightforward. So I know when we talked the first time on the podcast, we talked about the Protactile communication movement that really had a lot of momentum here in Seattle, the deafblind community, that I got to experience when I was at the Lighthouse here with the deafblind program. Having a sighted ASL interpreter stand with you on a stage and give you some feedback, like touches on the back. People are leaning forward and looking interested. [laughs] People are starting to look at their smartphones.

Jack Walters: [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Someone just came in the back door and sat right in front. So you're certainly taking that philosophy of it's not just the words people say, it's not just the tone of voice, but it's body positions, movements, gestures, facial expressions. So you've taken that Protactile concept and brought it forward to the digital world, which is fabulous. So what else? People can sign up for alerts and notices, I assume, to find out when the monthly webinars are and the in-person demos are.

Jack Walters: We have a—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And that's at https://hapware.com?

Jack Walters: Yeah, https://hapware.com/, I think it's stay-up-to-date. So we have a form, and we'll send them updates and emails on how things are going. Definitely would encourage anyone that's listening that is an employer to reach out. And if you're looking to make your workforce more accessible, especially in the communication and the different visual, in-person environments, I think that we could be a great partner and help you with that. So definitely wanna give that as a call to action.

Jack Walters: We have limited capacity with how many people we can bring on, so definitely wanna find those organizations that are really looking to make change and get the return on investment that investing in inclusiveness gives you. So definitely those would be the areas that we're looking for to expand and grow, and any partnerships or individuals involved in that would be more than welcome.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Great. Well, I will mention that in July, I published a book called The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion. So we're on the same sheet of music there as far as the strategic advantage businesses can achieve by being more inclusive of people with disabilities. As we know, we develop some really unique strengths in areas like creative problem solving and resolve and perseverance and self-motivation and those things that employers like.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I would also like to mention a project of mine, the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. I'm serving as executive director of a nonprofit here in Seattle, the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. We launched a membership coalition, Community Coalition, on September 1st on the Circle platform. So there's a website and two branded apps. Invite people to take a look to see if you would like to join the community and join forces with those of us who are passionate about advocating for diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, social justice, human rights.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So there's the book, there's the coalition, there's HapWare. There's all kinds of great things happening. And Jack, I'm so glad that we reconnected, and we'll do it again in another six months after your pre-orders are out and see how things are going there. And again, reach out to Jack, https://hapware.com. Reach out to me, https://drkirkadams.com, or I'm on LinkedIn every day, Kirk Adams, PhD. So congratulations on everything that's happening with HapWare.

Jack Walters: We appreciate that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: From small acorns grow mighty oaks. [laughs] You are past sapling stage now, so it's very exciting.

Jack Walters: Yep, we're moving along. We're making it happen. Appreciate it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yep. Thanks, Jack, and we'll talk to you all next time on another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Mary Williams, Founder, and Sian Welch, Chief Executive Officer/Administrator, New Start Health Enterprises https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-10-28-2026/

In this inspiring episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams welcomes Mary Williams, founder of New Start Health Enterprises, and her daughter, Sian Welch, its CEO, whose mission is helping catastrophically disabled people find a pathway from hospital to home. Mary Williams tells how it started in 1982, when she left her job as director of a 50-bed rehab unit after seeing very high-level quadriplegics returned to long-term care facilities with no hope of getting out, and promised a 27-year-old quadriplegic that she would never go to a nursing home. She says she had assistance to write the law for congregate living health facilities, which Sian Welch says became law in California in 2007, and Sian Welch explains that New Start's three six-bed homes in the Chatsworth and Northridge areas of the San Fernando Valley serve 18 patients, with nurses around the clock, therapy and a model that gives people back the power to make their own decisions.

Sian Welch describes how families are thrown into the acute care hospital world with very little information, why connecting on day one opens the way to a longer term plan, and the red tape that slows growth, from years of waiting for Medi-Cal approval on a new home to managed care plans that say they only contract with skilled nursing facilities. She tells the story of Angel, who became a quadriplegic after being shot eight times as an innocent bystander, moved from a nursing home to New Start, married his girlfriend of many years in the backyard three weeks after he arrived and is training to move home with his family, and Mary Williams adds that he arranged his own outpatient therapy at Rancho Los Amigos. Dr. Adams connects their work to his father's final years and to the three gifts the school for the blind gave him: blindness skills, high expectations and a strong internal locus of control. To learn more, visit https://newstarthealthenterprises.com, and find Dr. Adams and the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion at https://drkirkadams.com.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle. And today, I have a guest that I'm just getting to know at the same time you are. I was contacted by a member of their team asking if I thought they would be a good fit for the podcast. And after I looked into what they do, I said, "Absolutely." So Mary Williams is here. She's the founder of New Start Health Enterprises, along with her daughter, Sian Welch, who's CEO of New Start Health Enterprises. Say hi, Mary and Sian.

Mary Williams: Hi to everybody.

Sian Welch: Hi. Thanks for having us.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. And we'll be back to you very shortly. So New Start Health, their mission is helping catastrophically disabled people find a pathway from hospital to home, and this is a huge gap in our healthcare system that Mary identified over 40 years ago, and they've been working hard to address ever since. And as we all know, the disabled community is one that anyone can join at any time, and sometimes it happens very suddenly and surprisingly.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I was telling Mary and Sian as we prepared that my retinas detached when I was five years old. I was a sighted kid till then. I became a blind kid. So I entered the disability space a long time ago. And then there are other people who have strokes or accidents who were living their lives without significant impairments, and now they find themselves with significant impairments they need to deal with to continue living and thriving. And New Start Health helps individuals to do that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I'm very pleased to have you here. I will hand the microphone to you to tell the New Start Health Enterprises story and talk more about your proven model, which sounds exceptionally exciting. And as the host, I'll reserve the right to pop in with questions as they occur to me. But looking forward to learning more. So over to you.

Mary Williams: Thank you.

Sian Welch: Would you like—

Mary Williams: Well, just at the beginning, it started back in 1982 when I just left my job as a director of a 50-bed rehab unit because I had noticed that all the patients, the very high-level quadriplegics, were going home and returned to long-term care facilities and had no hope of getting out. I also met a young lady of 27 who was in that position. She had been home. Her family could no longer take care of her, and she was facing a nursing home. So I really promised her. That's how I started. I promised a 27-year-old quadriplegic that she would never go to a nursing home.

Mary Williams: And so I did leave my job. I started making inroads to the Department of Health Services because I knew so many people were stuck in the hospitals in long-term care by that time. And over a period of time, I had assistance to write the law for congregate living health facilities, which gave me the opportunity to work with the state to build an alternative for people with catastrophic injuries in the community. There's—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And I know you're in California now, so when you say the state, the state of California.

Mary Williams: In the states. Yes, in Cal— It's a six-bed home. It's considered the person's home even though each person is an individual. However, they learn there how to be able to start making decisions for themselves again. By the time they come to us, everybody has been, "Oh, you should go here, you should go there. You could..."

Mary Williams: And so when they arrive at New Start, what we do is let them know that they are the center part of our team, and that they are the ones that are gonna make the decisions for the rest of their lives, and that they will be able, with hard work... We don't do it all, and we make it very clear that when they come here, we are going to be helping them to maneuver the path to the most independent living situation that is possible for them, and each one is very different and very individual.

Mary Williams: Some people rise to the top and have jobs and do more than I'd even dreamt of. And others, they actually are just living out in the community, but they're not fading away in a long-term care facility in a bed waiting to die. So I always say we help people to live a better quality of life and to reach whatever goals, and we help set those goals, and so that they can have an independent living type of situation.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I'd say we're very aligned on that. I talk about thriving quite a bit and trying to help create conditions where people can thrive according to their own definition of what that means for them. As I mentioned before we started recording, my focus has really been around employment because as we know, depending on whose numbers you look at, under 40% of people with significant disabilities of working age are in the workforce. So there's lots of poverty and bad things that go along with poverty. But also, work in our society is very important in identity formation and self-respect and dignity and all those good things.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So when you talk about people living a better quality of life according to their goals, I think that aligns very closely with my thinking about creating conditions for people to thrive as they see thriving. And I just wanna ask you, you talked about people going through the system, which is a kind of very [chuckles] complex, frustrating, aggravating healthcare system that we have, and people being told what they should do by others and, basically, I'll put words in your mouth, but having their power taken away as an individual, as an autonomous human being. It sounds like kind of the core essence of your proven model is to give that power back to people. Is that—

Sian Welch: Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Is that fair? Yeah. Can you—

Sian Welch: Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Can you talk a little bit about the model? And I don't know, a hypothetical person who connects with New Start Health, how do you begin? What's the process look like?

Sian Welch: Well, why we're getting our message out is because we're very small and mostly referral, but the information and the advice that people can find is very, very limited. When something like this happens, nobody expects this to happen, and they're thrown in a world that they're at an acute care hospital, and they have a specific time there, and then when they stabilize, it's like discharge time. And the family is like, "Oh my goodness, where are we gonna go? What are we gonna do next?"

Sian Welch: And then, if you're lucky enough, you can go to rehab for maybe a month or two months. But after that period, which is usually three or four months, millions and millions of dollars are spent in saving those lives. And the healthcare system isn't looking at that person that has had a catastrophic injury, illness, or event in their life and saying, "Okay, so this has happened. We're gonna save this life, and we're going to do as much as we can right now, but we are going to continue their recovery." And continuing a recovery when you have a catastrophic injury, it's insane to think that somebody's gonna go home to their family because who's gonna take care of them?

Sian Welch: And then the other option is to go to a nursing home of 100 to 300 patients, and you're one patient in a room, and usually you're younger. So it's like nobody knows what to do. And I meet so many people that, a couple months after they're in the hospital, maybe they're in rehab, and they find out about us, and I talk to them and I'm able to ask all of these questions. And if I was able to just connect with them kind of day one, we can start thinking about a longer term plan even though you're not... Everybody's like, "We're gonna get through this, and we're gonna walk out of here, and we're gonna do all of that." And none of that hope is taken away by just having information and being able to plan.

Sian Welch: So after this time, you wanna go home, but I always think of it like going to college. When you have a 18-year-old and they need to go away from home to learn all the skills of life. And sometimes that is what's needed. And our environment, it's like home. It's a six-bedroom beautiful home in the community, and everybody has a private room. We have amazing staff nurses, and you can have therapy, rehab. And it's like being home, but you have all the care you need, and you have oversight that whatever medications, anything that you need, we have doctors and RN oversight. So you're recovering, but you're also at home. And everybody that walks in here says, "Oh, I wanna... This is where I want my loved one to come." But we're very small.

Sian Welch: And what we are talking about is more of a model that in the healthcare system, our most expensive cases are catastrophic cases because they end up in the hospital, and they don't have any discharge. They're young, they have complex needs, and they just can't find a place to put them. So for us, we have Joint Commissions, so we can accept patients from acute care hospital because we are sub-acute. We deal with ventilators, trachs, G-tubes, everything to paraplegics. And so there's other things like long-term care when you have insurance. That runs out, and insurance doesn't pay for long-term care. So people need to apply for Medi-Cal.

Sian Welch: And Medi-Cal, a lot of people don't think that they can qualify because they have an income and things like that. But in this situation, I believe this is what our Medi-Cal system needs to prioritize because families that have this, and they have the loved one, Medi-Cal is our long-term solution, and it's the lower cost from the insurances. And so we meet people three months later, and they haven't started that process. And now they just don't have any options because they don't have any long-term care. And so we really want—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, remind us of where you're physically located, where the six-bedroom home is.

Sian Welch: We have three facilities, so 18 patients. And we are located in the Chatsworth and Northridge areas in the Greater Los Angeles area. It's in the San Fernando Valley.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. And you talk about Medi-Cal. You talk about long-term insurance, health insurance, acute care hospitals, sub-acute. So there's a lot of structures and processes that the average person has never had to think about or deal with. And then all of a sudden they're in that world where you have to get these things figured out. So it sounds like part of your model is to help people weave together the resources that they need to move forward with life.

Mary Williams: Yeah, I would say, Kirk, that we are the experts for helping them get the resources in a timely manner if we know early enough. And they would not lose months of really being pushed from one place to another that they don't want if they contact us early. We are not going to take them out of rehab or anything that they have. They obviously are gonna go. We can go alongside of them while they are going through those first critical three months.

Mary Williams: And help them get involved with the resources or applied for the resources that we know are going to be absolutely necessary after that three to four initial months. So the earlier they can contact us at New Start Health Enterprises, we are more than happy to give them the information that we have gathered over 40 years of how to work in this system to move a person along without having to lose precious time.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So a question about scaling. So you have three facilities, so you can serve 18 people at a time. Are you wanting to expand and create more facilities, or are you wanting to teach other people to do what you do? Or what are your thoughts on how New Start can amplify the good work that you do?

Mary Williams: Yeah. Our thoughts right now are to involve other owners of congregate health facilities join us, because we have Joint Commission, and most of them don't.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Can you explain what that means, Joint Commission? I'm not familiar.

Mary Williams: Yeah. And so what we're wanting to do is to provide a level of excellence and have other congregate owners join us so that we can all work together, and the enterprises will have an education arm. It will have a equipment arm. I have an home medical equipment company that does ventilator care to a very high standard. We work with wheelchair companies. We work with all other companies that enhance what we do to be able to provide that pathway to the most independent and lowest level of care and lowest expense that is possible for that person.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, let me make sure I understand a couple things. So I'm assuming congregate just means that a facility that can serve multiple people? And house multiple people.

Sian Welch: Yeah. Congregate living health facility was what my mother legislated back in 2007, and it became law in California. And congregate living health facilities have started to open around 2012, and there's probably about 200 in California now. We don't all run the same. They're owners of maybe one to two, five congregates. But we have, for instance, a five-bedroom, six-person home that we would like to open.

Sian Welch: And the problem we have is that in order for us to open another house to accept more patients, it takes three to six months just to apply for the license. Then it's taken us over two years to get the Medi-Cal approval for Medi-Cal waiver patients. And so when we're looking at opening a house, we have to buy that house, we have to pay the mortgage, we have to put everything... It's a facility, so we have all the regulations. And two years goes by, and then what happens is to get to accept patients, our Medi-Cal and managed care, they're not contracting with congregates. And so we contract with one managed care, but it's a tough fight.

Sian Welch: When somebody really wants to come and we have an open bed, many times the insurance company or the managed care, like L.A. Care, has millions of members. We've got a closed door every time. Like, they go, "Well, we only contracted with skilled nursing facilities." So the person has to go there instead of to somewhere like us, that we are able to take that patient and see them all the way, and if they can discharge home, they will.

Sian Welch: And it's frustrating because I would really like to get the ear of the policymakers to see that these solutions, some of these challenges we face are so big. And we are a small company. We're a small business, and we have a payroll. And beyond the payroll, we don't make a lot of money because everything has gone up. And so that's an important part of this, is that we can't accept a lot more patients unless we have open room.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, you need to be sustainable, obviously, to keep serving people. You need to stay in business to help people in the future.

Sian Welch: And we need to be able to get through the red tape. We have three successful facilities licensed. We're doing good work. And why does it take us two to three years to get another location?

Dr. Kirk Adams: So question back to Joint Commission, 'cause you mentioned partnering with other congregate health facilities and sharing information and teaching them your model, sharing your wisdom. And I think, Mary, you said we have Joint Commission, most of them don't. Can you explain to me what the Joint Commission means?

Mary Williams: Joint Commission means that we are now eligible to contract with private insurance companies such as Anthem Blue Cross, Shield, et cetera. And then we will be able to take patients that have a higher acuity. And also, we will be able to provide them more services. And while we're providing them those services, we will get them onto Medi-Cal. Now, Joint Commission, if we open another house, that house automatically becomes Joint Commission accredited. And so we don't have to go through another 18 month like—

Dr. Kirk Adams: So in Joint Commission, you have more options that you can bring into the—

Mary Williams: We have more options.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Bring into the mix. Yeah.

Mary Williams: And yes, we can go to the next step. And so Joint Commission is kind of the gold seal of health.

Sian Welch: It's very difficult to get because, on top of all the state regulations, Joint Commission, they have standards that are the highest in healthcare. So that's why not a lot of people have it. It's very, very costly to go through that process and continue with that process, and make sure the standards are at the highest level.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. But you've done it, and that allows you to provide people better, more holistic service, it sounds like.

Sian Welch: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So my personal experience, my father passed away, 2021, of renal failure, kidney failure. And it was during the pandemic. And so facilities weren't allowing family members to come in, so he was ambulanced to the hospital on dialysis to get him stabilized, and then they tried to discharge him. My mother, they're both in their 80s, was not able to provide him the level of care he needed, so the advice from the social worker at the hospital was adult family home.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So we found a resource who helped us identify an adult family home. He was there for a while and had to arrange transportation to dialysis through another company, and there was what does insurance cover, what doesn't it cover? And then had to move into a skilled nursing facility, and then final days back home for a short period of time with some 24-hour care, and then at the hospice. But as the eldest child, I was responsible for figuring all that stuff out.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I have a PhD in research [laughs] and I tell you, it was really hard to understand, really hard to get straight answers, really hard to get care plans put together with steps and timelines. So I have a little bit of a taste for what you all do, and I applaud, recognize, and respect what you're doing. Without naming names, could you maybe give us a scenario or two of people that have come into New Start Health Enterprises care and how you help manage the process so they can continue with the best quality of life possible?

Sian Welch: Yes. I will talk about this young man. He's about 35 years old. And it's Angel, and he is with us now, and he became a quadriplegic about four years ago. He was in Texas, and he was an innocent bystander shot eight times. And so when he got back to California, where he's from, and his family, he was in the hospital for quite a while. But after that, his mother contacted me about a year before he actually transferred to us.

Sian Welch: And he was in the hospital, and she was desperate to get him here. At the time, they didn't know about what's called the HCBA waiver, which is a Medi-Cal program in California that we can accept. And so I had her apply for that, and he went to a nursing home. And he was there for about a year and a half, and basically, he's 35 years old, laid in a bed. He had three other people. He had some wounds. And really, he wasn't even allowed to have a wheelchair because in a skilled nursing facility, they're not allowed to have a motorized wheelchair. So basically, if they do get up, they're sitting in a chair, and they're just pushed into the dining room or something like that.

Sian Welch: So as soon as he qualified and I had an open room, I called his mom, and his mom says, "Okay." And we transferred him within, I think, two days. And when he arrived, he looked like a patient. He was in a white gown. He had no clothes. And then within a week he had his power wheelchair. It was a loaner that we have a wheelchair company that helps our clients, and then they look at a client and say, "Okay. We'll order a chair that's right for you." And then he actually [laughs] had his girlfriend for years, and they had a child together, and they got married in the backyard three weeks after he arrived.

Sian Welch: And he's never, ever looked back. He is going out every single day. He gets up by 8:00. He feeds himself. Whenever I see anybody who can feed themselves being fed, I'm like, "What are you guys doing?"

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Sian Welch: You can do this. And that's what we do. We encourage everyone to do as much as they can. Even though they have nurses around the clock, that's not what we're about. We're about taking as much autonomy back, independence. They all do their own supplies, and they know their medications. And Angel is on our road. We call it the independence training program.

Sian Welch: And it doesn't happen overnight, and so it's been about a year and a half. And he wants to move home with his wife and his family one day, but we wanna ready him so he doesn't get home and it all falls apart. So part of that training is to train Angel that when he moves home... He knows his care through and through. He'll have his care follow him home, so he'll have nurses in the morning and nurses at night. And he'll learn how to sleep all night without being turned. And then his wife will get up and take care of the kids, and then she'll go to work, and he can come home and have dinner made. He can think of all of those things to take care of her. And give her flowers, and, "How was your day?"

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Sian Welch: And that doesn't happen when a catastrophically disabled person moves home with their family and they don't have that training. They don't have that time to learn how to manage themselves and their care. It all falls apart because—

Dr. Kirk Adams: It's a disaster, yeah.

Sian Welch: No, it's a total disaster.

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Mary Williams: He has also arranged, and this is what he did himself, he arranged to go for outpatient therapy three times a week to Rancho Los Amigos, which is about an hour or so away, and he gets up really early, he gets on Access on his own, and he goes to therapy three times a week. And he arranged that himself because he is taking back control of his own life, and that's basically what we want to do.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. Do some folks end up staying with you permanently, or does everyone take another step on the journey and move into another living situation?

Sian Welch: That is what the beautiful thing about congregate living health facilities are, is that it has the solution for people that are transitioning and need three months, six months to two years. And they need that time. And then there's some people that will not have a discharge plan, but they're authorized on long-term care to stay with us. So yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So there are some situations where that happens.

Mary Williams: Yes, and they all can access the community. They can go to the movies. They can go to the mall. They can go out with their family anytime, and it's a home.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, the 18 people [laughs] that you're currently serving are very fortunate to have found you, and of course, all the others you've served over the years. I know you've changed many, many lives for the better, and I just greatly admire and appreciate that. And putting the power back with the person with the impairments, with the catastrophic disabling situation is such a lovely cornerstone of what you do. I greatly appreciate that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Now I talked quite a bit about my three years at the school for the blind as a child, six, seven, eight years old, and they gave me three gifts there. I didn't know they were doing it, but they gave me blindness skills so I learned how to read and write braille and use a cane, and folks you're working with learn to use power chairs and other tools that they need. They gave me high expectations because so many, especially kids with disabilities, their families, communities, schools don't necessarily hold high expectations for them. But it sounds like you certainly are expecting people to learn the skills to care for themselves to the extent they can to be as independent as they can.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And then the last thing they gave me was just this strong internal locus of control, which just meant I felt in my bones as a little blind kid, I can do this. I can figure this out. I can do what I want to do. I can climb that tree. I can ride that bike. [laughs] I can go backpacking in the wilderness area. I can do what I set out to. And it sounds like as you're returning power and decision-making to people, you're helping them build that strong internal locus of control that says, "I can do this," as opposed to the external locus of control where you think all this stuff happens to me, and there's not much I can do about it. So it sounds like you're doing wonderful work in empowerment and inclusion of people.

Sian Welch: Thank you. We really, really love what we do. It's not an easy task. But we have 18 patients and 18 families that really don't know what they would do if they didn't have New Start.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Wonderful. So, Mary, the time has flown by. Sian, time has flown by. Love to check in again, maybe when you get your fourth congregate health facility opened, we could talk again. But what would you like the people to know, people with family members, loved ones who've experienced the catastrophic disability, legislators, policy makers, other congregate health facilities? Tell people how they can join the team of New Start Health Enterprises.

Sian Welch: Yes, for sure. Well, we have our website. It's https://newstarthealthenterprises.com. That has a lot of information on it, and of course, if you're in a situation that you find yourself in the hospital and don't have any answers, you can always contact us. It's something that we can just give you some information that might help. And then for policy makers, I would say, please take notice of what we are speaking about. There are so many ways we can look at our system, and especially in this one niche. It's so costly. And there's so much wasteful spending at the beginning, and then we save lives and then almost throw away that life because they just don't qualify.

Sian Welch: And we would like to be embraced by the healthcare system. We have the law of congregate living health facility, but we're so small that we don't have this big lobby to lobby money and contracts. We're kind of at the back of the line when it comes to that. So I'm trying to get a bigger voice for a small organization that deals with huge problems and issues and expense of all of our taxpayer dollars.

Sian Welch: And it speaks to everyone that is listening because, as we said, we do not plan on anything like this happening to ourselves or a loved one. And I see it a lot, a young 20-year-old goes to the beach and dives in the water, and you find you're in the hospital and he's paralyzed, and it's like there is a whole journey in front. And, God forbid, but it does. It's something that, as taxpayers, we want to say, well, if this does happen to a loved one, we want them to be saved, and we want them to be able to get home with dignity and a quality of life, and right now that doesn't happen.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Just to the fortunate few [laughs] who happen to connect with New Start Health Enterprises.

Mary Williams: Yeah. It happens mostly to people who have family that actually give up their own life to look after the disabled individual. And further down the line, there's still, now what do we do when I can't do it?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. Well, Mary, Sian, it's been a pleasure. So if you're listening and want to learn more, go to the website, https://newstarthealthenterprises.com. As for me, Dr. Kirk Adams, my latest proud achievement is the launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. It is a place for anyone interested in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, to gather together, teach one another, learn from one another, share resources, take collective action. So happily offering people to visit the Community Coalition and check that out.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You can reach me by going to my website, which is https://drkirkadams.com. You can sign up for my newsletter. You can fill out a contact form. I'm on LinkedIn every day, Kirk Adams, PhD on LinkedIn. So get in touch with Mary, get in touch with Sian, get in touch with me. Let's make the world a better place for everybody. And we'll see you next time on another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Victoria Hillard, Founder & Executive Director, Blind Professionals Network https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-10-27-2026/

In this inspiring episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Kirk Adams talks with Victoria Hillard, founder of Blind Professionals Network (BPN), about her journey since going totally blind at 30 from neuromyelitis optica, a rare disease she says went unidentified for nine years; she was even treated for multiple sclerosis for a whole year. She describes the despair of early blindness, the day one of her children asking for food jump-started her, her training at the San Diego Center for the Blind, the 13 years she says she was ashamed of her cane, and the two-year steps that took her through psychology and then human services, followed by work as a switchboard operator, a quality analyst and, for over 15 years, a personal and professional development coach.

Victoria Hillard explains how BPN grew from a monthly Zoom support group of 40 members in 2019 to about 290 within a month of the pandemic, and to almost 1,000 members now, all served free through one-on-one assistive technology training, eight-week courses, development workshops, employment services and support groups, plus an in-person Professional Empowerment Conference in Houston that she says drew over 100 people. Dr. Adams recalls being turned away from high school chemistry when neither he nor his parents knew how to advocate, the two compare notes on choosing battles and the spoon theory, and Victoria Hillard describes BPN Workplace Solutions, the commercial division that hires blind and visually impaired professionals to deliver inclusivity training, custom JAWS training and accessibility testing, with everything funneling back into BPN. Dr. Adams closes by pointing listeners to https://blindpronet.org and inviting them to explore the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a guest that I've known for several years, but getting to know much better. I have Victoria Hillard, founder of Blind Professionals Network, here today. Hi, Victoria.

Victoria Hillard: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, you bet. So I can't remember how I encountered Blind Professionals Network, but I remember joining a Facebook group, and there were maybe about 150 people in it. And there was virtual gatherings monthly, and I had the opportunity to speak about cybersecurity careers to the group. And then about a year and a half later, I checked in again, and there was something like 800 members, so.

Victoria Hillard: [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Victoria has really grown the network and the value to people who are blind. And I just asked Victoria to be with us today and tell us about her personal journey. So where have you been, Victoria? Where are you at now? Where do you see things going? And I would love to just hand you the microphone.

Victoria Hillard: All right. Well, thank you. It is such an honor. And yes, it has been many years. And I think when you first spoke to the group, we were just starting, right? And so it was a really small thing. And then pandemic happened, and we blew up, right? And I'll get to that a little bit later, but for myself, I am totally blind, and I went blind older in life. I went blind when I was 30. And once I came out—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Victoria, you're just breaking up just a little bit. I don't know if there's anything you can do about that.

Victoria Hillard: Okay. Let's see. I'm gonna try. Let's see here. Can you—

Dr. Kirk Adams: I think that's—

Victoria Hillard: Can you hear me now?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Victoria Hillard: I'm gonna be still.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, that sounds good.

Victoria Hillard: Am I good? Okay. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So why don't we start over with your being a totally blind person?

Victoria Hillard: Okay. So I am totally blind. I actually went blind at the age of 30. And like most of us—

Dr. Kirk Adams: What was the cause, Victoria?

Victoria Hillard: So the funny part about that is I didn't know the cause for nine years into my blindness. I had been tested for pretty much everything in the book. And I can tell you what I didn't have, but didn't know what I had. And I was even diagnosed for a whole year with multiple sclerosis. I gave myself a shot every day for a whole year because they said I had multiple sclerosis. Come to find out I had, at the time, was a rare disease called neuromyelitis optica, which is in the MS family. They say it's like a cousin to MS, right? And so that affected my optic nerve and damaged my optic nerve. Sad story about that is if they would have known what it was sooner, they could have saved my sight. But as I have come to feel and truly believe is there is a reason, a purpose for me being blind, and I am just going to accept that and embrace that, and that is what I've done. But it did not come very easily. Of course, when I first went blind, I was like, "Oh my God, my life is over. I might as well die. There's nothing I can do. What am I gonna be able to do?" And so I actually went through that for some time and then had to realize that my life is not over. Because I sat there and thought about somebody closing their eyes and still being able to do half of the things that we do, most of the things that we do every day. Cooking, cleaning, putting your pants on one leg at a time.

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Victoria Hillard: Right? All of these things. And I'm like, "Wait a minute. There—" And so I finally... One of my children came in, and during part of my depression, was like, "Mom, I'm hungry." And I'm like, "Oh my— what is wrong with me?" Right? I just can't see. Am I supposed to let my kids starve because I can't see? So that jump-started me, right? And it started in the home. And then I thought, "Well, if I can do this in the home, what can I do outside the home?" So I tested myself. I went to college, and I got a degree, and then I was surprised that I did that as a blind person. I'm like, "Wait, whoa."

Dr. Kirk Adams: Now, what did you do about blindness skills? I assume you needed to get some orientation mobility and some technology.

Victoria Hillard: So I did do that. So I am from San Diego, California. And so they had a center there, where I... But the thing is, when I went to that center, I was pretty—

Dr. Kirk Adams: You mean the San Diego Center for the Blind?

Victoria Hillard: Yes, exactly.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. I've been there.

Victoria Hillard: Yes. Exactly what it is. So, [laughs] when I went there, I knew... So they were like cooking, so I was a little bit advanced in what they were teaching me, 'cause I taught myself a lot of things, right? But what I did not teach myself was the confidence. And especially seeing other people like me. I thought I was so alone, right? When I seen and got around other people that were... We're all just people who happen to be blind, and I couldn't see that before. And that's what the center helped me. It helped to empower me and the confidence. And it did teach me things. I actually learned braille. I still don't know braille two. I just know my alphabet and stuff, enough to play cards. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, there you go.

Victoria Hillard: And so I did go there. I sit there for about two years. That was the other thing that I learned too, the O&M skills, which is the orientation and mobility because—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Are you a cane person or a guide dog person?

Victoria Hillard: I am a cane person, but I will share that I was so ashamed of my cane for probably 13 years. I would not bring that cane out. And finally, when I did, I was mad at myself because I had robbed myself of that confidence for 13 years. When I finally started using that cane, I stopped caring about what other people thought about the cane and pitying the poor little blind girl, 'cause that's what I always thought it was gonna bring to me, right? That attention. And so now I don't go anywhere without my cane, which is a big change. So I learned those skills. I don't know. I really embraced the fact that this is my new normal, right? Because there's nothing I can do to get my sight back. If it's meant to be for me to see again, I will. Until then, I need to do this. And so the college came, and then employment came. And—

Dr. Kirk Adams: What did you study?

Victoria Hillard: So I did my associate's. I had to do it in steps, right? 'Cause remember, I couldn't believe I can do it. And so, [laughs] I said, "Well, let me just try two years," right? And so I did two years of psychology. And then I said, "Ooh, I got it. I graduated and I did it." And so I said, "Oh, okay. Well, let me try another two years," right? [laughs] So I looked at the syllabus for psychology. Ugh, it was... I did not like it. And [laughs] I didn't really wanna learn that much about the brain, right? So [laughs] I switched it over to human services. So I did two years of that, and I said, "Ooh, wait, I finished this." So I got excited again. I stopped there, though, because I'm done. School is done. [laughs] I did not want to, so—

Dr. Kirk Adams: You reached the goal.

Victoria Hillard: Right. Exactly. And prove to myself that I could do it, right? That's what it was really, is what I was trying to do. So I did employment. I started off... Actually, my first job was a switchboard operator at a hotel. And I did that for quite some time. And then I moved over to other jobs that were—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Within the hospitality industry?

Victoria Hillard: Actually, no. I then became a quality analyst where I was scoring people's cards. I did customer service, which grew to management customer service. I did that. Then I actually did something where I started my own, and I did development coaching. I started my own business with that, which people call life coaching, I guess. But development coaching is a lot better, so I did personal and professional development coaching for over 15 years. I did that and helped people start businesses, but also helping people to realize their potential within, whether blind or sighted. I did it for profit for many years, and most of that was sighted people. When I started BPN, I stopped doing it for profit and turned it into a service that BPN offered, and I did it for free for BPN members.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And tell me how BPN came to be.

Victoria Hillard: So in—

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's Blind Professionals Network, that's what—

Victoria Hillard: Yes. Blind Professionals Network. So in 2019, I'm from California, but I moved to Houston. I moved to Houston in 2015. And so I got connected, and I was working out here. And really it was mostly to say, "Hey, where are the blind professionals where we can come together, kind of discuss work-related things, the challenges and obstacles that are in the workplace? Somebody who can understand what I'm going through," right? "And we can just understand each other." So there were so many things out here for social things, other things that were great and I enjoyed, but I really wanted to have a meeting with my peers. And so I started a support group. One support group once a month, and it was on Zoom. That was in 2019. And so I was Zooming before Zooming was a thing, right? [laughs] So 2019, 40 members. We just kind of got together once a month and just discussed work-related stuff. And sometimes I would have a topic and things. Well, when pandemic came, we were all forced to be at home, right? And so what do we do now? So I said, "Hey, let's do some workshops. Let's do some development. Let's work on us while we're here and doing nothing." So I did some development workshops. I started doing some trainings. I was a AT trainer for a few years, and so I did some classes, did some trainings. From that, the pandemic and the Zoom, being at home, we grew from 40 members to probably about 290 members within one month. Right? And—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And just people finding you or just posting on social media?

Victoria Hillard: I guess just posting on social media. But that was a time when we were all looking for something. That's all we were able to do was be on social media, right? So [laughs] that's where that came in. Word of mouth got around. We did that. So that was all in about 2021, and then now we have almost 1,000 members, and still. So what happened was, I said, "It's so much more than just the networking and the support. We need to help our community gain the skills and build the skills, and that's going to help them gain employment," right? There's so many, we already know, and I'm not gonna repeat the employment statistics—

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Victoria Hillard: And all that stuff, right? We know the story.

Dr. Kirk Adams: We know it's bad.

Victoria Hillard: Right? Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Victoria Hillard: Exactly. But here's the thing. There are so many of us that go blind as adults and really do not believe that we can work, or that that is even possible. And so what I did was, we have state rehab service, vocational rehab services. I commend those. I love them. However, we all know that those can take forever, right? Not only can it take forever, but it can also reach a max to where once the time you're allotted, the services, you're no longer given anymore. That's what BPN is meant to be. That bridge while you're waiting for services and the programs that we can provide after you have gotten those services. Growing knowledge, experience, that should never stop, you know? And so that's what we do. And so now we have our members. We have our trainings. All of our service are absolutely free. So we do the trainings. We do the employment services where we match people with an employment specialist that guide them from A to Z, from resume writing to career exploration, all of those things. And then I think that this is something that people probably don't even realize they need or could use. And so that's what we do.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So where do members gather? I remember joining a Facebook group. Is that still the platform that you're using or—

Victoria Hillard: No.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Or where do people connect?

Victoria Hillard: Yeah, we usually actually have Zoom. We're still on Zoom. So all of our events are virtual. With the monthly meetings, everything is virtual, with the exception of, we will be working next, on the 2027, we'll be having our second conference that we have, our Professional Empowerment Conference that we had for the first time last year. That is actually in person in Houston. So looking forward to that. But everything else is virtual. All of our trainings and workshops are still virtual.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So do people sign up for an email list, or how do they become a member?

Victoria Hillard: Same. And it's very easy to do, and when we say our services are free, our programs are free, it is. The only thing that has to be done is to join the BPN, which is also free. There's no small print, none of that stuff.

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Victoria Hillard: And once you become a member and all you have to do is go to our website, which is https://blindpronet.org. If—

Dr. Kirk Adams: https://blindpronet.org. Got it.

Victoria Hillard: And you fill out the membership form, and once you fill that out, you are immediately able to start receiving our programs and services.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. Well, can you give us some examples of some of the trainings and workshops that you've done in the recent past?

Victoria Hillard: Yes, I'm sure.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Give people a flavor what they get.

Victoria Hillard: Yes. So of course we always have our one-on-one trainings that are available for everybody. So those are kind of, you are paired with a volunteer, and our volunteer trainers are just awesome trainers, right? And they're volunteering their time to BPN, but they are assistive technology trainers, and they will be paired. Sometimes people might just need a little help with maybe a project they're working on or have something on Excel that they need help on. You can do one-on-one trainings and sign up and get help on that specific thing. I love the one-on-one trainings 'cause they meet you where you're at. You tell them what you need, right? Then we have our eight-week courses that we do, and those are kind of just like it is. It's a course, you know? And so that's where you come in and it's usually a JAWS, a Word course, an Excel course, or whatever the course may be.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Are those live? Are they recorded? Do people—

Victoria Hillard: Nope, they're—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Attend classes—

Victoria Hillard: Yep, they attend—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Or do they do it at their own pace?

Victoria Hillard: Yep, they attend once a week, and you have a live instructor in there. So we have that. Then we have our various development workshops. Sometimes we've had effective listening. We've had public speaking. There's been a few those. Kind of a lot of soft skill stuff as well, 'cause we cannot forget about those soft skills, right? So we do a lot of workshops on that. And then we have our other support groups that we do have. We have a new support group that we've started, for those that have been blind five years or less, to help them to gain the confidence and see that employment is still possible after blindness.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That they're not alone.

Victoria Hillard: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Not very alone in your journey.

Victoria Hillard: Absolutely. Yes. And then we also have advocacy support group, which is just helping, coming together. It's a peer advocacy space. And so we're supporting one another on how to advocate in various situations and in our journeys.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Let's talk about advocacy a little bit. So the American Foundation for the Blind, where I had the honor and privilege of being the president and CEO, before my time, they worked with an expert in education of blind children, Dr. Phil Hatlen, may he rest in peace. And they developed what was called the Expanded Core Curriculum for blind kids. And so I say, at some point when you're a blind kid in school, you get the good news that you need to learn all the stuff the sighted kids learn and these nine other things. [laughs] Those are orientation and mobility, assistive technology, career exploration, and advocacy. And I know I was not a good advocate as a young blind person. My little story is that when I was in high school, small town, Snohomish, Washington, there were probably about 30 kids that were kind of the college-bound kids. And first period senior year went to math analysis. Second period went to physics. Third period went to chemistry. And I walked in and the chemistry teacher said, "Oh, you can't take chemistry. That's a safety issue. No, you need to go to the office and get a different class." And I didn't know how to advocate for myself. I didn't know any other blind people. I was always the only... I went to a school for blind kids for second, third grade, because I became totally blind when I was five. So I needed to learn braille. I needed to learn the cane. There was no question about that. But then I was the only blind kid in school from fourth grade on, and we weren't connected to any blind people. I didn't know any blind adults. So I did not have the great tools and resources and assets that you are providing to people [laughs] in Blind Professionals Network. And I went home and told my parents, kind of outraged, that they're not gonna let me take chemistry. And they didn't know advocacy either, so they just said, "Well, if Mr. So-and-So says, then, well, that's that." So I sat in the library third period my whole senior year.

Victoria Hillard: That's sad.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And now of course I've met blind people who have PhDs in chemistry. Blind chemists, blind people who teach chemistry [laughs] at the university level. So I was not given correct information, but I didn't know where to find it. I didn't know where to go. So I didn't advocate for myself. I gave up without a fight, really. But I'm so pleased that you are focusing on advocacy.

Victoria Hillard: Thank you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And if you could maybe give a couple little examples of some of the situations that have come up.

Victoria Hillard: Yes, absolutely. And think about it. So I mean, not that we're aging ourselves here, but think about 30, 40 year ago, right? The services that were out there. None of us knew. I can just think, I mean, 50 years ago, if I was blind, it would've been a whole different thing for me, I'm sure, because of what is out here now. And that's why it's so important for us to spread awareness and advocate, right? But now it's more so you can go and Google self-advocacy for blind people. [laughs] And that will bring up stuff, right? We didn't have that back then, you know? So some of the things that happened, and then I'm gonna take it to that school, and that's so unfortunate, but that's the way that it was, right? Now, today, in employment, I was always one of those that did not advocate for myself. You know why? Because I didn't wanna ruffle waters. I was just happy to have a job. I was happy to be here. "Well, if I say what I really need, they might try to fire me or something. And I'm just happy to have a job." And that's what a lot of us think. And because of that, we are not operating at full capacity the way that we can be helping this company that has hired us the way that we can because we're afraid to ask for what we need, right? Not only that, even asking for what we need, there's other personal space. When people would come up and grab me or do these things, I just sat there quiet. I didn't say anything. Because I don't wanna, well, they're trying to help me. And not knowing there's a proper way to assist me. And a lot of people just need to be kind of educated. But then that flips up to I am in education mode 24/7, right? And you always have to be there, and I get it. And but there's a way to advocate, and I think our attitudes and our humility and when we're talking to people, when we are advocating, that makes a big difference. We should not advocate or self-advocate from a position of "This is what's owed to me. I'm entitled." We need to self-advocate in a way of educating. This is what I need. This is why I need it. And I think that's so important for us to not, don't minimize ourselves because of what the response that we think we're gonna get might not be the best one for somebody else. And so I always say, we need to speak up for ourselves, and that is not our job to speak up for ourselves for everybody else. But I speak up because what I'm doing today could help another blind person that's coming behind me to make their travel a lot easier and smoother. That matters to me. Maybe it doesn't matter to everybody. But—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. It matters to you.

Victoria Hillard: It should. Just the struggle.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Agreed.

Victoria Hillard: The struggle is real.

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Victoria Hillard: Right? [laughs] The struggle is real.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You also have to choose... Sometimes you have to choose your battles, too. I travel a lot, and my wife and I will be going on a trip, and the TSA person will ask her, "Can I see his ID?"

Victoria Hillard: Ugh, absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs] And she goes— And do I choose to spend my time and energy educating that person, or do I just hand—

Victoria Hillard: He probably doesn't care.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Or do I just hand them my ID?

Victoria Hillard: Right. It's pick and choose. That is so true.

Dr. Kirk Adams: It's pick and choose. And energy. Through the community of people with chronic illness, I've started to understand the spoon theory. That you only have so many spoons of energy to use every day.

Victoria Hillard: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And you can say this, "I only have eight spoons, and I'm getting dressed, organized, and starting the day takes three. And so I have five left."

Victoria Hillard: Right. I was in—

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Victoria Hillard: I was someplace. I had a friend, and she said, "I'm not using a spoon on you." And—

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Victoria Hillard: That's when I learned about the spoon. I said, "What? Why do you keep saying that? This is the fourth time I've heard you say that when I've been around you." She just said, so she's mentally, like you said, picking and choosing her battles. She's like, "I'm not using..." And that's when I learned about the spoon theory.

Dr. Kirk Adams: The spoon theory, yeah.

Victoria Hillard: Because [laughs] she said, "I'm choosing not to use a spoon on you."

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. I like it.

Victoria Hillard: [laughs] Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I found that very useful. So what do you see happening with Blind Professionals Network in the next six months, year?

Victoria Hillard: Okay. So here's the thing. We have focused for so long on Blind Professionals Network, right? Blind Professionals, it's for our community. It's to help our people to get those skills, go gain the confidence and that. So that's there. That's done. We're gonna continue expanding, and not just expanding, but enhancing the programs we have. But we have to flip it. We can do this all day long, but on the flip side, where is the awareness? Where is the, for employers to know about our work? So that is why we also have BPN Workplace Solutions, right? And it is kind of like our commercial division, I guess.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So it's consulting.

Victoria Hillard: Yes. And so what we do, we are going into focus on companies, businesses, organizations. We will come in and do the inclusivity training, or the sensitivity awareness training. Those type of things. We would do those for companies. What better way to show inclusivity by having these trainings conducted by blind and visually impaired individuals, right? So that is one of the things we do. We do the custom JAWS trainings. We will go in and actually train your screen reader users the most effective way to use your systems. We're training it catered to your specific systems, right?

Dr. Kirk Adams: So if I'm an employer and I use Workday or Epic or some platform, you'll come in and teach people how to navigate those particular, specific systems.

Victoria Hillard: Exactly. Yes. And then we also do accessibility testing to help companies realize there's work. And then we do workshops, development workshops and team building workshops. And then, of course, we'll do the coaching if that is needed as well. The beauty about BPN Workplace Solutions, well, number one, we hire blind and visually impaired people. That's the focus, right? All of our employees that provide these trainings and facilitate these workshops and do these things, they are all blind and visually impaired. So we are keeping positions for what we are struggling with in the employment world anyways, is providing jobs and having jobs out there for us, so we're doing that. Everything that we do there funnels back into Blind Professionals Network. So that's kind of the thing about that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I love the social enterprise model. Because you are generating revenue while advancing your mission, right? Fulfilling your mission and generating revenue. Which is a beautiful thing.

Victoria Hillard: Yes. So 2027, I think right now for the rest of the year, and this year has gone by so fast. I can't even believe this time. So we'll end out our year for BPN and then while ending out the year, still get ready and lay the plan for the workplace solution. And just really focus on that 100% the way that we have been focusing on Blind Professionals Network. But of course, don't forget, we still will be working on our conference that will be in spring of next year. That was such a great success last year, and it may be small to some, but we actually had over 100 people attend in person, and we weren't even expecting that. So that was a thing, and we're expecting the numbers to grow this next year. So we're gonna focus on that and then workplace solutions, and just to continue to provide services. The thing about it is we're out here, we are here for our community. It is up to our community to grab those services, the things that are being offered to them. We can... What do they say? We can lead a horse to water, right?

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs] Yeah. Right.

Victoria Hillard: And so we're here for whoever needs us. And if you want it, then come get it. We're here.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Come get it. Come get it at https://blindpronet.org.

Victoria Hillard: Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So if a blind person's listening, you're interested in employment, careers, getting that paycheck, then go to https://blindpronet.org. And if you're an employer seeking to become a more effective supportive employer for all of your employees, including people who are blind, how do people get in touch with your business solutions, the same way, through the website?

Victoria Hillard: Yes. So they can go through the website as well. Also the email address for that is [email protected]. But again, website, if they go to the website, we're right there. That has a whole separate thing. Also, anyone interested in volunteering with us as well, we look forward, we do have a lot of positions, but some of the employers, they have volunteer programs through their employer. And if you wanna see how we work, you wanna see how blind people work in action, it's a good place to send your employees to volunteer with us as well.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Cool. And if people wanna email you directly, how do they do that?

Victoria Hillard: They can email me directly at vhillard, that's V as in Victoria, Hillard, H-I-L-L-A-R-D, @blindpronet.org.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Fabulous. So please get in touch with Victoria. Get in touch with—

Victoria Hillard: Love to hear from you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Blind Professionals Network. And as far as getting in touch with me, I am Kirk Adams, K-I-R-K A-D-A-M-S, @drkirkadams.com. My website is https://drkirkadams.com, https://drkirkadams.com. I have a newsletter you can sign up for. You can reach me via email, via the contact form on the website, or via LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn every day, Kirk Adams, PhD. And I do want to mention an initiative I've been involved in, and it really aligns closely with what we've been talking about, Victoria, and that's finding community and strength in numbers, learning from one another, teaching one another. And I have been serving as executive director for a nonprofit here in Seattle called the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. And this fall we launched the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. It's on the Circle platform. There's a website, there's Android and iOS apps. And it's really a place for people from whatever demographic categories you might be in [laughs] who care about diversity, inclusion, equity, accessibility, belonging, who care about social justice, human dignity. And I would invite you to explore Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity Inclusion. We want all people to be represented, to feel welcome, to have a place. And so, with that, thank you, Victoria, for your time. I look forward to helping to spread the word about your in-person event in spring.

Victoria Hillard: Awesome. Thank you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I have signed up for your newsletter, so I get your announcements. And I just applaud you again. I say when I first encountered BPN, it was a small Facebook group. And now you're a thousand strong. And you're on a roll. So keep up the good work.

Victoria Hillard: Thank you so much.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And we'll talk again in the spring.

Victoria Hillard: Thank you. Appreciate it. And thank you for all you do as well. I've been following you too. I follow you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, all right. [laughs]

Victoria Hillard: So thank you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: All for one, one for all. All right. We'll see you next time on another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Anthony Corona, Host and Executive Producer, Sunday Edition with Anthony Corona https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-10-14-2026/

In this candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Kirk Adams welcomes Anthony Corona, founder of Anthony Corona Media and Sunday Edition, who was connected to Kirk by Jeremy Grandstaff and recently joined the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op. Anthony describes his life before blindness and after blindness: he was the East Coast entertainment editor for The Associated Press when shingles in the tissues of his brain, eyes and ears left him completely blind at 40, and he says he is now 10 years in. He talks about teaching himself VoiceOver, mobility training, guide dog school, his first American Council of the Blind convention in Rochester, New York, in 2019, the internship that led to Sunday Edition, and his work at Open Doors Organization, where he was asked to head communications.

Anthony explains how Sunday Edition grew from ACB's weekly news magazine show into an independent family of eight podcasts, with 10 expected by the end of the year, plus Corona FM, its 24-hour streaming channel, and how he mentors contributors to host their own shows, including Sylvia Stinson-Perez, whose Treading the Waters of Life is going solo in January. Kirk and Anthony discuss intersectionality, Anthony's role as vice president of Blind Pride and why it left the American Council of the Blind, and Anthony's focus on sponsorships, short video content and the Double Tap Live network. Kirk closes by describing the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, an online membership community on the Circle platform. Listeners can find Anthony at https://anthonycorona.com and Kirk at https://drkirkadams.com.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that very same Dr. Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today, I have a guest who I'm a little bit intimidated because Anthony is a very experienced podcast host himself. So we'll see how I do, Anthony. You can give me a grade at the end.

Anthony Corona: [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: But it's Anthony, Anthony Corona, founder of Anthony Corona Media and Sunday Edition. Say hello, Anthony.

Anthony Corona: Hello, everyone. I'm really glad to be here.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Glad you're here with us. And I was connected to Anthony by Jeremy Grandstaff, another fellow blind guy who I have known and worked with for eight or nine years now. And Anthony attended the virtual launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion on September 1st, which I'll talk a little more about later.

Dr. Kirk Adams: But Anthony is out there doing great work in making the world a more inclusive place for people, and in particular people who are blind. And he has put together a number of really exciting initiatives, and we're happily joining forces in a couple of ways. One is Anthony recently joined the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op, which is a group of us who share our social media platforms. So between all of us, we have social media platforms with over 200,000 followers. And through the management and direction of Aaron Di Blasi of Mind Vault Solutions, anyone in the media co-op can get a message out to all of those social media platforms at the low, low cost of $25 per message.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So if anyone listening is interested in learning more about the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op, I'll tell you how to get in touch at the end of the podcast. So Anthony, I'm gonna hand you the microphone and ask you to tell us your life story in about 40 minutes.

Anthony Corona: [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs] Where have you been? What's been the journey to get you to this point? What are things looking like now, and what's your vision for the future? What's working well for you? Any challenges that we can help with? So the floor is yours.

Anthony Corona: Well, I kinda say that there's Anthony and/or Anthony 2.0, or BB and AB, which, you know, before blindness and after blindness. I was sighted until I was 40 years old.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, wow, okay.

Anthony Corona: Yeah, so I'm 10 years in. March 24th is that anniversary. And I threw myself a virtual party. [laughs] But—

Dr. Kirk Adams: So it was an event then? It wasn't a gradual degenerative situation?

Anthony Corona: No. I am one of those very rare statistical persons who had shingles in the tissues in my brain, in my eyes, in my ears. Had a medically induced coma, woke up three days later and was completely blind. They had to drill a hole in my skull to relieve the pressure. And yeah, the world completely... I was 40 years old, and the world completely changed access. It felt like north was south and south was north, and I had no idea how life was going to exist [laughs] moving forward.

Anthony Corona: Before that, I was the East Coast entertainment editor for The Associated Press, but I lived a bunch of lives in 40 years. Played baseball, a year of minor league ball all through high school, college. Worked in retail, worked in restaurants. My degree was in recreational therapy, so I worked in the autism community for a couple years doing early intervention, home-based services as well as ABA, behavioral analysis modification, things like that.

Anthony Corona: None of these jobs were high-flying career-paying jobs until I got to The Associated Press. And even then, I mean, the salary was great, but the perks of travel and things like that made life incredible. And then, in the space of three days, I—

Dr. Kirk Adams: So how do you move into a job like that?

Anthony Corona: I actually had always been writing. And I took a per diem job with The Village Voice, a famous newspaper on the West Coast in New York. A headhunter actually contacted me and said that The Associated Press is interested. Their arts and culture division is going through some changes, would you be in... You have managerial experience as well. Would you be interested in taking a sort of half editor, half managerial position? And I really didn't think I would get the job, so I kinda threw everything I wanted in a job at them, and they gave me everything.

Anthony Corona: And seven months later, they asked me to actually take over the entertainment division for a year or so, and clean it up and transition. Media was really changing at that point. When I first walked into that department, we had 17 support staff through researchers, secretaries and such, and there were barely four by the time this happened. And I never left. I loved it. I loved the job, I loved the fast pace, the energy, traveling around the world, meeting incredible people. There were some trade-offs, life-wise. Work/life balance was always hard, and I have a very demanding family. But I loved it. The only thing I joke about is towards the end I was getting really burned out typing the name Kardashian, and major news events in the entertainment industry would happen, and for a month straight you'd just be typing the same things over and over again, recycling the same material.

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Anthony Corona: That part of it became a little frustrating towards the end, but I had no plans to leave or anything like that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So were you in that role when the shingles occurred?

Anthony Corona: I was.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, wow.

Anthony Corona: Folks who listen to Sunday Edition, my father passed away. It was happening all at the same time. I didn't know what it was. I was seeing flashes, getting these migraines. By the time I got to the hospital, they rushed me actually to a eye and ear specialty hospital. And that's the last time I drove, I drove myself to the emergency room. And three days later woke up in Manhattan. I was living in Staten Island, New York at the time.

Anthony Corona: And after that, I don't really remember a lot about the first year. I think the brain protects you from the harsh parts. I mean, if I sit and focus I can really bring up memories, but they're not part of the kind of fabric of my life. It kind of jumps over until guide dog and becoming involved in the organizations, and life started to pick back up and I knew I wanted to figure out how to find a way to take the skills that I had and turn them into a viable career as a blind person. We all know that—

Dr. Kirk Adams: So what was step... My retinas detached when I was five years old, so I've been blind since first grade and I went to school for blind kids, and there was just no question I needed to learn braille, how to use a long white cane. I needed to learn how to type on a typewriter so I could go to public school. So my path was pretty clear-cut. For you at age 40, the first year you say is a bit of a blur, but what was kind of the first coherent strategic thing that you did to move into living as a blind person?

Anthony Corona: And this is something we advocate for, the first couple of months I didn't get any real information, and maybe there was a little bit of it, but my brain is, there's so much going on. And honestly, they thought they could save some of the sight, so I did a couple of surgeries with scar tissue and such.

Anthony Corona: So by the time that all settled in I realized, okay, I'm gonna have to start figuring out how to live like this. I'd already figured out a few hacks and I wasn't even using a cane yet. And so I reached out to The Lighthouse in New York, and that kind of set me up on that first-year path. But even then it was basically only mobility training. I did a lot of YouTube. I taught myself, thankfully I was in a Mac environment beforehand, so I taught myself VoiceOver and had a really good visual memory of how the phone and MacBook operated. So things like that, I started teaching myself while taking mobility. And then like I said, going to guide dog school really changed everything. That's where I got so much information and got connected, and realized how much I didn't even know about Commission for the Blind.

Anthony Corona: [laughs] I was paying for my mobility services out of my severance pay. Yeah. And then I got hooked up and I'm like, "Okay, this is really expensive. I need help." [laughs] But JAWS training, more specialized skill set training, that was all those first two, two and a half years. And I sat at it like a job. They say when you're looking for a job you need to spend like six hours a day actively working on looking for a job. So I took that mindset and said, "Well, if God is good to me, I'm gonna live another 40, 45, 50 years. How do I do that?" Well, I worked to do it and I started learning the skills I needed to learn.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Hmm. And then?

Anthony Corona: And then a bunch of things happened in a relatively short time. I went to my first national convention. It was for the American Council of the Blind in Rochester, New York. And I had no plans on doing that, but I had sold a story. Got a check that was really nice, and said, "You know what? It's a train ride and a couple of nights in a hotel." And I hadn't traveled on my own anywhere at that point. I had taken Greyhound back and forth to Virginia where my family was, but there was somebody meeting me directly on the other side.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Was this like 2018-ish, 20—

Anthony Corona: 2019.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I was there. I was there.

Anthony Corona: Yeah. And so I was really faking it until I made it. And I met a bunch of people including my partner in life. Got involved with Blind Pride International, Blind LGBT Pride, and various other Guide Dog Users Incorporated. I was a new guide dog user. I met all these amazing people. And I can only explain, people have asked and I say it like this, it feels like you're meeting these incredibly capable, talented, amazing people listening, sitting in lectures listening to people, that first time around because you're fumbling, you know? [laughs] Or at least I was. I had no clue what I was doing. Honestly, I was making it by the seat of my pants.

Anthony Corona: But all of that turned it around and a couple of months later I got an internship through the Commission for the Blind and the American Council of the Blind. I worked for them as their communications intern for a year, and a lot happened during that year. Led to starting Sunday Edition and took some contract jobs. I worked for Democracy Live for a while. Started Sunday Edition. That morphed into three podcasts. And again, life sort of started to shift. I took on leadership roles in Blind Pride, in the American Council of the Blind itself. And another great symbiotic moment, I met Eric Lipp, the director of Open Doors Organization.

Anthony Corona: And started working for them as a contractor, and they saw that... And I honestly said, "You don't want me in this role." And it was for the Amtrak compliance and training and all of that side of their operations. I was like, "You really don't want me for this role, but I'm gonna take the job because, A, I need the job, and B, I'll show you..." My father always said, "If you want the job, do the job, and eventually they'll give you the job." And I figured, you know what? I'll show you everything that I have and make myself somebody that... And less than a year later, they asked me to head communications. And at the time, Sunday Edition was really blowing up, and the other podcasts were doing well, so I had to make a decision, and the American Council of the Blind and I parted quite amicably at the time, so that I could do things with Sunday Edition that under a nonprofit structure like that I wasn't able to do, and grow.

Anthony Corona: And the mission became amplifying the voices of marginalized communities, especially focusing on the blind and low vision community, the LGBTQIA+ community, all of disability, across the disability spectrum, and anyone who has a voice with something interesting to say or conversations that are adjacent to the advocacy that we're all doing. And my mission is through storytelling. I do traditional interviews, of course. We do a lot of entertainment stuff. We do a lot of straight up tech talk. But the storytelling really is the center of it all, and the mission for the Sunday Edition family of podcasts and Anthony Corona Media itself is really to prepare folks. Take the voice that they have and harness it to put it out there into the world. And if that means you stay with us forever, great, but if you wanna learn sort of the tips that have worked for us, both traditional media and podcasting and digital media content.

Anthony Corona: And then, in fact, our first podcast that came on after we left the American Council of the Blind is going solo in January, and I can't be more happy and more proud. And they're building subsequent podcasts off of that. That's Sylvia Stinson-Perez and Treading the Waters of Life.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, nice.

Anthony Corona: Yeah. I'm so proud. It's my first fledgling leaving the nest. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: So let's back up just a little. I'm gathering you were doing communications work for American Council of the Blind, and part of that was creating a podcast or podcast platform or podcast structure, and then you moved out of the ACB umbrella and established Sunday Edition, and you mentioned three podcasts. So could you talk about the structure and scope of Sunday Edition? You talked about supporting people and now helping them spin off into their own podcast empires, so if you could talk a little bit about the shape of Sunday Edition, the components of it. A description of Sunday Edition as an entity would be really helpful.

Anthony Corona: If I could take one step back first.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, of course.

Anthony Corona: I do wanna give the American Council of the Blind credit for, one of the responsibilities that I had was helping to organize and put together the very first virtual convention during the pandemic. And that was invaluable. Getting that much trust in being able to oversee projects and implement and the knowledge that I learned gave me a base that I couldn't have gotten anywhere else. So I will always hold a very special place in my heart and in my career path for the things that I gained with the American Council of the Blind. Sunday Edition started out as a news magazine show. We used to break it up into three segments, kinda movers and shakers, an interview—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Was it called that while it was part of ACB?

Anthony Corona: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: It was called Sunday Edition?

Anthony Corona: Yeah. Sunday Edition. And it was literally labeled ACB's news magazine offering, weekly offering. And we did it live. We used to have, like, 70, 80 people in the room during the pandemic. It was amazing. We had a lot of fun. There was no real direction those first couple months, and then it started to take direction. And there was something in me between the point where I lost my eyesight and really sitting behind the mic as... I was involved with a podcast, a soap opera podcast for 12 years at this point, so at that point, about seven years. But it's different when you're sitting with a bunch of people, and all you have to do is show up on recording day with your opinions and talk than harnessing an entire show. And my interviewing skills really started to come back, and I felt confident again. I felt in my element and that I was really putting my skills to use, and it morphed into a more roundtable panel/one-on-one interview, in-depth, two hours on a topic, on a focused topic.

Anthony Corona: We would throw fun shows in along the way. You're doing four or five of them a month, so not everything was advocacy related. There was a lot of introducing new ACB members, staff members, talking about conventions, interspersed with a lot of advocacy work, and then around the third year, we started really moving into tag conversations, and the companies and entities liked coming to Sunday Edition because it wasn't a 15-minute spot. It was a two-hour conversation. And I started getting companies coming to me that wanted to introduce themselves to the blind and low vision community. We were the first to bring OKO and HapWare.

Anthony Corona: EchoVision was in early, I mean, before they even had a prototype, they were on Sunday Edition. And little by little it grew. And so by the time we left we also had something called Behind the Music, which is sort of a karaoke performance adjacent, and an Intimate Evening, which is sitting down, again, another two hours, but with an artist or someone who is functioning in the world, and then we tell their story through their art, their music, as well as their in-depth interview with them. And those are the three that we took and went independent with, and quickly started adding podcasts to the fold.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And you mentioned three podcasts. Is that the current—

Anthony Corona: There was—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Or four?

Anthony Corona: That was three then. We are at eight, and we will be at 10 by the end of the year. We have two more premiering this year I'm very excited about. So... And I am not hosting all of them. That would be way too much Anthony Corona in the world. [laughs] But yeah. And I think, at that time also, I started working for Open Doors, and I had to decide leadership versus career. And I will always have space in my life for advocacy and for leadership, but I still want work, I still wanna make a difference, and I still am vital in that world. So it all comes to—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And is Open Doors currently the career piece?

Anthony Corona: Open Doors is kind of the career piece. And that's—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Can you describe Open Doors for those who aren't familiar?

Anthony Corona: So Open Doors is cross disability. We advocate and we're in the travel hospitality retail spaces. We do ADA compliance, we run workshops, we consult in new construction for airports, train stations, Amtrak, Brightline, all of the major airlines. We also have the service animal portal—

Dr. Kirk Adams: What's that?

Anthony Corona: It's a portal for guide dog users to make the paperwork process a lot easier. We have two of the major airlines and we are seven American carriers, including two of the major 11 global total, bringing more on this year. But it's a hard administration to be a nonprofit, and it's just a hard space to be in right now. But I love the work, I love the people that I work with. And quite honestly, I'm strong in voice and personality, and so if I can use my voice for my community, I want to. And if I can get paid for it, I mean, score.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's—

Anthony Corona: And that's... Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Hear, hear. [laughs]

Anthony Corona: Yep. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: I high five you on that one. And then back to spinning off for, I don't know what the right term is, but you have one of the podcasts you said is going to be moving in—

Anthony Corona: Into an independent space.

Dr. Kirk Adams: From beneath the Sunday Edition umbrella into independence. So—

Anthony Corona: Graduating, so to speak.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You talk about story... Graduating.

Anthony Corona: [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: You talk about storytelling and mentoring and helping people develop, so why don't we talk a little bit about those aspects of what you do?

Anthony Corona: Well, you know what I found, once Sunday Edition really started to hit its stride, I found people would often come, "Hey, are you gonna do a show about this? Can we talk about this topic?" And, [laughs] as the other two podcasts came on board and I'm working full time, I suddenly didn't have the same amount of time that I had during the pandemic to really go in depth with research and conversation and finding panelists and coordinating everything. And so, just organically, I started asking folks to sort of partner with me for some of these conversations, and that's really where the idea was built from. And I said, "You know what? Instead of constantly owning the entire space—" And there's tons of podcasts out there, don't get me wrong.

Anthony Corona: But people are hesitant to do a long form conversation and stuff like that, and after they do a two-hour conversation, they're like, "Oh my God, that flew by. We could talk for another hour." And it's not as hard as they think it is. I realized, wow, if this is a way for me to pay it forward. If they only want to bring an idea to the world and move on, great. You know what? It benefits Sunday Edition, it benefits the community. But if this is the space they're interested in, then why not teach them what they need to know? If they stay with us, great. If they... It's a lot. You have to upload, you have to edit, you have to follow... [laughs] If people constantly change, we're scheduled for Thursday at 2:00 to record and something comes up and it can be a lot. So the flow of Anthony Corona Media and the Sunday Edition family is, where you are is where we're gonna meet you, and if you have no experience whatsoever, we'll walk you through it.

Anthony Corona: And if you get to a space where, like Sylvia, you're ready to take it to the next level, she's writing a second book and her next podcast is gonna focus on that, God bless. I don't wanna gatekeep. We have enough of that in our community to begin with. In humanity, I think it's microcosmed because we're so internet with each other, and we are such a small portion of the larger community. But these things happen, and one of the things that I'm really anti is anti-gatekeeping and anti that whole elite structure.

Anthony Corona: Who's a super blind? Are you a super blind? Am I a super blind? I'm a blind guy getting through the day. And I think that's how most of us feel. But at the same point in time, I do understand when you get to a certain space, you don't really wanna look back, and you don't really wanna be held in that space. So it's a really unfortunate dichotomy that we find ourselves in. So those of us that have platforms, and that's why I love the co-op and the things that you are putting together for a cross, I call it cross-pollination.

Anthony Corona: We can only be better if we amplify each other. We create the spaces, we share the spaces, and we open the door for others, you know? I look at both organizations and lots of other spaces, and it's the same people doing the same things. And that's not a bad thing, don't get me wrong. But what's the session plan? Have somebody next to you doing it with you so that it—

Dr. Kirk Adams: When you say both organizations, you're talking about Federation and Council?

Anthony Corona: Federation and the Council, yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Okay. That's fine. I was sure we're thinking about the same organizations.

Anthony Corona: [laughs] But I think it spills over into a lot of spaces in our life. Even the social hierarchies. And I think that's part of, that's my unofficial mission, but I want the doors open. And I want people to feel that they have a space, and they're valuable.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And I wanna talk about Blind Pride a little bit. I wanna frame up my interest in learning deeply about those dynamics. So I talk a lot about intersectionality and disability, and I'm in the diversity, equity, and inclusion spaces writ large, not just disability, but everybody, everybody. And that's where the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion comes in, a space where everyone can bring their lived experience and their perspectives into play. And when I'm talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, one thing that often comes up is intersectionality, and my argument that if an organization, a company, an employer, an institution does a good authentic job of disability inclusion, they're going to be doing a good authentic job of inclusion overall, because disability knows no demographic boundary.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So there are people with disabilities and impairments of every ethnicity, country of origin, economic status, affectional orientation. You name [laughs] a demographic category, there's people with disabilities within that category. So you are involved in Blind Pride. So I don't know if you identify as gay or queer, how you like to self-identify, but I'd love to know. And then you are a blind person, so you obviously have a visual impairment as well. So one thing I often cite is data I found in my dissertation research that showed only 35% of blind people are in the workforce, and of those who are, the people who make the most money, who have the highest income are white males with lots of usable vision or legally blind.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And the people who make the least are totally blind Black women. So I say there's these cascading dynamics of marginalization, oppression, institutional barriers and discrimination that kinda layer upon one another. So, as I blurted out those top of mind thoughts, would love to get your take on those dynamics of Blind Pride and your lived experiences occupying multiple identities of, I'll say, oppressed, marginalized people.

Anthony Corona: Well, I'll start off with my pronouns are he/him. I do identify as gay. Caucasian Italian man from New York City, so I recognize the privilege that I was born into and, for lack of a better word, enjoyed for most of my life. Athletic, relatively good looking, relatively smart. I had a lot of advantages, a lot of luck. I knew when to take advantage of luck when it crossed my path. And I did a lot of advocacy in the LGBTQIA plus community beforehand, gay marriage and archiving, working with Eric Marcus in Making Gay History and the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, archiving our history and understanding where we came from. And I say that because when I got to convention and found out, oh my God, there's a group, and there's folks that [laughs] excuse me, are doing good things together, I was so excited.

Anthony Corona: And I think that there's a lot of overlap for all marginalized communities, but especially the blind, low vision and the LGBTQIA plus community. There really is a lot of overlap in the types of advocacy we've needed to do, the unfair stereotypes that have been placed on us and the villainization of our communities, the other-izing for political purposes. So to be involved in an organization that really cares for the intersectionality of blind, low vision, and the LGBTQIA+ experience touches right at my heart. I'm the current vice president. I came in running. They didn't have a secretary in 2019. Nobody volunteered. And I finally did because they needed it, and I had the skills to do it, and never looked back. We've had some rough patches. We've had some amazing triumphs. And it's a really great organization. We have a lot of allies. And we make sure to create those safe spaces for the intersectionality that is blind, low vision, and LGBTQIA+.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Are there any particular challenges that you might have not thought about [laughs] before becoming a blind person, to that intersectionality?

Anthony Corona: The same challenges, I think, in different ways that we all face. And I'll say it this way. A couple of weeks before all of the events that led up to losing my sight, I had been in one of my favorite bars in the Village on Christopher Street in Manhattan, and I had a really, almost unfair amount of attention. I did not lack for conversation, companionship, or anything else. A couple months after being blind, the first time I walked in there, it was like I was invisible.

Anthony Corona: And so what I think the challenge is trying to align with the big organizations and the big advocacy movements in the LGBTQIA+, we get all the same questions, all the same fears, assumptions. "Well, what could you really do?" "How much help are you gonna need?" All that kind of stuff. But the other side of it, it's no secret, I'm sure, to a lot of your listeners, Blind Pride left ACB as well. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, I had no idea.

Anthony Corona: Yeah. No. We're an independent organization. January will be three years. So BPI left a little bit before I did, and the two events had nothing to do with each other. Leadership of ACB and I were in conversation about how to gently part, and potentially running some of my content, which they still to this day do. Like I said, we left on pretty amicable terms, but not Blind Pride. There's a lot of the blindness and blindness only, leave the rest of yourself at the door, and that works really well for white Christian folks. It doesn't work for almost everybody else. Hispanic community, the African American community especially, the LGBTQIA+ community. And we've never been ones to say, "Oh, we have it doubly hard because we're doubly... We're disabled and gay." But when it comes down to it, to completely ignore half of someone's lived experience, it can only fester for so long, and that's what ended up happening.

Anthony Corona: And I think honestly, both organizations are better for having gone through it. And we can act as subject matter experts for, and we do. We are now for both ACB and NFB.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. So how do people listening who are sharing those identities of blindness and LGBTQ, how do they get involved with Blind Pride?

Anthony Corona: Well, we have a really easy website. It's https://bpi.gay. There is tons of information there. Membership email address is there. You can always reach out. You'll either get me or one of my committee members. Have a conversation and join us or come to one or two of our events, feel us out. We do a lot of social networking. Most of our advocacy at this point, we've morphed more into a partner organization rather than a full-blown advocacy organization. For many reasons. But also, the smaller fish, we can do some specialized stuff for the bigger organizations, and it works out well that way. But there's a lot of opportunity for social gathering, advocacy, and peer support. And you can find all of that at https://bpi.gay.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I like it. And then Sunday Edition is a portfolio of, I think you said eight, soon to be 10 podcasts. You're not managing, hosting all of them. What's your vision for the future of Sunday Edition?

Anthony Corona: Well, joining the co-op was a big... I guess you could say it wasn't a bucket list, because I didn't know the inner workings of it until very recently. But it was something that I was looking towards. I just recently also joined the Double Tap Live network with two of the podcasts. What I see for the next two years is what I'm really focused on, moving into short video content, expanding the reach of the podcasts themselves, looking at sponsorship opportunities. And my contributor list is growing, like, almost daily at this point now, which is great. Keep 'em coming. But keeping that—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Contributors meaning financial contributors, content contributors?

Anthony Corona: Meaning content contributors. Folks that are writing editorials, helping with the tech spotlights, bringing conversations to one of the various podcasts. And now, it is hard to sustain financially. I had a great sponsorship opportunity last year, which got us through the first half of this year. Everybody who does, actually not bringing ideas, not part of conversations, but my editors, my background, everybody who works for Sunday Edition gets paid. That was something that I absolutely insisted on from the moment we started. But it is expensive, so this, the year of '27 is gonna be about sponsorships, growth, opportunities, and keeping the doors open and then amplifying as many voices as comes to us, and I'm always actively seeking out. I talk people [laughs] into, instead of just taking your idea, you come do it. Me or one of our partners will co-host with you. You're gonna set the conversation. And I just wanna keep doing that and grow.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Can people do a one-off? If someone's super interested in blind chess, can they do an episode on that and contribute that passion and that knowledge?

Anthony Corona: Absolutely. I had somebody do a one-off.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You're not committing to create a blind chess podcast, but do an episode on one of the existing?

Anthony Corona: I will always try to talk you into doing, and I've done a few of these, limited edition series. And what I always say is, "You know what? Have the first conversation." Structure it so that it's not everything that you know and everything that you wanna say, and honestly, no one does a two-hour podcast out of the gate. We usually plan for 45 minutes to an hour for a first podcast. So structure what you really wanna say in that first podcast, but think about, if you like doing it, we get good engagement. Think about how we might turn this into an... I've only done maybe three one-offs in the last three years because they have turned in, most of them turn into something. A couple of them have turned into full-blown podcasts.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So if someone has an interest, a passion, an interest, something they would like to share, they can contact Sunday Edition and fit in somewhere in the portfolio of activities that are going on.

Anthony Corona: Absolutely. I can't say too much about this, but I'm working with the Kentucky School for the Blind on a project that will result in a bunch of one-offs. [laughs] But they're getting credit for learning journalism and such, and their finished project will also be a podcast that they can keep for—

Dr. Kirk Adams: So these are students?

Anthony Corona: These are students. And we'll be featuring them through the Sunday Edition channels. We have our own 24-hour streaming channel, by the way, Corona FM, which plays all kinds of content from the Sunday Edition family as well as music and fun stuff. One of the podcasts, the soap opera one that I'm involved with, we partnered and branched off and we do legacy entertainment interviews. I just literally yesterday spoke with Mimi Kennedy. Last week was Rosanna Arquette. We're sitting down with, oh, God, J.R. Ewing's wife. I just looked at her email two minutes before we got on this. Next week, Linda Gray, amazing actress. Jon Lindstrom, the author. We have a conversation coming up with Stephen King actually for the holidays. So yeah, there's just a lot under Sunday Edition, but whatever day you have—

Dr. Kirk Adams: How do people find Corona FM?

Anthony Corona: https://www.anthonycorona.com, anywhere you listen to your podcasts. It's Sunday Edition with Anthony Corona, and links for all the other podcasts are on https://anthonycorona.com.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's—

Anthony Corona: But I'm out there everywhere.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's the hub.

Anthony Corona: That's the hub. Yeah. Anthony—

Dr. Kirk Adams: If we go to https://anthonycorona.com, we can find everything else?

Anthony Corona: Yes, or Anthony Corona Media on Facebook. I'm a version of Anthony Corona on all socials.

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs]

Anthony Corona: [laughs] Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Look for Anthony Corona wherever you prefer to do your social media hangout. You'll find him.

Anthony Corona: [laughs] You'll find me somewhere. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's great.

Anthony Corona: And the easiest email is sundayedition, all one word, @anthonycorona.com. I am responsive. I answer everything that comes in. And if you've got an idea, I always say, "We'll take it from mind to mouth to microphone to podcast feed, or from mind to fingertip, word to one of our publishing arms." And we have quite a few distribution arms of anything written that we publish.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I don't know how in the world I have not encountered you before, sir, but I'm glad it's happened now. Thank you Jeremy Grandstaff for connecting us.

Anthony Corona: Absolutely. Same here.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And now you're part of the Persons with Disability Media Co-op, which we talked about a little earlier. If people wanna get in touch with me, I have a website, dr for the doctor, https://drkirkadams.com. You can email me there, sign up for my newsletter. I'm on LinkedIn every day, Kirk Adams, PhD. And I do want to talk a little bit about the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. I was asked to join a board in the fall of '24 for a nonprofit here in Seattle called the Institute for Sustainable Diversity Inclusion, which has been around about 30 years doing great work here in the Seattle community, mostly working with local corporations and being sponsored by companies that are based here, all the Seattle gang, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Costco, Boeing, et cetera. And their model had become less and less impactful as corporations started to move away from formal commitments to DEI.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Sponsorship started dwindling. The pandemic didn't help. And then I agreed to join the board under the condition we could lead a strategic planning process, which we did last summer. A very good one. Convened 60 DEI leaders and got input and got a clear message that there was appetite, interest, and a community where people could gather, share information, learn from one another, teach one another, enlist support from others, and rapid response of emerging issues. So we decided to create an online membership community based on being welcoming to everybody who has an interest in making the world a more inclusive place, with people interested in human dignity, social justice. It's called the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. It's on the Circle platform. There's a website. There is an Android app, iOS app, and it is a monthly membership with various levels.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I invite you all to come check it out. And it's a place for you if you care about fairness [laughs], equity, and justice and want to make sure those issues aren't buried under the onslaught of evil forces. I'll leave it at that. But Anthony, it's been a pleasure to have you. It wasn't two hours, but as you said earlier, it sure could have been. But I will be going to https://anthonycorona.com. I wanna check out Corona FM for sure. And again, if people wanna get in touch, go to https://anthonycorona.com or email [email protected] or get in touch with—

Anthony Corona: It's Corona like the beer. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes. That doesn't sound bad right now. It is about that time here in Seattle, Washington, on a sunny fall afternoon.

Anthony Corona: Same here in Miami. Absolutely. And we'll do a part two of this on Sunday Edition. I think there's a lot you and I can talk about.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that.

Anthony Corona: All right.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Thank you, Anthony, for being on this episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, and we'll see everybody next time.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Zhou Fang, Founder and Principal Practitioner, Intersectional Group https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-10-01-2026/

In this thoughtful episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Kirk Adams talks with Zhou Fang, an intersectionality practitioner and abundance mindset teacher whose podcast he discovered when it popped up in his iCatcher app. Zhou explains that her intersectionality work begins with her own experience as a Chinese immigrant who is not a citizen, from graduate school in Manhattan, Kansas, to her life in Portland, Oregon, and she compares Midwest hospitality with Pacific Northwest politeness, which she says can cost people the honest conversations that build real relationships. Kirk shares his own culture shift from "Seattle nice" to New York City, and Zhou describes how she uses intersectionality and the "yes, and" approach to help leaders become better, more thoughtful communicators.

Zhou says she learned about abundance because of scarcity: about three years ago, she says, illness forced her to stop working, and she found abundance in the people who cared for her and in nature, from the smell of fresh rain to Oregon's waterfalls. She walks through her coaching process, which begins with reclaiming time, rest, space and the ability to dream, and explains the solidarity economy, while Kirk brings in Tricia Hersey's Nap Ministry and his reading of the Dao. The conversation closes with Kirk's invitation to the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion and with where to find Zhou at https://abundancewithzhou.com and Kirk at https://drkirkadams.com.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that very same Dr. Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, and today I'm thrilled to have a guest that I discovered by listening to a podcast. Zhou Fang is here today. Zhou is an intersectionality practitioner and an abundance mindset teacher, two things I am very interested in myself. So welcome, Zhou.

Zhou Fang: Thank you so much, Dr. Kirk, for having me on your program. When you told me you listen to my podcast, [laughs] I felt so honored. I rarely have people talk and tell me, say, "Hey, I listen to your podcast." Every time I hear something like that, for some reason, I just feel so nicely surprised and also honored. So when I saw your message, it made my day. So thank you very much.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. So I'm a totally blind person, and I use various types of technology, screen-reading software. I use one called Job Access With Speech, JAWS, on my desktop, and then on the iPhone there's a built-in screen reader called VoiceOver. And I have an app called iCatcher, which is very accessible and works well with VoiceOver, and it's for listening to podcasts. And when I get ready for the day and set my intentions and kinda write a little vision of what I want the day to look like, what I want the shape of the day, the focus of the day, I typically listen to a podcast while I'm kinda getting organized. And I'll just put in a keyword, just whatever floats to the surface. I might have put in intersectionality. I might have put in abundance. But your podcast popped up, and I tapped on it, and I was just so engaged by what you had to say. So I'm so glad you're here today.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I do want to make listeners aware of something that's very important in my life, and that is the launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. I'm serving as executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, and we have launched a community coalition that's a monthly membership model. And if you are interested in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, and gathering together with other like-minded individuals to take collective action to make the world a more socially just, fair, and a place where human dignity can flourish, I would invite you to check out the Community Coalition.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So, Zhou, intersectionality is something I talk about a lot in the work that I do, especially when I'm talking to companies about employing people with disabilities. And I say that if you do a good job of including people with disabilities, you're going to be doing a good job of including everybody because disability knows no demographic boundaries, so people of all races, genders, affectional orientations, economic backgrounds, education, rural, urban, there's a certain percentage of us that have or will have disabilities. So intersectionality is something we share. And then the abundance mindset, I know I've read the work of Carol Dweck, and she talks about that. And I loved what you had to say when I listened to your podcast, so I just want to hand the microphone to you and ask you to tell us about your journey, which I heard a little bit on the podcast interview I listened to. But would love to, like I say, where have you been, Zhou? Where are you now? Where do you see things heading? What's working well for you? Any challenges? So the floor is yours.

Zhou Fang: [laughs] Such big questions. Thank you, Dr. Kirk. I just wanna say really quickly that I am curious about your Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion organization, so I would love to learn more of that as well.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I will send you information.

Zhou Fang: Yes. I would love to participate. And for me, intersectionality and abundance mindset, they are really interconnected. When I first entered kind of the consulting space, during the pandemic pretty much, what I started with intersectionality, and for me, that's where I was, is intersectionality really opened my mind about how our world, especially in the US, works. As you mentioned, right, people with disability and with different kind of intersectional identities, different backgrounds, somehow we are all here together and trying to figure this out. And for some of us, more able-bodied people, right, we don't see the challenges people with disabilities, and sometimes visible, sometimes invisible. And just from that perspective, from the intersectionality lens, is that if we can all develop a sense of empathy and also being able to understand and think from different perspective, then we have the opportunity to serve each other better.

Zhou Fang: And I think that's the power of intersectionality. 'Cause like you mentioned, Dr. Kirk, is that at some point in our lives, a lot of us will at least become temporarily disabled or having limited ability, and for a lot of us, that condition may be permanent or long-term. So if we have that kind of mindset, disability is not, it's not that unique. It's actually, it can happen to anyone. And having that idea can really make us more empathetic, just as a society and as community. And of course, apply intersectionality to other areas, race, gender, socioeconomic status, and even your citizenship status, right? 'Cause I'm a immigrant, so I'm actually—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, let's hear a little bit about your lived experience, your life journey. Not everyone follows a path that leads them to a space of thinking about empathy [laughs] and serving others. Some of the things you've mentioned. So what is your life experience that brought you to these spaces?

Zhou Fang: Yeah, for me, my intersectionality experience starts with my immigrant experience. Is not being a citizen, and that is invisible identity. And oftentimes also visible because I am, for folks who are listening to this podcast or who heard my name, Zhou Fang, may be able to guess that I am Chinese. So I moved to the US from China as a young adult. So for a lot of people, the way I look will—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And what brought you, your education or work?

Zhou Fang: Yeah, education.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, okay.

Zhou Fang: Yeah, yeah. Grad school. So I went to grad school in Kansas, actually. A lot of people probably wouldn't guess that either. So the way I look is, people will by default assume that I am an immigrant to begin with, right? Which I am. At the same time, it's like there are so many Asian Americans here, and we are always seen as immigrant. So that intersectionality to me is part of my experience here, and also, because I'm not a citizen, and some people don't know that. So a lot of the benefits that a citizen has, I don't have, right? For example, voting. I'm not able to vote, and a lot of us take that for granted, the right to vote, the ability to vote. So every time I mention myself as an example is, we don't take things for granted, and a lot of the things that we just assume that's readily available may not be for a lot of people, for example. And so that is my very personal experience with intersectionality. And—

Dr. Kirk Adams: So some of your identities, obviously you've got Chinese, immigrant, female.

Zhou Fang: Yes. Chinese—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Not a citizen. So you've got [laughs] a number of intersecting identities. And you live in the Pacific Northwest now.

Zhou Fang: I do, yeah. I'm in Portland, Oregon. Which we have a larger Asian population compared to Kansas probably. And still we are a relatively small group of people here, and very diverse as well. So I can also observe a lot of intersectionality within the Asian and Asian American communities, from just personal life and through my professional work as well. So really it's like my lived experience as an immigrant, as Chinese, as woman, as someone who lived in the Midwest and then moved to the West Coast, to be able to compare the differences kind of between places, even within just one country. That really kind of put things into perspective in terms of intersectionality.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And what does it mean to be a intersectionality practitioner?

Zhou Fang: Is for me to use intersectionality as a guidance, as a principle in when I work with individuals, when I work with organizations, when I work with leaders. And that does put me back to the kind of empathetic leadership mindset a little bit, because with intersectionality we can say, "Oh, I don't exactly know where are you coming from, or where did you get that idea or perspective, but what I do know is we all have our lived experience, and that experience kind of leads us to our decision-making, to our understanding of life, to our building relationships, to our showing up to our community." And because of our intersectionality, basically it, in a way, decides how we show up to this world, and I use this framework of intersectionality as a guiding kind of principle in my work with individuals and organizations.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So what would be an example of work that you've done with a leader or organization? What types of outcomes are people seeking to achieve in working with you?

Zhou Fang: Yeah. A lot of the work I do focuses on communications, so using the sectionality as a framework to help organizational leaders to be better communicators, and that is to use my academic background as well, 'cause I have a journalism degree and also a mass communications degree from grad school. And so understanding the sectionality really can help leaders become better and more thoughtful communicators at work and in community. A quick example is from intersectionality, we are able to see things are not linear, right? Oftentimes it's not either/or, as we know. The thing is, sometimes we still think that way, so we need to practice the not either/or kind of thinking, which is yes, and, right? It's, "Yes, I hear you, and this is what I think." Or, "Oh, yes, this is what happened, and this is what we can do to perhaps correct something or fix a problem or make things better," is to have that acknowledgement of the situation or the presence and being willing or being curious enough to have a conversation, a dialogue with your staff members, with your team to really figure out what's the better way to move forward with the business, with the organization, and with your team. So really, intersectionality in my work largely is to help leaders to become better, more effective, and thoughtful communicators using the yes, and methodology.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, [laughs] I'm very curious about, you mentioned differences and intersectionality, you lived in the Midwest, now you live in the Pacific Northwest, and you were able to observe differences. So I have lived in small towns in Washington State, a small town in Oregon, Seattle, New York City, and Arlington, Virginia. Those are the places where I've had permanent addresses for long-term residences. So I've never lived in the Midwest. So I'm curious, Kansas and Portland, they sound very different [laughs] when I say those words. So what are some observations, reflections that help inform your work around those three things?

Zhou Fang: That's a really good question. Thank you for that, Dr. Kirk. So I lived in Manhattan, Kansas, which is where Kansas State is.

Dr. Kirk Adams: The Little Apple.

Zhou Fang: Yeah, Little Apple. How do you know that? [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: [laughs] I know that from watching sports.

Zhou Fang: Oh, my gosh, of course. Yeah. And to me, as a student, that's where I landed. I landed in the heart of the US, basically. And what I experienced there, people might say, "Oh, was it boring or bland, or was it rude or…" It's not. It was actually people are genuinely very nice there. The hospitality, the sense of people want to take care of you, especially knowing you are not from here. Sometimes we talk about racism, right? Some people are very blatant and obviously racist, but the thing in the Midwest is a lot of people, they genuinely don't know, oftentimes, is unconscious bias, right? So borderline, kind of like, "Oh, do you mean this, or do you mean that?" So there is ambiguity in people's language, and the thing is oftentimes people don't mean bad. It's just genuinely people are not aware. They don't know enough or educated enough to be very careful with their language.

Zhou Fang: But the experience I had, it had always been people being very nice to me, and my friends, who are also international students. The hospitality in the Midwest absolutely is the best, honestly. And compared to the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific Northwest to me is, as you and I know, we pride ourselves, right, both in Seattle and Portland regions, we pride ourselves for being very progressive, or a lot of us, people in the metropolitan areas, or say we are, we know a lot, right? People will say, "Oh, I read a lot. I have a lot of information. I read about things, different opinions, et cetera." We think ourselves as very educated, very informed, and very progressive. At the same time, sometimes I feel a little taken aback by the Pacific Northwest politeness.

Zhou Fang: Yeah, so it's that kind of combination of, okay, so whose moral high ground we are talking about here? We are learning or we are trying to do better, and the politeness to me sometimes is like, I want to say something, but I don't want to be rude, so I do not, rather not say. And I think sometimes it's fine, and if we all just try to be polite or pretend to be polite, then we actually lose a lot of opportunities to learn, to build that connection, to build that relationship. And everything because of that politeness or the hesitation of saying something, it leads to a more shallow relationship.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. So there's this thing called Seattle nice where people don't disagree with one another. Even if they have a contrary opinion, they won't necessarily voice that. And that was my big culture shift when I moved to New York City and I was working with people who grew up there. Because they will voice their counter-opinion in two seconds [laughs] and engage you in a debate and a vigorous examination of different opinions. Where here, people don't tend to challenge one another, and sometimes that leads us, especially in organizations and institutions, to kind of get really bogged down in process. And I noticed things moved more quickly, came to resolution more quickly in those environments where people would air their differences and express their differences and work through them.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So then you mention intersectionality and abundance, I can't remember, you said go hand-in-hand or align with one another, so let's examine abundance a little bit.

Zhou Fang: Yeah. Thank you. I developed my abundance mindset practice slightly after intersectionality practice. I learned about abundance because of scarcity. So you see, that's intersectionality, right? It's yes and, it's never either or. There's always this interconnectedness between things and with each other. I learned about abundance because I was ill and sick a little while ago, about three years ago now, and I realized the reason I became sick and unable to work was because of my scarcity mindset. My own scarcity conditioned me to believe that if I stopped working, then I'm done. I must work. That was my mentality. Which is very scarcity-centered because I had so much fear of missing out. I would say, "If I don't do this, I will lose that," right? It's very either/or thinking. And when I get sick, because my body just couldn't go on anymore at that point, and I had to take a prolonged kind of extended break, about three month, during that time not working very much. And I realize when I am in recovery, when I am trying to feel better and rebuild my strength and my body, I experienced a lot of abundance during that time. Which is weird, right? I'm not working.

Zhou Fang: How do I have abundance when I'm not working? But I did. And I had so many people check on me and help me, not only with my life and with my house, with my dog, and I have a wonderful partner who has been there supporting me, and they all showed up when I was in need. And because I wasn't working, I had a lot of time, right? So I was able to see nature, and nature is such abundance. And I don't know how somehow along the way I lost my interest in nature. And I rediscovered my interest for nature and appreciation for nature, and it's been giving me so much abundance since then, and so much learning and lesson quietly. Nature is never like, "Hey, you have to do this." It's just there, and if you are curious enough, if you are open enough, then you will learn from Mother Nature. And to me, that's a lot of abundance. So for me, during my recovery, like, oh, I don't have to be in scarcity all the time. In fact, scarcity almost paralyzed me. I couldn't move. But abundance to me at the time, and to today still, is the people and nature and everything that we provide for each other.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Talk to me a little bit more about that abundance of nature and some of your experiences and reflections. So how do you experience nature? What are some of the ways in which you internalize that feeling of abundance through nature?

Zhou Fang: Yeah, I wanna say having the ability to experience nature itself is a privilege, right? To understand intersectionality is also to understand our own privilege, our own advantage, and also our disadvantage. So having access to nature, being able to step outside is a huge privilege. And also being in Pacific Northwest, we are so close to, say, the ocean, the forests and the waterfall, the river, that is such a blessing. That in itself is abundance, I believe. And in terms of my experience really is the smell, the smell of fresh rain. After the first rain, what's the smell? After the first spring bloom, the flowers, what is the smell? When we go to the Portland Rose Garden in May or in June, the colors we see, the smell, and the texture we can feel, and how it makes people feel, you can see the smiles on people's faces. And you can hear just the joy around nature. And also when we go hiking, Oregon has a lot of waterfalls. So when we go hiking, you not only see the water, you hear the water as well.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Have you ever gone to Silver Creek Falls?

Zhou Fang: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I lived, well, you drove past my childhood home 'cause we lived on the—

Zhou Fang: Oh, yeah?

Dr. Kirk Adams: We lived on the road to Silver Creek Falls. Yep.

Zhou Fang: Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah, that—

Dr. Kirk Adams: We went there as a child and walked behind the falls, and I can still remember the awe, the feeling of awe standing behind that waterfall and hearing it, feeling the mist.

Zhou Fang: Right. It gives you, yeah—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And, or smelling the smells of the forest, yeah.

Zhou Fang: Exactly. It's the sound, it's the smell, it's the texture, how it makes you feel as a person, the comfort you take in nature, and the wisdom you receive from nature. And just, I will walk through the waterfall if I can. Not all the waterfalls. So okay, don't attempt if it's, [laughs] it could be dangerous, listeners. But make sure you are safe, and if you are, you can walk through the waterfall, and the feeling of those water splashing on your skin, that feeling is just incredible. And to me all those experiences from nature are abundance to me, and understanding how precious that is. A lot of the abundance mindset is how do we have a more sustainable future? How do we create, how do we repair the damage we've done to environment, to nature? And that really makes you think, okay, we only have this one world, and if you want to continue to have this abundance, we really need to take care of it. So that's my very much lived experience with nature. And how does nature provide abundance to me.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, it's interesting. I mentioned my iCatcher app and putting in a keyword. If I put in the word abundance and hit search, and it pulls up 100 podcasts, probably 95 of those will be talking about money.

Zhou Fang: Wealth, yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Wealth, things. Cars and houses and stuff. So it's very refreshing. I think about the waterfall being refreshing [laughs] and I think about your take on abundance being very refreshing.

Zhou Fang: Absolutely. Yeah. No, thank you. I have the same kind of complaint, is every time someone reach out to me and want to talk about abundance, is most of the time it's about wealth management. [laughs] I can't. [laughs] I'm sorry. I understand the importance of money. I really know it. Working as a consultant, I know what money means. And there's so much more. There's so much more to that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you're an abundance mindset teacher, so what would a process look like? What would your initial conversations be like? If you could give me a little bit of shape to that.

Zhou Fang: Thank you. Thank you. It's like many kind of coaching processes. I would have a intake session with a new client just to understand what are their wants and needs. Why are they talking to me? They could be talking to so many coaches and consultants. Why me, right? What is it that you need, that you want from this experience? And what prompts you to want to know more about abundance? So I would have a intake session with them, and then from there, every session we would focus on something. So initially we would talk about how do we reclaim time? Time is part of abundance, right? If we cannot reclaim our time back, then we won't really be able to enjoy abundance if we don't have time. Say you are working 12, like 10 hours a day and six days a week. So even if you did have abundance, how are you gonna enjoy it? So initially we will establish a basic kind of foundation for abundance practice is to reclaim time, to relearn what is rest. Rest is also a very important part of abundance. Again, if we cannot rest, we won't be able to enjoy abundance. And then we will talk about space. What is space for you? Is it spacious or is it limited or confined? So if we don't reclaim our space, either physically or in our head, then we also won't really be able to enjoy or create abundance in our life. And then another thing I would work with my clients with is dream or imagine.

Zhou Fang: Can we dream of a better future? Can we dream of a more abundant life for ourselves and for each other? Not being able to dream or imagine freely is scarcity, right? 'Cause that's what scarcity conditions us, is this is the only way. You have to do this. That's scarcity. But abundance is, well, this is where we are now. What about an alternative? Can we think of a better future, what that future could look like? If I am to dream freely, what kind of life do I want to live? What kind of life do I want others to have, for my family, for my children, for my grandchildren? So giving people back the ability to dream is another important component in my abundance work with people. And from there, we continue to explore based on people's lived experience. Again, it's like, oh, do you want to talk about gratitude? Okay, let's talk about gratitude. And do you want to talk about solidarity? Oh sure, let's talk about solidarity and solidarity economy. How does that look like in your life? And oh, what if you want to talk about grief, right?

Zhou Fang: For some people, that's heavy, but to me, grief is a huge part of abundance. Grief and love, they go hand-in-hand. So do we want to talk about abundance in love and in grief? We can also talk about that. So I think after the initial exploration, the intake, the reclaiming time, space, dream, and rest, then we continue to explore the different factors and different areas where people want to be more abundant about. So—

Dr. Kirk Adams: I don't think I've heard the term solidarity economy before. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Zhou Fang: Oh, it's so fun. Solidarity economy is not really outside of the capitalistic system. It can still exist in the capitalistic society. Although, we think about solidarity economy, it's not very exploitive. It's more like we do this together. So if you think about a co-op, that is solidarity economy. If you think about employee-owned business, that's solidarity. Or if you think about a mutual aid or a mutual fund, that's solidarity economy. Or sometimes people are like, "I'm not gonna buy anything this year. I'm only going to exchange and trade with people." That's also solidarity economy. Or yeah, or even like a thrift store, that could also solidarity. So—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I've seen circular economy, but I—

Zhou Fang: More circular.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Circular is thinking about keeping assets in the community, strengthening the community by generating business activity intentionally within a community.

Zhou Fang: Yes, yes. Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: But let's talk about time, so reclaiming time. But I assume that when it dawns on them that if I'm spending all my time in busy activity, I can't really enjoy abundance, and then they think about wanting to have more time to enjoy. Are there certain things that you suggest or things that seem to work for people as far as reclaiming some of their time?

Zhou Fang: Yes. Absolutely. That's a great question. What I will say is, start small. Start small. Anything that we want to reclaim, we start small. A lot of us have a New Year resolution, right? And then what happens? Three days later, everything's gone. Because we set these really unrealistic grand goals that we cannot hold ourselves accountable to. So in terms of time, it's such a big concept. If we can now reclaim, say, oh, I worked Monday through Friday, and can I work, I don't know, 15 minutes less every day? 15 minutes, just 15. Can we do that? Can we try, let's start with Wednesday. Maybe on Wednesday I'm gonna work 15 minutes less, and on Friday perhaps, if I'm lucky, maybe I can get out of my office at 4:00 instead of 5:00. So that's one hour back.

Zhou Fang: And other ways to reclaim our time in a more incremental way is, oh, can I take a 10-minute break today just to step outside to walk around the neighborhood or to walk around the block? Just 10 minutes. Not too much, and it's not even 30 minutes. Or another way to look at it is, I am actually going to make a pot of tea. I'm going to use five minutes to boil water and make tea, and that is time and rest, both that you can reclaim. And all those things, they are not grand. They are all very small. But really pay attention to how you feel after you are able to, say, take that 10 minutes walk or make that pot of tea or even listen to a music or dance in the kitchen for three minutes. That's something you can get and reclaim for your own wellbeing, for your own life. And it may look small, but if you are able to do that once a week, right, and then it becomes twice a week, and then it becomes every day, if you can get 10, 15 minutes back every single day, that's great. That's big.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And then rest. Are you familiar with Tricia Hersey and the Nap Ministry?

Zhou Fang: Yes. Oh, I love her.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. [laughs] Me too. So she, for those of you who don't know her, Tricia Hersey has a movement called the Nap Ministry, and she's an African American woman, and she kinda frames rest as an act of resistance. Like, the society wants you to be productive all the time, and you need to resist, you need to resist that. By taking a nap. So we often, my wife and I often will say, "Let's observe the Nap Ministry."

Zhou Fang: Aw. I love—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And then space. You talk about time, rest, space, imagination. So space, is it creating spaces that are a good fit for the person, the space that is comfortable for them, supports them, aligns with their values? I assume there's not a space that everyone should be trying to achieve. It must be very, very individual.

Zhou Fang: Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you talked about physical space, and you talked about space in your mind. So if you could talk about that a little bit.

Zhou Fang: Yeah. Thank you. I think space is really important. Even for people who say they have a lot of space physically, a lot of us, we just don't have enough head space, because the invisible force is on us, like the news, the information, the pressure of doing more. Like you mentioned, Dr. Kirk, productivity. We have to produce and produce. And that may not look like oppression of own space, but it is. That is squeezing our space out, and a lot of us feel anxious or stressed out or burnt out. That's really our heart space and our head space just being taken away from us and eliminated, and we need to take that back by, how do we take our space back, is one pretty active way, it pretty simple.

Zhou Fang: You can use both your imagination or your vision, is to imagine or to think. You are looking outside of a window, right? It could be a physical window. It could be an imaginative window. You're looking outside of the window, and you are trying to look as far as you can, as further as you can. Where do you see? Do you see a tree in the next block, or do you see a mountain further out? Or if you keep reaching your vision, either imaginary or physical, maybe you can even see the edge of the ocean. And that is a lot of space. So I really encourage people to reclaim their space, and using these meditative kind of activities to do that. And also, in real life, sometimes that looks like boundary setting. To set boundary with people, to actually practice that boundary is like, you know what, it's 6:00 PM now. I will take a look at it tomorrow or even later, but right now I can't really do it. So I have to protect and respect, rather, I have to respect my own boundary to not take up too much of my precious space. So boundary is a really good way to protect space as well.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So creating and protecting the space is, it's a mindfulness practice, it sounds like.

Zhou Fang: A lot of that is. It is. Yeah. You are right.

Dr. Kirk Adams: 'Cause we spend a lot of time in our brain space thinking about things that have already happened or worrying about things that might happen, [laughs] and to create that gracious space. I read the Dao quite a bit, the Lao Tzu Dao, and it talks about living in the present now moment. Which are hard to do, but—

Zhou Fang: Easily said than done.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Worth working on.

Zhou Fang: Yes. I hear that. [laughs]

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, this has been fabulous. I've taken a lot of notes. I look forward to continuing to get to know you better, talking with you more. I will send you information about the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. We'd love to welcome you there. And what else would you like people to know, Zhou? How can they get in touch with you? How can they engage with you and tap into your intersectionality and abundance wisdom?

Zhou Fang: Oh, thank you. I'm also a student. I practice, I teach, but very importantly, I learn. So I would love to be students together and learn together, and thank you so much for having me today, Dr. Kirk, talking about intersectionality and abundance. And if folks want to find me, you can go to https://www.abundancewithzhou.com. So, abundance with—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And Zhou is spelled?

Zhou Fang: Z-H-O-U. Z as in zebra—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Abundance with Zhou, Z-H-O-U—

Zhou Fang: Dot com.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Dot com.

Zhou Fang: Yep, that will be great, and you will find my contact information there, my email address, and if you are in the Pacific Northwest, I would love to meet you as well, or virtually online. So really looking forward to that. And thank you again so much.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Oh, it was so much fun. I can be reached at my website, which is D-R as in doctor, https://drkirkadams.com. I have a newsletter you could sign up for. You can find information about the community coalition and other things I'm involved in. I'm on LinkedIn every business day. Kirk Adams, PhD on LinkedIn. And Zhou, this has been a delight. Everyone go to https://abundancewithzhou.com and connect with her. Come to https://drkirkadams.com and connect with me, and let's build this community together. Let's learn from one another and teach one another.

Zhou Fang: Yes. Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Absolutely. So we'll say goodbye for now, and we'll catch y'all later on the next episode of Podcasts with Dr. Kirk Adams.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Stephanie Sanders, Owner and CEO, Walk In Thought Productions, LLCE https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-09-17-2026/

In this warm episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Stephanie D. Sanders, a transformational motivational speaker and performer from Lakeland, Florida, who first wrote to him years ago when he was president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, and who later met him in person at the National Federation of the Blind convention in Orlando. Stephanie tells her story from the beginning: legally blind in one eye since birth but undiagnosed until kindergarten, treated through the University of Florida, and raised as the youngest of three by a mother who did not yet know why her daughter kept giving the wrong answer. She describes refusing to let her vision define her, the sports and cheerleading years, the basketball injury that ended her track-and-field and Olympic hopes, and the pivot that followed into sports announcing, a mass communications degree in radio, television and film production, and a career in entertainment.

From there the conversation follows her from a Seattle radio station in the early 1990s to Los Angeles, where an improv workshop at the Hollywood Black Film Festival drew unexpected praise from actress Cee Cee Michaela and convinced her to make the move. She talks about her CD, book and audiobook One More Day, sings a few lines of her song Hold On Tight on air, and joins Kirk in a candid exchange about intersectionality, privilege and disclosure, in which he recounts negotiating a car by telephone as Dr. Kirk Adams and then losing interviews the moment he walked in with a long white cane. Both return repeatedly to faith, resilience and the value of community, and the episode closes with how to reach Stephanie and with Kirk's invitation to join the Community Coalition at the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a guest that I've known for quite some years now. It's Stephanie D. Sanders. Stephanie hails from Florida, born and raised. She is a transformational motivational speaker and performer. And say hello, Stephanie.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Hello, everybody.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Great. We'll be back to you shortly. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind. And I'm a blind person. My retinas detached when I was five years old. And in 2016, I was president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, and I was given the opportunity to move to New York and then to Washington, DC, and lead the American Foundation for the Blind through a turnaround process. The organization was founded in 1921. Helen Keller was their global ambassador from 1924 until she passed away in 1968. And at the time I was given the opportunity to lead the iconic AFB, they were in a severe financial downward spiral. And I spent six years working with a great team of staff, board members. And we did some difficult but necessary things to put AFB back on track. And during that time, I received contact from Stephanie, who said, I admire what American Foundation for the Blind is doing, and I would love to become part of the organization. I am a motivational speaker. I'm a performer. I think I could lend my talents to the good work. And unfortunately, we were eliminating positions and laying people off in order to cut expenses. So the timing didn't work out well for that. But Stephanie and I had a few conversations. I learned she lived in Orlando, and I was headed to Orlando for the National Federation of the Blind conference, and we arranged to meet. And we met in the conference hotel and had a great conversation, and we've kept in touch since. Stephanie is a very inspirational person, a very talented person. I am honored to be considered her friend. And it's great to have you here on the podcast, Stephanie. I want to just hand the microphone to you and ask you to tell listeners your story. And I guess, where have you been? What brought you to where you are now, and how are things now, and where do you see things going? What's your vision for the future? What are you working to accomplish? And then we'll let people know how they can get in touch with you. I'll, as the host, I will sit here and listen. And if a question occurs to me, I will interrupt you and ask you questions. So be — I don't know what they'll be, because I don't know what you're going to say. But here we are, Stephanie. It's a pleasure to have you. The floor is yours.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it very, very much, for the opportunity to actually be here, just hanging out with you and talking to the people. Yes, I am Stephanie D. Sanders. And I always say, now don't forget the D. That is my middle initial, but it makes a difference when you put me in Google. But I am originally here from Central Florida, and I'm actually from Lakeland, Florida, but I'm very, very close to Orlando, right in between actually Orlando and Tampa. And like Mr. Adams said, I had the opportunity to connect with him years ago when I wanted to start to get more involved with the visually impaired and blind community, because I grew up actually as a legally blind child in one eye, but they didn't find out until I went to kindergarten. And so just imagine those first five years, and your mother's a teacher, and she's trying to teach you things before you go to school, and you're saying the wrong answer. That didn't go over too well for a while. And she actually apologized to me later when I was an adult. She was like, I'm so sorry, I was tough on you. I did not know that I had a visual impairment at that time. So it's actually been since birth. And went to University of Florida for some research for several months, I believe it was, as they tried to help me out in making my vision at least better in one eye. Yeah, they tried both, but it only turned out to be in one eye that they could help me more to have some vision. So then I kind of moved on and transitioned into teenage years and growing up. And I tell you, even though I had and still have a visual impairment, I absolutely, positively never let that deter me, discourage me in any way, shape or form. And I know that had to be God just instilling something, just that self motivation within myself, to not even pigeonhole myself at times into only being a visually impaired person. People saw me, they saw that I would wear glasses one day. Another day I would wear a patch, another day I would wear contacts, lost them several times. So mom was like — mom and dad are like, no, that is way too expensive. Yeah. And at that time, you were only getting one contact a year.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Let me — a couple things. So visual impairment, blindness, legal blindness means a lot of different things. Like I'm totally blind. I have been since I was five, when my retinas detached. Most people who are legally blind or visually impaired have some level of vision, usable vision. Some people can see shapes, some people can tell the difference between light and dark. Some people's vision change. Some people have night blindness. They kind of see okay during the day, but not at night. Some people day to day, like sometimes their vision is pretty good, sometimes it's not very good. And then there's progressive conditions like retinitis pigmentosa. I know lots of people with RP who don't really know they have a visual impairment till maybe they're eight, nine, ten, 15, 20 years old, and then they discover they have retinitis pigmentosa, starting with usually difficulty seeing at night, and progressively lose the peripheral vision until people are just looking through a tunnel. Then there's macular, where people lose the central vision. They can only see out of the sides. So it's a one size does not fit all.

Stephanie D. Sanders: So it—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Really does. Your experience and my experience with visual impairment is obviously very different. You grew up in Florida. I grew up in little towns in Washington and Oregon. So definitely different backgrounds. But tell me about your family. Were there brothers and sisters too?

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes, actually, I have one brother and one sister, and they're both older, so I'm the baby of the family. And I played my role. I accepted that role as the baby in the family. I didn't abuse it, though. I didn't abuse it. I just had to watch my siblings and how things were going for them and mistakes they might have made here and there. And I'm like, oh, I'm not going to do that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I have one younger brother and one sister who's quite a bit younger, and she's definitely the baby in some ways. We still kid her, because my dad's famous line was, I don't care what's going on, I just don't want to hear her cry.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Right. I was a bit of a tomboy. I was like a rough and tough, and just into anything and everything that was going on around me and in the neighborhood. We had kids in the neighborhood, so it was a really good time.

Dr. Kirk Adams: City, country? What kind of neighborhood?

Stephanie D. Sanders: Ours was in the city. It wasn't like city city, but it wasn't country either. We were kind of like right in the middle. And it was great. It was great. But see, I wish kids could get that experience that we had growing up without some of the technology right now. It just made us, I think, better kids just all around. We were just out and about, all outside. It made you more—

Dr. Kirk Adams: When the street lights come on, come home.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Exactly. You had to be creative like nobody's business, to go outside when your parents told you to go outside and play. Okay, where are we going? Out to play. Yeah, let's do something. Or let's make a tribe. Let's push the little dog in the stroller. We did all kinds of things. And I used to wrap my dog up, [unclear 00:10:26] a little baby. But she didn't care that I had on glasses. I mean, they were a little thick, but nonetheless, I tell you, I can look at it and laugh now, because I really did not allow that to hinder me or stifle me in any way. I just kind of used my — well, I won't say good, I—

Dr. Kirk Adams: You had usable. You had some usable vision, right?

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes, I just use that, and I just kept moving and getting along and trying to keep up with everybody else, even though I was the baby. Yeah, I ended up transitioning on to high school and playing sports and cheerleading. I mean, literally whatever I found in my heart to do, athletic wise, or cheering and dancing, I did it. And that's why it's so important for me to talk to people about resilience and having a personal self-motivation within themselves, because a lot of times you may not get the motivation that you seek from other people, but you've got to find it within yourself to keep going and pressing on, even though you know it may be rough at times. You have to find another way to get the job done and make things work for you, no matter what the situation is. And that's what I did. I just kept going and went on to college. And even there, I just jumped right in head first into communication.

Dr. Kirk Adams: What did you study?

Stephanie D. Sanders: I studied mass communications, radio, television and film production. Yes. And I ended up doing several television shows at the college TV station. And I had already begun doing some radio work. I started announcing sports for two minutes, five minutes every Saturday.

Dr. Kirk Adams: All right.

Stephanie D. Sanders: And I went on to do that. And the goal was to end up at ESPN. But I started turning towards entertainment more, because I did love entertainment, even from childhood. So I just kind of gravitated towards that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And it sounds like your motivational, transformational speaking, from what you just said, is centered around resilience.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes, yes, very much so. And taking situations and problems and making them work for you, no matter what. That is making it work. It may not necessarily work exactly to the way that you wanted it to, but you still have an opportunity to make it work and come out with some sort of answer or resolution to whatever you were trying to get towards. Because sometimes we look at things like, it's got to happen this way, or nothing is going to happen. And that's not always the case. And I had to find that out for myself. We may see things and want things in a certain way, but a lot of other times it will happen, but it will happen in a different way. So that's why I like to say now — and this just kind of popped out during a speech when I said one time, I can do anything. But I said we, because it was a group of us. I said, we can do anything that we set our minds to do, but we might have to do things differently. And that's okay. Because even with us as visually impaired people or blind people, we can still do certain things. I've met so many people at some of the conventions and things who are doing much more than people think that we can do. And I was just so amazed and really happy about it, because I had not been involved with any groups or anything, all the way up until the time that I contacted you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. And that's interesting, because community is so important. So I went to a school for blind kids first, second and third grade, and then off to regular public school. I learned how to read and write Braille and use the long white cane and type on a typewriter. So I had the skills to be in the public school, and I'd get my textbooks in Braille. And then if there were tests or papers or spelling tests, I would type on a typewriter. But I was always the only blind kid in my school. So I lived in small towns, small country towns. And I went through college — no other blind kids, no other blind students at my small college. And then I went into the banking finance industry for ten years, and no people who were apparently blind or visually impaired in any of my work settings. And then when I was around 30, I decided to transition into the nonprofit sector. And my first nonprofit job was, I was a development officer for the Seattle Public Library Foundation. I was raising money for the state Talking Book and Braille Library, and my office was actually at the Talking Book and Braille Library. So all of a sudden I was around lots of blind people and got connected through the work with the National Federation of the Blind of Washington and the Washington Council of the Blind, and visited the school for the blind. And all of a sudden I found all these people, just like you were saying, people who've had similar and different pathways through the lived experience of being blind and visually impaired, people who are doing amazing things. And it was — you know, I'm 65 years old, so I became blind in 1966. So my parents were 25 years old. They'd never met a blind person in their life before. My retinas detached and we were not connected with anybody. They didn't know any other blind — they didn't know any other parents of blind kids. I didn't have any blind role models. But now, with the technology we have, you said, put Stephanie D. Sanders into the search engine, people can find you. But we can find each other now. We can connect now. You and I live 3,000 miles apart, and we've kept in touch through technology. And here we are recording this podcast together with technology. So I just wanted to emphasize the importance of community. And I know you are very interested in building and supporting community. And you talk about motivational speaking and speaking to groups, but you also say motivational, transformational speaker and performer. So I'd love to hear about the performance part. You said you had the ESPN goal, and then you started thinking maybe entertainment. So yes, I'd love to hear about that, and what led you to be a performer, and what your performances entail, and how do you use performance to motivate people and to build community?

Stephanie D. Sanders: Well, I know the gifts came from one, God, and then through my mother, because my mother sang opera and gospel music, and I know they came from her. But the thing about it was, I did not sound like Whitney Houston initially in the beginning. So my little dreams were shattered initially. But it didn't stop me. I took that little red radio in the bathroom, and I would just practice for like an hour and come out sweating. But I started singing. And then once I decided to sing—

Dr. Kirk Adams: And how old were you then?

Stephanie D. Sanders: I started singing just in general — I know I was in my very early teens. And I would sing at home, but I had never sung or anything like that until maybe my senior year in high school, when they had a talent show. And that was my very first time singing. And I did a pretty good job.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Do you remember what you sang?

Stephanie D. Sanders: It was Anita Baker. I want to say, Caught Up in the Rapture, by Anita Baker.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I know it well.

Stephanie D. Sanders: And I sang the song. I was nervous, so I just focused in on one of my friends through most of the time. And after that, I really didn't sing much more, because I was focused on sports and wanting to go to college and the Olympics. And I ended up getting injured.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh. What were your sports of choice?

Stephanie D. Sanders: My sports of choice was basketball and track and field. I wanted to go to college for track and field and to the Olympics for track and field.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Wow. Yeah. You had some aspirations.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Oh, yes. I tell you, I did, because that was just a part of me and who I was. But when the show — I don't know if people remember that television show Fame.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, yeah. With Coco.

Stephanie D. Sanders: [Debbie Allen? 00:20:12] and — oh my God. Yeah. And that show came out, I just lost my marbles, because it was something inside of me just fired off. And I was like that. I didn't even say it, but I could feel it. That's me. That's me. So before I even got out of high school, I was already looking, where was I going to go? Was I going to go to a school of the arts, if this school was a real school? Or was I going to go for sports? So I tried both of them, and then I ended up getting injured in a sport, basketball. And that kind of ruined my chances there for track and field.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. That does happen to people.

Stephanie D. Sanders: And I left that alone. And so I said to myself, okay, well, if you can't play sports, what about announcing? So that's when I started doing the sports announcing for the radio station.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Stephanie D. Sanders: And then when I got to college, that shifted to not only doing some sports announcing, but it turned into entertainment hosting and reporting for the college station. So that's how I kind of transitioned over into that. And that's kind of where I've been at at this point. I moved on and started working with a production company for voiceovers, and did that for about — I think I did that for about six months as an intern, and then as a part time employee in Atlanta. Then I found a person and he found me, once again, and through a pen pal service. And I ended up in Seattle. He was out there working. And so I went out there, and we were thinking and planning on getting married and all of that. So I went out to Seattle and started working at a radio station. And so I worked out there for about four or five years at a radio station there.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I don't think I knew you were in Seattle at one point. Very interesting.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Was it? I think it was 1993.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Yeah, I was here. We hadn't met yet. I was here.

Stephanie D. Sanders: And I worked at the radio station for five, and maybe two years. No, because by 2000 we moved to Los Angeles, after going to the Hollywood Black Film Festival.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Stephanie D. Sanders: And what did we want to do that for?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, I—

Stephanie D. Sanders: Know. Boy. Moved to LA. I mean, we went to the Hollywood Black Film Festival to volunteer and got to know more about the place and everything. I ended up in a workshop where we had to do an improv performance. And I was dressed up, and the man told me what I had to do. And I just let loose. I didn't hold back. And it was just natural for me. And I was down there rolling around on the ground in my little dress suit and everything, doing the whole improv. And I hopped up and I went to sit down. I was sweating, and I started sweating. And as I was going to sit down, there was a lady that rushed up to me and hugged me like she knew me. And she just told me how good it was and how just authentic it was. And I was surprised. No one other than one other person had ever talked to me like that. And found out that she was Cee Cee Michaela. She played the officer on a television show, Girlfriends.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Stephanie D. Sanders: She was like a nutty kind of a security guard.

Dr. Kirk Adams: All right.

Stephanie D. Sanders: So she told me — we talked for a while. She walked me to the car with her left hand, and she told me I should consider moving to LA. She's like, you've got it. And so we did. I think it took about a year and a half later, we moved to LA.

Dr. Kirk Adams: All right.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yeah. So I tell you, I did. This little train has been moving for a while.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes.

Stephanie D. Sanders: And I like it. It's just like [unclear 00:24:45] almost non-stop. And sometimes people ask folks like me, creatives and things like that, but why do you do what you do? Why do you keep doing it? Well, because I haven't reached the goals that I want to. There's certain goals in my mind that I would like to get to, and then be able to produce my own projects for television and film, and continue doing my music and speaking. Those are big for me. So when you feel it like that, and you know it's something you can't shake, and when you recognize that, you've got to just dig deep, put your heels in there and keep going. Because hearing that — that's why I wrote my book, One More Day.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, okay. Let's hear about the book.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes. Actually, I came out with a CD entitled One More Day. And then I said, okay, I need to expand that, because there's a place where these songs came from. And I expanded it and went ahead and wrote the book entitled One More Day, and recorded my own voiceover audiobook with the same title. And that's where all of that came from. There are about three or four different scenarios that are in that book that had happened in my life. It just led me to a point of realizing, if you're not really doing what you feel led in your heart to do, I mean, it could literally feel like you're dying, because it's such a deep passion inside of you to give what you were called to do and to use the gifts and talents that we have.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right?

Stephanie D. Sanders: And when you use them, it's really like an adrenaline rush, because you're releasing those things that are already inside of you. And there's so many things that we have inside of us that people need. But if we don't use them, and if we don't give them, then someone may not get what you have to give.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right?

Stephanie D. Sanders: So we have to be open and stay open and available to using our gifts and talents to the fullest.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And being able — your purpose and your passion.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes. Exactly. Yes. And I realized that—

Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm interrupting you before I forget this thought. I'm going to misquote it, and I can't attribute who said it, so I'm not going to try. But there's an aphorism that says that the place you should live is where your deep passion meets the world's deep need. So you are fulfilling a need that the world has. At the same time, you are living out your passion and your purpose. So that sounds a lot like what you've been striving to do.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes, yes, I definitely would say that. I definitely would say that, because you feel a passion not only for what you do, but a passion for the people who can receive it. And I mean, I've been in certain places or situations — like most of the material that I have is inspirational type of music, and some is motivational, some is love oriented. But I remember a time when I was in a group, and I was just singing with the group because the gentleman, one of the gentlemen in the group, was my producer. And it was in a club setting. I was used to going to a club setting and still singing my inspirational material. I had no problem, and I went ahead and did my two or three songs. And by the time I got down, it was a lady waiting on the side, and she had a drink in her hand, but she wasn't drinking it. She walked up to me and she just told me — she leaned over in my ear and told me that that song really touched her, and the message, she really enjoyed the message, and where can she get it? And so I told her that it was available on Amazon, and I also had one with me. And so she went ahead and got that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And that's the One More Day album.

Stephanie D. Sanders: The One More Day album. Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And people can find that on Amazon.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes. They can find that on Amazon.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Get One More Day, by Stephanie D. Sanders.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes, sir. And there's going to be some more material coming out from that. It's just a different spin off from the actual singing style, but I'm going to be coming out with some new material. Well, it'll be new in a sense. The delivery is going to be different. And it's coming up really soon, along with some other material that I have for children and so forth. I'm trying to give it away. But you know.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. It's going to be a surprise.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yeah. That's kind of how I like to function when I do things. A life coach had told me once before to move in silence, especially while you're working on certain things and you're doing them, to move in silence to a certain degree. And I had already been doing that, but it just put an emphasis on it. And then when it's ready and you have it out there, it's like, boom. I'm popping out with it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I like it.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Where have you been? Where have you been doing?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, you make sure to let me know when the boom happens, so I can spread the word across my platforms in my social network. So I do want to talk a little bit about intersectionality. So you're an African American woman. I'm a white male. I'm married to an African American woman. We just had our 41st wedding anniversary.

Stephanie D. Sanders: That's what I want.

Dr. Kirk Adams: We met when we were in college, when we were 18. We have two adult children. Her son will be 40 this year. Our daughter is 36. Then we have a couple grandchildren. And as a person of color, a woman, a person with a visual impairment, you're experiencing a lot of dynamics of stereotypes and misperceptions and structural barriers. And I understand privilege, and I understand my white male privilege. And then I understand when people find out I'm blind, that the white male privilege dynamic shifts, and shifts quite a bit. So I had an instance where our daughter — this is during the time of the pandemic, she was living in New York City, and she bailed out of there because that was kind of the epicenter of the pandemic. She came and stayed with us in our apartment in Arlington, Virginia, for a while. And then she decided she was going to move back to Los Angeles, and she wanted a car. So she did her research, and she figured out it was cheaper for her to buy a car in Virginia and put it on a train out to California, rather than buy it in California and pay the taxes. So she did the research and found the car that she wanted. It was a Honda Fit. She had certain criteria, and she said, Dad, I want you to call these five car dealers and tell them you are Dr. Kirk Adams and you want to buy the car and you're going to pay cash and you want it tomorrow. And what price can you get? So I called and made these calls. I'm Dr. Kirk Adams. I want to buy a Honda Fit. And of course it's not for me, because I can't drive because I'm blind. But I didn't say that. And you know, I started out with 225 and I got it. I [found it to her? 00:33:05] for 17,000. And then she and my wife, who's African American, walked in the next day and bought the car for Rachel. So I had that experience, which I believe my experience would have been different than if a 25 year old young lady was calling. And then when I was applying for jobs, first thing out of college, I had the experience where I would send in a resume and an application for a job. And at that time it was all on paper. So I sent my resume and my nice cover letter on nice paper. And sometimes I'd get a call, and it was oftentimes a phone interview, and I'd do the phone interview. These were banking and finance jobs, and the phone interview would go great. I was an econ major. I had a four point. I had a Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude, and all that stuff that those employers liked in the entry level employee. And they'd invite me in for the in-person interview. Then I'd walk in with my long white cane, and I'd have a slate and stylus so I could take some notes in Braille. And then the confusion would set in on the room, because the employer would be looking at me and thinking, how in the heck could this blind kid do this job he's applying for? So I wasn't getting hired. And I had that experience numerous times. And then I started disclosing in my cover letter. I started saying, I'm blind, I have been since age five, here's how I've accomplished all these things that I've listed on my resume, here's how I'll do this job. And then I wasn't even getting the phone interviews. So I just wonder if you have any reflections on experiences you've had as a Black woman trying to accomplish all these things that you've aspired to, and a person with a visual impairment. Any thoughts or reflections on the things I've just said.

Stephanie D. Sanders: I remember there was one time or two when I was trying to — I think it was a cheerleading team or something. Well, I had two different cheerleading experiences. And I think they were a little hesitant because I had a visual impairment. You really can't see it unless I tell you, or unless my eyes kind of cross up a little bit every blue moon.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Every blue moon. And it was something like that. And then as a Black woman, there have been other times in stores or things like that. I wonder at times when I would submit for certain jobs or whatnot, I wonder about some of that. And even now you wonder about certain things, when you see quite a few people doing particular jobs or whatever the case may be. And you wonder, where was I at? I was somewhere. I was somewhere, and I was literally the only person in the room. No, two of us. But I was there because I was singing. A friend of mine who was Caucasian, she told the people about me, and I was in the room. And at that time I was the only one, until a gentleman came that I knew of. But he had been a commissioner, so he was used to coming to certain events and things like that. So they didn't treat me any different at that time, once I got there. But sometimes you wonder about things like that, that happen in life. And you wonder, did you get that role? You know, did you not get that role, or did you not get that audition for certain things because of this, that or the other? Because a lot of times on the auditions, they'll say like, all ethnicities, you can submit for it. But you wonder at times, do they already have something in mind, but just leaving it open to be fair, you know?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. I mean, I didn't want to dwell on it, but when you said a couple of things, you said, just made me think of bringing it forward. I think it's good to be open and authentic that way. We live in a racist, ableist, misogynistic society. So I think it's good to acknowledge that.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Well, and then this will be a personal thing for me. Most of the time, I don't even think about it, you know, when it comes to that, because I think to myself, okay, whatever God wants me to have, I'm going to get it anyway.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Gotcha.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Earlier on in my audition process, I would go in and I would try to be this, and I would try to be this, and you know what I'm saying? And it wasn't until after maybe that audition I had done in Los Angeles, I was like, wait a minute. Yes, you can be the character when you go in there, but you need to reel that back in and just be yourself. Be the character, be yourself. You don't have to try and transform completely like that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right.

Stephanie D. Sanders: And after that moment, I just never, ever — even when people say, oh, that's such a competitive field, whatever. Okay. And what? That means nothing to me, because I'm still going to submit. I'm still going to do my thing. I'm still going to write letters to people. I'm still going to reach out. Yeah, one of my bosses told me in Los Angeles, when I'm writing to certain people and whatnot, go to the top, write to the person at the top. Henceforth, I wrote to you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Stephanie D. Sanders: I contacted you when you were the president. And it's like he told me, because even if you can't get to them, they can at least bring you down and send you down to wherever you can communicate with someone. But they still know you now, and they know your name now. So I've just been grateful to have a mindset like, I don't care if a billion people submit for this audition, I'm going to submit if I feel that I can do it. If I feel that I can do whatever, I'm going to submit, and that's it. Once I do, then I let it go. And I move on.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And you've mentioned your faith a couple of times. Would you like to talk about how important that is to you?

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yes. Thank you, I appreciate that. My faith is definitely important to me. Instilled from a young age, and didn't really grasp hold of it for myself personally until I went to college. And at first Sunday I said, I'm not going to church. I'm not going anymore. I went all the time.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Mama made me.

Stephanie D. Sanders: I did not go the first time. Ooh.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That messed—

Stephanie D. Sanders: With me. With me, it's like, ooh, I feel really bad right now. I went the next Sunday, and it was just enlightening, just refreshing and everything. And I was like, this is when you have to decide that thing for yourself. And that's what I did. And just continue to get better each year. And age has definitely helped out. I still won't ever reach the pinnacle, but I just keep moving forward, to keep trusting and believing that God has the very best out there for me in every aspect of life. I mean, from love to relationships, business, career things and so forth.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So, yeah.

Stephanie D. Sanders: There are times when, you know, you feel like, oh my goodness, why didn't I get that? Why didn't I get that? So come on, come on, come on. I'm like, come on, come on, come on, Lord, it's right here. But then I have to step back and just say, you need to calm down. Yeah. Because whatever is for you is going to be for you. And I just have to keep trusting and believing that in his timing, it'll all work out. I know we get frustrated. Now please trust and believe, I understand that. Yeah, because I've gotten frustrated at times from a relationship, not having one, desiring one, and career things, especially with the entertainment. But I just have to, like my song says, you've got to just keep holding on. And it's called Hold On Tight. I almost started singing it right there. I almost burst out and start singing the chorus.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Feel free, Stephanie. If you're comfortable, give us at least a couple lines.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Sure, I will. Okay. Hold on tight and don't give up the fight. If you hold on tight, it will be alright.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Stephanie Sanders, ladies and gentlemen.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Yay! Yes!

Dr. Kirk Adams: And so if people are interested in talking to you about coming to speak to a group, or if people want to listen to your music or read your book, what's the best way for people to get in touch?

Stephanie D. Sanders: They can actually email me at [email protected], or you can go ahead and reach out to me online. Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, because I will answer. And we can definitely just make this happen, because I tell you, like my coach told me, I'm like an Amtrak train with no gears and no brakes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, everyone, reach out to Stephanie D. Sanders. In my mind, the D is for delightful. I don't know what your middle name is, but that's how I remember to never forget the D, because you are a delightful person. And so reach out. [email protected], or Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Stephanie D. Sanders. Please reach out to her. She'll be a ray of sunshine in your day if you do.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes. And as for me, my website is Dr. Kirk Adams, [unclear 00:44:48] https://drkirkadams.com. And I have a newsletter sign up there. I'm also on LinkedIn a lot. So it's Kirk Adams, PhD. I'm also, Stephanie, I'm serving as the executive director for a nonprofit based here called the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. And we just launched a Community Coalition, which is a membership organization that people can join and join forces with other people who are passionate about diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, social justice, human dignity. So I'd love to talk to anyone out there about the Coalition. So please reach out to Stephanie. Reach out to me. Reach out to each other. Let's build this community together. And Stephanie, I'm so glad that you reached out to me those many years ago when I was at AFB. I'm glad we met and had that heart to heart conversation in that busy hotel lobby during the NFB convention in Orlando. And I'm so glad we've kept in touch. And thank you for blessing us with a little bit of your song. Oh, beautiful. And you're beautiful. And you have a great rest of your day.

Stephanie D. Sanders: Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you, everybody.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yep. Thanks. We'll see you next time on another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jeff Wissel, Vice-President, Accessibility, Aira https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-09-16-2026/

In this warm and candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Jeff Wissel, Vice President, Accessibility at Aira, a friend he first met in a Washington, D.C. hotel hallway when the Secret Service cleared a banquet room for Secretary Elaine Chao. Kirk opens with his own decade as an Aira subscriber: a demonstration at AFB's New York offices from founder Suman Kanuganti, and the airport navigation that became his most valuable use case. Jeff then traces his own arc, retinitis pigmentosa noticed around age seven, a 28-year career at Fidelity Investments that began before the internet, giving up driving at 34, and years spent covering a non-apparent disability because he had no blind role model and believed he was the only one.

The turning point was meeting Alicia, a blind vice president at Fidelity, who pushed him to start an employee resource group, it now has 8,000 members, and in his own 3,000-person phone center he found nine other people with RP who had each thought they were alone. That led to Fidelity's Office of Customer Accessibility, then four years and eight months as Chief Accessibility Officer at Disability:IN, and now Aira, where he is two months in. Kirk tells his own Disability:IN story along the way, meeting Northrop Grumman's Bob Vetere, pitching CEO Wes Bush on the Seattle Lighthouse's blind and DeafBlind machinists, and winning ITAR certification and a place in the defense supply chain. Both men close on community: Jeff on Aira Explorers and the stigma that disappears when accessibility sits in the accommodations catalog, Kirk on ISDI's new Community Coalition.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that very same Dr. Kirk Adams, speaking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And I have with me today — I'd say it's long enough to say a long time friend and colleague — Jeff Wissel, who's Vice President, Accessibility at Aira. Hello, Jeff.

Jeff Wissel: Hey, Dr. Kirk, how are you?

Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm good. And this is really interesting to me, because two really interesting parts of my life are intersecting here today. When I first was hired by the American Foundation for the Blind to lead that iconic organization, Helen Keller's organization, I moved to New York City from Seattle. And among other things, learned how to travel the subway system using the long white cane, which is an orientation and mobility personal highlight for me. And I got a call very early on from a gentleman named Suman Kanuganti, who said he was developing a system for blind people to connect with human beings who could offer sighted assistance. And he wanted to show it to me. So he and another gentleman whose name escapes me, who I never encountered again, came into the offices at AFB, and we sat in the conference room and I put on a pair of Google glasses, and I downloaded an app onto my iPhone and I connected with an agent who described the room to me. What was on the walls? The view out the window down onto Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. There was a bust of M.C. Migel, the founder of AFB. She described that. After about five minutes of that, it was enough of a wow factor that I was pretty much an Aira fan from then on.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And I've been a subscriber since then — I guess ten years, coming up on ten years. And wow. And Aira has gone through many different steps and evolutions and advancements and improvements. And probably the most intense situations I've used Aira to support me is in airports. Even the Uber driver — you say Alaska Airlines, they drop you off in front of an airport and you're going in, and where's the Alaska Airlines desk? And in the past, you would kind of wait till you heard a friendly sounding set of footsteps: excuse me, can you direct me to the Alaska desk? And sometimes that worked well and sometimes it didn't. But with Aira, you say, can you help me? I need to locate the Alaska desk. And they say, hold your camera up. Turn it a little left. Hold up your phone. Turn a little left, a little right. Okay, there it is. Turn 20 degrees to your left. Walk about 25 feet. Now turn ten degrees to your right. Go about ten more steps, a little left. There you are. You're in line. So it's like magic. For me, as someone who has traveled a lot for business travel, that's probably my most interesting use case. I've also done, many times, I'm in this hotel room and it is really hot and I cannot figure out this climate control.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And which of these buttons does which? How do I — where's the fan? How do I turn it on? My suitcase is locked. These four little rotors need to all be turned to zero. Can you help me get them adjusted so I can unlock my suitcase? So obviously, for me, a lot of travel stuff. But then at some point, not long after, I was at a conference. It was in the DC area. It might have been after I moved to Arlington, Virginia. Honestly, I attended so many conferences representing the American Foundation for the Blind, I don't recall exactly what it was. But I was by myself. I was at a table with other folks, but I was the only person from AFB there. And they said, everybody clear the room. Secretary Elaine Chao was coming to speak, and the Secret Service needs to make sure the room is safe. So everybody get up and go into the hall. And as I merged into the traffic in the hallway, I encountered another gentleman with a long white cane. And it was Jeff Wissel, there with the team from Fidelity. And we stood there and got to talking for about 15, 20 minutes while the Secret Service did their thing. And they cordially invited me to join them at their table, which I did.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And so Jeff and I have been in pretty regular contact since then, as both of us have turned various pages and chapters in our career paths. And so I'm just so pleased to have Jeff here. I'm so excited that the Aira part of my life and the Jeff Wissel part of my life have now aligned. So it's a good thing for everybody in our community. And Jeff, I really just want to hand the microphone to you. I know our experiences with blindness are so very different. I became totally blind very quickly as a five year old when my retinas detached. I know the arc of your becoming a blind guy, it's quite different than mine. And so I would love to hear your reflections on that journey. Hear about your career path, any thoughts you might have for especially young blind people out there wanting to make their way in the world of work. And then really the excitement about Aira — what your role is there, and what you've discovered so far in the short time you've been there, where you see things. What's the current state of the union at Aira, and where you are a visionary. So where do you see things going? So I'm handing you the talking stick.

Jeff Wissel: Awesome. Thanks, Dr. Kirk. And I'm honored to call you my mentor and friend. And as you were describing how we first met, I was remembering it vividly. It was an honor to meet you also, because you're a legend in our space. And when you and I first met, I was pretty new on my accessibility leadership journey, and you really took me under your wing. And I'm forever grateful for that. So for the audience, I'm Jeff Wissel. This month, actually, I'll be turning a young 59 years of age. And the reason I lead with my age is, for me, my personal journey with sight loss started — I have retinitis pigmentosa, or RP. And when I first noticed symptoms, I'll say I was seven years old, somewhere in there. And one experience, I was riding my bike with a friend of mine on our school parking lot near our house. It's dusk time and we're riding and I start pulling ahead of my friend and I'm like, wow, I must be really fast. But what I didn't realize is I was getting ready to run into a rusty chain separating the parking lots, that my friend saw from way behind. Fortunately, the way it hit the tire, the fender, the handlebar had flipped right over me and I didn't get a scratch. And I just ran through this metal chain, and it was like one of the worst experiences I can remember.

Jeff Wissel: And for many in the audience who have retinitis pigmentosa, our journey is probably very similar. Night blindness, one of the key symptoms. For me, I still have sight to lose. I became a late in life runner, so it drives my wife crazy. But when the conditions are light and it's safe enough, I can run. In that same environment at night time, if I didn't have my white cane or my guide dog, Gabe, you would swear I was a drunk man walking, because I can't navigate the sidewalk, just stepping into the grass and everything. But throughout my life, it is a degenerative eye disease. So different things. I started out driving and playing softball, just an alumni league after high school, and I remember being in the outfield and saying, I got it, and ball's hit and I got it. All of a sudden it's like, I don't got it. And ball dropped 20 feet from me. Do that a couple of times and it's like, all right, I kind of have to get rid of that sport. Gave up driving when I was 34. And for many folks, when I tell them that, they're like, oh my gosh. And I reverse it and I say, no, it was really thank gosh. That last year and a half of driving, nothing happened.

Jeff Wissel: But it was so stressful. It's always, to this day, been more of a relief than it's ever been an inconvenience. Even not being able to teach our two daughters to drive, or not being able to just get in the car and go to Home Depot and things like that — as much as you could think, wow, that would really stink. To this day, it's always been more of a relief. I had a really good long career with an amazing financial firm, Fidelity Investments, for 28 years. And when I first started, I was 26 years of age. It was before the internet. I started in 1997 and everything was printed. We had these big magazine style booklets that would have all the information for all the mutual funds that were available through Fidelity, and I was able to read those. And you can imagine being on the phones, there's a lot of information you have to describe verbally over the phone to clients. And after about two or three years, that just started becoming blurry pieces of paper to me. And fortunately, things started getting online and some of that information was online. So lots of challenges along the way, but that's —

Dr. Kirk Adams: What was your first assistive technology? Was it magnification or speech, or what?

Jeff Wissel: For me — sorry, for me —

Dr. Kirk Adams: What did you use first?

Jeff Wissel: I had come across one of those magnifiers that you could do high color contrast. So I think I spent $500 for this thing. And it just reversed the image, so I could hold it over that booklet and it would make the screen black and the text white. And I could magnify it a little bit.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Jeff Wissel: And then —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, there you go. Assistive technology.

Jeff Wissel: Yeah. And this is before cybersecurity was a really big thing. I remember buying a copy of JAWS myself and putting it on my work computer. And I mean, back then you could put stuff on your computer. And that worked for a while. And a little bit later I'll talk about covering a non-apparent disability, but I was able to fly under the radar a little bit. And it's an amazing company. It was nothing about them. It was just Jeff. I didn't have my inner voice. And so that technology worked for a while, until — air quotes — a system enhancement. And then it stopped speaking to me, and a different journey then.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's because your employer changed something internally.

Jeff Wissel: Yes. Yeah. Like a new user interface.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So just a brief aside. My doctorate, PhD, is in leadership and change from Antioch. And I did an ethnographic study of blind adults employed at large American corporations and asked people how they made their way. How did they forge a successful path? And there are some common themes. People had good family support. They had good blindness skills. They had a supportive manager. They had a lot of outdoor activities that have given people a strong sense of agency, strong internal locus of control through experiences in childhood or teen years, often. And then the ninth theme was disappointment. And everyone I talked to had some pretty significant levels of disappointment that they were the only person with an apparent disability who reached that level in their organization, that people who were junior to them, less experienced than them, were promoted beyond them. And a common complaint was just the constant battle for accessibility. And often people cited — often people talked about the fact that their employer would change productivity tools and change systems without taking accessibility into account. So able to do your job one day, and then walk in and not be able to do it the next, and have to fight those battles to regain accessibility. So I just say that you experienced something that many other blind and visually impaired people working in the corporate world of work have also experienced.

Jeff Wissel: Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you weren't asking for accommodations. You were just doing what you needed to do in order to continue to do your job well.

Jeff Wissel: Absolutely. I was in that statistic where there's the disability index that hundreds of companies have taken for 11 years, shows that in corporate America, it's like 3.97% of employees self disclose any form of disability.

Jeff Wissel: We know it's way more than that. But there's all types of reasons. And for me, I think back on my life and I try to put things into life lessons. I did not have information. When the human brain has gaps of information, it fills those gaps in with fear and anxiety and all kinds of misinformation. So I thought I was the only one. I was the only one that I knew that was legally blind in my regional phone center of 3,000 people, and I was putting stuff between my ears that, I'm kind of less than, this is my fault, all those different things. And I didn't have a role model. I didn't have a mentor. I didn't know anyone in my circles who was blind or low vision. So it kind of just went through it the best that I could. And it's — you mentioned family support. My wife and I are celebrating 29 years next month. I have amazing family support, our daughters, my siblings. That was always there. But I didn't have, in the professional world, a mentor.

Jeff Wissel: So I thought there was some mold I was supposed to fit into. 70 plus percent of disabilities are not apparent, or invisible. So you kind of think, oh, well, everybody's just fully abled, and so forth, and I need to be like that. So I was the poster child for covering, or trying to cover, non-apparent or invisible disability. And so fortunately for me, when I was 23 years old, I came across a motivational speaker named Zig Ziglar. And one of his series was See You at the Top. And I say this unequivocally, other than my family and friends, the most important or most influential person in my life is Zig Ziglar. Always listening to that positive message and realizing it's up to me and I can do it. I, to this day, on a weekly basis, I'll listen to him for a couple of minutes when I'm getting ready in the morning. That positive thinking really helped me along my journey of sight loss. To this day, it does.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Cool. So at the time I met you, you were still with Fidelity, but you had a cane in your hand. So you went from covering to something else.

Jeff Wissel: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: On that journey.

Jeff Wissel: So I had an amazing thing happen. I had the opportunity to have a temporary loan position to Margie at Fidelity. She was leading accessibility, and just what an amazing opportunity. What an amazing human being. And had the opportunity to — she introduced me to a colleague that we worked with. She's out of Boston, I'm in Cincinnati, and this woman's name is Alicia. And she had lost her sight due to diabetic retinopathy 20 years earlier. And she was a coach to our senior leadership. And Margie introduced us via email. And so Alicia and I talked and we set up a recurring, like every other week, meeting. I now had someone in my life who was blind. And not only that, she was a vice president and a coach to our senior leadership. And she's speaking to me.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Nice.

Jeff Wissel: We became fast friends and everything. And the most amazing thing happened after our connection. We would tell our colleagues about the connection that we made. And every time I tell someone, they would say, oh, wow, that's pretty cool. I have, you know, whatever, or my daughter was just diagnosed with — and it's like, once I allowed myself to be vulnerable, other folks felt comfortable. And everybody's got something. Even Ken and Barbie have something. It may not be a physical disability, but everybody has something. And when you allow yourself to be vulnerable, it's amazing what goodness happens. And Alicia said, you know, this is really working for us. You want to start an employee resource group for colleagues with disabilities? And I'm like, okay, I'm the poster child for covering this, but you're a vice president and it's working for us. So I went through this chain of events and ended up starting our employee resource group. We started it in my regional phone center where we had 3,000 people. And after six months, it was —

Dr. Kirk Adams: About what year was that?

Jeff Wissel: Oh gosh. 2017, 2018.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Okay. So —

Jeff Wissel: And it was successful. So we were able to have it happen in the other ten regional phone centers. But we would market this in our internal publication a couple times, and every time we put an article, our colleagues from the other phone centers would say, hey, when this gets to Boston or Merrimack, I want to be part of it, because I have, or my spouse has. And so it was just amazing how much we were learning about the disability dimension of our own employee base.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Jeff Wissel: And with that, I found nine other people in my little regional office of 3,000. Nine other folks who had RP.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you were not the only one.

Jeff Wissel: But they all felt they were the only ones, and they were covering. And that's just RP. All the other disabilities then.

Jeff Wissel: And so that led to the opportunity then to think, okay, if we're learning about all this on our own associates, what are our customers telling us? And so we had the opportunity to go through some research and found that, wow, we have a pretty large segment of our client base who have disabilities, that are self disclosing during courses of their financial conversations. And a very common one —

Dr. Kirk Adams: All of the employees of the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind were Fidelity customers. That's where we did our 403(b), our retirement.

Jeff Wissel: I think one out of four people have a retirement plan with Fidelity. It's an amazing company.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Jeff Wissel: And so we found that, wow, if a spouse — say a spouse loves talking to us, but due to the aging process, they're not able to hear on the phone anymore. So their partner has to call in, who never wanted to call us in the first place, has to gather information that they're not familiar with and then share it. And the person who really loved doing this is missing out. It's not a complaint. It's just a life event. But you get enough of these life event stories together and we build a business case, and found that, wow, this segment is a very profitable segment. And especially in financial markets, it generally takes a lifetime to accumulate wealth. So the population skewed older, and all these things. So that helped us to launch an Office of Customer Accessibility and to initiate a lot of accessibility processes. And just an amazing journey. But that vulnerability, embracing vulnerability, was one — I think that is the greatest leadership lesson any manager, any leader, can possess. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, it just knocks down walls and it allows everybody to be their authentic selves.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Jeff Wissel: It's such a great leadership. But the other thing I'll say, Dr. Kirk, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today if it wasn't for every single person that played a role in this. I'll give you a really quick example, because I think this is important for all folks out there who are managers of people. We had our phone center and we had our phones, and the phone had a little light indicator on there. And if it's red, I mean, you got a lot of people holding, right? And you always want to take care of that client like they're the most important person you can talk to that day. But you always have to be efficient and effective and right and everything. And when I went to my manager after Alicia said, we ought to think about this, that light was red. It was during tax season. And when I asked my manager about this, I would love to pursue this. He so easily could have said, Jeff, you know, the light's red. I believe in you. It's a great idea. It's just not the right time right now. His name was Andy. He didn't say that. He said, let's go talk to Matt, our general manager. And that's like, it's a great idea. It's going to be beneficial for our employees and for our customers. And it just went up the ranks. Without, if any one of —

Dr. Kirk Adams: What was the modification?

Jeff Wissel: Oh, no. I'm going to start an employee resource group. So if any one of those people in the leadership roles —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, now's not the right time. That means I'm sorry.

Jeff Wissel: The light was red.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Just meant that we're super, super busy. Okay. Absolutely.

Jeff Wissel: Sorry about that. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's okay. So if the light's red, we don't have time to do anything else but tend to the phones. Gotcha.

Jeff Wissel: That's how cool Fidelity is. Yeah, that type of leadership. But and then everyone else, in addition, after that, could have derailed it. But now there's 8,000 people, 8,000 employees who are active members of employee resource group. It's amazing when you look back how life kind of ebbs and flows.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, that's enough of a legacy for a lifetime for you. You created an employee resource group that's now supporting 8,000 people. That's amazing.

Jeff Wissel: It's an amazing company. Amazing people.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, then actually another pretty significant part of my life and Jeff Wissel intersected, and that was with Disability:IN. So I was hired by the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle in 2000 to be the development director and set up the foundation and the fundraising board and things like that. I entered this field through resource development. And I think around 2003, there was a woman named Marthalee Galeota, and she had managed the Lighthouse Deaf-Blind program, and she was hired as the first disability inclusion accessibility lead at Starbucks, a Seattle based company. And she called me one day and said, there's this thing called the United States Business Leadership Network. And it was started by the U.S. Chamber. It's a bunch of companies that are committed to including people with disabilities. And we're having this conference and you really need to come. So I went to my first USBLN conference, which was later renamed Disability:IN. I think it was 2003, around in there. It was at the Gaylord at National Harbor, Maryland, which is a huge labyrinth, an O&M challenge in itself. And there are probably 300, 350 people there. And they're primarily kind of HR specialists, HR generalists who are trying to figure out how to hire some people with disabilities. And fast forward to today, it's a powerhouse in the corporate space.

Dr. Kirk Adams: If you go to https://disabilityin.org and click on their corporate partners, you'll see the companies that are involved. Thousands of people attend the national conference. Jeff — John Kemp was the executive director when I first went. Jill Houghton has been the executive director there for quite some time now. I met her when she was Jill Deatherage, and she was leading the Washington State Business Leadership Network here in Washington state. So I attended probably 12 or 14 Disability:IN conferences. You mentioned the Disability Equality Index earlier. That's a tool that they developed. I was on the advisory council for developing the DEI. They've got the Disability-Owned Business Enterprise certification program, where businesses owned by people with disabilities can become certified, and their corporate members are committed to doing business with that supply base. So they've done a lot of great things, and one great thing they did was hire you as the Chief Accessibility Officer. So I know I introduced you as Vice President, Accessibility at Aira, which is your new role, but in between Fidelity and Aira, there was Disability:IN. And so we'd love for you to talk a little bit about that chapter of your life, and what your reflections upon the knowledge, skills, experiences, wisdom you gained through that chapter.

Jeff Wissel: We don't have enough time for me to share everything. It was such an amazing — it was a daily pinch myself opportunity. It was an amazing opportunity, amazing organization. But I'll go back a few years, Dr. Kirk, before I even heard of Disability:IN, when I was on loan to the Fidelity accessibility, to Margie. I was doing some Google searching and I came across this thing called the Disability Index. And I downloaded this benchmarking survey and had this gold mine of what the best in class companies were doing around disability accessibility and disability inclusion. And one of the things I noticed was that best in class companies have an accessibility help link in the global footer section of their website. So that way, no matter what page you're on, that link is always down at the bottom there if you needed assistance. Well, I looked at https://fidelity.com and we didn't have that. And so I started reaching out to the leadership. And the disability index, it's a roadmap of everything. There's like ten categories. One's accessibility, one's culture, all these others. And that was my roadmap. And so I would get, reach out, an email internally to someone who I didn't know who they were, but I saw their title, and shared with them that I was on loan to the accessibility team.

Jeff Wissel: I'm an individual phone representative and have a couple questions about this. And it took about a year, a year and a half, and ultimately got that link on the website. The website at that point took like 2.3 million hits on average per day. And I was just waiting for someone to say, now, who are you and why are you asking us these questions? But that index gave me the confidence in the information and the knowledge to have those conversations. Again, just one of those things that happens in life. And another thing was procurement. Companies buy so many products and services, and they don't have control over the accessibility unless you ask for it. So I started reaching out to our procurement team and came across this wonderful woman, Rhonda, and I shared with her what I was looking at. Next thing I know, she's scheduling meetings with the head of procurement. And I'm like, I'm going to get in trouble. I have no authority. But it was amazing, because it made so much sense. So anyway, that was my first engagement with Disability:IN, was the Disability Index.

Jeff Wissel: Well, okay, after that first year and a half and we got some things done, then I asked our leadership if we could take the Disability Index, and we did. And each year we would improve on what we were doing, and I would attend the conferences. So I had the opportunity then to meet Jill and the team, and was pretty involved with Disability:IN from the corporate side. And then there was a voluntary buyout offer and it was a perfect time in my life, and I accepted it. And then this amazing chain of events where Disability:IN had the opportunity for the Chief Accessibility Officer role. And I was offered that, and it was an amazing four years and eight months. I had the opportunity to work with the accessibility leaders and teams and employee resource group leaders, diversity officers, accommodations teams, procurement teams of the world's greatest companies. Like 72 of the Fortune 100 are part of it. And the greatest thing, Dr. Kirk, was not the knowledge — knowledge sharing and information gathering was just amazing. But I always, when someone asks how I'm doing, it's a Zig Ziglar thing, I always say I'm doing beyond awesome. If there's something going on in my life —

Dr. Kirk Adams: I did not know where that came from, but I certainly know that's what you do say.

Jeff Wissel: If something's going on in my life, I'm transparent. I'll share it. But I am constantly surrounded by people who are trying to make a positive difference for others. That was every day of my life at Disability:IN. So the accessibility folks who are making the positive difference, the accommodations teams, that was my every call. That's what that was all about. So that's why, I mean, it was a pinch myself moment every day to be part of that. And again, one of the really cool things about this space, the accessibility space — I quote Jenny Lay-Flurrie when she says, when one of us wins in this space, we all win. And my buddy Mike from JP Morgan would always say, it's oftentimes we're so heads down and just going through everything you need to do to make your websites and digital and mobile and all that accessible, that sometimes it's just good to lift your head up and have this network of competitors and business who are collaborators in accessibility, to know that your positive affirmation that you're on the right track. And it's amazing how many companies are willing to share things where they failed, things that are working, on things that they're having success with, all in the accessibility space. Everybody pays it forward. It's one of the things about the Disability:IN conference — that's an annual conference every year that you mentioned. The most common comment that we hear is folks say, I've never been in a corporate environment where so many people have so freely shared. Nobody's giving away their trade secrets or NDAs, but there's so much that we can share, and together, we're better. And what an amazing experience.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I'll tell you, before we turn the page again to Aira, I wanted my brief Disability:IN story. I was at a conference in probably 2008 or 9, and I happened to be sitting next to a blind gentleman in one of the audiences. And we got to talk. His name was Bob Vetere, and he was an HR leader with Northrop Grumman, and he was totally blind. I had just gotten my first iPhone. Over lunch, he actually taught me how to send a text on my iPhone with VoiceOver. So whenever that was. But I was running the — I was president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here. And we have blind and DeafBlind machinists who make parts for the Boeing company, and have done for many years, and are a top rated supplier of aerospace parts. So it's precision machining. And I was telling him about that. Of course, Northrop Grumman's an aerospace company. So I said, you need to meet Wes Bush. He was the CEO at the time of Northrop. And he said, we're having this reception tonight. It's only for Northrop people, but I'll take you. And so we went. And Wes Bush is a wonderful man. Very busy. People want his time. He said, give him your 30 seconds. So I said, Mr. Bush, so glad to meet you. I'm president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind in Seattle, where we proudly employ 150 blind and DeafBlind machinists who make AS9100 certified aerospace parts for the Boeing Company.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And he said, let me get this straight. You say out in Seattle, you have blind, DeafBlind people who can make AS9100 certified aerospace parts. I said, yes, sir. And he turned to someone and said, get them in the supply chain. So as a result, Northrop Grumman sent engineers and they spent eight or nine months and probably many tens of thousands of dollars to get us ITAR certified, which is international trade in arms regulations, so that we can make parts for defense. And we became a Northrop Grumman supplier, and we became a Boeing defense supplier. And that is my best Disability:IN story. Well, thank you, Bob, in your retirement. Appreciate you. And so now, Aira. Aira comes calling, or you come calling them. I imagine you knew the team there and encountered them and their good work and were familiar. But how — the grass, what is it? A rolling stone gathers no moss. No moss gathered on you between Disability:IN and Aira. One minute I sent you an email that said out of office, no longer with Disability:IN. And then seemed like a week or ten days later, I am now a Vice President, Accessibility at Aira. So tell us about that.

Jeff Wissel: Sure. So it was probably eight years ago when my life was enhanced by Aira. I mentioned, when I was at Fidelity, we launched the Office of Customer Accessibility, and I live in Cincinnati. Well, the headquarters is in Boston, Massachusetts, and I had to fly from the Cincinnati airport to the Logan Airport. And a month or two before I was going to fly there by myself. Again, I wasn't using a white cane at that point. So I'm using the sight that I have left to navigate the airports. And I wasn't a frequent traveler on the airplanes, so I started using Aira. And like you mentioned, Dr. Kirk, the agents are able to provide the visual assistance that I needed and that I need today to navigate confidently and effectively and efficiently. It's a point now where I waste zero mental energy when I think about traveling, because I have the confidence that when I need it, I'm going to have a trained, experienced agent that has amazing resources on their computer that's able to see everything from the — now, my glasses, the camera on my glasses. But you can also just use your phone's camera to help me independently travel. And when I had the opportunity to go to Boston to meet the leadership team, that was our steering committee, Aira and the agent helped me navigate the airport, helped me find baggage claim. I had a picture of my suitcase on the photo portion of the app, so the agent's able to see my luggage coming around the carousel. And Dr. Kirk, all these are steps that help me find my inner voice, to realize that my sight loss is a strength and not the weakness or vulnerability that I was allowing it to be up until I was age 48.

Jeff Wissel: It's something I relearn every day, right? I mean, there's always things that come up where you have to have that internal endurance and mental fortitude to know that, hey, this might be challenging right at this moment. I'm going to be better 20 minutes from now because of what's happening right now. But Aira helped me gain that independence, and to keep my independence, I should say. So I'm an avid user of Aira. So when — every time has a season, and it was just the right time for me to move. I don't change jobs very often. 28 years at Fidelity, four years and eight months at Disability:IN. But a mentor of mine who's blind, who's lived in 16 countries, who is a CFO of a major airline, he's a mentor and a friend. And about nine months ago we were talking and he said, you've been in the corporate world, big business, for 34 years. I've been consulting with startups for quite a few years, in addition to his day job. And he said, it's fascinating. He said, I would encourage you to kind of check it out. So I spent time researching all this. Well, Troy is the CEO of Aira, and I've known Troy for years.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Troy Otillio. Yeah.

Jeff Wissel: He's amazing. He's one of the smartest guys I know. He is unequivocally the most collaborative leader I have ever had the honor of knowing. Now I get to work for him. But I reached out to Troy to get his guidance, and we were talking, and the opportunity was presented to join Aira and to use the experience of 34 years in the corporate world, especially the past ten plus years building a network of folks leading accessibility departments and everything that I mentioned. And my passion the rest of my life, Dr. Kirk, is to help individuals who are blind, low vision, deaf, hard of hearing, really anyone with a disability, if they haven't embraced it, to find their inner voice with their disability, and to do everything that we can to help them realize that what they have is a strength. It's not a weakness or a vulnerability. It's the exact opposite. Because on a daily basis, we all know we have to solve problems. We have to find alternative ways to do traditional things every hour of every day. That is what companies want. They want folks who are innovators and thinkers and who can overcome adversity just even to show up, let alone to be able to perform at their peak. But it takes someone or an experience or a chain of experiences to help folks realize this, because there are stigmas about disability and so forth. And Aira is an amazing tool. It's amazing. You can bring online, on your phone or Meta glasses, in a matter of seconds, a trained agent who can give visual interpretation. We also have a platform for American Sign Language interpreters. You can bring up an American Sign Language interpreter in a matter of seconds, who can make what would normally be an awkward or almost impossible conversation — even just checking into a hotel, if you're deaf, hard of hearing — they can make that like a pleasurable experience, like everyone else is able to have.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. That's great.

Jeff Wissel: It's a tool.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And that's fairly new, right?

Jeff Wissel: So it is. Past couple of years. Yeah. That's great. So Aira is a tool. It's an assistive technology. It's perfect for when it's needed. It's not going to solve everything. I use a golfer's analogy. I'm not a golfer, not yet anyway. But a golfer always has a bag of clubs. You can't get through a golf course effectively and competitively with a putter. Aira is a tool, just like a golf club is a tool. We all need alternative devices. But in all of the circumstances where it works, it's amazing. So that's how I got to Aira. I'm two months now behind the scenes, and Dr. Kirk, it's my — our friend Mike, who encouraged me to check out a startup, was right. It is innovative. It is fast paced. There's no bureaucracy. Stuff moves, especially —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Probably doesn't take you a year and a half to get a link added to a website.

Jeff Wissel: But what's cool — you mentioned Suman. Yeah. Aira, the acronym A-I-R-A, stands for Artificial Intelligence Remote Assistance. This was 11 years ago. That's pretty forward thinking, isn't it?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Jeff Wissel: Yeah. And now we are heavily involved with artificial intelligence, and folks who use Aira for visual interpreting, we call ourselves Aira Explorers. The Aira Explorers have the opportunity to opt in, because Aira is a subscription service.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right?

Jeff Wissel: And Explorers can opt in and allow that interaction. It's anonymized, and so all personal information stripped out of it, but that data can be used then to train a large learning model so that it has actual representative information about the blind low vision community.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And I certainly signed up for that as soon as I learned of it, because I —

Jeff Wissel: You have 72 hours to cancel it if you want, but you can do interaction by interaction. Yeah. And then it's free. That interaction is free to the user. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I have an ongoing dynamic of angst around the fact that the lived experience of disability is underrepresented in the large language models, because they're built on data. The data is gathered by people using technology, and people with disabilities use technology less than people without. So some bad things happen because of that underrepresentation of our lives. So I applaud Aira for efforts to address that by gathering our anonymized data to train the LLM. So good on you.

Jeff Wissel: What's great in my role is, one strategy around that 3.97% self disclosure rate is for companies to provide assistive technologies that kind of bypass the accommodations process. So when companies bring Aira into their enterprise and make it as an accommodation for employees who are blind, low vision, deaf, hard of hearing, they don't have to go through the accommodations process. What's really cool?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. When Suman first rolled out the employment initiative for Aira, the American Foundation for the Blind was the first company to sign up as an employment partner and offer Aira as an accommodation for our blind and visually impaired employees. And proud of that. And it worked great. We were largely virtual. So we had a blind person working from their home office. And this is before [Aira? 00:49:38] desktop. Their computer froze and JAWS stopped talking, and they didn't know what was going on the screen. So they could call up the agent and hold up their phone, figure it out. So it worked really well for workplace accommodations for our blind and visually impaired folks.

Jeff Wissel: I love it. Yep. And when it's part of the process, when it's part of the accommodations catalog, it takes the stigma away from it. Yeah. And so forth. So that's a huge win there. And then think about this. If a company has a headquarters, it's not just employees that are there. They're bringing guests in from their customers and everybody, vendors. I ask leaders to think about this. Do you want to be that company that when someone who is blind, low vision or deaf, hard of hearing, one of your customers is coming in to your headquarters and you don't have an accommodation, you don't have an ASL interpreter on staff, so that deaf, hard of hearing person who uses ASL as their primary language cannot fully participate?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right?

Jeff Wissel: Or someone's blind, low vision, to not have that. Do you want to be that company, or do you want to be that company that wants everybody that enters their headquarters to be able to fully participate? So having it — we can geofence the location. So anybody that comes in that perimeter automatically, the company pays for the minutes then, but everybody's welcomed. Everybody can fully communicate. Effective communications. And we're grateful to Walmart, to Starbucks, to Target, the Cincinnati airport, all these airports. This Sunday I have the opportunity — it's the last home game for the Cincinnati Reds. Great American Ball Park here in Cincinnati, Ohio, offers Aira for visual interpreting and American Sign Language to anyone that comes to the ballpark.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You can go get your hot dog during the seventh inning stretch independently. That's pretty cool.

Jeff Wissel: Find my seat on the way back. And I can get a hot dog for someone else. Yeah. It's incredible.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's fun. Yeah. So I know we're coming to the end of our time. And I know after two months, you're probably still kind of crafting your role. Knowing you, you're shaping that. But it sounds like your focus currently is on working with companies and institutions, airports, businesses. Is that your focus right now?

Jeff Wissel: Yes. Overall accessibility. Definitely business development. A big focus on the corporate environment and global, and then also creating the awareness and the messaging, and always making it innovative, using AI in the right way, and making sure that Explorers are able to, in a matter of seconds, get what they need and be able to just move on to the next task of their day. I think one of the greatest opportunities is really creating that awareness, getting more folks to use Aira, more companies to offer it not only as an accommodation, but to their customers. How cool would it be to be able to go to your local grocery store independently and have Aira helping to find what you need in the aisles and so forth? So anyone that works for a company out there, if you need it as an accommodation, ask for it and we'll help. Anybody that's in the leadership position that thinks, wow, we want folks who are blind, low vision, deaf, hard of hearing to have an amazing experience at our retail stores or our banks, whatever it might be, we can help with that. We can geofence a location in about an hour. It's incredible how fast we can go.

Dr. Kirk Adams: How do people get in touch?

Jeff Wissel: You can reach out to me directly. It's very easy. It's Jeff — jeff at Aira. Again, Aira is A-I-R-A, and since we're a startup, it's dot I-O. So [email protected], easiest way to get ahold of me.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I've been thinking about community. As you mentioned, you thought you were the only one, and I didn't know anyone, didn't have any role models, etc. And then when you met Margie and she had introduced you to Alicia, so you had a blind role model there at Fidelity. And then you started the ERG. And then lo and behold, you find out there's nine other people with RP right in the place you were working. So now there's 8,000 people on the ERG. So I think about community. After I left — I went to a school for blind kids for first, second, third grade. After that, I was always the only blind student in my schools, and then all the way through every level of schooling. And then I was in banking and finance for ten years out of college, regional bank and a large commercial bank. I was the only person I was aware of who was blind, certainly the only totally blind person in my workspaces. So I didn't really start interacting with blindness community until I was 30, early 30s. And I certainly wish I'd done it before. And now with the technologies we have at hand, it's so much easier for us to connect and find others. And you certainly have a community of Explorers that you're building. So I urge people to think about that. People say, especially parents of blind kids, what should we do? And find other parents of kids.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Join in community. I will say that one of my hats, I'm executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion here in Seattle. And we've just recently launched a Community Coalition. It's like Aira, it's a subscription, it's a monthly subscription to join this coalition, that people who are interested in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, social justice, human dignity. So reach out to me if you'd like to learn more about that. You can reach Jeff at [email protected]. You can reach me at [email protected]. I'm on LinkedIn every day. It's Kirk Adams, PhD on LinkedIn. And Jeff, this time flew by. And what I'd love to do is have you come back in about six months and tell us all of the things you've accomplished at Aira. Because I know there will be many accomplishments, having watched your career since we met in that crowded hallway in a D.C. hotel as they cleared the banquet room for Elaine Chao those many years ago. So it's been great deepening our friendship and our professional relationship. Hopefully you'll be coming back through Seattle for another Alaska cruise so we can have another nice sunset seafood dinner on the waterfront. Please give your wife our best from me and Ros, and we'll talk again soon.

Jeff Wissel: Dr. Kirk, thanks for this amazing opportunity. Thanks for being my friend.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Absolutely. We'll see everybody next time for another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. Take good care.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Rachel Antoine, Senior Director of International Operations, Braille Institute https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-09-15-2026/

In this warm and wide-ranging episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Rachel Antoine, Senior Director of International Operations at Braille Institute, for a conversation about Braille literacy and the programs that sustain it. Kirk opens with his own Braille history, losing his sight at five, learning to read and write Braille from Mrs. Summers at the Oregon State School for the Blind, and depending on Braille books through long hospital stays, then traces his three encounters with Braille Challenge: a regional in Tampa, a 2019 keynote at the Braille Challenge gala, and a return visit in 2026 where he met Rachel. Rachel explains that Braille Challenge has grown from one Southern California regional in 2000 to over 80 regionals worldwide, reaching around 2,200 students a year and over 26,000 since it began, with the competition as the vehicle and Braille literacy as the mission. The second half covers the documentary Brailled It, filmed at the 2024 Braille Challenge Finals with GoPros worn by competitors Salome, Isaiah and Christopher Morgan and now touring US cinemas; the program's first African regional in Kenya, where more than 1,000 students took part and many competed with slate and stylus because there were not enough Braillers to go round; and plans to build an East Africa model spanning Uganda and Tanzania, with three Kenyan students due at the 2027 Finals. Rachel also describes the free, non-competitive foundational category any parent, teacher or grandparent can order year-round, and Cane Quest, Braille Institute's orientation and mobility program, whose SoCal regional runs October 3rd at the Los Angeles Zoo.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And very excited today, because we're going to be talking a lot about Braille. I have Rachel Antoine here with me from the Braille Institute. Say hey, Rachel.

Rachel Antoine: Hello. So happy to be here. Thank you, Dr. Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And Rachel, what's your title at Braille?

Rachel Antoine: Yeah. So I am Senior Director of International Operations at Braille Institute. My role is really about connecting programs, people and possibilities around the world. I lead our international work, expanding programs like Braille Challenge and Cane Quest, and building partnerships with organizations, schools, and educators in other countries.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That sounds like a fun job to me.

Rachel Antoine: It is.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So my history with Braille — I think many of you know I'm a blind person. My retinas detached when I was five years old. I was in kindergarten in Lynnwood, Washington, north of Seattle. My parents — I was born when they were in college, so they were in their mid-20s when my retinas detached. They had never met a blind person before. Before I became one very quickly. And they were told that I wasn't going to be allowed to come back to the neighborhood school, that I needed to go to the school for blind children. At that time, the model was, I think, most blind and deaf kids went to a state school. My parents visited the Washington State school. They did not like what they saw as far as the level of academic activity. My retinal surgeon was in Oregon, and someone there at University of Oregon Medical Hospital said the Oregon State School for the Blind is awesome. So I remember visiting there, and they agreed that it was awesome. And they quit their jobs and moved the family down to Oregon so I could go to the Oregon State School. And I had a teacher named Mrs. Summers for first, second and third grade. May she rest in peace. And whenever I'm in a setting where they say, name the person who had the most influence on your life, I say, Mrs. Summers, because she taught me how to read and write Braille.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I was hospitalized a lot. I had quite a number of eye surgeries that were painful and unsuccessful, and I would spend 10 to 14 days after each surgery in the hospital with my head in a clamp, so I couldn't move my head to disrupt the surgery they'd done. So Braille was really my lifeline. And my mom would go to the Braille library of the National Library Service library in Salem and load up the station wagon with boxes of books and bring them to the hospital. And I read and read and read. So Braille has been super important to me. I learned about the Braille Challenge, gosh, ten, 12, 14 years ago. I was aware of it. At the time, I was the CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle. And we had a mentor-protegé relationship with the Lighthouse for the Blind in Port Richey, Florida, which is near Tarpon Springs, the sponge capital of the United States, which is fairly near Tampa. And the Tampa Lighthouse was having the regional Braille Challenge the week that I was there. So my wife, Ros, and I went, and I got to meet the kids and see the activities they were doing. It was a Harry Potter theme, so it must have been when the Harry Potter books were so popular. And I had a chance to talk to the parents while the kids were doing their activities.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And like my parents, most of them had never met a blind person before. They had a blind child. So they had a lot of questions about how to raise a child successfully who is blind. So we talked about being developmentally appropriate, and talked about creating a Braille-rich environment — that your sighted child is surrounded by print all the time. The cereal box, the magazine on the table, the street signs you drive by. And you have to be very intentional with the young blind child to have lots of Braille around. And I said, order some Braille magazines from the National Library Service, and let them play with those and tear them up, chew on them and do what little kids do with board books. And put Braille on everything, label everything with Braille. And then, if your four-year-old sighted child is out playing in the sandbox and tussling with other kids over the toys, you want your blind child out on that playground with their cane doing the same thing. If your 12- or 13-year-old sighted child is taking the bus or getting themselves downtown to meet friends, to do things, go to movies, you need to make sure your blind child is learning how to use public transportation and has orientation and mobility skills, so they can do those same things.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And we talked about the school-to-work transition. You have sighted kids doing chores. Blind kids need to do chores, and you need to figure out different approaches to do things. But you want blind kids doing the same thing sighted kids do, using the alternative techniques of blindness. And literacy is so important. Braille is so important. For me, there was no question — I was totally blind. So in first grade, I learned Braille. Blindness comes in so many variations. Many people who are legally blind have some usable vision. Sometimes there's questions whether or not kids need to learn Braille. And I always say, if the visually impaired child cannot read at the same speed and comprehension as a sighted child, if they're trying to use magnification, they need to learn Braille. Braille is literacy. I say, if listening to materials is sufficient, then why do sighted people still read? So we need to read too. So anyway, I did the Braille Challenge regional in Tampa, and I was given a certificate of Braille wizardry, which I still have, with the Harry Potter theme. And then, my gosh, five, six years later, I became the president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind. And I was visiting partners around the country, and I made a stop at the Braille Institute and sat with — that was before your time, Rachel.

Dr. Kirk Adams: 2016, 2017. Yeah. And got to know folks. And then I got a call in early 2019 asking if I would come and give the keynote talk at the Braille Challenge gala. So again, my wife, Ros, and I flew out and met the kids. And they — [unclear 00:08:13] Rachel will tell you all about this — but they fly in the winners from the regions, and they gather on the USC campus. And [I] remember the Trojan, the hated Trojan marching band — I'm a Husky fan — marched the kids across the campus playing the USC fight song. And they had their competitions, and then the awards gala. And I got to talk about how important Braille is to me, and said a lot of the things I've said so far on this podcast, in a more organized and elegant fashion. But I talked about the importance of Braille and how meaningful it was to be there. They had an alumni who's become a really good friend of mine, a young lady named Caitlin Hernandez, who's totally blind. She lives in San Francisco, and she's a public school teacher. And she gave the alumni speech, and it was just such a moving experience.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And then fast forward to this year, 2026. I was talking to Dimitri Kales, who's now the CEO of Braille Institute, and we were just catching up and comparing notes on a few things. And he said, well, next time you're going to be in the Los Angeles area, let me know. I said, I'm going to be there next week, because my wife and I are visiting our daughter Rachel, who lives in Highland Park. We're coming to visit her. And he said, well, Braille Challenge is next Saturday. I'd love for you and your wife and daughter to be our guests. So we attended again — a beautiful alumni speaker, a great keynote speaker. The kids were so excited to win their awards. And afterwards our daughter Rachel said, I want you to meet Rachel Antoine. So that's when I met Rachel Antoine. And I've been so excited about your vision for the future of Braille Challenge. Another good friend of mine, Stephanie Jones, was there from the Clovernook Center, and they're out of Cincinnati. They're doing wonderful work with you in Kenya.

Dr. Kirk Adams: They showed a preview of a documentary called Brailled It, where some of the competitors were given cameras and filmed, and they've made a documentary which is now airing around the country. So the Braille Challenge is on the move and expanding under your leadership. And I just am so pleased to get to know you and to have you here, and just love to hear you give more detail about Braille Challenge and Cane Quest and whatever you would like to share with the good people listening.

Rachel Antoine: Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Adams. That was such a beautiful summary. So as you mentioned, Braille still matters. We're seeing a decline in Braille literacy and, in many places, a decline in opportunities for students to receive Braille instruction. And internationally, there are additional challenges like limited research, fewer educators, limited resources, and inconsistent access to Braille materials and technology. But technology doesn't replace literacy. Braille is still essential for learning spelling, grammar, punctuation, written communication, proofreading, and independent reading. So technology gives you access to information, but Braille gives you that literacy. Braille is a lifelong skill, and that is what makes Braille Challenge so powerful. Braille Challenge was born in the year 2000 as an arena for blind students to participate in an academic competition, the only one of its kind. But Braille Challenge is much more than a competition. The competition is the vehicle, but Braille literacy is the mission. It gives students a reason to practice their Braille skills in something meaningful to work towards. It gives them a sense of belonging among their peers, a sense of community. They're not just learning Braille, they're using Braille. So over the past 26 years, Braille Challenge has grown from one regional competition in Southern California to over 80 regionals across the globe. In each season, students step up to the challenge in 38 US states, Canada, the UK, Australia, Ireland, and most recently, this past spring, Kenya. And I attended the Kenya regional. It was amazing. I'll chat about that as well.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Awesome.

Rachel Antoine: Yeah. And later this year, several schools in India will be participating in Braille Challenge for the very first time. And all of this is provided at no cost to each and every participant.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And so it is a skills competition, right? So it is reading Braille, writing Braille, spelling. And blind people who don't read Braille, who listen to everything, are terrible spellers. So I'm glad to see spelling. And then I think there's something about graphics, about understanding tactile graphics. So could you tell a little bit about the nuts and bolts of what these young people go through as far as the various competitions they do?

Rachel Antoine: For sure. So students are practicing reading comp, spelling, speed and accuracy — which is them listening to an audio file and doing formatting — and then proofreading, where they're reading a document and finding all the errors, and then tactile graphs. So they're reading a map, a chart, a cell, anything like that. So they're really using Braille. They're really getting their hands on Braille. And there are not enough opportunities in the classroom for teachers to provide Braille materials. So teachers are really eager to join our program and get their hands on free Braille materials, free charts and graphs. And we're just really happy to provide all these teachers with these materials.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So with the 80 regionals, how many total? It's K through 12, right?

Rachel Antoine: Yes, yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So with 80 regionals, about how many kids roughly participated this year?

Rachel Antoine: Yeah. So in 2026, we had around 2,200 kids participate, and annually it's around that. It's going up with our larger international regionals. But since the year 2000, we've had over 26,000 students take on the Braille Challenge. So that's a really large number. And we're impacting lots of students around the globe. But there's so many more blind students than 26,000. So we want to reach all the schools for the blind and find these students where they are, to give them access to Braille Challenge.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So tell me a little bit about your background. What brought you to Braille Institute?

Rachel Antoine: Sure. Yeah. So I'm originally from Boston. Go Celtics, go Patriots, Red Sox. But I started at the Mass Commission for the Blind as a program manager. And I knew I always wanted to move to California. I love SoCal. I was tired of the snow. So I found an opportunity at Braille Institute, and I've always been in our — we used to be called National Programs, now we're called International Operations. So I've always worked on the Braille Challenge program, in addition to Cane Quest. And I did a little bit of work with our youth programs as well. But Braille Challenge has always been home for me.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Did you have exposure to blindness as a young person? What brought you originally to the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind?

Rachel Antoine: I was working in state government, and I was working at the Division of Professional Licensure. I was doing all the background checks, and when they heard from me, they were getting the bad news, because they had to go in for a hearing, I needed additional information. So it was really making a lot of tough phone calls. And I [said to] myself, I need to do something more. I need to do something more meaningful. I want to work with — I want happy news. Yeah. So I found a role at the Mass Commission for the Blind, and then just fell in love with the community. What a powerful community. And the students, the adults — it's just been great to work with this community. So ever since the Commission for the Blind, now at Braille Institute — yeah, this community has become home for me, so I really enjoy it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: All right. So when I was there in 2019, I met a young man who was probably 11 years old named Christopher Morgan.

Rachel Antoine: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And he very, very authentically believed in his bones he was going to be the first blind NBA player, and he was doing some stuff with the Atlanta Hawks. And Ros and I had a nice time, sat with his mom. And then lo and behold, 2026, there he is, all grown up, heading off to college, his final year with Braille Challenge and, of course, winning again. And he is one of the three main competitors who did the filming that has become the Brailled It documentary.

Rachel Antoine: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And I had David Grabias, one of the producers of the documentary, and Christopher on this very same podcast.

Rachel Antoine: Oh, wonderful.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Seven weeks ago. And Christopher said that as he matured and became a teenager, he did come to realize that he probably would not be the first blind NBA player, but that he could be a world-class athlete. So he threw himself wholeheartedly into the sport of goalball, which was designed for us. And he is the youngest member of the US men's goalball team. So we talked about that. And so Brailled It is being screened around the country. There's a screening in Seattle. I know there's one at Library of Congress. I saw a trailer. I haven't seen the documentary yet. About the time this podcast airs, I'll be at the Seattle screening. So I'm very excited about that. I sat at a table this year with one of the other three main folks, Isaiah, who is a avid hockey fan from Canada. And when we first came up, I was greeted by a young lady named Salome, also the third of the trio. And Salome, very friendly, very charismatic, said, I want to get in there because I care about eating and I care about winning. She did eat and she did win.

Rachel Antoine: So I love that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, it was good. So could you tell us a little bit more about the documentary and how that came to be, and what people know about that?

Rachel Antoine: Of course. Oh, I am just smiling from ear to ear talking about it. My colleague Madeline Hernandez just spoke at the Library of Congress yesterday. There was a screening of it there in front of congressmen and women and lots of powerful people in DC. So just kudos to Madeline, Lisa Lepore and Brian Sheridan, who represented Braille Institute yesterday. But Brailled It is such a powerful film, because it puts blind people at the center of their own stories. It showcases the creativity, talent and lived experience of blind youth, while challenging some of the assumptions many may have about blindness. And then all this happens around Braille Challenge. So Braille Challenge creates an opportunity. It celebrates the talent of these Braille readers. And Brailled It makes sure that these youth have the platform to be seen, heard, and recognized for what they do, not just for being blind. So Brailled It was filmed at our 2024 Braille Challenge Finals. Salome, Isaiah, and Christopher were picked to star in the film. And it just authentically showcases their day to day as they're going through the program. We have a three-day weekend where we bring the students out from all over the world, and we highlight them at the second tier of the program at our Braille Challenge Finals. And it's a culmination of the Braille Challenge experience. Students around the world spend months preparing, competing at regionals and building their skills, and then those top students come together at finals.

Rachel Antoine: So it's not just a competition. It's a celebration of Braille literacy, achievement, confidence, and community. And then those three kiddos had GoPros to capture their first-hand experience throughout the program. So it's so fun. It's hilarious, it's sweet, it's heartwarming. There's something for the kids, for the parents, for the siblings. You find yourself in every one of these characters in the movie. So it's just really powerful. And it's screening all across the US. It's at film festivals, in the film festival circuit. I'll be going up to San Francisco this weekend to see it at the Roxie Theater in SF. And it's screening in Seattle. It's screening in Atlanta. It was just screening in New York City, DC yesterday, in LA all next week starting this Friday. So we are just really, really excited to bring this film to new audiences, and to change the assumption about blindness. One of the most exciting parts of the film — it reminds us that access isn't just about providing a service or a tool, it's about creating an opportunity for people to participate, create, compete, lead, and to tell their own stories. So that's really what it is about, and I'm just so happy to be a part of it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm looking forward to it. I remember at the gala this year, we all gave a hearty one, two, three — Brailled It!

Rachel Antoine: Oh yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That was fun. Yeah. How — if someone's listening and they know a blind person K through 12 who would benefit from more focus and exposure to Braille and connecting with other blind kids… After third grade, after I finished at the school for the blind, I was the only blind student in all of my schools from fourth grade through my PhD. Really. So I was never around any other blind kids. So I could just feel the connection and the friendliness, and the kids rooting for each other and clapping for each other. And that was such a sense of camaraderie. I was very happy for them. I was a little melancholy that I didn't have those experiences as a blind kid. But I'm sure glad they were having that, thanks to the Braille Challenge. Thank you. So if someone listening is a blind kid, knows a blind kid, or is an adult who wants to support Braille Challenge in some way, how do people get involved and get engaged?

Rachel Antoine: Absolutely. So help us bring Braille Challenge to your community. It might already be there. There might be a regional near you. If you check out our website, https://www.braillechallenge.org, you'll be able to see our list of regionals. So we have regionals all over the world, but we want to grow. If you don't see a regional in your community, reach out to us at [email protected]. That's our email address. And let's have a conversation. Get your students involved. Get your youth involved. Braille Challenge looks very different all over the world. We have regionals that are ten students, 20 students. And then we have the Kenya regional — that's a thousand students, and we're aiming to make it 2,000 students. So no matter the size, you can bring Braille Challenge to you. We also have our foundational category, which is a non-competitive category for students — early Braille learning, Braille immersion. And you can order those materials any time of the year. And that is Braille Challenge. So we want these students to be part of a community. As you mentioned, a lot of these kids are the only blind students in their school. But when they come to Braille Challenge, they're part of a community, and they're celebrated, and they realize that they're not alone.

Rachel Antoine: So we want—

Dr. Kirk Adams: Tell me more about the — did you say foundational series? Okay. Tell me. So you can order materials and they're sent to you. It's not part of the competition.

Rachel Antoine: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So what do the families receive?

Rachel Antoine: Yeah. So our foundational category is for Braille immersion, early Braille learning skills. And this is non-competitive. So you receive charts and graphs, spelling and proofreading or reading comp. And then you can go on our website and order, and we will send you those materials year round. So we do have [a] specific timeline for Braille Challenge season, in order to be eligible for finals. But foundational — you can order these documents year round. If you're a parent, if you're a teacher, if you're a grandparent, and you want your grandchild to have more Braille materials, feel free to order them through us, and they will always be free of charge. And we look forward to getting more Braille in the hands of your students.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes, yes. So as I talked [about] earlier, at the beginning — to create that Braille-rich environment for blind kids, so they have the same amount of exposure that sighted kids have to print.

Rachel Antoine: Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you go to https://braillechallenge.org, order those foundational materials, give them to the blind kid in your life, please. Okay. So glad that you — I didn't realize that that was available.

Rachel Antoine: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And then should we talk about Cane Quest, too?

Rachel Antoine: Sure. Yeah. Or can I make one more?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Please. You can do whatever you want.

Rachel Antoine: Thank you so much. So we want to get Braille Challenge into organizations and students around the world who need it. So Kenya has been a really exciting part of Braille Challenge's international growth. In 2026, we launched our first Braille Challenge program in Kenya, and it was also our first regional competition on the African continent. We partnered with Clovernook, who was already doing important work in Kenya, and the response was incredible. More than 1,000 students participated, along with 200-plus educators across three schools and 16 partner organizations. These students were celebrated for their Braille skills. They build confidence. It wasn't just a competition. We were bringing together educators, teachers, building skills and creating more awareness around the importance of Braille literacy. So this was really felt and powerful across the country. And what's next? So we're looking at year two already, with plans to expand beyond Kenya and building an East Africa model that includes Uganda and Tanzania. So two additional countries. And the goal is to reach 2,000 students and over 300 educators and coordinators, continuing to build that local leadership. And then one of the most exciting parts of this program is that three Kenyan students will be joining us at Braille Challenge Finals in 2027.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Nice.

Rachel Antoine: Yes. So for these students, this is an incredible opportunity to meet other Braille readers from around the world, to experience Braille Challenge Finals firsthand, and to see themselves as part of a larger global Braille community. And what makes this work so meaningful is that it started as a regional competition in Kenya, but it's now creating a pathway for students to participate on an international stage. So they're not just coming to compete, they're coming to show what's possible. And it's just so powerful. It's powerful.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. 2,000 kids in Africa will be participating [in] Braille Challenge 2027. That is tremendous.

Rachel Antoine: And I attended that regional in person. I was in Kenya for three weeks, working with those students, getting to know the educators, setting up the contest rooms, the classrooms across the campuses. So it was really powerful. And I can't wait to go back for year two. Hopefully it's in May of '27. Yeah, we're looking for support to join us on that trip and to help us make this possible again. So please do not hesitate to reach out.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you mentioned earlier international Braille and lack of resources and materials and technology. So were there Perkins Braillers going, or were—? How's the resource situation for kids learning Braille in Kenya?

Rachel Antoine: Yeah. Kenya really was the model for what an international Braille Challenge can look like. Resources, they were lacking. There weren't enough Braillers for every student. Lots of students competed using our slate and stylus, which we haven't seen before. But they're showing what's possible. When we add more Braille Challenge across the world, we're not just trying to add countries to a map. We're trying to build a global ecosystem for Braille literacy that is locally led and sustainable. And the ultimate goal is for communities to have the people, the training, the partnerships, and the resources they need to continue the work long after our initial investment. So year one in Kenya proved that demand. Year two is about building that capacity, getting them more resources. So that's what we're working on — getting those students more Braillers, getting more slate and stylus. Some students prefer slate and stylus.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I learned how to use a slate and stylus when I was six. And I carry one in my briefcase because the refreshable Braille display tablet doesn't work.

Rachel Antoine: Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I greatly appreciate the slate and stylus, which, for those of you who don't know, is a method of writing Braille by hand with a stylus that pokes out the dot from the back side. So you need to learn to write right to left, and reversing each of your Braille characters. It's a bit of an art. But I love that our kids [are] using slate and stylus. So I assume you would accept a donation, if anyone listening wants to donate and designate their gift to support the Braille Challenge.

Rachel Antoine: Absolutely, absolutely. The need is so great out there in Kenya, and our regionals domestically, and just all over the world. Yeah, we want to be able to do this program wherever it's needed. We want to meet the students where they are. So your donation will make a difference. Sharing the word, sharing some of our posts, following us on LinkedIn and Facebook, and getting involved. We really would love your support in making sure Braille literacy is here to stay. With technology everywhere you look — and it's a good thing as well — but technology and Braille can work together. And Braille Challenge is all about that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I have a slate and stylus in my bag. I have a Perkins Brailler right here. I have a [unclear 00:31:43]-character Braille display attached to my laptop in front of me. I've got a Braille tablet, Android-based tablet, with 32-character refreshable Braille on my lap. Got a Braille embosser sitting right behind me.

Rachel Antoine: Amazing.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And when I did my doctoral work — I have my PhD in leadership and change through Antioch University — my doctoral thesis was an ethnographic study of blind adults who are successfully employed in large American corporations. So I interviewed blind people who are working at all the name brand companies that we all know. And there were nine themes that emerged around what were the conditions that allowed people to be successful and create these successful career pathways. And blindness skills was prominently featured. So people had to have blindness skills. If they were Braille readers — there was a variety. So some people were low vision and could use magnification, but everyone used technology. Everyone used some sort of technology. The blind people were all Braille readers. And orientation and mobility really came up. You have to be able to travel independently and safely through the world. If you're going to be in the world of work, you're going to have to navigate workplaces. Many of these folks traveled for work, so [you] need to be able to maneuver an airport and get on planes, trains and automobiles. And so I know that you at Braille Institute also realize the importance of strong orientation and mobility skills. And you have Cane Quest, and I'd like to hear a little bit about that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So for those who don't know, orientation is really the concept of knowing where you are and where you're trying to go, and what pathway you should take. So being oriented to your surroundings and your destinations. And mobility is the concept around being able to move through spaces efficiently and safely and gracefully. Most people do that with either a long white cane, which is what I use — I learned to use when I was six — or a dog guide, or some combination of those things. So let's hear a little about Cane Quest.

Rachel Antoine: Absolutely. So Cane Quest is our orientation mobility program. It's been around since 2009. And Cane Quest is about building confidence and independence. It gives blind and low vision students the opportunity to practice and demonstrate real world orientation and mobility skills in a fun and supportive environment. It turns the skills that students practice in everyday life — like using a cane, navigating routes, crossing streets, identifying landmarks, and problem solving — into an experience they can be proud of. It makes mobility fun. And this year, in addition to last year — this is year two — that Cane Quest is taking that experience somewhere completely new: the Los Angeles Zoo. So we're giving students a chance to use their own skills in a real dynamic environment rather than a traditional classroom or school setting. The zoo is such a fun setting, because there are sounds, smells…

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's making me smile. That sounds like fun.

Rachel Antoine: Yes. Sounds, smells, pathways, landmarks, people, and unexpected situations that students have to navigate. It makes the experience feel like a real adventure. And students will work through different [unclear 00:35:32] navigating stations. It's also a great community and family day, for the general public to see what young blind youth are capable of. We're putting independence and mobility skills front and center. So it's such a fun program that is happening. Our SoCal regional is happening October 3rd at the LA Zoo. We're also partnering with LA Galaxy, our soccer team, and Guide Dogs of America, who are bringing ten guide dog puppies.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Nice.

Rachel Antoine: So we're really, really excited. It reinforces that idea that blind and low vision kids should have access to the same opportunities to explore, learn, have fun, and participate in their community. So that's what this is about.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's awesome. So Rachel, you are doing great work. Braille Institute, kudos to the whole team.

Rachel Antoine: Thank you so much.

Dr. Kirk Adams: It was great to be at Braille Challenge again this year. I hope to be back soon.

Rachel Antoine: Absolutely.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I jotted down that if people want to reach out to you by email, it's [email protected].

Rachel Antoine: Yes. So that's our main one. Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. And there is a separate website, https://braillechallenge.org. People can reach out to you and learn more and get involved. For me — if you want to get in touch with me, I'm on LinkedIn every day. It's Kirk Adams, PhD on LinkedIn. And then my website is DR as in doctor — https://drkirkadams.com. I have a newsletter you can sign up for. I have a link to my book, which came out in July. It's called The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion, which is geared toward employers who are out there battling to attract and retain the best and brightest talent — how to do that by being inclusive of people with disabilities. And I'd love to talk to anyone, anytime, about any way I could be helpful in creating opportunities for blind people to thrive in this world, whatever thriving means to them. Especially interested in creating pathways for blind kids to move into adulthood and flourish and thrive. So Braille is important. Essential. Good orientation mobility skills is a must. And Rachel, you're helping make that happen. So I really appreciate you having me. Thank you to Braille Challenge. I'm glad you were here with me today. And keep up the good work. And I'm looking forward to seeing Brailled It this weekend.

Rachel Antoine: Yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me today. And at the heart of all of this, we just want one message: access creates opportunity, and representation shows people what's possible. So get involved, spread the word, and help us make sure that Braille opportunity and possibility are accessible to everyone. So we're doing that through Braille Challenge and Cane Quest. So thank you so much.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Thanks, Rachel.

Rachel Antoine: Thank you.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Tom Bobinszki, Owner, Even Grounds https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-08-20-2026/

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams sits down with Tom Babinszki, owner of Even Grounds and a travel and tourism accessibility consultant, whom he first met across an exhibit table at a Kennedy Center LEAD Conference, where, as Kirk tells it, "what to my wondering hands should appear" was a 3D model of the White House, pillars and porticos and all. Babinszki was born completely blind in 1970s Hungary, where a close family member advised his parents not to take him out on the street because it would be embarrassing, and suggested that one day he might watch the geese at the end of the village. His parents decided instead that their son would have exactly the education everyone else had. A scholarship year at the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia followed, then Trinity College in Hartford, then George Mason, three years directing the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Hadley School for the Blind, and some twenty-five years in digital accessibility, including teaching thousands of people at IBM.

Even Grounds grew out of a failure. A lifelong traveler, "my favorite smell is jet fuel," and a coin collector who bought building replicas in museum gift shops just to understand where he was standing, Babinszki hired a designer and a 3D printing company and produced models of Washington landmarks, only to find his blind friends admired them and had no wish to own fifty large buildings. Museums and schools did. The company he founded in 2023 now pairs holistic accessibility consulting with tactile 3D work for the Toledo Zoo, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Opera, a Kenyan school for the blind through Clovernook, and a Braille map from the 1800s remade so it could finally be touched. One small tactile map of a public restroom drew thirteen hundred LinkedIn likes against his usual fifty. His advice to listeners is the whole argument in four words: don't ever accept that something is not accessible.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a guest who's doing some very interesting things to make the world more accessible for us who are blind and visually impaired. Today I have Tom Babinszki. He's the owner of Even Grounds. He's a travel and tourism accessibility consultant. Say hey, Tom.

Tom Babinszki: Hi, Kirk. Thank you for your invitation. I'm glad to be here.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, absolutely. So several summers ago I attended a conference here in Seattle that was sponsored by the Kennedy Center for the Arts. It's called the LEAD Conference, and it's about leadership and accessibility of the arts. And one of the exhibitors there was Tom. And [I] visited his room, his booth, his table — and what to my wondering hands should appear, but 3D models of buildings and architectural wonders that I had never seen and had no concept of what they looked like. I lost my sight at five when my retinas detached. I cannot remember anything visual at all. I cannot conjure up a visual image in my mind. I cannot recall colors. If you say blue, in my mind I see the Braille characters.

Tom Babinszki: Blue — I'm the same way.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. But I remember having in my hands a 3D model of the White House, and I was so surprised by the pillars and the porticos and the verandas. And it was not a symmetrical situation. It had a lot going on. And it was very interesting. And I spent quite some time with the 3D model. And Tom and I recently reconnected, and he is creating accessibility for museums and various sites, points of interest. One thing he is doing that I applaud so heartily [is] 3D maps of [unclear 00:02:49] public restrooms. How many times have I searched for the paper towels? How many times have I decided, no, I'm not going to wash my hands, because I'm going to pick up more germs trying to find the faucet and the soap that I'm going to lose. So Tom's doing some really cool stuff. We just want to hand it over to you and have you talk a little bit about your experience with blindness, your personal lived experience — and then you've had such a long and varied career in accessibility, I know 20, 25 years at least. So I would love to hear the summary of that, and how you came to start Even Grounds, what the history has been so far, where you're at, what you're doing now, and then what do you see for the future? So Tom, it's over to you.

Tom Babinszki: Thank you. Kirk, if you don't mind, let me start from the very beginning, from where I was born. Because I think that's pretty relevant to where I am today. I was born in the '70s in Hungary, and that was one of those socialist countries in Eastern Europe. So education for blind people was rather limited. There was a school for the blind. But what started everything was that when I was born, there was a close family member who said that my parents shouldn't take me out on the street because it's embarrassing. And then she said, well, maybe when he grows up, maybe he can watch the geese at the end of the village. Now, mind you, I think watching the geese at the end of the village was going to be much more difficult than my two master's degrees, but I didn't know what she had in mind. But that was the point where my parents said that, regardless of how — they had no idea how to do it — but this kid is going to have the same education that everybody else [has]. And that's when I was a baby.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So did your parents — were there other brothers and sisters already, or were you the first?

Tom Babinszki: I was the first at that point, and later I had a brother two and a half years [younger?] 00:05:03. So we're pretty close, growing up.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, so high five to your parents. Good for them.

Tom Babinszki: Thank you. I'll tell them. Because it was incredible what they did. And they took me to — where they found a school for the blind, they took me there. I studied there and then went to high school. But then I had to advocate a lot for myself, because there really wasn't too much advocacy. So I had to fight for every single thing. All I heard is that you cannot do it because you are blind, and blind people can't write. So I heard it enough. And I'm very thankful to every one of those people, because —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Did you get blindness skills instruction? Were you [taught?] 00:05:56 Braille and cane travel?

Tom Babinszki: [Taught?] 00:05:59, actually. So when I was 16, I got a scholarship. It was an international scholarship at the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia. And I spent there a year, and I got lots of mobility instruction there and other skills. Actually, I just came back from the LEAD Conference last week, which was in Philadelphia. It was amazing to be back after 30 years and wander the same streets.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Cool.

Tom Babinszki: But then, in the meantime, life was difficult, because my parents gave me the education, but what they couldn't give me is, they couldn't stop the discrimination. Every time I looked for a job, they either told me you can't do it because you're blind, or somehow they started convincing me that I need a car and the driver's license, in a city where public transportation is amazing.

Tom Babinszki: And then I got a scholarship to the US, and I came here and I finished my master's degree, and I got a job. And —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Where did you go to school?

Tom Babinszki: At that point, I went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. And later, when I moved to Washington, DC, and I was working in accessibility, I went to George Mason.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Tom Babinszki: So this country welcomed me. They didn't ask me what is it you cannot do. They told me that you're welcome to help us with anything that you would like to, and do what you can, and we'll support you. I get so much support from people that I didn't even know, because they never looked at me as a blind person. They looked at me as an accessibility consultant. And sure, I know we still have problems, and we do, and that's why I'm still doing what I'm doing. But at least I was able to succeed. And so I started working for accessibility consulting companies. And I'm not going to keep it too long here, but at some point, for three years, I was at the Hadley School for the Blind, where I was the director of the Center for Entrepreneurship.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, I did not know that.

Tom Babinszki: Yeah. I built that program. George Abbott started building it, and then under his leadership, basically I got the whole thing, and they told me build it from scratch. And that was a ton of fun. But what's most important here is that the travel bug bit me when I was young, very young. And I love traveling. You know, my favorite smell is jet fuel.

Tom Babinszki: And every time I have a chance, I go. And I hardly ever had — other than during Covid time — in my life when I didn't have an upcoming airline ticket to be used. But that interest in travel gave me something, that it wasn't just enough to be there. I wanted to experience so much. And some of the things that I really wanted to experience was buildings. Every time I went somewhere like a more famous building, I always started out at the gift shop, because some of the places have building replicas.

Tom Babinszki: And when they had it, it was interesting to buy that building and understand where I am and what it looks like. Because everything is just large and cold, and walls and bricks and doors, right? One building can be like the other, unless you learn more about it. But many, many buildings didn't have replicas. And so I did all kinds of accessibility stuff. I did IBM.

Dr. Kirk Adams: But if they do, they're very simplistic.

Tom Babinszki: It could be anything, but for the most part, yeah, oftentimes. But that's much better than nothing.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Sure.

Tom Babinszki: And yeah, I was mostly in digital accessibility for about 25 years. And one day I said, well, let's do something about it. And then I hired a 3D designer, and I hired a 3D printing company. And we designed a few buildings from Washington, DC.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And was it just part of your regular job, or was this something you were doing on the side?

Tom Babinszki: No. At that point, that was just something on the side.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Tom Babinszki: And we printed out a few buildings, like the White House and Pentagon, Capitol. And so in the meantime, I was traveling a lot for work. And I found that many people asked me questions about how blind people travel. Now, those were good questions, but not from the places where I got them, because those were coming from the hospitality industry, from people who should have had some understanding of people with disabilities. So in the meantime, I started a travel blog. It was travel for blind people, but mostly targeting sighted people. But interestingly, I reviewed so many accessibility features and locations that mostly many blind people picked up on my blog. So that's when I started the blog, and I started making these buildings. And then ultimately my blog developed into a consulting business. And that's Even Grounds, that I started in 2023. So anyway, I got those buildings ready and I showed it to a few friends, and they said, well, make some more. I made some more, and I made some even more. And then I showed it to more people and they loved it. So I started selling them on eBay and Etsy. And none of my blind friends were buying it. I said, you gotta be kidding me, you said those were nice. And they said, yes, those were nice, but I don't want to have 50 large buildings in my house. And I was sad. You know, that was the first failure. Actually, my business grew out of this failure.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Tom Babinszki: Then I started thinking, okay, now blind people don't want to have it. And I talk more to them. Okay, what do you want to do with it? They said, we just want to touch it. We want to understand it and move on. I don't want to have it, though. Who would want to show it and not give it to people? Museums, schools. And so I started working with museums and creating replicas. And then I came across the Clovernook School for the Blind, and the Clovernook Center for the Blind [and] Visually Impaired.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Cincinnati. Yeah.

Tom Babinszki: Right. And at that time they started some work with a school for the blind in Kenya. And so they ship 3D printers and filaments to the schools in Africa and [unclear 00:12:34] other continent. And they design buildings, maps, educational tools. And they send the files so that people can print it out there, which is much cheaper than printing it here and sending it. So I got more involved. I hired more designers by that time, because I was selling those buildings, and we started working together. And that's how I ended up creating maps. So first we created the map of Kenya, and then the map of Ohio, because — why not? That's where I live.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Tom Babinszki: And then all kinds of other things, like biology tools — you know, like a human-size heart that you can open and explore the inner working of it. And then just one thing after the other, and then started consulting with museums. The other thing that's really interesting is, I'm a coin collector, and I went to many, many museums — before my guide dog, [and] who was my guide dog. Well, I probably went to the most money museums, I believe, 15 in six countries. And I found that they were so interested in showing me everything, because by default the coin museum is not necessarily for blind people. It's actually pretty darn boring, because everything is behind glass.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Glass. Right.

Tom Babinszki: Yeah. But they went out of their way to show me things that was okay to touch. And obviously not everything, because some are just expensive and can't be touched. But then, so I started working with these museums and showing them, okay, if you could do it for me, you could do it for so many other people. Because that's all we are looking for. It's okay if most things are behind glass, but if we can have one or two hours of experience that's relevant to your mission, to your organization — it's educational, entertaining, that's what we all do in a museum — and why not make it available to blind people. And many did. One day, I —

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's great. Can I — let me pause for one moment. So I want to go back to Clovernook and Kenya. Were you working with Stephanie Jones, by chance?

Tom Babinszki: I met her once when we went to the Braille Challenge in Canton, Ohio.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, okay.

Tom Babinszki: We hadn't worked too much together.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. I'm just asking because I'm a big fan of Stephanie Jones. She works for Clovernook, and you just mentioned the Braille Challenge. And last time I saw her was at the Braille Challenge banquet on the USC campus in June, and she was speaking about how Clovernook had partnered with Braille Challenge to bring the Braille Challenge to Kenya. So I'm assuming the students who were at the Braille Challenge in Kenya were the same students who were benefiting from your 3D models. So just a beautiful alignment. And hats off to Clovernook, hats off to Braille Challenge, hats off to Stephanie, hats off to you.

Tom Babinszki: So I'm a big fan of all of them. I mostly work with Samuel Fuchs, Clovernook.

Tom Babinszki: But I really have lots of respect for all the great work that they're doing.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. And then I had another question for you. Have you ever been to the museum at the Perkins School? They have — well, you know where it is, it's in Watertown, Massachusetts — but they have a small museum, and it's in the lowest level of their main building. But they have wooden architectural models of famous buildings that were made by artisans during the Great Depression, during the 1930s. There was a program called, you know, the WPA, Work[s] Progress — Work Projects Administration — but they hired artists and artisans to keep them employed and to keep the economy moving. And so there's gorgeous wooden models, and the one that I was most fascinated by was the Parthenon. And it was built so that the top could be lifted off, so you could feel the interior.

Tom Babinszki: And that's how we built ours. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Babinszki: Otherwise it's just a cage.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right, right.

Tom Babinszki: Once you can feel what's in it, it's amazing. Right. No, I haven't been there. And I haven't been to so many places yet, unfortunately, even though I constantly go to museums. But only the United States has approximately more than 10,000. I have a lot to cover.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Tom Babinszki: And yeah, the Perkins is on my radar. And APH — as soon as it opens, I'll be there. I was at the Technological Museum in Madrid last year, and they also had lots of architecture there.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I had interrupted you when you were talking about going to money museums and coins, and how your guide dog holds the record for the most money museums visited by a guide dog. And I —

Tom Babinszki: I don't —

Dr. Kirk Adams: — know. But I think we're going with that. We're going to go with that. And then you mentioned that the curators of the museums were very open to talking to you about making the experiences more accessible for people who are blind and visually impaired. So I'll hand you back the mic after my interruption.

Tom Babinszki: You know, I feel that many people, many organizations, are open to accessibility. Sometimes there is the "I don't have time, I don't have money" kind of duo. Sometimes it's an excuse, sometimes it's real. I taught digital accessibility, especially at IBM. I taught thousands of people around the world. I met many people who weren't sure about it at the beginning. I never had anybody who said at the end of the training that I don't care about accessibility. Where I see the problem is not that they don't care. It's more that they don't know about the needs, or there's something exists that they are not meeting, or there are people who can't necessarily benefit from what they are doing. And every time I show it to them how — oftentimes how easy it is, because there's always a low-hanging fruit that they can do and make one change — and people are genuinely excited about it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And so you're at [Hadley] 00:19:06, you were doing work at IBM. You started making some 3D models of DC-area buildings on the side, showing them to blind people. They were very well received. Then when you went to take them to market, people didn't want to — people wanted to access them, people wanted to experience them, but they didn't necessarily want to own them themselves. So you turn to the museums and architectural sites as your customer base. So then you founded Even Grounds in '23. And so what was the first year or two like?

Tom Babinszki: First I was doing it on the side, so slowly building up my business, and then I turned it into a full-time business. Yeah, right now I work with lots of museums, doing actually maps. So what's good about this company is that we don't just do 3D. I do all the accessibility consulting that I've done before. So it's holistic consulting. I help them with physical accessibility, event accessibility, web accessibility. I don't even want to get into it because there's lots of people doing it, and probably you talked with many of them already. There's no need to repeat it. But it kind of became a niche that I'm doing, that everything starts with the 3D, it seems, and a lot of organizations want maps. And one of the things that I did — it has been a frustration to me, as you mentioned at the beginning, that the restrooms. And honestly, I just try to avoid it as much as possible. And I was always wondering, why isn't there a good way? And with the cane or with the guide dog, it was still pretty dirty experience.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Tom Babinszki: And the one thing I —

Dr. Kirk Adams: I always say, when I retire, I'm going to start a crusade that all public restrooms should be standardized. That's a —

Tom Babinszki: Oh, that would be beautiful.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Of course, that's a pipe dream. But —

Tom Babinszki: Right.

Dr. Kirk Adams: But we —

Tom Babinszki: — can always try.

Dr. Kirk Adams: We share the frustration of being adrift in a large public restroom. So the map — the map of the layout space would be so helpful.

Tom Babinszki: Yeah. So one day we just created a sample map. I tried so many things with 3D, experimented a lot. I threw it at the wall to see if it sticks. You know, 80% doesn't, but the other 20 takes off, and that's okay. That's what a small business does. But one day we made this little restroom map, and it's pretty cool, because everything feels like a little restroom. Like, you can feel the little toilets, you can feel the little sinks, right? So even if you don't read Braille and you can't read the map key, you'll still figure a good 80% of it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Babinszki: And then I posted it on LinkedIn. And usually if I get 50 likes, I take out the family for dinner and celebrate. I got 1,300.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Nice.

Tom Babinszki: And you know, it's not about the likes, obviously. That's not — but I got so much interest that —

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's an —

Tom Babinszki: — indicator. Yeah. For a whole month I couldn't put the phone down. And people just want these restrooms, because that's a very easy entry to accessibility. You can make a big difference. It's not difficult, it's meaningful, it's easy to explain. It was a story that I could explain in ten seconds. Because, you know, there's the elevator speech that you explain what you do in 30 seconds. Nobody listens to you for 30 seconds anymore. That's history, you know? Ten seconds, you're done, tops. And this restroom, I did it. And yeah, that's it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I'm not a technical person. I've never run a 3D printer. I've seen the products of 3D printing. One really good experience was when I was [at] the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle. We had a breakfast for our donors out at Seattle Center, and the King Tut exhibition was in town, and they had created 3D replicas of some of the items in the exhibit. So we were able to get some hands-on of some of the artifacts in a 3D printed form. But I don't know how. Give me the very simple layman's explanation of, how do you create a map of a bathroom? Are you taking photographs? How is that converted into some sort of digital information? How does it work?

Tom Babinszki: Yeah. So basically we either get drawings or photos or videos of the entire layout. We mark up everything that's fixed. So if there's a movable trash can, we don't put it there, because there's no guarantee it'll be there. And then I hand it over to my designers, and they look at it and then they create the map, and they make a rendered picture, and we send it back to the organization just to make sure we got everything right, and all the [unclear 00:24:14] and everything is fine.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. So you don't have to physically go there. The people at the site can provide you with the photographs. Right? Okay.

Tom Babinszki: Right. So, no, we give them very detailed instructions on what we're looking for. We have sample drawings, sample pictures of — if you look at it, this is what it should look like.

Dr. Kirk Adams: This is what we're after.

Tom Babinszki: Yeah, yeah. And in a few minutes they can just put it together, upload it to Google Drive, and we're good to go. You know, in a few days we have it done.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Why don't I ask you this. Let's do a use case. Talk to me about a museum project that stands out for you. Please name the museum, so the people who listen can go and thank them for making our museum accessible. But tell us about a project — all the aspects of the project that you feel good about.

Tom Babinszki: Well, here's one that we are just wrapping up, that's fresh in my mind. We are actually doing it in collaboration with Clovernook. This is the Toledo Zoo. And so I always say that, what do we use 3D printing for? We make things which are too small, too big, or too dangerous to touch.

Tom Babinszki: And so what we did for them, we made five buildings on their property, so that you can get a sense of what the buildings look like from the outside, because they are very beautiful, detailed buildings. We made the aviary and the aquarium and the museum and a bunch of buildings. But we also made animals. There's two kinds of giraffes at the property. One is the Masai giraffe, and I can't remember the name of the other one, but so they are different — slightly different. So now you can't really touch the giraffes, but you can have a seven-, eight-inch model, and you can compare the two giraffes. Or we put together three heads in a row. One is the brown bear, one is the polar bear, and one is the Kodiak.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Cool.

Tom Babinszki: And so those animals that you really can't touch, you can get a sense of what they feel like. For another organization, we made a comparison of the alligator and the crocodile.

Tom Babinszki: There was a museum in Iowa where we made a replica of a Braille map. Interestingly, it's a map of part of Asia and part of Russia and part of Europe. The map was created at the end of the 1800s, and it's old and you can't redo it at this point. So it's behind glass. But it was specifically made for blind people, and now blind people are the only ones who can't see it. Right? So we made an exact replica in 3D, and they exhibited that beside the original, so that everybody can touch it. It was in the [Iowa Art Museum?] 00:27:29. That's why [we] did so many. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Those are great. What are the most commonly sought-after 3D printed — they call them artifacts. What do you call them? Items.

Tom Babinszki: You know, I honestly don't see a trend.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Tom Babinszki: They always surprise us. There was the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, for example, who was looking for a [stage?] with the musicians on the stage as they are playing, so that you can show it to blind people what the layout is like.

Dr. Kirk Adams: The strings are here, the woodwinds are here. Right? Yeah.

Tom Babinszki: We had the Cincinnati Opera, who was looking for 3D replicas of their characters. We had a [country?] 00:28:30 museum which wanted the map of the radio broadcasting layout in the United States and Mexico. They always surprise me. Yeah. Just recently — it was for a dance company. They were looking for teaching tap dance moves to blind people. And then we created 11 steps, [we] created the dancers one by one.

Dr. Kirk Adams: The position of the body.

Tom Babinszki: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Each of the movements.

Tom Babinszki: Yeah. So you could just hand it to them, and it's much easier to demonstrate that way than to explain.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, to conceptualize that. Yeah.

Tom Babinszki: You know, my trend is that there's no trend.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Gotcha.

Tom Babinszki: We did paintings in a museum, the Dominican Republic. And it's like an outside display of different paintings that we kind of reimagined in 3D — actually more like two-and-a-half-D — so that you can feel the different figures on the painting.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I am imagining, in the audience listening to us right now, there are probably more blind and visually impaired individuals than there are museum curators and directors of zoos and operas and symphonies. But if you are leading a cultural institution, please listen to what Even Grounds can do for you. If you're a blind and visually impaired person, I would guess you could — if you have a favorite museum or a favorite place where you go to enjoy music or theater, you could certainly contact the accessibility folks there and let them know about what Tom and Even Grounds are doing to make experiences more accessible. But Tom, what would you ask people listening to do, in order to help move things forward, make the world more accessible, get your work into more places?

Tom Babinszki: Think out of the box, step out of the box, and be open and interested. And don't ever accept that something is not accessible, because sometimes it only takes a little creativity. And ask. Ask for it. I used to hate museums, because I couldn't touch anything, and I wasn't brave enough until I really started traveling. I said, no, I can't enjoy it. So then I asked — if they didn't have accessibility features, I went out there and asked, can you show me? Can you give me a guided tour? Can you let me touch a few things? And everybody was so positive. And I think that's what you can do. And then when you encounter organizations that will listen to you, then share it with them, that it's actually possible — that the same way they shared it with you, they can share it with everybody else.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. When I was first, second or third grade at the Oregon State School for the Blind, I didn't realize until later, of course, what a wonderful, amazing set of experiences they intentionally provided us. But we'd go on school field trips, we'd go to a dairy farm, we'd milk cows, we would go to Fort Clatsop where Lewis and Clark spent the winter, and we would lay on the bunks, the replicas of their cabins, and we'd put wood in the wood stove and boil water. And it was super experiential.

Tom Babinszki: That's beautiful.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Then starting in fourth grade, when I was in public school and I was always the only blind student, field trips were go to a building and walk around and touch glass cases and framed things on the wall covered in glass. So, right.

Tom Babinszki: Did your classmates help you, explain?

Dr. Kirk Adams: You know, sure. To the extent that they could. But it was still frustrating. Largely frustrating. So what you're doing, I applaud. So how do people get in touch? Website, email — how do people reach out to you and Even Grounds?

Tom Babinszki: You can find my website at https://evengrounds.com, or you can write me at [email protected]. You can also check out my blog. I write a lot about my coin-related travels. Blind Coin Collector — https://blindcoincollector.com.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Cool. Good. So —

Tom Babinszki: You can find me on LinkedIn.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes. I found you on LinkedIn.

Tom Babinszki: I live on LinkedIn.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Me too. Another thing we have in common. So go to https://evengrounds.com or email [email protected]. Go to Blind Coin Collector and read the blog. Let's help spread the tactile experiences of cultural sites, and let's all get better, and let's all have better experiences in the public restroom. And for me, you can find me at my website, https://drkirkadams.com. You can sign up for my monthly newsletter. You can buy my book, which came out last month, on Amazon — there's a link. It's called The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion. It's a guide for employers to help them win the war for talent by hiring people with disabilities. And I'm also on LinkedIn, Kirk Adams, PhD. So reach out to one or both of us. We will happily talk to you about how to make the world a more accessible place and create opportunities for people with disabilities to thrive. Tom, it's been a pleasure. The time flew by. We'll have you back again for chapter two at some point. So thank you so much for being here.

Tom Babinszki: Well, thank you, Kirk. I appreciate the conversation and the opportunity.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. And for everybody else, we'll catch you next time on another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Cazerny Bussey, Founder, Even Though I'm Blind Foundation https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-08-18-2026/

Here Dr. Kirk Adams welcomes Cazerny Bussey, founder of the Even Though I'm Blind Foundation, for a first conversation between two blind leaders who arrived at the same work from opposite directions. Kirk lost his sight at five in small farming towns in Oregon and Washington, where he was the only blind kid in every school after fourth grade. Bussey grew up in Brooklyn with low vision, active and surrounded by a large family, and lost his sight at fifteen, a sophomore at a performing-arts high school, already recording music, after a second retinal surgery took the optic nerve. He describes the moment in the exam room as a decision he had to make on the spot, and the years that followed as a run of doors opening: two and three shows a week, work alongside Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J and Chuck D, and the persistent fact that he was the only blind person in every room he entered.

That isolation is what became an organization. A love song Bussey wrote called "Even Though I'm Blind" gave the foundation its name, and research he did afterward gave it its purpose, blind college students, blind chefs, blind skiers, blind pageant winners, an entire world he had not known was there. Today the foundation runs a radio station carrying roughly forty-five independent blind artists, a podcast built on community members telling their own stories, and a curated directory of blind-owned businesses, alongside an artist showcase staged at the NFB convention in Texas. Bussey has just joined the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op as a sponsor of Access Information News. Kirk and Bussey trade New York geography, blindness-skills philosophy, and a shared conviction that visibility is the work, and agree to meet in New York in February.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, in my office in Seattle, Washington on a beautiful sunny August day. Best time of the year here. I lived in New York, I lived in Virginia. I don't miss August in either of those places. So I'm a Northwest guy. My guest today is a new acquaintance. I don't know how I've missed you so far, but my guest today is Cazerny Bussey, founder of Even Though I'm Blind Foundation. Say hello.

Cazerny Bussey: Hello, everybody.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And Cazerny is out there making waves, getting things done. And we just became acquainted. We've had one conversation just to get to know each other a little bit, and immediately knew I wanted you on the podcast. Because, Cazerny — so for those who don't know me, I'm a blind person. Have been since I was five years old. I was born a sighted kid and became a blind kid when I was five. Both my retinas detached. I was totally blind very quickly. And so there was really no question that I needed to learn Braille. I needed to learn how to travel confidently and safely with a white cane. At that time, I needed to learn how to type [on] a typewriter so I could go to public school and type assignments and papers and things for my sighted teachers who didn't know Braille. So I went to Oregon State School for the Blind — first, second, third grade — then on into public school. And very interested to have you [unclear 00:02:17]. Our — I think our experiences as blind people are so different. I grew up in little farming communities in the Pacific Northwest. Silverton, Oregon; graduated from high school in Snohomish, Washington. One was known for strawberries, one was known for dairy farming and football.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I was always the only blind kid in any school I went to after fourth grade. And the little towns I grew up in — when kids turned 16, they got driver's licenses and they got some sort of job, and I didn't get either. So I lived a fairly isolated, pretty tough time in high school, and then on to college where things got better. I graduated with a degree in economics and went into banking and finance for ten years, then into the nonprofit sector, became the president and CEO of The Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle. The American Foundation for the Blind — moved to New York for that. But knowing the little bit I know about you, you became a blind person later in life than I did. You grew up in a very different environment than I did. And you have, like I said, you've been doing stuff, making things happen. So we'd really just like to hand you the microphone here. Your story, how you came to be part of the community. What inspired you to start your foundation? What's the journey been like so far, and where are you taking things?

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I first would like to just thank you for allowing me on your platform. I did come across you because, as I was doing my due diligence and my research, it was hard to not bump into Kirk Adams, because you done made so many great things happen in your lifetime. And I really do commend you, and I honor that. And yeah, looking forward to doing things as big as you done it someday, when I get there. But yeah, I lost my eyesight at the age of 15 years old due to retinal detachment as well.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. So we have that in common. So — yeah, around five years old. Wow. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. So it is a lot different than your environment.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I will tell you that I lived in Brooklyn when I went to work in 2016 to lead the American Foundation for the Blind. The offices were at Two Penn Plaza, right above Penn Station, next to Madison Square Garden. But my wife and I lived in Park Slope at Eighth Avenue and Eighth Street. And my greatest orientation and mobility triumph is learning to take the F train, to transfer to the A at Jay Street–MetroTech, to go into Penn Station and up to 34th Avenue and into the office. And for a kid who grew up in little teeny towns — my first experience was staying in corporate housing on 43rd, between Eighth and Ninth, pretty near the Port Authority. And I had an O&M instructor, and she asked me, "How's your experience walking on heavily trafficked sidewalks?" I said, "Yeah, pretty good." And then when I turned the corner from 43rd to Seventh Avenue to walk down to 33rd, after about half a block, I stopped and said, "I had no idea." So.

Cazerny Bussey: You're right. Yeah. That's the heart of New York, you know.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Cazerny Bussey: That is literally where everything happened. Although I feel like a lot of parts of New York is pretty hectic. Park Slope is a pretty nice neighborhood.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I like Manhattan because if you can count, you know where you are. Things are numbered. Things are nice 90-degree angles, nice rectangular blocks. So that's a good part. And then you got the open hatchways in the sidewalk and the scaffolding and all that. Right. All right. So you're 15. So you were in high school, I assume.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, I was. Okay.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I was fully sighted until then.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. I wouldn't say fully sighted. Okay. Yeah. I have low vision, but I was really active. Like I was going to tell you, at five years old, I think where I was from, we was outside in the street throwing footballs and throwing basketballs in the hoop. We actually went outside then. I'm not that old, but — right. It wasn't like internet-based. We was actually in our neighborhoods. I had a really awesome childhood growing up. Had a large family and very supportive. And it was a lot of us boys, so we challenged each other like a pack of lions. So we wrestle and just play sports, and we was competitive. And we chased the girls, all kind of stuff. Young. Right. So by 12 years old, before I get to 15, my father — he was very heavy into music. He was actually a part of the old school rap group Stetsasonic. And yeah, them guys did some great things. So he had me around music. I wasn't really, per se, wanting to do music, but I did like it.

Cazerny Bussey: Maybe I loved it. But at that time, I probably would have wanted to go outside or play my — at the time, what was it, a Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 — play with my friends. But he recognized that gift and he really had me in professional recording environments. So I recorded my first song at the age of 12 years old. Song I actually wrote. And that was big for me, because that kind of changed the way I viewed the studio. Instead of being there seeing them guys, I was able to partake in the festivities, you know? Yeah. So, long story short, I go to high school. I auditioned in junior high school to Frank Sinatra School of Performing Arts, which was — yeah, it was [founded?] 00:09:01 by the late, great Tony Bennett. And I got in. I auditioned. Academically, I was able to reach — it was a special school at the time. I think the school only was open two years prior to me getting in it. It was a very new school.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Is it located in Brooklyn?

Cazerny Bussey: It's actually located in Long Island — it was located in Long Island City at the time. Okay. They didn't even have their own building. We were sharing one of the campuses with LaGuardia College. Okay. Yeah, the C building. So we was — yeah, but loved it. Freshman year, met all my friends. And it was a very artsy school, about 500 students. So I was really fortunate to be able to get in. Great music teachers — Miss [Bess?] 00:10:02, Mr. [Sandri?] 00:10:02. They grew a liking for me because I am gifted vocally. And it was great. The first freshman year — I'm speeding up to the sophomore year, because things kind of changed, but they changed a lot. Yeah, they changed a lot, from five years old playing basketball on the streets to doing my first song, having all these wonderful experiences. In between time, things went totally dark for me. I was actually doing all of my surgeries. I did two surgeries for my retina. After the second, they said the optic nerve was gone.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So yeah, I had a lot of surgeries too, from age five to about 12. I think I had five or six. And they were unsuccessful back in those days. That was before — I'm much older than you, because, Cazerny, that was before lasers. So they were actually going in and trying to do things. But long stretches in the hospital with my head in a clamp, so I couldn't move my head and disrupt their surgical work. So some traumatic experiences for me as a young kid. But the one thing that I mentioned earlier is, when my retinas detached, I wasn't even in first grade yet, so I knew I had to learn blindness skills, Braille and cane travel. But wow — for you, you're a sophomore in high school. You're living your life, you're making music, you're at the Frank Sinatra School, you're making new friends, doing new things, and then all of a sudden the retinal detachment. So how does a young cat adjust to that?

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. I went — my doctor, I went, Doctor [Rosenthal?] 00:11:47 — I went in there. When I did the surgery, he said, "Go home for a couple of weeks." And I was all packed up and stuff like that. And of course I didn't have vision. The first time I did the surgery it was the same, but the vision was coming back slowly. Right.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Cazerny Bussey: So a couple of weeks passed. We ready to go back to the appointment to get it checked. I think my mind was playing tricks on me, because for some reason I felt like the sight was coming back, right? [unclear 00:12:25]

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you had — you were optimistic about it, right?

Cazerny Bussey: Right, right. Memory, right. The power of memory. And then I went in a room. They did the process, the procedure, and he came in, and I could just remember he said, "Like the optic nerve — you're blind." And then for a slight second, I — it went dark for me. At the time, I was seeing floaters and everything, right? It was what they call them, floaters, what I call them — these colors — and everything went dark. I was like — for me it was kind of hard. But yeah, right in that moment. The reason why I tell that story is because a lot of people benefit from the fact that I can say, in that direct moment, I had to make a quick [choice?] 00:13:20. One of the biggest and quickest decisions I ever had to make in my life. And it was in that moment, because I remember I had to choose to be blind, or I had to choose to not be able to see but be led to vision. Right? Such a complex choice I had to make at the age of 15 years old. Sophomore in high school. At the time, things was going so great for me. I was tapped into Miss Jones in the Morning — she was one of the radio hosts at Hot 97 — and DJ Envy, and all these great people that I'm tapped into.

Cazerny Bussey: And it's like, probably in [venues?] 00:14:10 I wasn't supposed to be in at the time. But just all these things, to now having to accept the fact that, well, I no longer was going to be able to see the sunshine, right? So that, you know — and a lot of people probably take those simple things like that for granted. But it's a beautiful thing to be able to see the blue skies, you know? But I did make the choice to see vision, right? Because I was able to see for a while. I think I still have the ability to remember the color red and orange. And if I really have the confidence that I know I have to remember my mother's face and my father's face, I can just kind of tap into it and see it. That's cool. If I second-guess it, then it'd be a little struggle. But I have to just know I have to. But I did choose to tap into that vision that day. So I left the hospital, total silence. And I still was able to remember the — of my neighborhood and my community and my house. At this time, I was stepping up before the steps was there, because I knew they were coming.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah. The spatial awareness, right.

Cazerny Bussey: Right. So I went through the whole curve. And I would tell you this — I was really tapped in at the time with a lot of people that cared. And they didn't show me one day of, I don't know if to call it sadness or depression.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Pity.

Cazerny Bussey: Pity. Yeah. That's the word. Yeah. I didn't have a time to feel pity for myself, actually. I went to school about three weeks to a month later. Right.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Same school.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Cazerny Bussey: I goes back to the school totally blind. So you gotta imagine, they like — really, they like —

Dr. Kirk Adams: So how about blindness skills? Did you have people come and train you? Did you go somewhere for training?

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, absolutely. They actually offered me the school for the blind in the Bronx, and —

Dr. Kirk Adams: NYISE.

Cazerny Bussey: Yes, yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: New York Institute for Special Education.

Cazerny Bussey: Right. I said —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Beautiful campus. Okay.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: "No, thank —"

Cazerny Bussey: — you." Tactfully declined. Right. Yeah. Okay. I was like — I mean, I had my girlfriend in there at the time, like my friend. I'm like, I — so they did make accommodations for me. The principal was the most beautiful woman. Her name was Miss [Finn?] 00:17:15, and she was really skeptical, because she didn't know how to deal with a student, honestly. But she worked with me, and my guidance counselor, Miss [Crow?] 00:17:28 — they worked with me, and they got me mobility. I had people that came in there to teach me levels of Braille.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So do you use the long white cane or a guide dog person?

Cazerny Bussey: I didn't use the long white cane. It's what I use. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So good.

Cazerny Bussey: I mastered the environment of the school. And long story short — because you could just imagine it. When I first got into school, it was like a thing where it was like, wow, it was a music school, one of the best performing arts schools in New York, and I was privileged to be in. Then it kind of turned into me just feeling like, well, I just gotta graduate. I gotta pass these tests. I had to figure things out. It wasn't the same no more. Everything was just a challenge, you know? And challenge is not bad, but it was a challenge at the time. I learned a lot since then. Challenges these days is kind of opportunities for me to overcome them. So back then it was more so like, all right, maybe not so much of singing in a cabaret, but —

Cazerny Bussey: — keeping up with my class.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You survived. Right.

Cazerny Bussey: Right, right. So I did graduate. And the beautiful story about the graduation was, one, I was the only singer that actually sang a song that I wrote, called "We Made It," at the graduation for my class. So that was a beautiful thing. But even a lot more beautiful than that, it was a young lady that came in that freshman year by the name of [Valeria?] 00:19:17, and she was totally blind.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Came to the same school.

Cazerny Bussey: Came in the School of Performing Arts.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Cool.

Cazerny Bussey: So that was just beautiful for me, to see that this school is able to now accept a second blind student. And that's —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Great.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. They wasn't trying to — she came in, and they wasn't trying to hand off. They felt like they had what it took to take her [on].

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's what we do, because we try to make the path a little easier for the next blind person coming along. Right. So you established the fact that a blind person could be successful at the school, and probably made it a pathway for her.

Cazerny Bussey: So at the time, I just didn't have a clue. Yeah, I didn't have a clue. But I tell that story because — exactly — our lives is purposeful. And when we tap in to the greatest part of who we are, we never know who can benefit from that outcome, you know?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right.

Cazerny Bussey: And even we can benefit from that outcome, right? So I graduate, she comes in. It was beautiful for me. It was kind of go time, because at this time I'm really heavy into the music. So I didn't go to college. I was just more so — at that time I probably was doing two or three shows a week, performing music I wrote. Was able to connect with people like Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J — like I said, Daddy-O and Chuck D — all these great people that I was able to. Yeah, I was able to work with these wonderful people. And shout out to Stevie Wonder, because he paved the way in the music, and Ray Charles, and a lot of the greats. But I was always the only blind person in all these rooms.

Cazerny Bussey: And even out of music rooms, I was finding myself to be the only one. So the simple things in life, such as frying chicken, was just amazing to people, you know?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. I walked with a cane to my seat on the airplane and sat down and buckled my seat belt, and had someone said, "That's amazing."

Cazerny Bussey: "That's amazing."

Dr. Kirk Adams: Man, it's not really. But anyway, I can imagine. But so, high school music — you just mentioned Chuck D. I love Public Enemy above all. So, hats off to you for knowing that fine gentleman.

Cazerny Bussey: I mentioned him because he was the foundation of it. They was the ones that — yeah. And I learned under that. So I'm really honored and privileged. And I could say that maybe a lot of my strength did come from my tribe and the ones that I was able to have around me. So I always acknowledge, you know.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You're performing vocals two or three times a week in the city, primarily.

Cazerny Bussey: Oh yeah. In the city. I've traveled to Virginia. The only place I haven't been is the West Coast, but I've been all down the South, all the way down.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Come on.

Cazerny Bussey: As far as Mississippi and Louisiana. Wow.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm about two blocks from Jimi Hendrix Park, and about 20 blocks from where Ray Charles started playing in the '40s with Quincy Jones. So come on out.

Cazerny Bussey: That is awesome. That is awesome. So, and you know, just in the process of learning and experiencing different people and different things, and learning and growing myself.

Cazerny Bussey: I didn't have as much mobility. And basically what I would say is, I was lacking a lot of the independence of a blind person, because I always had people with me. I always had an entourage and management.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You got a sighted guide.

Cazerny Bussey: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes.

Cazerny Bussey: Right, right. Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That is an honorable way to navigate the world. So, but as you know, everyone has a different path. Everyone learns things at a different rate. I think every person needs to be honored for the way they create their pathway and the way they create the opportunities for them to thrive. So, no judgment here.

Cazerny Bussey: No. As you get older, and you start to get in to yourself, you realize how important those things. So I always advocate that people tap into that mobility, start really young with it and really master that, because I feel like that's a great skill to have mastered in your life.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You know, as a blind person — I was going to say, as a blind person, the stronger your blindness skills are, the easier things are going to be for you. But circumstances sometimes prevent people from learning. Life happens. So I echo your sentiment that strong orientation and mobility skills are super important.

Cazerny Bussey: Oh yeah, absolutely. I was going to say that, although I didn't have the skill, I was really confident. So I've took many flights and met people at the destination, because I'm a people's person. So a lot of times those opportunities — most trips I take, I find myself meeting somebody new. Sometimes it's for a season, sometimes for a lifetime. And so, just going through the world, not really bumping into a lot of blind or visually impaired — well, maybe they were, I just didn't know they were visually impaired — but I kind of started to feel like I was the only cool blind guy in the world. Right. And then I said, this can't be. So — and I'm gonna be totally honest, I know the power of media, because I grew up around a lot of that kind of stuff. Around three years ago I decided to develop this organization, but through a beautiful song I wrote called "Even Though I'm Blind." And that was probably one of the only blind songs I've ever — metaphors. But —

Dr. Kirk Adams: You're breaking up just a little bit.

Cazerny Bussey: Do you hear me [clearer?] 00:26:28 there?

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's better.

Cazerny Bussey: Okay. Well, this song was — oh.

Dr. Kirk Adams: No, we're good. Why don't you just take it from "about three years ago, you decided to start the organization based on the song."

Cazerny Bussey: Okay, yeah. So about three years ago I had this desire in my heart, because I was always the only blind person in the room. I kind of figured that it had to be more of us that was great in the world, right? But at the time, I thought I was the only cool blind guy in the world, because there wasn't a lot for me to see when it came to the community. And I wrote a song called "Even Though I'm Blind," and the song is a love song. It's me telling my lady that I wish that I could see her pretty smile, and just the simple things of life. And yeah, that love song was deeper than the song, because it would be beautiful to see pictures of your significant other when she was a child. But I also said in this song that — what my eyes can't see, my heart can conceive, you know? So although I didn't have the ability to see, I did have a heart that gave me something beautiful as well. I want to see that deeper inner vision. And the organization is just that. The name came — Even Though I'm Blind. Even Though I'm Blind. And I was just like, Even Though I'm Blind. And it was like, now it just — it was just dot, dot, dot, right? Because now it's like Even Though I'm Blind. And then it was just so many different opportunities, and it just started opening up. And quickly I took — I went to my business partner, he sighted, his name is Johnny. And we were doing a lot of cool things. I went and told him, I was like, "Yo, bro, this thing came." Because I just feel like — at the time I was getting old. I have children as well. The story goes deep, and I'm a superhero to my children. Like, they look at me as like a super dad. Right.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Nice.

Cazerny Bussey: And I'm the oldest brother of 12, and all of my siblings look up to — they all still call [their?] blind brother for the loans, you know, that I never get [back?] 00:29:14. It's not really a loan. But what I'm saying is, blind has never stopped me from my story, my purpose. Right. And I just knew that there were so many more.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You're blind. Even though you're blind, you have these roles. You're a father, you're a husband, you're a big brother. You're a business person. You're an artist.

Cazerny Bussey: Major roles. And I was trying to get to the [layer?] 00:29:43, because it's always partners that I'm dealing with that always says things like, "Man, sometimes I forget you blind." And you probably hear that. But I guess I would say, at the time, like I said, that it starts dawning on me. Like I start to realize that I'm blind. You know, you have a child and you can't see their face. That's when it kind of starts to —

Dr. Kirk Adams: I don't have as many as you, but I do have [children?] 00:30:13 now.

Cazerny Bussey: I have two sets of twins. Yeah. Shout out to my two sets of twins. You know, I [lucked?] 00:30:20 up twice. But —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Amazing.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, man. Kirk, the organization just kind of — it came. It came to me, and I had to answer the call. I mean, I could have ignored it. But started writing a mission statement, and it was — yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So let's do that. So I've been executive director of a couple fairly big, well-established nonprofits. I'm an executive director now of a smaller nonprofit here in Seattle called the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. But how did you go about it? How did you get it started? Three years — so how did you start, and what's happened in the last 36 months? Kind of, what are the activities of the foundation now?

Cazerny Bussey: Absolutely. Well —

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you wrote a mission statement. Then what?

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. My thing was more so like, I had to show the world that — I just thought it was absurd, like I said, that it wasn't — every room I was in, there was no blind people. Right. And then I started doing my research, right? Because I had to do my research. I had to look and see the world, because I was like, I know there's this big world out there, right? And the organization started to open that world up to me, because although I was blind growing up, like I said, I was in a different world. I was in a world where I was the only blind person in the room. Right.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And do you remember any of the things that really struck you or stood out for you when you were doing your research?

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Moments. Big moments of realization.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. The college students in Harvard that were blind. The chefs that I seen online, the blind people that were skiing, the blind pageant winners, the blind music — it was just this whole world opening up to me, right? And I quickly realized that I wasn't the only blind cool guy in the world, like really quick. You know, people like you. So then I started telling my peoples, I say, "Are we going to get these stories out there?" Like, I'm going to do what it takes to let the world see these wonderful people, these personal brands, right? Because — it's just — and then I started realizing, and I'm telling you this because I started learning about some of the challenges that we face as blind people. You see what I'm saying? I started realizing the discrimination at times. A lot of times we're underrepresented, right? A lot of times we overlook, we underestimate — all these words that put us under. When I saw so many bright stars on top, right, I said, the world have to see this. And I refuse to be seen less than — my parents always told me I was great, right.

Cazerny Bussey: And I refused to let anybody put a perception on what a blind person supposed to look like with me, right? So I said, no — like, we gonna fight for that. Because, I mean, we're not going to let people tell us we're blind, especially if they can see. We gonna have to show them what it is, right? So the organization was built to be media programming sequence, so that we can basically use the programming and imagery to the stories, the missions, and to change the perception of the world. And it started like that. Like I tell a story, it's going to be so much bigger than me, but it really started with a simple desire of a song that said, "Even though I'm blind." And then I started just tapping into me. And all these times hearing these people tell me how amazing I was. And like I said, I know there's so many more bigger things than the little things in life, but even the little things matter. I linked up with Krystle Allen. I think that people like Amos, the one that made the Glide —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Amos Miller, my neighbor here in the neighborhood of Seattle.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And I know Krystle.

Cazerny Bussey: Like —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Krystle — Eyes Like Mine. She's in Jersey. She has a Blind Diva pageant she runs.

Cazerny Bussey: [unclear 00:35:23] amazing. I ran into one of my partners and close friends, of course, Big Saint. He has the first mainstream [label?] 00:35:32 that deals with all blind and visually impaired artists, engineers, producers, guys like that. [Esli?] Ramos 00:35:44, who is a great college student who's doing wonderful things in school. And just really see, like, people like Professor Blindie, who is a wonderful mother. I heard the story about one of these blind mothers, and they said that because she was blind, she wasn't qualified to raise her child. And it's like, things like that.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That has happened.

Cazerny Bussey: I can't even imagine, because I'm from Brooklyn and I'm kind of a fighter. You can't take my child from me, you know. Really? So these things really happen. So just growing, growing so rapidly. And the reason why I name a few of the names that we're connected with, great people such as yourself, is to say that this organization wasn't an organization that was built solely by me. It was built by these inspirational people. Their stories, their messages, their contributions that they're giving to the world and in the community at large. And it's because of us collectively doing our parts as human beings — but blind human beings — that this organization and media can come. And then also started dealing with some people that didn't know, like a guy named The Blind Steppa, who lost his sight to gun violence in New York City, in Brooklyn. Got shot two times in his head and went dark. And he barely know how to use VoiceOver, you know? So he's new to it. And it's like, well, the media is there for that reason — to show them these resources and these things that's available for us, and to us. And each of us just coming together and saying these things, to try to make life just a little bit easier for all of us.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So tell us about kind of the current level of activity of the foundation. I think you mentioned radio station. What are the things you're doing now? I know you just became a sponsor of Access Information News.

Cazerny Bussey: I mean —

Dr. Kirk Adams: — part of the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op. Welcome to the team. That's exciting. So it is exciting. So yeah, tell me what you're currently focusing on.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. So that gets into the actual programming and meat and potatoes of the thing, because out of the passion has to come kind of structure, and system and order. And yeah, we have a radio station, Even Though I'm Blind Radio, of course. That's a passion of mine. Music was one of the things I grew up on. And we have currently about 45 artists, independent blind artists, playing on the station right now. So the station is doing really great. We actually just did a showcase out in Texas for blind artists at the NFB. So, nice.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, good.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, we did a showcase for them. We did one for three years now. I couldn't make the second one — my father passed. But what I would say is, the growth is really growing. We had about six artists perform at the show, and we had a great attendance. People came out and they was really entertained by the talent of these artists. And we was able to give these artists the treatment they deserve. They all said they felt like stars. Shout out to my partner Big Saint, for giving them that wonderful environment. And it was just basically based to really highlight the talent of the blind artists in the world. We have a podcast that is, I think, one of my personal favorites, because the Even Though I'm Blind Experience is exactly what it says. It's just people basically coming on and talking about their experiences, you know.

Dr. Kirk Adams: How do we find the radio station? How do we find the podcast?

Cazerny Bussey: Oh, yeah. You go to https://eventhoughimblind.com, and you'll be able to — you can [go to] https://eventhoughimblind.com/radio, or https://eventhoughimblind.com forward slash —

Dr. Kirk Adams: There'll be tabs there.

Cazerny Bussey: Yes. But it is on the website. Everything is there. The directory is growing at a great rate.

Dr. Kirk Adams: What's the directory?

Cazerny Bussey: Yes. We just added a directory not too long ago, but I thought it really made sense, because the story that I was telling — the Even Though I'm Blind Experience brought a lot of different personal brands and business owners that were blind and visually impaired. I just figured that they should have a platform where the people can actually find their services and their businesses. So we make this directory. We curated — we don't allow anyone, we got to take it through the protocol. But everybody that's on the directory, which is growing slowly, but it is growing, it's very solid. People like some of the people we named.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm looking forward to looking through the directory.

Cazerny Bussey: Oh, yeah. We even had to put [Kirk Adams in it] 00:41:41. But look, even the podcast sector, we just added, so that people could find podcasts and resources through the media channels. So it's still in development. We're definitely growing it. But like I said, to find the foundation —

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, it's definitely — like I said, people that we're working with really close, and these people is just superstars. And I'm not bragging on the people because we really close to them, but we're open to connecting with anybody who has the heart and desire to change the narrative of blindness and change the world's view of blindness, and just here to help us to make this more of an equal playing field. Because I feel like we all deserve that opportunity when we have the capability, right?

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's right. So what do you want to get done in the next 12 months?

Cazerny Bussey: Man, in the next 12 months, I want to be able to reach more people on both sides. Our desire is to grow, grow, grow, because the foundation, new people and the brands that we're working with, is the story that need to be heard, right? So as a media organization, we want to grow, we want to get these stories out, we want to get these brands out. And yeah, just want to make major impacts. It's so much on the actual calendar right now that we're doing. We just covered an event with [Lakshmi?] 00:43:26 out in Lincoln Center.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh yeah. Nice.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. And Lighthouse Guild. We did the media coverage for that event. It was very awesome. I got a Special Ed, one of the hip-hop greats, to come out.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Leading global — did you say leading global voice?

Cazerny Bussey: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I love the aspiration, I love leadership, I love the global scope. So talk to us a little more about what you see coming down the road.

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah, absolutely. The leading global voice is just us coming together as a collective and really raising our voices together as a collective community. And the reason why I say leading global voice, because the platform is for all of us, all the voices. I mean, we're not biased. I mean, if you really about the things you're doing, and do our thing and do our parts right and be excellent in other things that we're doing. So —

Dr. Kirk Adams: And how can people get involved? How can people connect with you? How can people join the community?

Cazerny Bussey: Yeah. Well, you go on the website. You can definitely join us, signing up to our email list. You can contact us through our email. We have submission links for your music if you're an artist. We have the submission for you to submit your business. And we straightforward — it's me and about three other people that run this thing, so we stay on top of everything. And we are very easy to find. We're on Facebook and all the social medias everywhere. So everything is aligned. But yeah, my thing is —

Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm a big fan. Just met you, but I'm a big fan of you, because I'm a big fan of Even Though I'm Blind. I look forward to getting to know you better. I'm urging everyone to go to the website, sign up for the newsletter. If you want to be in the directory, submit. If you are a musical artist and you're blind, submit. And for me, I am Dr. Kirk Adams. My website is https://drkirkadams.com. I have an email newsletter too. And you can also buy my book, which came out last month, because — Cazerny, it's called The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion. And it's a guidebook for employers to win the battle for the best and brightest talent by hiring people with disabilities.

Cazerny Bussey: I love that. I love that. So I think that's why we connected, because we kind of got the same scope. And that's —

Dr. Kirk Adams: It. Grew up very differently, yeah, as we talked about earlier, but came to the same intersection in the road here, where we're both trying to make the world a better place for people who are blind, create opportunities for blind people to thrive, to live their dreams. And I really admire what you're doing. And let's have you back in about six months and see what new things you've accomplished.

Cazerny Bussey: Oh yeah. It's going to be a lot going on. It's a lot going on.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I know. Well, I'll be in New York in February, so I will let you know in advance. And we'll break bread and get to know each other across the table somewhere, with your kids. That would be fun.

Cazerny Bussey: I mean, you're great. You're great. All right. Yeah, definitely. With the pioneers, man. You paved the way for people like me coming up. So we're going to keep the light shining forward.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's it?

Cazerny Bussey: That's it. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: All right, everybody. This is the founder of Even Though I'm Blind Foundation. [I'm] Dr. Kirk Adams, Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. And we'll catch you next time on another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams.

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