On this episode of Podcasts with Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk sits down with ISDI co-founders Barbara Deane and Effenus Henderson to explore how the Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion is helping organizations move “from better arguments to better outcomes.” The trio trace their shared history on Washington State's Governor's Committee on Disability Issues and Employment, then dive into the origins of the Northwest Diversity Learning Series, why 2025's sessions are built around the Aspen Institute's Better Arguments Framework, and how ISO 30415, the Global DEI Benchmarks and intercultural-competence research shape ISDI's evidence-based approach.   Listeners will hear candid stories of corporate triumphs and HR “sticky situations,” learn how sponsors co-design each year's curriculum, and discover practical ways to tackle today's backlash against DEI while keeping accessibility and systemic equity front-and-center. Whether you're an HR leader seeking new tools, a manager craving civil discourse, or a changemaker looking for a community of practice, this conversation offers both inspiration and a clear on-ramp to the 2025 NWDLS workshops. Tune in, take notes, and join the movement toward sustainable inclusion.   TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1  00:09

Music. 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,

 

Speaker 2  00:37

welcome everybody to the cleverly titled podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, and that is me. I am Dr Kirk Adams, speaking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have two amazing guests, Barbara Dean and Ethan is Henderson. I'm going to tell you how we all got connected in a minute, and then ask them about their incredible journeys. Some years ago, when I was in the role of president and CEO of the satellite House for the Blind, before moving to New York and assuming that same role at American Foundation for the Blind, I was contacted by the transition team for Governor Jay Inslee when he was first elected and asked to serve on his transition team, and shortly thereafter, once he was installed as our governor, asked to join the Governor's Committee on disability issues and employment. And I don't remember FNS if it was the transition team or the Governor's Committee or the Governor's Committee, okay, but you and I spent a lot of time together, yes, and a lot of meetings, and I took a lot of notes whenever you talked, because you had a very deep knowledge about disability inclusion and Federal, State and local policies and the history of diversity, equity, inclusion, and I learned so much from you. And then, of course, in 2016 my wife and I relocated to New York City, and then Washington, DC, as I had the privilege and honor of leading the American Foundation for the Blind Helen Keller's organization through through a transition and a restructuring. And then when I had accomplished what I set out to accomplish, there, I returned home to our cozy little house here in Les, and I decided that I was ready to not lead an organization of that size and scope again. And I love nonprofits. I love nonprofit boards, but I was ready not to report to a nonprofit board for a while, so I decided to strike out on my own and just look for, I say, fun, innovative, high impact projects that would accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities and to work with people I really like. So that's what I'm doing now, and as I followed a blueprint that I discovered on how to launch a consulting business that said, reactivate your network and reach out to people that you trust, admire and respect, tell them what you're doing. So that's when I reached out to effin us on LinkedIn, and said, Remember me from the Governor's Committee. I'm back, and I'm looking for fun, innovative, high impact projects. And he introduced me to Barbara Dean, and Barbara, I think you have, might have got me my first paid training opportunity with Delta Dental of Washington. And I had a chance to talk to all of their HR professionals across their network about disability inclusion on a virtual Zoom meeting. And they asked me how much I would charge. I didn't really know what to say, so I said something, and they paid that was, that was the start of my consulting practice. So I think I have you you to thank Barbara for getting that ball rolling. That sounds good. Yeah. Fast forward a year and a half or so, and fell, fell into deeper conversation about Barbara and FNS, and learned about the Institute for Sustainable diversity and inclusion, which we all fondly call is di and the amazing history of the nonprofit is the place it has held in Our community, not only in Seattle, but nationally, the amazing board members and their their depth and breadth of knowledge and experience, and although I swore I would never join another board again, I have happily and graciously and with great gratitude. Um. Been elected to serve on the board of the Institute for Sustainable diversity inclusion is di and we are really in the right place at the right time, our community, our country, our society, needs organizations and expertise and leaders that we can rally around and catalyze as we pursue our quest for social justice and fairness and equity. And is di has a lot of experience and history in that space. So we are boldly proclaiming we are here, and we want you to join us and organize and catalyze and learn, and we do have a series of learning opportunities coming up that we'll talk about later. But for now, I would love to just get a taste for from you, Barbara and effin us about your journeys in this space. You are both social justice warriors, and you've done all every time we talk you, something new comes up that you've done a group, you've been involved with a committee, you've been on a some vital foundational documents you've crafted. So I think Barbara, if you, if you would give us the tour,

 

06:27

tour of your life,

 

Speaker 2  06:32

and what, what brought you to this point with, with being a leader, at at ISD, and really being having such clarity that is di is such a vital resource

 

06:43

for our community. Sure,

 

Speaker 3  06:45

you know the way that you described our connection, where I connected you with Delta Dental for your first consulting gig. So those are the kinds of connections I've been making since about 1988 so in 1988 my husband and business partner and I launched a newsletter, one of the first newsletters in the country on workforce diversity, and it the first The first name was training and culture newsletter. That didn't inspire anybody very much. But about three years in, we changed the name to cultural diversity at work, and it just took off. And also, there was just a, you know, there was, there was something happening in the country with organizations realizing that the workforce was, was just becoming much more diverse, and they needed they needed help. They needed information. They needed guidance on how to be effective with this, this workforce. So I started my career in this space, although it's hard, you know, it's hard to pinpoint the starting of a career, because careers develop over time. And that's also another little, little thing I have in my background is that I've been a career development advisor and coach so and I've developed and taught career planning courses. So I'm going to go way, way, way back, because I think this, I think it's fundamental what happens to you in your growing up years. And so my parents were from New England, moved to Ohio, and they basically were were in a cross cultural experience, because life and culture in New England and Massachusetts was very different from Northwestern Ohio. And my father used to say that that the personalities of the people in Ohio were about as flat as the land. And that was just his way of describing difference, right? Because he had been raised in Massachusetts, of course, where there are mountains and hills and valleys and and he just found, you know, that people were different in Ohio. And this is this is true all across our country. So I had my experience in my own family of difference, and then I was introduced to cultural differences by my parents with the National Geographic magazine. So that magazine coming into our home, and in those days, we didn't have television, so magazines were, were, you know, they were a vehicle, a window into the larger world. And I became very, very interested in all the people that were in the National Geographic Magazine. Mean, so you know, this is, this is how you get started on a on a career track. And so as I went to school, I just began asking questions about cultural differences. I remember at Ohio State University I was, I was in a class on organizational communication, and the young, ta, very smart guy, I said, How do you know these models and these theories work in in an organization in Mexico, for example? And he couldn't answer the question. And so I just kept asking those kinds of questions. I had just been sensitized to cultural differences, and it made me ask different kinds of questions. So when I got to the University of Washington, and I was a TA in as a teaching intercult interpersonal communication. I asked my advisors, Gary D'Angelo for one, Jon Stewart for the other. I said, you know, you're teaching a a type of communication, a style of communication, but it's really a white middle class style. Do Are you? Are you aware that you're doing that? Well, they had no awareness whatsoever. And so I designed this exercise in my class. Scared my advisors after death, but I designed this exercise about how white people talk. And I asked my my class, which was 30% people of color, international students, I asked them to help me, help us understand that these differences in communication. And so they agreed to go on videotape, and they talked about their experience of communicating with white people in the United States, particularly, you know, often white middle class people, and we use that as an exercise to learn about communication and to learn that about learn that we had been we had been taught a style of communicating, and that style was connected to our our economic level, it was connected to our racial and cultural makeup. It was connected to gender. There were just all kinds of connections. And so I just, you know, I just began asking the question, how, how would a cultural lens inform this exercise from a DI in a different way? And so, so, you know, that takes me to about 1988 when I got pulled into a a training effort at the University of Washington. There had been a racial incident in the dental school, and the dean of the dental school and the staff training development person agreed that there should be an innovation intervention and there should be education. And so I became one of the trainers in that effort to try and help people understand why, why making fun of black people wasn't necessarily a, you know, a respectful idea and and as I watched this whole project evolve and develop, I just had all kinds of questions, how do you know this intervention is going to work? How do you know people respond to this kind of thing? And I I just began asking questions, and one day on the bus, I was sitting there and saying, You know what? I bet I'm not the only person with these questions. I bet there are people all over the world that have these questions. What if we did a newsletter about this kind of and that's how the newsletter got started. That was the, you know, the initial push for it, and, and we began publishing in 1988 and then I began, you know, living my life on the telephone, because in an email at that time, or, or zoom, and living my life on the telephone answering people's questions. You know, what? What does, what does diversity mean? Why are, why are we doing this? What? What? What benefit does it have to our organization and and so as people called me with their questions, every question was an article. And so we began publishing in 1988 began publishing about diversity in the workforce, what that meant, and so I spent 10 years doing that, and then in 1998 a colleague of mine decided to form the Northwest Diversity Learning Series with some key Companies and organizations here in the greater Seattle area, and then this became a a community. I always called it, and it's a it's an employee, it's an employer venture on leveraging, leveraging diversity, because all the employers wanted to understand this. Thing, how it affected them, and so we joined together, and we started teaching ourselves, and that's how the Northwest Diversity Learning Series got

 

Speaker 2  15:07

started, and it still continues to this day,

 

Speaker 3  15:11

continues to this day, 27 years. Good for you,

 

15:16

and that's an us,

 

Speaker 4  15:19

yes. Well, let me just start by saying that I've originally from North Carolina, grew up on a tobacco farm with my siblings, all 11 of them, eight, eight brothers and three sisters, and in a household where at the age of 13, my mom died from lupus, and so we had to help carry out. My father kept us together. So it was a story about survival, resilience and kind of looking forward in terms of our life stories. Mike,

 

15:53

where were you? Where were you in the birth order,

 

15:54

number five. Number five,

 

Speaker 4  15:57

I was I was in the middle. So about that time, you know, some of the things that teenagers would do, like play basketball and, you know, do those kinds of things, I was not able to do that, because we had kind of the dual role of, kind of the the elder sibling, right? So you had to help out, because the older ones had left a home and so forth. And so I went on to college, and during my couple of years, during the summers, I worked, this is where I got exposed to people impacted by disability. Disabilities I worked for in the summer at a program at

 

16:38

o'bara Training Center, which was a

 

Speaker 4  16:41

residential facility for kids with learning disabilities and so forth, and so it was kind of it was my first experience and exposure to that. I went on and graduated college in North Carolina, North Carolina, Central University. I met my wife there, and we got married, and I wasn't out looking when I was a senior in college, because I was, unfortunately, one of the ones with a very low draft lottery number. So I assumed that I would get drafted upon graduation, and as luck would have it, the the draft was ended the week I graduate, and so I and I'd already gone and taken the physical, and was prepared to go into the service, but I didn't want to go, because of all that was going on during that time, but I knew that I I would have to, so I went and ventured and out, and I went back home and worked with my dad for a couple of years in terms of helping to support the family, and Helen and I got married, I started a job in in North Carolina as a resource research assistance for a community action agency, Executive Director and and that's where I started to get really a little bit more indoctrinated into social justice, equity, diversity. That was a diversity at the time, was more social justice and civil rights and so forth, and community action, things to do, to engage with the communities so forth. And I, someone saw me and said, I think you could do this regional job for an organization. It was called the Nusa river regional development planning agency, and they were creating a new program for assistance with the senior citizens and so forth. They said you'd be a natural to help, help out, shape this group up and get them going. And so I think I probably did a job so well that they didn't like the fact at that time, it was more of an economic development. Maybe we're moving too fast with that. So I left that, but I remember it exposed me to working with people older and needing different kinds of care and so forth, so in terms of generational that helped me kind of get that type of perspective. Someone there, a friend of mine, saw me and said, there's a job for a personnel rep at warehouse or company and you you might be perfect for the role that they're looking for. They were looking for like a entry level personnel rep to do a lot of recruiting and so forth in North Carolina. In North Carolina, okay, so I applied, and was off, offered the job on the spot, and I worked in Plymouth, North Carolina, very small rural community, and one of the things that I learned while I worked there as a representative was perceptions that appearances and so forth. And I recall having a friend of mine come to visit me. He happened to be a local reporter for television station. And and he drove up in his car with all of the signage on the side of the car. And I didn't realize that he did that in terms of what he came in, but I went into my office and shut the door and all panic. It started to happen in in the office, because people didn't know exactly what I was doing, and they were still very sensitive about racial issues, because the plant itself had one side of it was heavily populated by African Americans, and the other side was white. One was the pulp paper mill, which was the higher paying jobs, and the sawmill, the lumber mill and Timberlands, was the side where more of the African American employees. So it started to give me a sense of social justice, and why, why were some people on one side and the other So, and there wasn't an agreement with the government that, that, you know, they changed that, you know, there was a conciliation agreement of sorts. And so I was brought in to help with that whole transition and that process as well. And then from there, I started to do more college recruiting. I i recall that in a meeting I was at, one of the vice presidents came down to visit and was talking about all of the things that the company was doing to support affirmative action at that time, and so in equal employment opportunity, and they he was just talking about how, how well they felt about what they were doing. And I think I remember raising my hands, excuse me, but I don't happen to see any of these people you're talking about? Can you illuminate on some of whom these people are? Because, quite frankly, I haven't seen them, and I'd like to know, and it stumbled him, because he couldn't come up with an answer, right? But two weeks later, I got offered a job to come to Seattle, and so I came to Seattle as the college relations and recruiting manager, where I over saw the company's college relations program and summer internship programs for the entire company and all of its operations and so forth for a couple of years. And I wanted to then shift into more of a generalist role, because that was a specialty role. And so I was recruited back to New Jersey for warehousing to head up our regional sales office Human Resource Function. So I worked there. And then several years later, I got promoted back to Seattle as the overall HR director for that division and so forth. And from there, I moved into an international role where I was the international HR director, and that was during the early 80s, and I attribute a lot of the growth in the understanding about diversity, to a conversation I had with a person by the name of Louis Briggs. And I still am in contact and work with him on issues today. Louis Griggs is out. Was out of the San Francisco area. He and his wife, Lenny Copeland, had had wanted to produce a series on going international. In fact, they had, had written and done that. And he was marketing this cassette series on, you know, intercultural, cross cultural, going international types of activities. And so I was saying, gee, there's some similarities in terms of civil rights and affirmative action and so forth. And so we got, I say, You should do a series like that, but more specifically focused on diversity issues. And so he went back, and we actually helped us to fund the series on valuing diversity, which was kind of one of the first video series, things of this nature, which got sold to a number of major corporations. And I think that's when that whole transition from affirmative action and compliance related work in this area started to blossom and so so so fast forward, back until the late 1990s i i was in the international role, and I moved we went through a process of what we call organization redesign, and I was on a redesign team for the HR function. And during that time, we created three basic categories within HR, one around shared services, where a lot of the transactional work was being centralized because of the emergent technology that was coming on board with PeopleSoft and systems like that, and the strategic partners, where we elevated. The role of HR professionals in the business to become strategic partners with their businesses. And then Centers of Expertise. We had several Centers of Expertise, like learning and development, training and education, recruiting, diversity and so forth. And so I was tapped to be the head of the the recruiting, staffing and Diversity Center of expertise and with the staff and so forth. So we worked there, and then as diversity became even more of a priority for the company, they decided that they wanted to and I lobbied for the creation of a Chief Diversity Officer role. And I remember my boss at the time saying, oh, that's kind of a laughable idea. What's that all about? We don't know what what that is, and it was kind of the infant stages of the function and the role. And Barbara will know two people, Fred Miller and Judith Katz, were the consultants that we had brought in to help work with the leadership team to do that, but since that time, and actually they decided to do it, we we created what we call a framework that's in terms of the pillars of action that we would take to to expedite the work In diversity, equity, inclusion, and how it fits Weyerhaeuser, and we did that, but one of the things we learned from that we didn't engage leadership in the way that we felt we should. And so we went back around and talked to leaders and had them do do more work, and we were probably one of the first companies to have a diversity as a part of the criteria for management incentive bonus programs based on, you know, achieving certain results in terms of workforce representation change in areas where they were substantially underutilized in their businesses and so forth. So we, we were the first to kind of do that kind of effort. So I worked in that role up until my retirement in 2013 that's when Barbara twisted my hand and said, Let's, let's form the Institute for Sustainable diversity and inclusion.

 

Speaker 2  27:16

So the Northwest Diversity Learning Series came for the formation of Disney, it

 

Speaker 4  27:21

did. It absolutely did. Yeah, Barbara had done that. And the discussion we'd had it had Barbara had moved it over to Bill hertan, who managed it for a few years, and then it moved from there to archbrite. At the time Barbara, I think it was the employers, Employers Association of Washington. Is that right? That's correct, yes. And so the question that Barbara and I grappled with, is this a profit making entity that we're going to create, or is it a nonprofit? And we both agreed we thought a nonprofit fit better, and so we went through the process of incorporating and founding the organization, and that's what we've been doing since that time. The other thing that I do, just as an aside, I am also and it's a fairly significant commitment, is that I am the CEO of my own consulting practice. Hinder works which I do, consulting work. My principal sector is the architectural industry, and have been providing a lot of support to architectural firms in terms of some of their HR and di work and so forth. So that's in a nutshell.

 

28:36

That's a bit that's a big nut.

 

Speaker 2  28:41

So, so Barbara, do you recall how you first encountered his work and what led you to, what led you to twist his arm? And, well,

 

Speaker 3  28:51

I had, we were reaching out to companies and organizations to join the series, and so I think effin is was still in the recruiting position, and so we reached out to Weyerhaeuser to join the series, and he, he's the one that that brought, you know, Weyerhaeuser in as the sponsor of the series. And then, then, you know, things developed, and he became the chief diversity officer. So, one of the things that we did with the series, and it was just a natural as part of the beginning, is we had this network of the the the diversity leaders and practitioners and organizations, and we would meet in the afternoons of the the series sessions in the morning. So the series was a bi monthly series. So there was a workshop every other month. And so this group of people started getting together, meeting in the afternoon to discuss what happened in the morning and to discuss our work. And that that group became a fundamental. Uh, part of the success of the Northwest Diversity Learning Series, because we were, we were learning as professionals in this field, and it was emerging field, you know, it was not, it was not established at time. And so, so I got to know efnes, I started working with him, and we stayed in touch. And then, when, when archbrite decided, I think both of us were, we were starting to meet with archbrite Just to help them with the series. And then, then they asked us if we would take it over. And so,

 

Speaker 2  30:38

so that's I was when I was the My role at President CEO, the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, we we engaged we called it Washington employers, the right precursor to archbish. We engaged them on a couple sticky HR situations. I value I value them. Yeah, yeah. So the Northwest Diversity Learning Series that's happening here in 2025 that people listening to this podcast can join in on and learn. It's very interesting and something new. I'm learning the first session with Michael Ressler from the Aspen Institute. We learned about a framework called the better arguments framework. And I know you chose that very intentionally to align with our turbulent argumentative times. So, you know, I'd like, I'd love to hear your take on how you chose the thematic structure around the better arguments framework. And if you could talk about the upcoming series events so people can get a taste of what they they they can take advantage of

 

31:45

if they so choose.

 

Speaker 3  31:48

Well, we were looking for we we had so we meet with our sponsors in the summertime to figure out what we're going to do next. And that's been going on for 27 years, meeting and making these decisions. And so in our meetings, in in in 2024 it was we got some real clear direction from some of our folks that they they felt that their people needed help communicating about these contentious issues. And so I'm, my background is, is in interpersonal communication. So I've had a lot of training and conflict resolution communication models, and I just didn't think that they were, you know, what we wanted. And so we began looking at all kinds of things, searching. And one day I came upon the better arguments project. And I thought, Hmm, that's really interesting. So that the the the mover and shaker of the better arguments project is a man by the name of Eric Liu, and he comes out of, I believe, Microsoft. And he, he had the view that that we needed. We didn't need to stop arguing. We needed better arguments. We needed to understand, you know, to be able to articulate why we felt the way we did. And so I just started reading up on him and the better arguments project. We called Michael Ressler. We talked with him. He went through it with us, and then he finally agreed to do the first session. So the the first session really laid the foundation for, you know, what is the what is the better arguments framework? How do you have better arguments? So, the the better arguments framework is built on, on three dimensions and five principles. So the three dimensions are, you have to, you have to pay attention to the these fundamental parts of every argument, which is historical context, emotional intelligence and power dynamics. And then, so that's the context that you work with. And then the better arguments process is based on five principles, and that is, take winning off the table, prioritize relationships, listen passionately, pay attention to context, embrace vulnerability and make room to transform. So we just thought this was a really good model for talking about contentious issues. And we we came up with a whole list of contentious issues in our society. At the moment, there's no shortage. And so our process was narrowing down what was, what were the, what were the issues that we really wanted to to talk about. And so we we've we finally decided on on five topics. We decided to do five workshops this year, three special events. Because there's so much turmoil, we wanted to have a little bit more on flexibility and nimbleness in responding to things as they they come up. So we did, we did our foundation session on the better arguments framework in February. Library are in March. In March, we did a session called di business strategies, needed or not, and we recruited the whole is the board who have incredible experience. And we did the session about, you know, why? Why diversity anyway? Why? Why is it needed? And that was that was illuminating. It was illuminating just in our conversations with the board as we prepared this session, we learned as we prepared this topic. So it was, it was an excellent session. And then so the next one coming up is may 14, and that is, immigrants. Do they take jobs away from US citizens? And I was just reading the New York Times yesterday, and sure enough, this trope, you know, somebody who's being interviewed says, you know, immigrants take jobs away from from US citizens. You know, it's when you really probe into that question. That's not really what happens. But you know, people, this is, this is the story that gets told. So we have a wonderful presenter who's has, you know, great experience working with immigrants in the country and and she's going to do our session. Her name is Jess Galvan and she's the daughter of Mexican American immigrants in this country. So, and then our last, our topic in September is meritocracy, that that is all over the place. I mean, you hear it every day. And then the final one is racism re examined. Is it over or not? And I think that will be very interesting. We've got, we've got a really excellent presenter for that one, and really helping people have some conversations about racism in a different way. So we're, we're really excited about this series, and it's an opportunity for people to learn to have conversations and and, and, you know, one of one of our participants had the experience. She took the better arguments framework to have a conversation with a family member and a friend, both of political persuasions, and she was surprised and pleased at how well the better arguments, framework and process work for her. They could have, they could have a meaningful conversation so it, you know, it does work.

 

Speaker 2  37:19

And the remaining sessions of the learning series will amplify and dig deeper into the better arguments framework, right? That's the structure

 

Speaker 3  37:28

each session is based on the better arguments framework. So each presenter has to work with that framework. So we work, we're working very hard with all of them to follow this process. We designed a an outline that they will follow. So, you know, we really structured this so that the framework would get used every single session, so people get, you know, multiple times to learn it and practice it.

 

37:57

Yeah, the

 

Speaker 2  38:00

the people listening who want to join in and learn the better arguments framework and dig into the topics of the learning series. How do people get involved? How do people sign up? People

 

Speaker 3  38:12

register. They can go to the ISD website, Ifor, sdi.org, and just registers a registration tab, and they can register right there. I

 

Speaker 2  38:23

numeral 4s, di Institute for Sustainable diversity and inclusion. That is so I didn't know Eric Lew was involved in better arguments framework. I know Eric, yeah. I know he started citizen University. That's right. I know he served, served our nation, the Clinton administration, at least as a domestic policy advisor, correct? He did. He's got a great TED talk. Yeah, I didn't realize that today. I learned something new every day. So good learning. You mentioned sponsors. You mentioned getting together with sponsors last summer to design the 2025, learning series. So tell me a little bit about sponsors, and who, who are sponsors, who should be sponsors, and what, what do, uh, sponsors do for the

 

39:13

cause? Definitely want to take that one. Why

 

39:17

don't you go ahead and take that one as well.

 

Speaker 4  39:21

But what I will say is that each year, we try to come up with themes and topics that resonate with our sponsors. And what we generally do is we put together a packet of information that talks about, you know what, what we're proposing for the series we invite, and the what we're proposing is based on the discussion, the conversations with representatives from the sponsoring organizations. We have several, we have several levels of sponsorship for companies and nonprofits and. We share what that looks like and what's available as a part of that, we've had sponsors in the past that have ranged from Nordstrom, which has been a significant signature sponsor for a number of years, others, like the Boeing company warehouse, has been in and out as well Alaska Airlines. So we actually, during the fall of the year identify the sponsors that we go out and share with them what we're planning and doing and invite them to join the series at one of the sponsorship level. They're different levels, and each level represents the number of people that could be invited to a particular session and so forth. Okay,

 

Speaker 2  40:44

so if I'm a sponsor that gives me the opportunity to invite my employees, my stakeholders, my donors, my board members, whoever my stakeholders may be, absolutely coming and experience the Learning Series. Okay,

 

40:58

right? Barbara, is there anything I missed?

 

Speaker 3  41:03

No, I just Yeah. I just want to emphasize that sponsorships have never been just about providing money from the very get go. We wanted sponsorships to be tied to people coming to and learning in the sessions. So every sponsorship you get X number of seats for your employees and managers, and they the series became, over time, a really strong resource for training and educating employees, diversity councils, Employee Resource Groups, employee business groups and managers. So So one of the things that that the the employees would often say is say our our supervisors need to be in this training, our managers need to be in this training. So so we went back to the sponsor, and they said, This is the kind of feedback we're getting from our, you know, your employees that are attending the sessions. And so I said, What if we, what if we make a concerted effort to recruit and get more more sponsors or more managers into these sessions? And that did happen. And so our most recent data is about 40% of the attendees are managers.

 

Speaker 2  42:20

Great, but any individual can attend. Don't need to be affiliated with a sponsor. You

 

Speaker 3  42:26

do not need to be affiliated with a sponsor. So if you go to register on the website, those are, that's, those are individual seats that you're purchasing. And also, I want to make sure that people understand that, that, you know, we've we have to collect a certain amount of money to stay solvent, but also we, we've offered lower pricing for nonprofits. We've ordered, offered lower pricing for tribal members, lower pricing for retirees, and lower prices for students. So we have, with our sponsor support, we are able to offer some lower rates for people in you know, not affiliated with organizations or organizations that are non profit.

 

43:09

That's That's fabulous. So

 

Speaker 4  43:12

what one of the other things I'd just like to point out too that's important that the series has been evolving over the years for a number of the years, in fact, up until COVID, all of the sessions were held in person at Nordstrom downtown, and they were very gracious host and sponsor for the series. When COVID hit, we had to kind of talk about, well, why do we what are we got to do now, right? And so we decided that we were going to go virtual. We weren't sure, unsure. We weren't too sure about it, but we did, and we found that by by going virtually, a lot of folks like that, there is kind of the loss of the personal interaction, and so, so we're trying to evaluate that, but for the distant future. This this venue allows a lot of folks to participate, who would, who might not, otherwise participate from places as far away as Florida and so forth. So we're really pleased by that. The other thing I'll say is that this year, given feedback, we're introducing the cohort, a cohort, cohort learning group, which will kick off in June, which will be six to our sessions for the balance of the year, for young practitioners who want to take a deeper dive in into di work and the things that they should be cognizant of as di champions and leaders and so forth. Oh,

 

Speaker 2  44:41

that's fabulous. So anyone listening to this podcast, you know a young, emerging leader, this is for them. I know I recently read a grant proposal evidence that you crafted us seeking support from Morgan Stanley. If, if you're with Morgan. Stanley vote yes funding that grant. But I know that you articulated some elements of the vision of the future of ISD. So let's, let's wave that magic wand and say that we obtain all the funding that is necessary to scale is the to have the impact that is needed in these trying times. What are some of the things you see for the future? Well, one of the things both of you

 

Speaker 4  45:30

but one of the things I'd just like to comment on that we haven't touched on is that Barbara and I both bring a fairly deep knowledge of di work, and we have both been involved in the development of of standards. Barbara with the Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion benchmarks, and I served as the convener for the international organizations for standardizations. ISO standard, 30415, semicolon, 2021, which is the diversity and inclusion standard. And we believe, as we look forward, that increasingly organizations want tested frameworks and standards to help guide the development and sustainability of the work that they do in this area. And part of what we're trying to impress upon people that this isn't something that's performative, but that it's something that's very much integral to carrying out the mission, the vision of the organization, and that it goes beyond just employees, but to all stakeholders. So these frameworks help people gain a better understanding and appreciation for that, and we're going to be doing more about that as well. We're also going to be in a half we're looking specifically at research around, how do you counter this di under fire context that we're in? And so we've been putting together some special events, and we likely will have more this year, which helps people understand what's behind this pushback. What are the things that we can do? How do we message the importance of di and so forth, and so we think that's going to be a valuable add to the work that we're doing this year as well. Yeah,

 

Speaker 2  47:14

and I say assault rather than a pushback assault, that's just me, but that's fabulous. I know there's tools, so my ISO experiences in aerospace manufacturing, as the lighthouse here in Seattle has many, many blind and deaf, blind machinists making as 9100 quality aircraft parts. So I understand what that means, that there are standards, there are indicators that you're on the path to success. There are ways to test what you're doing. There are processes. So the ISO standard for for di What about valuable set of tools for people? So thank thank you for your work on that, and Barbara the global benchmarks again, including people, is the right thing to do from a moral, ethical standpoint, but it's also the right thing to do from an effective, effectiveness impact strategy standpoint for businesses, organizations, to deliver, like you said, evidence on their mission, vision of values, the best way they can. That's doing to include as many strengths as possible, which means including the whole spectrum of human contributions. So love the work you've both done, love to be part love, love to be joining the Mary band at this point, being on the is the board and just excited, and I think very motivated. And I think there are lots of people who are looking for a way to get involved, to to engage a place, a place to call home, a place to pitch in and contribute. And I would offer the Institute for Sustainable diversity, inclusion is the as that place

 

49:10

Sure. Could I add something? Right?

 

Speaker 3  49:13

I think one of the things that is the has done, and I think we're, you know, we're going to push it more as we as we move into this environment, and that is intercultural competence. So like it or not, the United States is a multicultural, multi racial, hopefully democracy continues. And so the diversity of our population just is. It exists, and it has for since the start of this country. And so we've been we've been trying to figure out how we deal with diversity our entire lives. And there have been advances and retractions and for. Forward and backward throughout our history. You can, you can read it anywhere. And so right now, there's a there's a model that I wrote about early on in 1988 and it has evolved. It was called the experiencing differences model. Now it's called the intercultural development continuum. So, and I know both of the both of the scholars that that contributed to developed and produced this model. So back in in 19 I was

 

50:34

taking notes when I talked to you too,

 

Speaker 3  50:39

I talked with Milton Bennett, who, who, who developed the first version of the model. It was called experiencing differences model. And he's, it was somebody asked him, can you tell us where the United States is? And he says, well, it's not really a a country model. But he said, If you force me to to answer, I would say it's in the stage of minimization, which is, which is a stage to to minimize differences. But today, I would say that the United States has reverted back to the second stage in the model called polarization, and that's where we recognize the differences. We don't like them, and we judge them to be inferior to who we are, and so that that basically the country has moved back into a earlier stage of the developmental model. And you know that it just, it just doesn't work very well for the reality of what we are. So I think one of the things that the the institute is going to think about as we move forward is, how can we help people understand and gain intercultural competency in this world that is becoming ever more diverse? And of course, diversity not only has to do with the diversity in our own country, but because of airplanes, diversity travels around the world at at great speed. And I used to remind the Boeing, the Boeing people, when we worked with Boeing. You, you all, you all facilitate international travel. You all facilitate international diversity and people moving around the globe. You all do that. That's part of what is the result of building airplanes. And so we have to become competent working with people different from ourselves. What a diplomat once said to me, you know, we have been come. We are competent in dealing with people like ourselves. We have to become competent in dealing with people who are different than we are. That's the next stage in adult development. I had that conversation 20 years ago. We are still in that that box, that bucket, so to speak, we need to learn to be more confident with the diversity around us, because it's not going away. That's right,

 

Speaker 2  53:02

the Northwest. Firstly, learning series is here as one way we can all work together again. Thank you Barbara, thank you Ethan, us for being here today. Love to have continue this conversation, and maybe in about six months toward the end of the year, see what's unfolded, see what's developed. That

 

53:20

would be very interesting.

 

Speaker 2  53:23

Yeah. So again, this is a podcast by Dr Kirk Adams, and I really I learned so much from both of you, whenever, whenever we speak. Now, now that I'm on the board, I have the opportunity to be in various meetings with both of you, and I always have my note taker at hand, because I always learn something from from both of you. I just treasure the opportunity to be part of his di and to bring these resources to the community sorely needed at this point in time. So here we are, and I will talk again later. Thank you again. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you.

 

Speaker 1  54:07

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 WWW dot drcker adams.com, together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact.

Supercharge Your Bottom Line TDI: April 24, 2025: Mai Ling Chan, CCC-SLP, PMP, Founder, Exceptional Leaders Network https://drkirkadams.com/sybl-tdi-04-24-2025/ In this episode of Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion, Dr. Adams speaks with Mai Ling Chan, MS, CCC-SLP, PMP — a speech-language pathologist turned tech entrepreneur and the founder of the Exceptional Leaders Network. Mai Ling brings a rare blend of clinical expertise, project-management rigor, and entrepreneurial know-how to the conversation. After 18 years of frontline SLP practice, she built and exited a therapy-staffing company, co-created the acclaimed Xceptional Leaders podcast, and now guides disability-focused founders and corporations on inclusive product design, branding, and market strategy through her consultancy, Mai Ling Chan LLC. Her Amazon best-selling Becoming an Exceptional Leader anthology series and the growing Exceptional Leaders Network spotlight innovators who turn lived disability experience into breakthrough solutions. In this episode, Dr. Adams explores: ✅ Mai Ling's journey from hospitality to graduate school at Arizona State University and why she pursued both the CCC-SLP and PMP credentials. ✅ The mission of the Exceptional Leaders Network and how community accelerates disability innovation. ✅ Key lessons from advising corporates and start-ups on accessibility, inclusive UX, and brand positioning. ✅ Opportunities for executives to translate disability inclusion into revenue growth and market differentiation. 🔗 Connect & Learn More Dr. Kirk Adams – Inclusion Strategy: https://drkirkadams.com Mai Ling Chan, LLC – Consulting & Speaking: https://mailingchan.com Exceptional Leaders Network – Community & Resources: https://mailingchan.com/eln Xceptional Leaders Podcast – Inspiring Interviews: https://xceptionalleaders.com If you're ready to supercharge your bottom line through disability inclusion, hit Subscribe, ring the bell 🔔, and share your thoughts in the comments! #DisabilityInclusion #Accessibility #InclusiveBusiness #SpeechLanguagePathology #Leadership #ProjectManagement #ExceptionalLeaders Transcript:  

00:00

Music.

 

00:09

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.

 

00:37

So welcome everyone to Dr KURT ADAMS monthly livestream webinar, which I call supercharge your bottom line through Disability Inclusion. Today, I have wonderful guest, Mei Ling Chan. If you could just say hello, Mei Ling, and I'll turn it over to you shortly. Hello everyone. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me great and for those of you who don't know me, again, I'm Dr Kirk Adams. I'm talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. I am the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, which was Helen Keller's organization, and I had the awe inspiring opportunity to sit at her desk. I moved to New York City

 

01:25

in 2016 to be become president of AFB. Prior to that, I held those same leadership roles at the lighthouse for the blind here in Seattle, which is a social enterprise employing hundreds of blind and deaf, blind people, interesting businesses, including aerospace manufacturing for all the Boeing aircraft. I have a PhD in leadership and change from Antioch University, and I focus my dissertation work on employment. I did an ethnographic study of blind adults employed at major American corporations, and interviewed a lot of really cool people working at a lot of companies whose names we all know, and I learned a lot from that experience about the factors that lead to successful employment for people who are blind and the barriers that still remain. So we we all have lots of work to do together to make the world of equitable place where everyone has the equal opportunity to thrive. And I do that by focusing on employment. I work with companies to help them accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in their workforce. I support disabled entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial journeys. I help

 

02:51

small nonprofits scale beyond the founder stage. And in general, I

 

03:00

look for fun, innovative, high impact projects that will accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in our world. And I like to work with people I like and mailing. Mailing is one of those people we were introduced quite some time ago, and I've stayed in very close contact as she has developed her strategies. And what she's bringing to the world to accelerate inclusion and equity and social justice and all of those good things. So

 

03:31

would really like to spend the bulk of our time hearing from you mailing I can. I'll reserve the right to pop in and ask some clarifying questions. But would would love to hear about your journey so far, your background. What

 

03:49

energize you, energizes you and motivates you. Around disability inclusion, maybe some of the things you've tried, some of the things that have worked well, some of the things that you you learn from and where you're at now with ELN exceptional Leaders Network, which I'm privileged and proud to be part of, and then what your your vision of the future is. So I'm happy to hand you the the talking stick, 111, little comment I've learned a lot from Mei Ling. She she comes my as a totally blind person myself since age five, I they tend to look for information about blindness and visual impairment and assistive technologies that support people with visual impairment to help us be in fewer disabling situations through use of technology, but I was on a call with Mei Ling earlier in the week, where her guest speaker was using augmentative communication technology, which I'm I've had some exposure to, but really learning a lot more about because of my association with Mei Ling. So always some.

 

05:00

Thing new to learn, and that's what we're here for today, for those of you who are with us live, we'll provide ample time for question and answer, and for those of you who are viewing the archived recording, we will let you know how to get in touch with both of us. So Mei Ling, the floor is yours? Excellent. Thank you again. I'm so excited to be able to be on the show with you, and I will tell our listeners that I do have ADHD and I have my talking points in front of me, but if I start to become a runaway guest, which is a podcast guest that just goes on and on, please jump in. Dr Adams, okay, okay, great. I can't imagine me wanting to stop you from saying anything, but I will, I will, I will take that under advice you never know. But I also have learned a lot from Dr Adams, and we are currently working on the software that I am using for the exceptional Leaders Network, which he just joined with me, because there isn't a seamless interface with the jaws re screen reader. And so we're having some issues with accessing different areas, and I don't, I don't use one. And so this has been a really interesting journey for me to be a bridge between a very important user, which is, you know, one of my members and the tech team, and so this has been back and forth with emails. And so I'm really hopeful that this company is going to embrace, you know, the WCAG

 

06:32

requirements, and I'm looking forward to moving through this process together. And of course, I am name dropping Dr Adams, and that was that he was the former founder and president of the Black blind Association, and you know, hello, we've got somebody very important here, in addition to any other future users who maybe they're already trying to use the software and just not saying anything. So we're getting some good traction. So I just wanted to share that with your listeners. So

 

07:04

you're muted.

 

07:07

Well, take take us back to your girlhood in New Jersey. Let's go way back. I love that, yes. So I'm a Jersey girl who's stuck in the desert looking for my beach. That's what I've been saying. It's wild. I've been here 24

 

07:22

years now in the desert. I originally am from Keyport, New Jersey, a small little sailboat town, which is a beautiful area in Monmouth County. And I did not know how good I had it, because really, you know, 20 minutes and I'm at any beach, it was just crazy. And then I could also drive into New York City. And so I grew up seeing a lot of the the shows, you know, Les Mis I saw probably three or four times. I saw the Christmas ones. I saw the rockets, you know, I've been center, yeah, all of that. And then I came out to Arizona, and I was like, what it was like scratching a record.

 

08:01

So I've learned a lot, and I've learned to really just treasure, you know, being in New Jersey, young and I would say, you know, going to the beaches and going to the Garden State Art Center, which is an open amphitheater where you could hear the watch the concerts, and you were so close to the to the, you know, the singers and the performers. It's just incredible. So a lot of things have changed. Obviously, I've been out now for 26 years, but my connections and my culture is still very east coast, and people out here will be like, you know, I like you may. You're pretty direct, you're pretty blunt. And I was like, oh, that's the Jersey girl talking.

 

08:38

Did you become aware of

 

08:42

people with impairments, disabilities, and dynamics around disability

 

08:48

as a young person? It's a great question. So I was in I grew up in a very small town, one square mile was the town of keep where it still is, and I had exposure to one cousin, so actually, a friend's cousin who had a lot of believe it was mental disability, and I don't know, because I was so young then, and he was much bigger than me, so I'm a tiny girl. I'm only, like, barely five feet now, and he was a big, big kid, and there was a lot of sound and chaos coming from the other rooms, and I happened to be sitting next to him, he reached out and hit me. Didn't mean to, you know, it's a sensory overload, all that kind of stuff that you don't know about. And so after that, being a young kid, I was always scared, afraid, putting these in quotes of people who had, you know, physical like, if it looked like they had a mental disability, and you could tell. And back then, we used the word retarded, which we don't use now. And that was, you know, in my mind, like, oh, they are violent. And so that was really interesting for me. Wasn't until I went back to school, I went to college, obviously, you know, got education there, and then I got immersed in a lot of self contained classrooms. And so now, obviously, I have a whole different vision.

 

10:00

And understanding, you know, of all of the sensory inputs and things like that. But that's a great question some people

 

10:06

so at the college level, were you studying disability related?

 

10:11

Great question. Oh, nope, I was going for business. I was supposed to get into the school of business, and because I was not focusing on my studies enough, I got a temporary

 

10:23

admission, and I had to get, like, one more a and so I took a Latin basis class over the summer, and I got a B plus. So I did not, you know, fulfill the requirements. And so I was like, Okay, what am I gonna do now? I supposed to go in and do marketing, and I decided to go into the School of Communications, would look which look like fun, you know, public speaking and broadcasting. So I ended up getting my bachelor's degree there, and then started working for hotels. So I was working for Hyatt hotels for a while, not married, and then had the absolute blessing to stay home with my children and raise them. So I stayed home for 10 years with my two boys. And then my aunt, who is Colombian, she was working in inner city, New York, and she said, Mehmet, you should become a speech teacher. And I said, what is that? And by that point, we did have the internet, so I googled it, and I was like, Oh, this looks great, you know, I love talking, and I could work the kids schedules. And so then I put all my eggs in one basket, and I took some leveling classes out here at ASU, Arizona State University, and I got to know the professors, and somehow I got in. So I was one of 35 students for the master's program out of 300 applications. And I ended up loving both the school age or the school setting and also the medical so I did both tracks, and it was incredible. And so I got to do everything from, I'd say, preschool age, at home, early feeding, all through school age. And then I also kept doing the medical side on the weekends. And so I've also worked with geriatrics, adults trauma like post stroke, acute speech language therapy. What's the right speech language pathology? Yep. Mythology pathology, yeah. So the neurological side, swallowing, and then I loved AAC, which you brought up, which is alternative and on

 

12:14

augmentative communication, which is AAC. That was incredible. As technology, I love technology, and I got to work with a company in Santa Barbara on brain computer interface, which was absolutely amazing. So we had a little stint there. And then, since then, since 2020 I've been full time consulting, so being a bridge between companies and businesses and helping to connect all the dots, you know, the pieces of clinical versus like product creation, marketing, content, so companies that are on the disability technology space, or what type of companies? Yep, and even it's just, it's a lot of blur, like even private practice or writing a book, and that's kind of where all of this came out. I also started my own podcast. I've been doing that for seven years. It's called the exceptional leaders podcast spotlighting people like yourself who are amazing leaders in this space. And that was an amazing journey for me to just get one person and ask them all the questions I wanted. You know, I'm a very curious person, and so I love that entrepreneurial journey of the ups and downs. And you know what kept you connected to your vision, and where did you get the help? So in after my first year, I realized, as this was back seven years ago, not everybody was listening to podcasts. And I was like, you know, I don't want people to miss these amazing stories. So I decided to do an anthology. I did not know what that word was when I started, I said, I just want to take everyone's stories and put them together in a book. And someone's like, that's an anthology mate. So I started with 15 other authors, and each one told one chapter, and that was beautiful. And so then that started the becoming exceptional leader book series. And then since then, I've now published a focus on AAC leaders, a focus on SLP leaders, and then also a focus on Asian Pacific Islander leaders, with the connection of special education. And each one of these books have had their own audience and their own connection. And I'm just amazed at the value, because everybody loves storytelling. You know, that's really how you can really connect with someone, versus just a bunch of bullets right in a bunch of directions. It's just been globally accepted each of the books, and I'm just so excited. It's been such a blessing.

 

14:29

So consulting with companies, podcasting, writing books,

 

14:38

connecting with leaders, and

 

14:43

what was the genesis of the exceptional leaders network that I know you've just launched. Thank you. So about maybe eight to 10 years ago, I started seeing these subscription memberships, and this is something where you pay, you know, certain amount every month, and then you get access to a group.

 

15:00

A community, some type of learning system. And this is different than just a like one course webinar, or even if it's like a three day course, this is something where every month, you know, you're tapping into the whoever the content creator is. And when it first started, I thought this is an amazing idea, and I had been creating other companies at that time. I had a learning management system for continuing education. We had had one about reviewing apps, you know. So I really understood the idea of aggregating and bringing communities together. And I just kept watching this idea of subscription memberships. And I saw colleagues starting ones like, for example, the medical SLP group. So it's a bunch of speech therapists who are their expertise is in medical and you pay a certain subscription price a month, and you get access to them, and all of these resources, fantastic. So I just kept thinking about it, but I had imposter syndrome, and I think that's what a lot of us have, because, you know, we come into this. My profession is a speech language pathologist, so I am an expert in certain areas, for example, AAC, right? And I say expert, we're always learning, but I'm just saying, like, that's my area of expertise, right? And then when you talk about subscription memberships, you now have to be creating content, you know, providing information. And I never found the area of speech pathology that I felt that I was in excellence of you know, where people would say, Oh, I, you know, I go to May every month for this in, let's say AC or this area, and that's because I do have ADHD, and so I feel like I have not deep dive into any one area, because they all interest me, which has been a blessing and a curse, right? Call that multi passion, yes, yes. I call it my, my superpower.

 

16:42

But it can also take me back. It take me, yeah, take me back. So, so I kept having this, like imposter syndrome, like, you know, I'd love to do a membership, but what is it that I would do? You know, I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert. I kept, kind of, like telling myself that. And for your listeners, really, the words that you say to yourself are so important. So if you tell yourself that you are or aren't something, you're going to believe that. And so for years, I believe that I wasn't an expert in anything, and then I was a jack of all trades, master of none. But I finally, finally started to understand that my value is really in connecting people and being a bridge to information. And then I don't need to know everything. And it wasn't until that clicked for me Kirk, that I was able to say, Oh, I've been doing this the whole time, right? I've been bringing people together. I've been sharing information on how to grow your specific accessibility business, or your inclusive business, or become a brand which people are not using like so say you are somebody, who you

 

17:43

you, I'm thinking the word refer, but that's the word you represent. That's the word you represent, a little known diagnosis, you know, and you're telling the world about it. That's your brand. And so we don't, we don't know how to use these words. And so I've been working with people, one on one, and consulting with them, helping them to understand, like, you need to create a website, you need to get very succinct in your messaging, and, you know, you need to have a mailing list and all of these things. And I started to see this is what I do. You know, this is my value. And so, keeping with the exceptional leaders branding, which is what I've been doing with the podcast, and then also with the book, I created the exceptional Leaders Network, and it this has even been a slow grow because I didn't know what it would be. And so last August, yep, last August, I sent an email out to like, 100 of my closest people who I who I've been dealing with over the years in projects and podcasts and books, and I said, Look, I really think that we need a community where we support each other, we uplift each other, and we support each other's offerings, and we get it. We get each other right. We don't have to explain what is accessible mean. What does inclusive mean? And I said, I don't know what it's going to be, but I'd like to start it. And if you'd like to, you know, be a part of this founders group, let's do this. And so I had 25 people who said, Yes, it was crazy. And we started each month coming together and saying, you know, what kind of topics would be valuable? And I started creating agendas. Another thing that is my superpower power, and it's really because I have ADHD, is I am very organized, and so I have created all of these strategies to make sure that I show up on time, that I get projects done on time. And so being very organized, I was able to kind of see, you know, the pieces of what we were doing and how this could then grow into something much bigger. And so in the last couple of months, now, we have all different presentations or webinars. They're like 45 minutes where they are deep dives into different areas of small business creation and strategy and maintenance, but we also have the time where the people that are on the live calls, they get to share, and that's been so valuable. And you were saying this to Dr Adams that you got to to meet Brooke Brown, who was former Arizona Miss wheelchair on.

 

20:00

Yeah, yeah. And so you start to see each other, and you hear from each other what our successes are and our challenges are, and sharing tips, and that has just been priceless. I The

 

20:14

the several experiences I've had so far with ELN exceptional leaders network have been

 

20:21

it feels like entrepreneurship flavored with disability inclusion. Are those common themes? Is disability accessibility unifying theme? Or how would you describe kind of the framework that you're constructing under right? So I always say it's people with and without disabilities who are working towards accessibility and inclusion. Okay,

 

20:50

great. So that leads me to the next question of what, what?

 

20:55

What types of folks do you think would benefit from joining joining the Mary band, yes, exceptional leaders, yeah. So I'm calling them or calling us like brand ambassadors. So now I talk about ADHD as much as I can, right? Because this diagnosis that I feel everybody should be in touch with, I received my di my diagnosis about three years ago now, and honestly, it was very what's weird, like I finally did it, but in the back of my mind, I've, I think I've known I've had it for a while, right? But it didn't look like what a little boy looks like. So I wasn't really sure. And I feel that my messaging is that many women might have this diagnosis, and they don't know, because it just looks different for women, it presents different. And so I feel like me sharing this is really important. So the this is me identifying with a and I'm putting in quotes a disability, but this isn't my it's not the only thing that I do. And so that's why the people that are that I feel that would be navigating towards, you know, our exceptional leaders network are people who are coming out, and they are, you know, seeing the value of having a brand, having a platform, and the real piece is monetizing. And so you could be a speech therapist who has a private practice, or someone who has a disability who just wrote a book or created a product, special education teachers, you know, who have this great idea for a product or a software program, assisted technology developers. I mean, they're people all over the place, but we all come together because we are unified in this very, very special niche area of disability accessibility, inclusion. And so it's been really amazing because people are now collaborating with each other and going, Oh, that. You know, I would love to have Dr Adams on my podcast or so. And so is writing memoirs. And I would love to have her help me, because she gets, you know, my story and how it's different. And, yeah, it's been amazing. I'd like to touch on a couple things. So ADHD, I often talk to people about disability inclusion, and, you know, they're the terms I've been using are visible and non visible disability.

 

23:05

You know, when I walked into my first job interviews out of college with my long white cane and my Braille slate and stylus, no, it's in Braille, it was pretty obvious that I have

 

23:15

an impairment, a visual impairment,

 

23:19

70% or something, of significant disabilities are what, again, I was using the term non visible until about, until about a week ago, when I, when I read a pretty reason

 

23:33

argument that not non apparent is probably a better term. So would love to get your thoughts on a parent versus non apparent disability a little bit, and any of that, the dynamics that you've observed as a person with a non apparent disability, and then really curious about, what if anything changed for you when you when you had a formal diagnosis, like you said, you kind of you kind of sense there was something neurodiverse about yourself, but you did not have that diagnosis until about three years ago. Obviously, you're an adult, so I'm just really curious about what that felt like, and

 

24:14

pros, cons,

 

24:16

dynamics around around that Excellent. Thank you. This has been a very interesting journey for me, because it collided with doing my last book, which was becoming an exceptional API leader, which is Asian, Pacific Islander leader, and I had just completed my it's like an intake questionnaire, and as I was completing it, that's really where I knew that I was going to qualify, because most of Your symptoms will show up before the age of 12, when you're a girl. And so I had to really go back deep into my childhood. I'm now 50. I'll be 53 in May. And so going back and thinking about all of these different the questions that they asked, and some of them were like, oh, so, for example, I always had bruises up and down my legs. Kirk, because.

 

25:00

I was bumping into things. I was constantly just, I didn't know where my legs were, and then my arms were like octopus arms. And my family actually joked that when I came to a table and there were glasses out on the table, that they would all grab their glass and hold it, because inevitably, I was going to knock something over. Okay, that was really interesting, right? So I think about, like, these type of things, and then also I wouldn't stop talking. And my dad, literally, my dad is 100% Chinese, would be like, shut up. Would you stop talking? You know? And then I would just shrink and just be like, you know? And he was like, you haven't stopped saying something since you were born. You know, there's all these things that, like, the picture starts coming together for me, and that was wild. So as I'm answering these questions, I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's me, you know. Like, did you have trouble getting stuff done in school? I got to see every single semester in grade school, up until seventh grade, it was like, I'll just pick spelling, English, history, science, you know, each one because I just couldn't get it together. Couldn't get my projects done, you know, I wasn't organized. And back then, I don't know if you guys remember, like, Oh, that was like, latch key kids days, like, my parents didn't help me with my homework. They didn't get me, you know, it's not the helicopter parenting that we had now, so literally, I had to take care of everything myself. Well, my parents asked, Did you do your homework?

 

26:16

Yes,

 

26:18

yes. There's different kind of parenting. You know, my death was a mess. My room was a mess, like, it's just a mess. And so going through it, like, by the time I got done, I submitted the questionnaire, and I just sat there crying. I was like, Oh my gosh, I had ADHD all that time, and nobody helped me, and nobody saw it. And then the flip side of that is, as I'm going through and writing the book together with Dr Lily Chang, who is the founder of the Asian Pacific Islander caucus for the American Speech Language Hearing Association. She taught me, and I think I always knew this, but she taught me about face. And this is a concept Mansa, that in most of the Asian cultures, and even Southeast Asian cultures that that on the outside, you don't want public people to know what is going on for your family, because it is embarrassing, because you know you there's a certain level that you want to keep up in terms of reputation. And so this, it just permeates so many things, and it is so true. And so this is where perfectionism comes in and secrecy. And if you notice, like very the Asians DON'T LIKE SHARE, you know, their their family gossip, you know, things like that. I don't know if everybody knows, but this is actually, like an unsaid thing. And so disability is actually a something that runs through this where you don't want anyone to know that your child has a disability. I mean, you want them to think that your child's perfect, and so any disabilities will absolutely be, you know, hit under the table, and we're not going to talk about that. And so when I was learning about that, and then being able to look at my relationship with my dad, who's 100% Chinese from Hong Kong, now I realize that he was trying to discipline ADHD out of me. I'm just gonna let that hang there, like by yelling at me, you know, reprimanding me, taking things away, you know, giving me negative feedback. It's not gonna work. Obviously, we all know it's not gonna work. So that was amazing for me to be able to connect all that together. I have a good relationship with my dad. I love him. The death cutest little guy, and I've been able to see past you know that this is what he thought was best parenting techniques, but it was so damaging for me, Kirk, because I always feel like I'm not good enough. I'm not doing all this work. I should be doing better. What is wrong with me? That was the other thing my dad loved to ask rhetorical, rhetorical questions, what are you doing?

 

28:48

I'm like, a million things I don't know.

 

28:52

So that was really huge for me. And then writing the book and working with all of the different people in the API community. Now I understand that me telling this story is so important because other people go, Oh my gosh, that's my story too. You know, whether it's just connecting with hiding a disability in the family, or the family not accepting a neurological, you know, a neuro diverse, let's say ADHD, ADD autism, all of those. You know, it's very hard for some families because of this Asian influence and the intersection of this culture. So that's really interesting, yeah. Well, obviously you

 

29:30

figured out alternative techniques for yourself at this undiagnosed, neurodiverse set of characteristics. But you obviously are very, successful, one of 35 people out of 300 to get into your master's program and becoming a speech language pathologist, podcasting and writing books and things. From a I guess, probably from a psychosocial standpoint, super helpful to have a diagnosis. But then from a practical standpoint, are there two?

 

30:00

Tools or techniques that you've

 

30:02

come to embrace since the diagnosis that have been helpful to you. Yes, so I set up to eighth grade. I got a C but then there was a high school that I wanted to go to, and it was a private high school, and I had gone to private school too, but I wanted this high school, and my parents said you have to get straight A's if you're going to go to this high school. We know you can do it. We don't know what your problem is, but in order to stay in this high school, you have to get straight A's. And so, again, no one told me how. So I had to develop my own strategies, and that's really the word. And so I had my Trapper Keeper, my calendar, my my note cards. You know, I had to come up with all of these ways to keep myself organized. And that stayed with me almost to a fault, because I'm OCD on a lot of things now, where it's like, Oh, my God, this has to be like this, where I got to be packed like, three days in advance, and I gotta get all my vitamins together a month in advance. You know, it's, it's a little too much.

 

30:55

So that's like, the the old school way. And then now with technology, which was what your question was, I am on fire because I've got, like, my phone is beeping, My watch is vibrating, you know, like, you name it. I got things going on to keep me going, and I still will miss a meeting, believe it

 

31:13

or not, happens to the best. Yes, yes, and then AI, oh my gosh. AI is like, it's like, I can't even, I can't even explain, like I can maybe 5x what my productivity is on a daily basis. Now with AI, what are some of the common things you use AI for? So research is really important. So I do a lot of presentations now, and I'm kind of doing meta presentations, because it's aI presentations, right? How to use it as a speech language pathologist, how to use it as a small owner. And I actually do a lot of this research using all of the AI tools. I also am loving agentic AI, which is that you can have, there's a software program, there's a couple now, where you have four or five different agents, and they different things. So one does content writing, one does email writing, one does personal development, and they all connect with each other, so you don't have to have, like, one space for one topic. So that's just really powerful. I love those two things. And then chat GPT is changing all the time. Here we are in 2025

 

32:16

and we're, you know, just at the surface of what it can do. It's constantly updating

 

32:24

and back to the parent versus non apparent disabilities,

 

32:32

thinking about speech, and obviously Brooke on Monday, when she was making her presentation using

 

32:40

AAC

 

32:42

augmented and alternative. Yes, okay, communications. So it was pretty, pretty clear to me before I knew she was Miss wheelchair Arizona,

 

32:53

you know, hearing, hearing during the way she presented I was as a blind person, it was apparent to me that she has an impairment. And I want to take just a minute and talk about impairment and disability. So

 

33:09

I have a visual impairment, I'm totally blind. Some people have hearing impairments, mobility impairments, cognitive impairments, but impairment does not equal disability. I really like to talk about that a lot, especially with employers. And I'm, you know, I use two simple examples. One is, if I'm

 

33:30

leading a meeting and I am at the conference table and I have my agenda in Braille and my committee reports and my budget and Braille, I can read Braille as well as a sighted person could read print. So I'm not I'm not in a disabling situation. Then, even though my visual impairment is constant, however, if I sit down at a conference table and you hand me a stack of print materials, my visual impairment

 

34:01

does not fit with that built environment of print, so I am in a disabling situation. So we talk, I talk a lot about trying to minimize the disabling situations for people with impairments, and to have social, digital and built environments that lessen the instances of disabling situations. So I talk, talk about that. And then often, if I'm on a break big crowd, I'll say, and this may you would, you would clap, I'll say, if you're, if you're five feet tall or shorter, clap, and someone will clap. And I'll say, Well, if you walk into a room and there's a package on a shelf that's eight feet off the ground, your characteristic of your height does not fit with the built environment or that high shelf. So you're going to have to be creative. You're going to have to get a tool like a step stool, or you're going to have to find a teammate taller than you and create a team.

 

35:00

Uh in order, and then you may want to build a lower shelf so the situation doesn't happen again. So those are super some super simplistic examples. But

 

35:11

as far as the fit between people with impairments and speech and the fit with our our world. I'd love to just hear some of your top of mind reflections about that. Since that's an area of expertise for you, it's not it's not for me, but I'm really obviously interested in anyone with characteristics that fall outside the norm, and how we can be inclusive of everybody, everybody, everybody. I say,

 

35:45

you're going to love this. So I had the honor of being able to nominate some people for our recent Arizona State Speech and Hearing Association Annual Conference, and it just happened in April, and I nominated John Gomez, who's a good friend of mine, but also the producer of when I stutter, and it's now an internationally recognized documentary on adults who stutter. And he published this, I think, back in 2018 and it was after like, four or five years of interviewing and filming adults all around the country. And he is one of the pioneers of shifting speech language pathology to whole person centered, versus fixing someone who stutters, and this is a non apparent impairment. So that actually fits perfectly into, you know, what you're talking about. And in the film, it's it's fantastic, because people talk about trying all different types of therapies, like even the one that is like that camera was called the MVR thing or something like, It echoes back to them what they say. And that actually works for a little while, but then the brain just reconfigures and goes back to its initial states. It's amazing. And then also, like, where all these strategies the speech therapist teaches the the client to stop talking, start again. You know, use onboarding strategies. And they were just saying, like, how limiting it was and how it affected their self confidence and so many things. It was actually negative for some people, you know, and it made the in the profession to have to take a look at, is it our is our place that we want to fix people so that they don't have this impairment anymore? Or are we just trying to get people to the point where they are happy and they are communicating. And that's always been, what I fall back on in the field, is it doesn't matter what form of communication you're using, it's that you are effectively communicating. And you know you're communicating with another person, with your pet. You know it could be with just somebody that can or something that can accept it. But there is, there's also a lot of controversy that if you have an AAC device, you have to use the device, you have to press the symbol, versus just using your hands. Why can't you just press your by, you know, or vocalize, uh, and that's all you can get. But that means by, or that's closest to it. We also find that there's people who and then this is Brooke. She cannot, um, enunciate all of the sounds, and so she has helpers, and that her helper was not available for our session the other day, but they can interpret her vocalizations. And it's amazing. And so that person has become her assistive technology, right? Yes, yes, yes.

 

38:22

Um,

 

38:24

yes, you said the documentarian. Did you say John Gomez,

 

38:27

so, and whole whole person? What was the whole person centered? Yeah, whole person centered. Could you just talk a little bit more about that? What that means the whole person? So, an example is when I had a child, he was in fifth grade, and he kept coming in. He he had a stutter. He come and he'd say, Miss Chan, I don't want to leave my class. I'm working on a science project, or, you know, we're just doing something and and I'd say, okay, but you know, let's just go through this. And as he's telling me, he's experiencing moments of stuttering, and he's like, I don't need, I don't need the speech therapy. And so I went in and observed him, which is part of our responsibility, is to observe him with his peers, you know, in the classroom. And I said, this kid's doing great, you know, he's not really impacted, and he was getting good grades. And so those are the two markers that we can attach our speech therapy to in the school setting. Is that, you know, maybe socialization is impeding his ability to to participate in group activities, and then that affects him academically. So it always has to affect academics. So this was years ago, before we had the school person centered, and I had his family come in, and he's only in fifth grade. And every year you have an IEP, the individual education process meeting, and I had to help him come to it. And I said, you know, Johnny, how do you feel about speech therapy? He's like, it's a waste of my time, you know, I don't want to be there. Yeah. And I said, Okay, well, how do you feel about your grades? He's like, I don't know. I think I'm doing great. You know, I don't have any problems. We asked the teacher. Teacher says he's doing great. Does he have any issues with, you know, interacting with peers? Any self confidence issues? None.

 

40:00

And he wants to stop speech therapy. The parents do not want him to stop speech therapy. And so this was something that took me at least two years to get him off of my caseload, and I had reduced him down to just one hour a month, reduced consultation to the point where I could get him off of a full IEP and he can be out with the general kids, and so that's what Whole Person Centered is, is that is this person communicating, or, you know, being able to live at the level where they feel that they Right, right? Are they thriving exactly by their own deficit, their own definition of what thriving is, right? Yes. So let's talk about the IEP just for a second. If there's a parent, the child with a disability, a child with an impairment, listening to this, the individual education plan or education process, individual education process document is super, super important,

 

41:01

your child is entitled to that.

 

41:07

For blind kids, there's something called the expanded core curriculum, which the American Foundation for the Blind and Dr Phil Hatton developed many years ago. And it's the it's the good news as blind kids get at some point and say, Hey, blind kid, you got to learn everything the sighted kids learn, and nine more things, which is orientation of mobility, how to travel confidently and safely with the with the long white cane Braille, if that's appropriate,

 

41:35

assistive technology and advocacy, you need to Learn how to advocate for yourself, and I did not. I was not really taught that very well. I have some terrible stories about how not being able to advocate for myself that negatively impacted my life, but

 

41:56

having your child in those IEP meetings

 

41:59

from kindergarten on is really important. They can give feedback and input into the process as developmentally appropriate. They can say what they like and don't like when they're really little, and as they get older, they can really start being a leader in those settings.

 

42:19

I can remember being at a National Federation of the Blind of Washington meeting, talking about IEPs, and one of the moms said, you know, if I walked in there and there were six people and me, there were six experts, and they were telling me what was best for my kid. And I said, I'm not prepared. I didn't realize what this is going to be. I need to reschedule. And she said, I came back with seven people.

 

42:45

No, it still chokes me up, because she said, you know, we have to have it IEP meeting in the gym. That's where we're going to have it, just so I can have enough support to

 

42:56

achieve for my child. What what I need to achieve for my child? So the IEP is super important. Sounds like you've been involved in quite a number of those mailing so I just want to put that out there.

 

43:09

And I know that either one of us would be happy, delighted to talk to anyone who's with us live today or

 

43:18

viewing the recording about any or all of this. So let's, let's tell people how they can get in touch with us. And then I love mailing to hear a little about about your vision for the future of the exceptional leaders network.

 

43:32

So how can people best get in touch with you? Well, it's kind of amazing. My name, mailing Chan is pretty

 

43:40

popular in China,

 

43:42

but I was able to actually land mailing chan.com which is why, so please feel free to reach out to me at MLC, at mailing chan.com you can also find me on LinkedIn at mailing Chan and Instagram at mailing Chan, great, and for me, my name is not quite as Common, but I was able to get Dr Kirk adams.com so dr Kirk adams.com

 

44:06

or Kirk Adams PhD on LinkedIn, and

 

44:12

I spend my day

 

44:14

trying to move

 

44:17

inclusion of people with disabilities forward in all kinds of ways, small, small and large, serious and fun. So if it's something that you're interested in talking about with either one of us I know mailing I'm gonna I'm gonna speak for you. We would welcome a conversation

 

44:35

with anyone out there who wants to

 

44:39

help move things forward. Good of the order.

 

44:42

But before we, before we open it up for any questions from the people with us here today, I'd love to, love to hear a few minutes about your vision for Eln. I know, I know it started. I joined it. I've been to a couple meetings, been to, had a couple great experiences with.

 

45:00

Your guest speakers. And as you mentioned earlier, you and I are working through the accessibility issues with the membership platform that you're using, and we've got the vendor involved now, which is what you need to do. And so we're, we're doing, we're doing those things that

 

45:18

in the ELN world will make things more accessible for everybody. So what, where do you want to see things go?

 

45:25

Well, you know, we have to talk about the space that we're in right now and how it's being affected by the change in the federal programs. You know, the obliteration of di programs and the trickle down, reduction in funding for services. So many people like us are disability advocates, speech therapists and just people in this community, we're starting to look for independent paths to creating impact. You know, what are some other ways that we can do this and connect with people and also generate sustainable income? And that's a piece that I haven't been talking about for years. It's that we need to make money, and with that money, we can help more people, we can be more impactful. And so that's where I see the ELN network really coming together. Is I think we're small but mighty right now, but we are going anywhere, and we're just going to continue to grow as people like you, our listeners, are listening and finding out that there is support here from people who get what you are working on. And that's really hard, because I think in this time again, I talk about inclusivity, accessibility, this is becoming non negotiable. You know, for businesses, they can take away the DI programs, but the the requirements are always going to be there, and we need to continue to self advocate. And if you know, we know together, we are stronger. That's where I see the exceptional Leaders Network going growing is growing together. I like to say this is we need to look to our left and right and to lift each other up. And I feel that that is where the exceptional leaders network is placed,

 

46:53

wonderful. And I that that does lead me to reiterate, the laws are still the laws. The Americans with Disability Act is still the law section, 504508,

 

47:07

EEOC, there's

 

47:09

opportunity,

 

47:11

there's still the Civil Rights Act, there's still the laws. And

 

47:16

I just say keep, keep the faith. And like you just said, mailing be be, be innovative, and gather together in community, and let's look for creative solutions as groups of people who care.

 

47:31

Anyone with us today who would like to ask a question? I don't like chat because I just hear Jaws read it. So if you if you just want to unmute

 

47:41

and ask a question. Feel free.

 

47:44

I'm sorry. I thought I was unmuted already. There we go. Oh, right. So Kirk, Mei Ling, it's always a pleasure to be with you. Amazing Stories. Mei Ling, I really appreciated some of the

 

48:01

insights on how you were raised, and it really struck home to me. So thank you for sharing that.

 

48:10

One of the questions that I I would really love to get both of you to weigh in on,

 

48:16

there is a

 

48:20

there because of what's happening right now and some of the

 

48:24

things that we're seeing happening at the federal level. One of the things that I've been hearing from some of my colleagues who have disabilities, whether that's blind or autism or other things, is I don't feel comfortable advocating for myself right now,

 

48:44

or I get shut down when I'm asking for help. And there's this intimidation piece that seems to be happening

 

48:57

that I have to own for you I don't really understand, because when someone tries to intimidate me to shut up, that usually makes me talk louder, right? And I'm comfortable with that, but not everybody is like me, and so I'm really curious if you have

 

49:17

any strategies either that those people might be able to tap into who aren't feeling comfortable and advocating for themselves right now, or, quite honestly, if you got any advice for me who's trying to support them and and on that journey, right and trying to be both understanding and at The same time, push for you got to advocate. You can't let them shut you down. And so I hope that that's, yeah, well, my, my, my top of mind answer is, there's, there's,

 

49:55

there's a tolerance for being spiritedness. You.

 

50:00

And

 

50:03

this courteousness that's happening in our society right now, and I think that's not a not a big surprise. I think certain, certain people who,

 

50:16

for whatever reason, feel aggrieved, are feeling pretty emboldened to

 

50:24

speak, speak cruelly to other people.

 

50:30

And I think it's just important to acknowledge that that people have been permission, have been given permission to be pretty rude.

 

50:41

I think we've always had to choose our battles, our advocacy battles. And there's a such a thing as compassion fatigue. You can't, you can't try to take every micro aggression as a teachable moment. You know, when I'm in the TSA line with my wife and

 

51:00

they say,

 

51:01

can, can I see his ID?

 

51:05

You know, do I choose to just hand them my ID, or am I going to take a moment to

 

51:10

educate them that they should speak to me directly? So sometimes I sometimes I say, can speak to me directly? Sometimes I just hand the ID. Super, small example,

 

51:20

I think the answer, my default answer, to all of this stuff, is community.

 

51:27

You know, it's tough to do all this stuff alone, and don't, don't put yourself through it. You can, you can join a formal structure group, like exceptional Leaders Network, or you can find kindred spirits, and it's so much easier to find kindred spirits now, I grew up in teeny towns in the Pacific Northwest. I was the only blind kid in my schools. Never met a blind adult until well into my 20s,

 

51:57

who was a successful, thriving person

 

52:01

then wasn't taught advocacy skills, but with with the search tools we have today, the groups,

 

52:08

the American Council the blind has chapters. National Federation of the Blind has chapters.

 

52:14

There are recreational groups around people with various impairments.

 

52:20

Use a search engine and put in some terms and find, find, find some, some folks. I know there's the common find, find your tribe is a little bit of a buzz phrase nowadays, but don't, don't go it alone. Find someone that you can talk to about it, who has some shared experience, that you have some commonality with and those are my top of mind thoughts.

 

52:46

Eileen,

 

52:48

yeah, I have a really interesting experience. I had the opportunity to present about accessibility to small business owners. And

 

52:57

at the end of it, one of the participants said, you know, I don't understand why we have to make screen readers available for everyone. If I have an employee and they need something, why don't they just tell me? Why do I have to spend all this money to make it available for all the employees, and maybe there's only 1% that need it. And I was like, I just stood here talking to you for an hour about how important it was, and you have the audacity and ignorance to stand up and say that I was shocked. So I just want to give you that perspective is people just don't get it. So what I do tell people in this is to answer your your question, Jeremy, is to say this, these are the needs that I have, and this is what I need. And so specifically saying I need a Jaws, or whatever the screen reader is that you like, this is what I need. You know, I am vertically challenged, and I need to have, like I do. I have a child's chair, a child sized chair, so that I can fit, you know, anatomically at my desk. I need this, like, making that list of things and sharing those. Now, I don't know if you want to share that in the interview. You know, giving them these are all the things that I'm going to need. But I have no problem with saying and this is from the other side, so I am still like on that employee side, but as a consultant, I do offer. I have ADHD, and I'm using all of these tools and strategies, but if I don't show up for a meeting, feel free to ping me, you know, just letting them know I'm okay with that. You know, Text me, email me, whatever that is. If I'm late for something, don't think that you know that I remembered or something. And most of the time they don't have to do that. Just want you guys to know, because that's the other thing, is, you don't know. Do you want to be telling people these, you know, these issues that you might be having, and then they don't want to work with you? But if you know yourself, and you know you are true to your word. Of course, you're going to try to show up, you know, the best that you can. And so I don't think there's an issue with sharing earlier. You know, in these conversations with employers, what your needs are, and you know how you are working through them and what you need to be able to produce, you know, at your best level. Yeah. But.

 

55:00

As far as that of disclosing your disability and the employment journey,

 

55:04

I've

 

55:06

tried both strategies, not revealing until the last minute when I walk into the in person interview, which didn't go well for me, or disclosing up front again my cover letter, and that even went worse. But I think now that I'm old, older and wiser, the person may not legally be able to ask you about your disability, but if you have one, it's a great strategy to talk about it and talk about how it's a strength, how you've developed strengths, how you have unique capabilities and unique experiences because of it, and how it will not, hello, will not create problems for the employer. It's going to bring valuable assets to the table for the employer. And you might say, Hey, I got my masters and such and such, and I use this, this and this, and that's the exact same tools I'll use to do this job. And

 

55:59

you know, the vocational rehabilitation system will pay for it, or mailings may say you, you notice I'm a short person, all I need is this a chair. It's not going to cost any small chair doesn't cost any more than a big chair. All I need is this chair. So you might, you might think about acknowledging it and putting it terms of strengths as counseling or meeting with some high supply and high school kids last summer, and there was a really sharp young cat. He was applying for jobs.

 

56:29

18 years old. Lived in a small town in eastern Washington.

 

56:35

I went to college in a small town in eastern Washington. So I said, you know, there's gonna be 100 kids applying for this job, and they're gonna all have the exact same thing on that resume, but, but,

 

56:48

but I will guarantee you that you have something unique that they don't have. So I don't know what it is. Maybe you babysat your younger siblings. Maybe you worked the chores on the farm. Maybe you did a really cool science project as a blind person, but illustrate, illustrate your differences. Stand out. Be proud.

 

57:13

With that mailing, I am going to have to bid you adieu until next time it's been this hour flew by,

 

57:22

and I greatly appreciate you being here today.

 

57:26

Thank you. This was way too much fun, and I don't

 

57:30

want to we'll do another hour. Let's do another hour in the fall. See, see how far you've gotten. Exceptional leaders, network, beautiful and everybody join. It's fun.

 

57:41

See you next month, the final Thursday in May, at the same time love in Pacific, or my monthly livestream webinar, supercharge your bottom line through Disability Inclusion. Have a great day, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.

 

57:59

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 WWW dot DRK adams.com,

 

58:12

together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time. Keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact.

Dr. LaMondré Pough is an internationally recognized speaker, entrepreneur, and disability rights advocate whose work sits at the intersection of leadership, inclusion, and lived experience. As the CEO of Billion Strong, a global nonprofit uniting people with disabilities across cultures and continents, he champions empowerment, identity, and collective voice. He also serves as the Chief Sustainability Officer for Ruh Global IMPACT and Chairman of Arts Access South Carolina, leveraging these platforms to advance equity in everything from digital inclusion to cultural accessibility. Born with spinal muscular atrophy and navigating the world as a Black man with a disability, Dr. Pough brings a deeply personal, intersectional lens to every conversation he leads. He is known for his powerful storytelling, his commitment to authentic leadership, and his unwavering belief that true inclusion begins with honoring lived experiences. Whether he's training organizations, hosting one of his podcasts like My Big Full Authentic Life, or mentoring future leaders, Dr. Pough is a passionate force for transformation—helping others not just survive, but thrive with purpose.   TRANSCRIPT:  

00:00

Music.

 

00:09

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.

 

00:38

Welcome everybody to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, I am said, Dr Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington, where rain is lashing against the windows of my office here and with me today, I have lamondre Pugh mondre is an authentic leadership advocate and professional speaker. I have had the privilege of getting to know a bit over the past couple of years. We

 

01:10

broke bread together here in Seattle last summer when he was here speaking at a conference. So great to connect with you again virtually. Lamondre Listen. It's a it's a pleasure to be with you, Kirk as always. And I'll just give a super, uh, top level headline for those listening who might not know who I am. I am again, Dr Kirk Adams, I'm immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, which is Helen Keller's organization. I was proud to lead that organization. Prior to that, the same roles here at the Lighthouse for the Blind in Seattle, which is a social enterprise employing blind and deaf, blind people in a variety of businesses and supporting people in thriving, thriving careers. I hold a PhD in leadership and change from Antioch University, where I did an for my dissertation, I did an ethnographic study of blind adults successfully employed in large American corporations. I learned a lot through that process about the success factors for employment people who are blind, and the barriers which I've certainly experienced myself in my life as a frustrated, disabled job seeker, disabled employee of a major corporation or two, and then in those leadership roles at some major nonprofits, where I had the opportunity to employ a lot of people who are blind

 

02:41

and lamondre and I encountered one another as our advocacy paths intersected, and I asked him to join me today and to talk a little bit about his Journey.

 

02:59

My impairment, personally, is visual. I my retina is detached when I was five, and so I am totally blind. And as as we know, an impairment does not necessarily equal disability. That we are placed in disabling situations when the environment we're in, digital, social built

 

03:21

does not fit well with our personal characteristics. So the little example I use often is if I'm running a board meeting and I have my agenda and my financials and my midi reports in Braille,

 

03:36

my impairment doesn't matter. I'm not in a disabling situation at all. I can run the meeting as well as anyone that does not have said impairment. However, if you hand me a stack of print material, I my impairment does not fit well with the built environment of visual print. So that that puts me that's a disabling situation. So as lamondre and I have gotten to know each other,

 

04:05

we I believe we share the philosophy that

 

04:10

the lived experience of these disabling situations allows us to develop some really unique strengths in the areas of resilience and creativity and problem solving. And, you know, I had the privilege of seeing lamondre lead a conference session, and I got to hear some of his words of wisdom that he's gained through his life experience as a person with impairments and the discipline disable these situations we find ourselves in. So lamondre, you know, I don't have any set agenda here today. I just really would love to hear from you your journey, what's brought you to the point you're at now, what, what you're currently focused on, and what, what your vision for your future is, Where, where are you headed? What are you going to be accomplishing? A.

 

05:00

So down the road here, oh, absolutely, I will just hand the talking stick to you, and I will reserve the right to interrupt you with questions as you speak. So thanks so much for being here. Oh, no man, listen. Thank you first of all for inviting me to your platform at any time that we have the opportunity to get together. I always learn something from you. I always learn something new about you, and it's always it's always a really refreshing conversation. So I appreciate the person that you are on, the journey that you've been on, and how you're willing to share, how you're willing to share your insights and your experiences, and it's really about lifting others up, and honestly, that's what my journey is about. I like you. Am a person with a disability. I have spinal muscular atrophy as a result of spinal muscular atrophy, I'm a full time wheelchair user.

 

05:58

I need assistance with everything in terms of, you know, anything physical, bathing, getting out of bed, feeding, all of those things I need assistance with. The only things that I really don't need very much help with is thinking and speaking. And so I'm one person who believes that you lean into your strengths, and that's probably where I became a speaker, because I am leaning in to the strength of this big mouth that I have,

 

06:25

but what I've committed myself to is I committed myself to really helping people live more empowered lives, and I created this philosophy that I live by. It's called the live, big, live full and live authentic philosophy, and we can talk a little bit more about that as it progresses, but what that was, or the way that that came about, was me really trying to navigate a world where things are not necessarily set up for people like me. And I'm talking physically, I'm talking socially, I'm even talking economically, and what I realized was that I am truly responsible for my own outcomes, but having said that, I also must stand up, assert and advocate for the change that we want to see. And because of that, this philosophy really was birthed out of me just living my life the way that I had to, with all those compensatory skills that kick in and and those ways of finding unique and innovative solutions to problems that can cease being a problem once we figure out a way to accommodate for those things. And what I'm doing now is I'm simply teaching organizations and individuals how to apply this philosophy to create number one, leaders that lead from a place of value, that lead from a place of integrity, and who really want to have a positive impact in their world. But then the other thing about that is not only just to develop those leaders, but to help create environment where people can really develop a sense of belonging and begin to thrive, regardless as to what societal barriers have been put in front of them. So that's me in a nutshell. Do a lot of advocating in terms of disabilities, working with number of different organizations in terms of volunteering and just helping to make the world a better place overall.

 

08:36

And lamondre,

 

08:38

you just talked about helping organizations develop leaders that are coming from authentic places. I'm paraphrasing, can you? Can you? Leadership is something I am very interested in

 

08:53

as I transition from the corporate world of banking and finance after my first 10 years of the work world, into the nonprofit sector, and really got clear that I should be in the nonprofit sector, and I should be in leadership roles, and I should be working to create opportunities for other people with disabilities to thrive. I saw a leadership voice, a leadership vacuum. I saw people in nominal leadership roles, CEOs and executive directors, who were very much maintaining a status quo,

 

09:35

who were very risk averse.

 

09:38

I didn't see a lot of innovation and creativity at the leadership level. So I love for you to talk about leadership, what what it means to you, how you embrace your leadership opportunities and and how do you work with organizations through your advocacy to help strengthen leadership?

 

10:00

Uh, what, what, whatever you want to talk about in the broad category of leadership. I'd love to hear it. No, okay, I and I appreciate that too. Well, you know, I like you.

 

10:11

I believe, or let me say this, I did indeed see a vacuum in leadership, and now I actually see what I believe is a crisis in leadership, not just in the disability community, but across the board. You know, we live in a very

 

10:30

social media driven environment right now, and as much as we, as much as we don't, might not necessarily want to admit it, I think we have seen how platform and how

 

10:45

the desire for likes and follow followers, and

 

10:50

I would say

 

10:52

affirmation from others has really created problems for us. We see people that confuse platform with integrity, or the fact that you have a high follower count means that you are an authority to be listened to and to give credibility to and honestly. Those things are not necessarily true.

 

11:19

We see instances playing out before us every day, of people who are in leadership positions, who have the title, but they don't necessarily have the empathy, the capacity, or even the will to really lead for positive change. Now we see a lot of people doing things that's really about, as as my folks from Jamaica would say about beating themselves up. But the truth is that is not what leadership in my in my estimation of it really is, because I recognize that people have different definitions for what leadership is. And for me, leadership is really about influence. And I like to say authentic leadership is really about positive influence, about leadership that is based in integrity, about people who are guided by their values, their principles and their beliefs in order to create a positive impact in the world to find to make the human condition better than what they found it in and this is the kind of leadership that I believe that we are missing. I believe that this is the kind of leadership that is going to be required in order for us to really advance just as as people, to really save this planet in order to

 

12:45

I really speak to the good of humanity. I'll put it that way, and and this is the mission that I'm on. And obviously, even throughout my years, you know, advocating within the disability community, we've seen that now I've met some incredible leaders who have poured into me, who have who have given me opportunities, and who have opened doors, and now I feel like it's my job to help do that with others, and that's the mission. That's the mission that I'm on

 

13:15

in your role

 

13:17

of influence, your opportunities to influence, we know you're a professional speaker, so you you get in front of audiences, and so if you're in front of an audience of, say, corporate senior managers at a company,

 

13:32

what give us a taste of the types of messages and communications that that you share in order To help move things toward that I that ideal picture of authentic leadership that you just described absolutely well. First of all, again, I go back to being authentic, being real about who you are and what it is that you want to contribute. How do you want to serve? How do you want the world? How do you want to show up in the world in terms of you as an individual, in terms of your organization, and what impact, what impact are you looking to make? And what I do is I customize things, but I find what it is that they want to do, where they want to go, and my goal is to help them achieve that. Now, the other piece of what I do in helping them achieve that is I believe that number one, a part of our strength is our diversity. I believe that when you really embrace our differences, when you really embrace different thoughts, different perspectives, different lived experiences, that is the engine that drives innovation. As you said earlier in your opening statement, Kirk, we talk about, you know, people with disabilities being problem solvers. Well, guess what? We're problem solvers, because we have to be. We have to figure out ways to traverse a world that was not necessarily designed by us, for us, but nonetheless, if we still want to.

 

15:00

Have an impact. If we still want to survive and not only survive but thrive, we've got to come up with some innovative solutions. And that just does not stop because we figured out how you can access documents or how I can access a curb cut. It doesn't stop there. That innovation, that problem solving skills, goes throughout every aspect of my life, and it's not just people with disabilities, it's also other people who may have been from traditionally marginalized communities, they've had to develop some compensatory skills. So why not take those skills and apply them to make your company better? Why not take those skills and apply that to increase your bottom line? Why not take those skills and apply them to make your place of business a place where people want to work, where they feel seen, heard and appreciated, and want to give you their very best. You want the kind of people in your organization where they could leave, start their own, do their own thing, but they don't want to, because they love the impact that you're making, and they love the contribution that you're given to their lives. That's the kind of organizations that I help people build wonderful so you say you customize, which makes total sense, depending on who the audience is, and say, wanting to find out what what they're trying to accomplish.

 

16:33

Up to you whether you name names or not, name names. But can you just think of an organization you worked with and you customize an approach? And give us just a little sense of how you would work. Work with an organization that engages you as a as a speaker, absolutely. Well, there's several different organizations that I have worked with, and they range from corporations all the way to nonprofit organizations, even to some governmental entities, and every situation is different. Now, primarily, I'm a trainer and a speaker. That's what I do. I go in an organization, and if they have a need for a training, that's what we do, and we build trainings specifically for them. I just recently, just last week, two weeks ago, did a workshop, an intensive workshop, for an advocacy organization who's really trying to deal with the struggles that's happening right now. They're an advocacy or an advocacy organization that really about helping people with disabilities to live their lives more independently and obviously with what's happening in the States right now, there's a big threat that they're facing in terms of funding, in terms of in terms of how they actually get a major part of their budget. And their leaders are obviously stressed. Their leaders are trying to figure out, how do they keep their How do they keep their teams motivated and engaged in times of uncertainty? So I have this thing that I created. It's called the real power framework, and basically it is the nine pillars of what I call authentic leadership. Okay, now we're now, we're getting there. Absolutely it's the nine pillars of authentic leadership, and what I did with them. And what are those nine pillars? I'm glad you asked Kurt, number one, it's real power. Real Power is an acronym, so the acronym spells out real power. All right, so I'm taking notes. All right. Here we go. The first one is rooted, and this is being rooted in your values and self awareness understanding who you are, because in order to lead authentically, you must first know who you are and be a person that's led by your core values. The second thing is the E empowered, empowered through emotional clarity and emotional connection. So we're talking about the empathy part. We're talking about emotional intelligence, about being able to understand where you are and understand where other people are and what triggers them and what triggers you, and having measured responses to that, then the next letter is the A in real and that's accountability, being true to your word and your vision, making certain that you stick to what the mission of the organization is, and even your own personal mission, and that you show up and you're consistent in following through with what you said. Then the next thing is the L, and that's leading in action. That's about leading with intentionality that is not just ideas, but we're looking to for ways that we can lead and be effective in what it is that we're doing. Now, the P in power stands for psychological safety, and this is about creating the environments, creating rules.

 

20:00

Rooms where others feel seen and heard, but in an authentic way, in a real way, not this, not this, not this fake optimism thing, but really creating environments where people can express what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what they're experiencing, without being judged, or without feeling that there may be some kind of retaliation, in other words, creating safe spaces for the people that you're serving by leading. Then the next one is the O, because that was P O. So the O is for being open, being open to feedback, being open to growth, being open to change. There is

 

20:46

so many things. There are so many things that's going on right now in terms of how quickly change is coming. Now, we can hunker down and cower, or we can just accept the fact that change is inevitable, and in order for us to not only survive but to thrive in it, we have to be open to change and figure out how our vision can best support the mission of what's changing around us. So that's what it is. It's about being open, and then the W is having a willingness to collaborate by CO creating instead of controlling, by allowing that, that innovation that we talked about, that you intrinsically get from diversity and from people from different backgrounds, By allowing that to have space by allowing that to breathe. So being open and willing to collaborate, I often say it's amazing what you can accomplish when you're willing to let go some of some of the control and allow people to contribute what they can to a thing. And it's amazing, many times what ends up happening is you end up growing something far better, far bigger than you ever even imagined yourself. So the willingness to collaborate, and then the E, the last E in power, is about being emotionally resilient, because, listen, challenges are going to come. Change is going to come, but when it does come, it's about having the emotional resilience to withstand that, to process it, to see it for what it is, and bounce back. You know, it's almost cliche when people say this now, but it's true, and this is something that I live by. It's not about how many times you get knocked down, it's about how many times you get back up. And the truth is emotional resilience allows you to get back up, to bounce back, and then the R the final thing is to be results oriented. And all I mean by that is that we need to focus, to focus on purpose driven impact. Listen, we can be passionate about things all we want to. We can have all of the the

 

23:15

we can have, all of the empathy we can have, all the emotional intelligence we can have all of those things firing on all cylinders. But if we're not accomplishing something, if we're not actually moving the mission forward, then what is it for? Then why are we doing that? Leadership is also not just influence, but it's influenced with impact. What are we changing? What are we doing? What are we creating? What are we building? How are we accomplishing what it is, and how do we know that we're accomplishing what it is? So that was the fastest I have ever explained my real power frame like I wrote them all. So I will, I will read them over and reflect. So

 

24:02

you very recently did customized training for a disability advocacy organization that's obviously feeling the chaos. And you said earlier that you need to identify what your

 

24:19

client, customer of the organization you're working with. What? What are they trying to accomplish? So, right, in this case, what? What, what were they wanting from the training? What, what were they what were they intending that you would help them move forward with? Well, what they really were looking at is ways to help develop their leaders further, because they have some incredible leads. And this was really a great group to work with. They have some incredible emerging leaders, but honestly, many of them liked the confidence to feel like they could really make a difference in and you know, you mentioned something earlier, as as we were chatting about.

 

25:00

Out some of the leaders that you saw were being risk averse, and this is one of the issues that we saw. And sometimes in leadership, you have to take risk. Now that doesn't mean that you take, you know, just wild, flagrant things that, right? Hey, we could just sink the entire ship, but you have to be willing. You have to be willing to risk something. Yes, leadership requires sacrifice. Sometimes, bottom line, yeah, bottom line, you have to be willing to look silly. Sometimes, you have to be willing to fail. And if you do, at least create the environment where, number one, you are empowered enough and emotionally mature enough to own up to it that you have the accountability to say, Yep, my bad. I messed up here. And those kinds of things. When you bring those kinds of things to the table, you empower people in ways unimaginable. So one of the main problems that they had was just that was having leaders Emerging Leaders giving them the confidence and the tools that they need and able to really grow into the roles that they that they've been working in.

 

26:13

I just makes me think of something I learned when I was at the American Foundation for the Blind, and it was a financial turnaround situation on a pretty dire one. As far as the revenue streams had shifted and

 

26:30

they were they had not adapted quickly enough, and maybe it was wouldn't have been possible to adapt quickly enough to the very big changes they had in the revenue streams, which were related to be quests that were generated by Helen Keller's work. But

 

26:46

one of the, one of the people I brought in to help with strategic planning said, you know, you're going to have to do, you're going to have to do some things that are other some, some people might consider some of the things you're doing to be pretty wild. And he said, we just want to, we want to maintain our understanding of the difference between wild and reckless. So when you were speaking of the need to take risks, that's that's what came to mind. Sometimes you got to do some things that are going to disrupt and shake things up. Some people might think they're wild, but again, if you're a steward of an organization, you can't be reckless. That's a little bit of a fine line. Oh, absolutely there is. And I'll even, you know, look at it from this perspective, in this day and age, the way that things are now, anything you do that is progressive or different is going to be a risk anything you do right now. So the thing is to really get do your homework, do what you can. But the thing after that is to step fearlessly, to step with intention. Once you've done your homework, once you've once you've done the things that you could do, to make certain that you know, everything that you could think of is covered step forward. There is a bravery in that, there is a confidence, there is a courage that's required to do that, and knowing that you could fall, that you could fail, but failure is not the end. All. Learn from it. People don't need perfect leaders. And see this is one of the things that I think holds a lot of people back from really embracing who they are as leaders. They think to themselves, what if I fail? What if I mess up? What if I'm not the person that they think that I am and I'm exposed? Well, here's the deal. There is not one perfect leader. Nowhere on this earth, no human. No human is perfect. And the truth is, the world doesn't need your perfection. The world needs your presence. The world doesn't need leaders who have not made mistakes. The world needs leaders who have learned from those mistakes and are willing to still move forward. And this is the message. This is what I'm passionate about. This is what I'm trying to bring to the table. And I'll tell you, I also work with major corporations as well. I recently did a training with a major corporation. This was a series of training, and we were dealing with their C suite and their management level teams. And this was a manufacturing organization, and they are located in a place where the company is an international company, not from the States. However, there they have a hub here, and the place that they put their hub,

 

29:45

the culture was really different than what they were used to, and they were having some serious problems. And the leaders and the management started counting or started categorizing these folks, and.

 

30:00

Is, they don't want to work. They're coddled,

 

30:03

you know, if we just throw money at them, you know, that'll change it. And what ended up happening was, in the middle of one of their meetings, in the middle of one of their meetings, they announced a bonus. They announced a bonus that was a significant bonus with some real money, and they did not get the reaction they expected. Instead of cheering on applause, they got booed,

 

30:29

an audible Boo from the audience, and this rocked them. And so I was called, and they found me on LinkedIn, which was amazing to me. They found me on LinkedIn. We started yes

 

30:47

and and we started a conversation, and I put together something for them that would help them understand the culture, that helped to break down some of the barriers,

 

31:01

and also also help them to understand that not everything is fixed with money. People want to be seen, heard, right and valued. I have to ask, what was the emotion that was stirred in their their people, that led them to boo, being told they were getting a bonus? Well, what was, what was about that, that that was the thing. It was a very closed off environment, and people were not consulted as to what the real need was. Now, of course, they were happy for money, but that did not address their more immediate problems. These people were way overworked, way overworked. I mean, so much so that some of the preliminary work that we did, you know, of course, we asked about, what are the challenges, what are the issues? And you allowed them to do that anonymously, and they were talking about how, you know, they had family vacations planned that had been approved, and it was taken away, okay, because of all the stuff that say, Oh, we don't want your hush money. We want you to fix the problem, fix what the problem is, and we want you to see us as people. We want you to see us as humans. It was amazing to me. I one of the exercises that I did, and I did a number of trainings with them, but one of the exercises I did, I did this with the upper level management and some folks from the C suite and in the room, I asked them, I said, What made you choose this particular organization? What made you choose? And it's a very prestigious organization. So they said things like, you know, the challenge, the pride of being associated with the such, such an

 

32:40

August legacy. And they talked about what they wanted for their families and what they wanted to show their kids, and how they how they wanted to have a legacy in terms of their careers. And as they said this, it was beautiful. It was really, really beautiful. Their hearts were open. And then I asked them about the people that they complained about, I said, and what was their reason? Why would they choose to come to this place? Do you think that they saw the prestige? Do you think that they have dreams and aspirations? Have you asked them about it? And it was funny, because having them in that emotional place, and then putting that same thing to the people that they were complaining about, the people that booed them, it changed something, because they said they never thought about it. They never thought about what motivated those people to get out of bed every day. It wasn't just a paycheck. You're paying them well, it wasn't just a paycheck. These people have dreams, hopes and aspirations. It was almost like they needed to see them as human. They needed to see them as having the same desires, dreams and aspirations. Everybody wants their children to go to good schools and be safe and be well educated. These people do too. They want to see you as a part of the community. They want to be a part of the community, and they want you to be a part of it too. So it was really kind of level setting.

 

34:13

So I feel that you're very adept and intuitive and attuned to understand what the right question is to ask.

 

34:24

I hope so,

 

34:26

because that's what so much of leadership is. It's about asking the right questions. Yeah, absolutely so Wow. This time has flown by, but I do want to ask about your what,

 

34:39

what does stepping out fearlessly for lamondre Pugh look like here over the next couple of years. What are you? What are you? What are you as aspiring to create in your life and with your advocacy? Well, I tell you,

 

34:55

Okay, that's a great question, because this last the.

 

35:00

Last year has been super challenging for me, and I've had to make a major pivot in terms of of my business and the approach. But I'll tell you, and this is just being transparent and vulnerable. This is one of the scariest things that I've ever had to do in terms of in terms of putting something that I have held as a personal philosophy and a personal guidepost for my life, and now sharing it with the world. And this is,

 

35:35

this is what my real power framework was built on. It's a philosophy that I have, and it's called Live, big, live full and live authentic. And I'm putting it out there. I'm putting it out there in terms of helping people with leadership development, helping organizations build, build and develop leaders that have a real impact, that are values LED. And I'm also using it in terms of a personal development tool for people who are not necessarily looking at doing something in industry or anything like that. They just want to use it to empower their own personal lives. Um,

 

36:14

I've never put anything out there this personal before. So this is the this is the challenge. This is the challenge for me now, and I'm going to continue to do that. I'm going to continue to put that out there, you know, offer programs, offer content, offer things that I believe will help, will help people become more of who their purpose to be and who they're created to be, and I'm doing that with corporations, with nonprofit organizations, with individuals alike and

 

36:50

yeah, just want to be. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. And I, I've, I've counted a blessing in my life that we were introduced to one another deepened our relationship over time. I know that's going to going to continue, and I, I will happily share you with the rest of the world. Lamondre, so how do people get in touch with you? Absolutely? Well, you can follow me on any social media platform. My name is lamondre, l, a, m, O, N, D, R, E. Last name is pew, P, O, U, G, H, so Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all the social media platforms, some of them like Instagram and x, it's la mandre underscore p, because I've been hacked before and get my can get my original stuff back, but you can also visit my website. It's lamondre pugh.com

 

37:45

that's L, A, M, O, N, D, R, E, P, O, U, G, h.com,

 

37:51

and you can check out my new podcast that's about to premiere on in April. Awesome. Yeah. It's called the live, big, live, full, live, authentic, Daily Affirmation podcast. You can check that out if you want to go to that website. It's simply, I will subscribe. I use an app that's very accessible for podcast management called eye catcher.

 

38:16

Find you and I will subscribe. Please, do please. We'll do it and and that's what it is, man. So live authentic daily.com that's live authentic daily.com

 

38:27

nice. And we can find you on LinkedIn, as we mentioned earlier, and me as well. So if you want to find me, it's Kirk Adams PhD on LinkedIn. My website is Dr Kirk adams.com so D, R k, i, r k, A, D, A, M, s.com,

 

38:47

I know lamondre shares the sentiment that we will happily talk to anyone listening to this podcast about inclusion, leadership, personal development, bravery, resilience, whatever you uh, whatever has resonated with you our discussion today, we would happily dig into it more deeply with you. So please do reach out to lamondre and or myself, and thanks for listening to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams,

 

39:17

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 [email protected]

 

39:28

Kirk adams.com,

 

39:30

together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time. Keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact.

In this episode of Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion, Dr. Kirk Adams speaks with Aaron Di Blasi, Sr. PMP for Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd. (https://mvsltd.com) and Publisher for the Top Tech Tech Tidbits (https://toptechtidbits.com/), Access Information News (https://accessinformationnews.com), AI-Weekly (https://ai-weekly.ai) and Title II Today (https://title2.info) newsletters. Subtitle: Blind and Low-Vision Workshop By Aaron Di Blasi and Dr. Kirk Adams: Copywriting With AI. How To Generate Professional, High Quality, High Ranking, Accurate, Long Form Copy For Your Personal or Business Brand Using The Premium Versions of Foundational AI Models. 👉 Learn more today at: https://DrKirkAdams.com. 🧑 Aaron Di Blasi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondiblasi/ 🚀 Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd.: https://mvsltd.com/ ♿ Top Tech Tidbits: https://toptechtidbits.com/ ♿ Access Information News: https://accessinformationnews.com/ 🤖 AI-Weekly: https://ai-weekly.ai 🏛️ Title II Today: https://title2.info   TRANSCRIPT:  

00:00

Music.

 

00:09

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,

 

00:38

Hello everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams speaking to you from my home office in sunny Seattle, Washington. And this is a very special edition of my monthly live stream webinar, which I call super charge your bottom line through disability inclusion. And today I have a wonderful guest and a colleague and partner in crime. Aaron Di Blasi, as we work together to accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in our society, it was with mindful solutions. And Aaron, if you could give me a quick headline of who you are, I will start back to you shortly for more. Hello, everyone. My name is Aaron Di Blasi. I am the Senior Project Management Professional for a digital marketing firm out of Cleveland, Ohio, by the name of Mind Vault Solutions Limited. I am also the publisher for the Top Tech Tidbits, Access Information News, AI weekly, excuse me, and now, Title Two Today, newsletters, if you're familiar with any of those. I also work closely with Dr Adams to do his digital marketing as well.

 

01:47

Thanks, Aaron. So I got, I became acquainted with Aaron and actually through the apex program, which is www dot the apex program.com which is a virtual training program to launch blind people into cyber security. And I had connected with Aaron around that, and he

 

02:14

helped us promote the program through his publications. And as our relationship deepened, Aaron said things like, you should start a podcast, you should have a YouTube channel.

 

02:27

Yeah, you should write blogs. You need a, you need a, yeah. The difference is, you listen. No one else listens. Though, you listened every time. Seriously, kudos. Really. You need a website that's more focused on your overall brand, yeah, and so, and he listens, yeah. We piece by piece, we've been building this web presence, and part of this is generating content. And for those who don't know me, just super brief again, I'm Dr Kirk Adams. I'm a blind person. Have been since age five. My retina is detached. I went to a school for blind kids, first second and third grade in the state of Oregon, learn how to read and write Braille, which I do constantly travel confidently, independently with a long white cane. Learned how to type on a typewriter so I could start public school in fourth grade and type my assignments and spelling tests and things for sighted teachers. And I also was given just this wonderful set of experiences, which gave me a great internal locus of control, just a belief that I could do whatever I wanted to do, and that was largely through outdoor experience. It was in Oregon, we backpacked and camped in the Three Sisters wilderness area, we

 

03:43

went up on Mount Hood and build, build big snow forts out of snowball huge snowballs. We went to the Oregon coast in the tide pools. And so I just had that sense of how to love my body as a little blind kid. And was

 

03:58

given some great gifts there at that school, was the only blind student in all of my classes, from fourth grade through my through my PhD. So also had experiences as a academically high achieving young college student, blind having the challenges of trying to find employment. So I've had those experience, frustrating experiences as a blind job seeker. I've I've also had the privilege of employing many, many hundreds of blind people as

 

04:31

the president, CEO of the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind, and American Foundation for the Blind. So employment is my jam and

 

04:42

and I've also become involved in a number of startup companies using Disability tech to accelerate inclusion. And through all of this, I have

 

04:55

been generating a lot of content. I've done a lot of writing in my day. And of course.

 

05:00

Course, as AI became more present in the world, I learned through doing so, I wanted to try to use AI whenever I could ask questions. I started to try to use it to assist in some writing. And then I discovered that Aaron

 

05:22

had done a lot more with that than I had,

 

05:26

had a lot more skill and insight than I had, and

 

05:32

we've generated some content together where I've given him some bare bones and some thoughts and some notes, and he's gonna show some examples of that. Yeah,

 

05:42

that's okay, yeah, yeah. He's come back and said, you know, what do you think of this? And he, he readily says, you know, I used, I used AI as a tool

 

05:53

to enhance

 

05:55

what you sent me. So we, we thought

 

06:01

that blind people in particular

 

06:05

could really be using AI to generate content more effectively and efficiently in order for us to all move our personal missions forward. So we thought we would share some knowledge today, and Aaron proposed we do a workshop, and I proposed we do it during my regularly scheduled monthly live stream webinar time. So here we are. Thank you for joining us, yeah, and thanks everyone who's here live, and thank you for all of you out there in the future we're viewing the recording. So Aaron, I'm going to hand you the talking stick, and I'm here to learn from you. So I will probably pop in with with questions from time to time. I hope so, and I have no you will, and I know you will allow time for questions. Oh, for sure, from our audience, very good.

 

07:01

All right, everyone. Well, just to top this off, I guess we'll start with the title, blind and low vision workshop, how to generate professional, high quality, high ranking, accurate, long form copy. Sorry for all that, for your personal or business brand using the premium versions of foundational AI models. The reason we included all of those words is because it's very specific to the type of copy that we're going to be talking about today.

 

07:26

It's very easy. Let's just start with this analogy to open up chat, G, P, T, and say, write me a blog post about dot, dot, dot, and it will okay. But unfortunately, the internet is filled with that kind of I

 

07:39

don't want to say garbage. A lot of people call it garbage, but it, unfortunately, in SEO terms, is garbage because it doesn't rank well, it doesn't do much for your brand, and it certainly doesn't do much for other people in the marketing field that read it and see that it was just simply generated with one prompt. So what people want to know is, they want to know, how do I get it to not only sound human? I mean, that is kind of the number one concern, I think, is that they want it to sound human, which we cover, that that's no problem. But more than anything, they want the context there that the model might not have. And today we're going to go over how to give the model all of the context that it needs and all of the timing that it needs to basically perform as though AI were five years from now. It's a pretty cool workaround. So we're going to start with an example. Recently, Dr Adams attended CSUN, and while he was in CSUN, he sent me daily summaries using Siri. He just simply transcribed them and sent them to me via text. I collected these texts into a document which was basically kind of him writing the article, but it was not in the article form. It was just his thoughts on what had happened, you know, people that he had met. This is, this is correct. These were notes on the fly that I just dictated as a text, right? Exactly. And then we just aggregated choppy, non sequential, thank you, exactly. That's what I want to point out. Yeah. This is not him writing, you know, an article, but by any sense, just kind of reporting what he had discovered. Okay, so now we take that and we're going to make that a piece of what we're going to go over today. Okay,

 

09:10

just to lay the groundwork for anyone who cannot see, we're going to have 10 steps that we're going to go over, and then we're going to have 10 preliminary things that we're going to describe. So there are 10 preliminaries and then 10 steps to the process. A lot of people start the process at write me a blog post about. Our number 10 step is going to be write me a blog post about so we're going to talk about what those other nine steps actually are. Okay, but before we do that, we're going to open up with just a couple of things, software tools that we're going to use in this course of using Google Chrome, which is just a web browser. I'll be using chat GPT, plus the $20 a month version, not the $200 a month version, nothing we need there currently. And I'll also be using Microsoft Word and notepad. Those are just for data. The purpose of Microsoft Word right now. And a lot of people use just pure text and say, why would you use.

 

10:00

Word because we have belief that in the future, in the very near future, llms will be able to not only parse the text in the Word document, but the hyperlinks attached to the text in the Word document, and that could make for some very serious contextual advantages in the future. So I would recommend you use Microsoft Word, where you can to store your quote, unquote databases, because they will have links attached to them that would be lost if you were to use text. Makes sense to everybody, okay. Number two, the computer platform that I'm using for the courses, windows, 11, desktop, but obviously you could use Mac. You could do this on mobile. You know, it works on on any platform that you can use an LLM.

 

10:39

Number three, what is a foundation model?

 

10:42

Just to clear this up, a foundation model is the context of artificial intelligence and machine learning at large scale that is trained on extensive data sets and serves as a base for various downstream tasks. Think chat, GPT, basically. Think Gemini, think Claude. These are major foundational models. They are closed. They're not open source. We'll get into that later. That's not really important right now, but these are the frontier models. These are the models that are currently behaving the best. They are giving us the highest quality. And of those three models, in our testing, we have found that chat, GPT, believe it or not, is the best writer. I know that a lot of people currently believe that Claude is the best writer, but I think what they're talking about is writing in the form of once upon a time, as in writing a story from scratch and keeping the narrative going. Claude does very well with that, for some reason, but chat GPT seems to do much better at original and creative writing, especially the kind that we're going to be doing today. So that's why we chose it. If anyone has any questions about that. So the competing versions would be Gemini for $20 a month and anthropic Claude for $20 a month. They'll all do the same thing, but these techniques that we're going to use today can also be used on the free version. You'll just have limits to how many

 

11:52

chats you can use. Okay, so moving on to number four. This is one of the most important contexts here. So listen up to this one, if you can what is a rolling context window.

 

12:04

The rolling context window allows the model to process and consider a fixed maximum number of tokens at any given moment in the session. This is the model's memory, essentially. And when you say, write me a blog post about Dot. Dot, dot, the model can only give you back results within this window, the single window, and that's why these posts are always small. They're always roughly 4096 characters or less, because that's the window. They're very easy to identify as AI generated, okay, the stuff we're going to do today. Aaron, this Yes. Kirk, so how do I know how big that window is? How much? Great question. Buy it off. Gotcha? Because I have noticed that sometimes, if I've asked,

 

12:48

take these three documents and combine it, you know, summarize it, it'll tail off toward the end and it won't all the words won't be there, won't be dramatically Correct. Okay, that's well, that there's a number of reasons that can happen that sounds more like a cutoff assumption. I've never experienced anything quite like that. When summarizing, let's go back to the first question. Yeah, no, that's okay, yeah,

 

13:15

gotcha. So here's some frame of reference for you, and let me give you the ones that won't matter first. Okay, 128,000

 

13:21

token rolling context window. That means nothing to most people. That's okay. We're going to convert that into Word document pages at 12 point font, just to give people an idea, because that's how most people parse things. Okay? That is roughly 205 pages of Word document at 12 point font. Now that's its entire memory throughout the entire conversation, not just one ask. So that is the maximum amount of context that it can hold in its mind while it's talking to you. The vast majority of people only use about 1% of this memory, but today we're going to use almost 100%

 

13:58

if that makes sense.

 

14:00

Any questions from you?

 

14:03

No, okay, okay. I can relate to Okay. Claude and Gemini have different rolling context windows, and they're larger, okay? And this can really benefit you if you are trying to put something together that has very large context. And we'll explain what that means once we get into the 10 steps. But just for informational purposes. Anthropic Claude is 200,000

 

14:25

token rolling context window, which is roughly 320 pages in a Word document for frame of reference. Now Google, Gemini, which is one of our favorite for research, is a 1.5 million token rolling context window, which is roughly 2400 pages of a Word document in a single conversation. That's why we tend to use it for very large research projects, because of its large text window, if that makes sense, but chat GPT gives better quality and it's much smaller context window. The larger the context window gets, the harder it becomes for the model to remember all of the context so the looser the answers become.

 

14:59

Okay?

 

15:00

So moving on to number six. What is a single chat context window? Now this is this is the limit. This is what everyone cannot get around. The single chat context window refers to the span of tokens that a language model can process in a single chat interaction, encompassing both the input tokens, which includes your prompt or query, and the output tokens the models response. It defines the amount of information the model can, quote, remember or consider at any given moment in a conversation. This amount is 4096 tokens. Comes out to about six pages in a Word document. So anytime you speak to chat GPT, you only have roughly six pages in and out what it's going to say to you and what you're going to say to it. So essentially, you have three pages because its response is generally 50% of the token output. So anything more than three pages in a single conversation, and it's going to truncate, it's going to give you issues, which may be one of the things that you described earlier when you uploaded a bunch of documents. And I think, yeah, we're going to get to how you can get around that, though, you know, with large documents, I'll show you a different way that you can do it. Okay, so number eight, we're getting close to the end here. Why the limit, the 4096 token limit that is returned in a single response, and this is across models, chat, GPT, Gemini and Claude, is likely to be capped at this value for practical reasons such as computational efficiency, user interface usability and avoiding overly large outputs that are hard to handle in one go. In short, this limit is not necessary, but it's currently here just to keep people in check, so to speak. So that is a limit that we are going to get around today, and we're going to teach people how to create entire documents that are cohesive, that are far more than 4096 tokens, which is all that it can return at one chat, if that makes sense. And we'll show you how to get around that. Okay, number nine, research tool examples for aggregating and assembling the data corpus for each subject. We're going to talk about this, but there's some tools that we're going to use to assemble data, because we're not going to trust the data that the LLM has. We're going to provide it with all the data ahead of time, and the tools that we use to gather that data is obviously Google search. We do Google, Google search. Perplexity has really come a long way. Notebook, LM, chat, GPT itself, we will ask to generate reports, especially with deep research now, and also we use Google 1.5 well it's 2.0 now. Grow with deep research. We use that as well, and we use these tools basically to generate current informational reports on our subjects or author before we go ahead and create the actual article.

 

17:26

All that makes sense.

 

17:30

Yep, following so far. Okay, great. Number 10, this we will cover later, but it's called the pair method. I just want to put this in everyone's brain. Pair, P, A, R, E, stands for Prime, augment, refresh, evaluate, but all you have to remember is prime. Prime is going to be the most important piece of this framework that we're going to use. You also don't have to worry about remembering any of this, because all of it's in a document that we will provide you after the course. So all you have to do is listen, okay, and this moves us on to the actual process for creating an article. And as we do this article, we're going to take the example of Dr Adams recent visit at CSUN,

 

18:08

and we're going to identify the subjects on the author. So we are ready to get started on the actual process. Do you have any questions before we do DR Adams,

 

18:17

I want to see how you spun my straw into gold. All

 

18:22

right. Well, here's how we did it. Okay, step number one of 10, identify the author of the final article that you want to create. This is kind of obvious. In this case, the author is Dr Kirk Adams. Why is that important? Because we have to build a corpus of that author, preferably with text that that author has written themselves. This is not a requirement. You can build an AI persona for someone who has not written their own text, but since Dr Adams has a beautiful dissertation in place and plenty of text that he has written by himself long before AI came along, we aggregate all of that data and we sample from it in order to pull a statistical analysis of the way that Dr Adams writes specifically, and chat GPT does this really well, and it it's a really great workaround, but you identify your author first, and then you put together a corpus about that author, as much information as you have. If it's only a single page Word document, that's all you know about them. Then you start with that. But for Dr Adams, for instance, we have his dissertation. We have probably 300 or 400 pages, you know, on him, I would say probably 200 of which he has written himself. So it's a very good statistical sampling for each article. So I strongly recommend that you don't need it, but it's something that you want to build over time. And as you generate articles for that author, you want to read those articles on the back end, back to that author's corpus for future generations. That makes sense. Okay, so that's step one, we identify the author, and we prepare a corpus of that author, and we set that aside. Step two, we aggregate, assemble and verify the data corpus for the author. We just said that. Step three, identify the number of subjects that your final article will require. Now in this case.

 

20:00

Case, this is something that you kind of have to do as a human being. You have to go in and see what you know, who did Dr Adams talk about, what are the subjects? So let's pull the subjects out of CSUN. There's CSUN itself. We need to tell the LLM all about CSUN. So we have a database for all about CSUN here at The Vault, and we dropped that in. He mentioned three players at CSUN, Awarewolf Gear, Case for Vision and Top Tech Tidbits. So we need to let the LLM know about all three of those subjects as well. So we prepare a data corpus for Awarewolf Gear. We prepare a data corpus for Case for Vision, and we prepare a data corpus for Top Tech Tidbits, and we drop those in along with the author and CSUN data corpuses. We're almost done. He also mentioned that there was uncertainty from disability organizations. Now this is more an ideal than an actual thing, but it is still something that we can research and give the LLM knowledge about current knowledge about. So for this, we went to Gemini growth deep research and asked it as of today to give us the most current research on the current state of uncertainty from disability organizations around the current political climate, di etc, and it generated a beautiful report on the current state of what's going on. We use that as a corpus and drop that in along with CSUN, a werewolf gear case for vision top tickets, and CSUN and the author corpus for Dr Adams. So we have our jaws. Tells me someone would like the definition of the data corpse. Oh, data corpus. Let's just call it a Word document, a database. It used to be SQL. It used to be a data corpus. Today it's just a Word document with data in it. I'm sorry for the extreme word, but it is still a data corpus. Each one is but basically, you're just building a Word document or text file about each subject, and you're saving those files because you're going to use those files as a base for what we're going to do next.

 

21:45

Sound good? Yep. Okay, on we go, all right, aggregate, assemble and verify the data corpus for each subject. So let's assume that we just did that, and we have all of those files ready on our computer. I know that's a tall order, especially for blind people. I don't want to seem like we're glossing over that, but we do only have an hour, and that's the reason that we're making this the way that we are. But I understand that's a lot of work, and it can take a lot of time, but as a digital marketing agency, when you do this for someone you know, like Dr Adams or a different client, it it definitely pays for itself in the long run, because by the end of it, you'll be able to generate articles much more quickly, much more high quality than even a team of humans could in the same amount of time. So that's the idea. Okay, so step number six, we're going to use the provided role prime prompt. You remember we talked about that earlier. I said you only need to remember prime so that's all we're going to do right now.

 

22:37

So basically, we're going to take these documents that we have, 1234567,

 

22:41

documents. We're going to go into chat GPT, and we're going to use a feature called projects. What projects allows us to do in chat GPT is list a number of documents and then go ask questions about those documents. You can get around this by providing the documents directly in the chat as you speak, but you will be limited by the context window that we talked about earlier, you'll run into the issue that Dr Adams described, where it will be cut off if you use projects, it uses a different technology called rag retrieval, augmented generation. We won't get into what that is, but it does not have a limit. Is the point. So you want to take these files, add them to a project, and then in this project chat window, with all of these files in tow. We are going to prime each subject and and the author. We're going to start with the author, and we're going to prime the author, and we're going to say, I'm going to read you the prompt that we're going to provide you. But I call it, tell me everything there is to know about dot, dot, dot. That's what I call it. So in the chat, I type in, tell me everything there is to know about Dr Kirk Adams. That is not the actual prompt. It's very long. I'm going to read it here in a second, but that's the idea. And we press enter, and it goes into this project files, and it sees those 400 pages that we have on Dr Adams, and it pulls this outline, so to speak. Basically what it's doing is it's pulling from the project files all of the information into its memory so that it does not have to hallucinate or guess about who Dr Adams is. In addition, it is sampling his writing style, his statistical, mathematical writing style, so that it can duplicate it later on, when you ask it to Okay, once we've done that for the author in the same chat window, we then proceed to do the same thing for each subject. Tell me everything there is to know about CSUN. And it goes into the project files, and it details everything that it knows about CSUN. And then we when it's done with that, we say, tell me everything there is to know about a werewolf gear. And it goes and it describes everything. Now, mind you, this is all in the same chat. So about Dr Adams, same chat, CSUN. Same chat, a werewolf gear? Same chat, case revision. Same chat, top check tidbits. Same chat, uncertainty from disability organizations, same chat. Now, when we're done with that, we've got all of this context loaded into the models memory. Okay, we're going to move on to I don't think I'm going to read the prompt. It's very long, but you will get it as part of this program, and you can swap out the author or subject in the prompt that you want it to.

 

25:00

The whole from the corpus, from the database. Okay, so we move on to number seven at this point, once role prime context has been delivered into the chat for the author and each subject and refined by pair as needed. We'll get to that later, because you can refine each subject and author if there's a specific thing that they want to say. For instance, Dr Adams provided a bunch of detail on CSUN, but I didn't decide to use it at this point. We'll use it later. I'll show you where that comes in. Here we are Step seven. Ask chatgpt to provide you with five possible article title examples from author about the final topic that you wish for author to write about. Select one of these five titles for the final article or some combination thereof. This is a wonderful time with all of the context present in the chat. To ask chat GPT for five possible article titles that author would write about said subject, considering all of the context that it knows about author and it knows doctor, yeah, does the choice of the title flavor the article, does it influence? Yes, it does everything. Flavors everything, because it is statistical analysis between words, so even changing the single case of a letter will affect the output. So yes, it does definitely. And the titles that it suggests are definitely in consideration of who you are, what you've written. It's interesting. It really takes into account everything that you've written before as well, which is why we do it at this point in the chat, because it now knows everything about you that makes sense.

 

26:36

Okay, all right, so at this point

 

26:41

we it gives us back five titles. We choose one of those titles, okay? Or some combination. Usually, I like a combination of two of the titles. It never it usually does a good job on like the first and the third one. So I'll put those together. And in step number eight, this is where the magic happens. This is where we sidestep that 4096

 

26:58

context window limit. This is where you get to do what no one else can do, and this is how, and as if you're an academic, you will recognize this shortcut Step eight, use the provided prompt to generate an outline. Listen to that outline for the final article title, copy and paste the final outline into a Word document. Now the chat GPT, at this point will generate an entire outline, and that outline will be within the 4096 character limit. But the great part about it is we're going to refeed that outline in one section at a time and have it write the article for just that section. Now what this allows us to do is make each section of the outline have a 4096 token limit rather than the entire article.

 

27:44

And this makes a huge, huge difference in your ability to generate long form content. You could literally generate probably a 200 Well, roughly 190 page article, and with context, using this method, so that is kind of the same. So mechanically, you've generated out while you put it in a Word document. Then do you just copy and paste each I'm going to get to that we're going to step up in that. Okay, use the generated outline in tandem with the following prompt. Now we've provided a specific prompt that we use to do this. You can use ours to start, but I encourage you to experiment. But this prompt will do a really good job. Use the generated outline in tandem with the provided prompt to generate the final article one outline section at a time. Do not provide more than one outline section at a time. Do not provide any additional chat or context. And in between providing each outline section for generation, copy each final article section as it is generated and paste it into a separate word document.

 

28:44

This gives you the final article from chat. GPT, okay. It is at this point that a human being needs to edit that article, review that article. Hallucinations still happen. This is still an LLM, you want to make sure it didn't, you know, say that Dr Kirk Adams used to be president in the United States, or, you know, it can do things like that. So you want to check through we've never had any hallucinations ourselves, but we have to recommend that you look through it and make sure that there are none. This is generally where we provide it to the client. Dr Adams will sign off on it or make any small edits that he wants or likes, which are generally few. And then that article goes into what we call production, gets turned into HTML. SEO is done on it. Keywords are pulled, etc, and we begin publication one. One thing that pops up sometimes is when referring to blind people as a group, it might, might say them, and I will change it to us. We hate that I am also a blind person and part of the community. So that you know that that's one that I've seen more than once, but they are very minor. I haven't seen any I haven't seen anything factual, right, right? Nor have I. But again, I think the way that you get those hallucinations is lack of context, you know? So here we're providing a TON TON TON of context. So the hallucinations drop to this.

 

30:00

0.000

 

30:01

point. You know, it's really, it's negligible. So that's kind of the beauty of the of the process, and that's what we use here. That's what we use for you. That's what we use for probably 20 other clients across the world. They're very happy with it. Just know that this may not last long. You know, the llms are changing, you know, in the way that this works may change in the future as well, and just to speak specifically to blind persons, I know how difficult this must be, and if you have any thoughts on how to copy and paste large amounts of text back and forth between documents, I know that there's anchors and all types of other workarounds that we can use. I would love to put something together, an article in the future that helps blind marketing professionals specifically to implement this workflow. So if you have any ideas, please reach out to me or Dr Adams and let us know

 

30:50

a question or two. Certainly, I also talked about a couple other things in the text I sent you. I talked about AI and how many of the presentations touched upon AI? There was a lot of excitement about AI and accessibility that there's some talk with universal design and incorporating AI into Universal Design that

 

31:21

add on. Assistive technology may not be needed in the future. There was some excitement around that.

 

31:29

There was also concern about the bias that is represented by AI, because AI is made up of data points, and people with disabilities use technology less than people without disabilities, so our data of our lived experiences is underrepresented. So you get you get some you get some things.

 

31:54

You know, Jenny lay flurry,

 

31:56

Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft, David, gave a presentation.

 

32:01

They are. They are now they have a partnership with Be My Eyes. They're they're now receiving data through the beam. Be my AI usage that they're anonymizing and and aggregating.

 

32:15

But you know, she, she put up an example of people saying

 

32:20

to a i I'm blind, and I need to do this, this and this. And, you know, the the AI saying, I'm, I'm sorry to hear you're blind. Think, think that that was, that was an example. So there is concern about bias, and how is AI out? As AI evolves, can be,

 

32:42

as people with disabilities, be proactive

 

32:47

in

 

32:49

addressing that, and

 

32:53

so any any comments you might have on that, just AI in general, what you're seeing, You're saying you're working with 20 clients using the type of generative process you just talked about.

 

33:07

I just love your personal take, take on the State of the Union as far as AI and disability and accessibility. Certainly, certainly, I think the big conversation right now that everyone is having is the effect that AI will have on accessibility. There's the will AI eat accessibility conversation, and I think there's a lot of nuance to that conversation.

 

33:33

I think the one missing element in that conversation is timing, because we say, will AI eat accessibility. I mean, 30 years from now, sure, I think, I don't think anyone would argue that, you know, but a year from now, two years from now, who knows? You know, those are the bets that are current. When's it going to happen? How is it going to happen? What's it going to look like, and specifically, how will it affect blind people? I think a lot of these questions are going to be answered very soon. Amazon plus is coming out, which is going to be huge. It's going to be huge for me, you know, I know it's huge for blind people. It will be the first time an LLM has really been merged with voice in the way that I believe blind people need it to be, you know, kind of like chat GPT, advanced voice mode, you know, which, if you are blind and you have not tried advanced voice mode, I encourage you to rush out today, if you can, and try it, because I think it's life changing. And I think those kinds of things will be life changing. I also think where representation is concerned specifically, and lived experience of people with a disability specifically, we have room for improvement in that once we can collect data from

 

34:42

people remotely using technology. I mean, I don't know how, but imagine a phone, imagine an apple headset. Imagine if you could, if they could watch Dr Adams work for an hour and specifically tailor solutions to Dr Adams needs. I think that is happening in the future. How far away I can't.

 

35:00

It 345, years, possibly, maybe sooner. You know, I just think it's a very interesting time. I think it is the greatest time to be alive, and I think it is the most profound time for people with disabilities to have hope in always. You know, from neuro link, which recently released a brain interface that allows a man to use an apple vision Pro to control his environment, you know, I would be incredibly excited about that. If I were one with paralysis, you know, to the breakthroughs of blind and retinal medical technologies that are happening currently, and the promise of that possible technology, then blind people may one day be able to see, you know, and that's not BS, I think is pretty amazing. Personally.

 

35:45

Another

 

35:47

aspect of CSUN I commented on as an avid Braille reader was the

 

35:53

appearance of numerous multi line braille displays. So I have a

 

36:01

80 character braille display attached to my laptop, the same one I've used since 2016

 

36:07

I have a 32 character

 

36:11

Braille tablet note taker,

 

36:15

basically the same technology I saw when I had my first bursa Braille from tele sensory incorporated in the early 90s, where the data was stored on a cassette tape. The braille display is essentially unchanged. So it's eight there's eight dot Braille cells, and there are mechanical pins that are driven up and down mechanically. And they they fail, they get dirty, they stop working.

 

36:42

So these multi line braille displays,

 

36:45

there were four companies there.

 

36:50

The premise is, you could be more efficient and effective if you could read a 32 character Braille display. I'm looking at one on my lap right now. 12345677,

 

37:01

words on the line. So the, you know, the Prem, and then I have to toggle to the next line. So the premise would be, could be more efficient and effective, especially with

 

37:12

computer Braille and mathematical Braille, long equations that that would occupy more lines. And then the other exciting piece is graphics, you know, as a blind kid trying to learn what, what's a parabola? Yeah, yeah.

 

37:32

And then, you know, there was one cool one where they,

 

37:36

there was a Braille tablet with 100 characters, and they put up a, you know, illustration of a bicycle, which was cool. I mean, I could tell two wheels, handlebars, it was fun, but they're expensive, right? They're incredibly expensive,

 

37:54

6000 to Yes, 20 plus $1,000

 

37:59

so my contention was we need another tactile

 

38:05

reading system that doesn't reply on these rely on these mechanical pins. And some people listening may remember the Opticon, which I was shown as a second or third grader in the late 60s. And you put your fingers on a little pad, and there were little pins that vibrated. They didn't raise up and down. They they vibrated. And they actually replicated, replicated print letters. So you would scan a print document, and then you would feel the print and some people, still, I know some people love the OPT, yeah, we have, we have people on the list that recently asked about someone that could fix an Opticon. And we were, yeah, yeah. We were trading back and forth black mark. There's a nice black

 

38:45

but

 

38:47

I had invited a gentleman, Rafiki Kai, who's a visiting scholar in AI at University of San Francisco Computer Science Department,

 

38:56

and I was showing him many of these braille displays and talking about the expense. And I got a text from him yesterday saying he's talked to people in the mechanical engineering department at University of San Francisco who are using AI to solve mechanical engineering problems, and he wants to get on a call to see if they can take on developing a new, refreshable breath technology as a project. So a lot of things come out of CSUN. And

 

39:24

I digress a little bit, just to say you talked about the seven subjects, but there were other things in the article as well, the discussion of AI,

 

39:34

the discussion of the Braille displays. And for those who haven't read the article, you can think you can find it and talk to top tech tidbits, but

 

39:46

I think Aaron, if you have any other thoughts that you think are important to share, also, how can people get in touch with you? And I'll let people know how they can get in touch with me.

 

40:00

And then we'll open up to see if anyone has any questions. Certainly, I think the easiest way that everyone's used to getting in touch with me is just publisher at top tech tidbits.com I have many, many email addresses. They all work. You can reach me at all of them, but that's usually the one that most people use.

 

40:16

I just basically wanted to answer as many, I'm sorry, yeah, as many questions as I could today, these this workshop was the culmination of questions that I have been asked for about the last two months, you know, from people. So I hope they get a lot of value out of this. We will have this recording posted tomorrow, along with the Word document, which contains all of the prompts that I did not read to you today and everything else that you need to complete the process yourself, and if you have any questions, I might be able to convince Dr Adams to get back on here with me and answer some questions. Yeah, absolutely happy to do part two.

 

40:52

And we'll probably need to in about three just just to answer questions. Yeah, you probably will change Yeah.

 

40:59

And to get in touch with me, it's Kirk Adams at Dr Kirk, adams.com Kirk Adams at Dr Kirk, adams.com or LinkedIn.

 

41:08

And any questions from those of us who are with us live today, and if you're viewing this as an archive recording, please email Aaron and or I, and we'll be happy to engage in dialog and hearing Hearing none I am going to thank you, Aaron, for a very succinct, well organized description of the process you use, and hoping that it will prove of great value to Those who I think view the webinar and looking forward to our next conversation. Indeed. Dr Adams, thanks for all you do. Absolutely talk to you, my friend. All right, take good care. Bye, everybody. Bye, bye.

 

41:56

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 [email protected]

 

42:07

Kirk adams.com

 

42:09

together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time. Keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You.

Tiffani Martin is an AI & Technology Strategy Leader, Social Tech Entrepreneur, and Accessibility Innovator who specializes in AI governance, responsible innovation, and technology strategy. With extensive expertise in AI ethics, compliance, automation, and digital transformation, she supports executives and organizations in scaling AI initiatives, optimizing operations, and mitigating risks, while ensuring equity and accessibility in technology adoption. As the Founder of VisioTech, Tiffani leads research and development efforts in accessible AI and emerging technology solutions, guiding companies in aligning with regulatory compliance, industry standards, and responsible AI practices. Her exceptional ability to bridge strategy, operations, and AI governance has garnered significant recognition, including: ✔ Black Enterprise's 40 Under 40   ✔ Dallas Business Journal's 40 Under 40   ✔ AI Innovator of the Year (Black AI Think Tank)   ✔ Lex Frieden Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Presented by Governor Greg Abbott) Tiffani serves as an Executive Board Member and Director for Ambassadors for the North Texas Disability Chamber, contributing actively to accessibility and AI policy. Additionally, she collaborates with industry leaders, policymakers, and research institutions to shape frameworks that ensure equitable AI adoption and ethical decision-making within emerging technologies. How Tiffani Drives Impact: AI & Tech Strategy: Aligns AI-driven innovation with business objectives and compliance frameworks. Executive Advisory: Partners with C-suite leaders to advance AI governance, risk mitigation, and responsible AI adoption. Workforce Development: Builds inclusive AI talent pipelines through mentorship and strategic initiatives. Digital Transformation: Leads cross-functional teams in implementing scalable and ethical AI solutions. Operations & Governance: Designs strategic roadmaps, optimizes workflows, and enhances decision-making structures to support AI-driven business transformations. Thought Leadership & Industry Influence: Tiffani's insights on AI governance, accessibility, and business strategy have been featured in national business and academic publications. She frequently delivers keynote addresses at STEM, accessibility, and technology events, shaping critical conversations around responsible innovation, ethical AI, and inclusive technology. Furthermore, Tiffani develops industry frameworks, including the Accessible AI Quotient, which provides structured methodologies for inclusive AI development and ethical deployment. She also actively participates on advisory boards, task forces, and executive panels aimed at advancing responsible AI policies and best practices across various industries. TRANSCRIPT:  

00:00

Music.

 

Speaker 1  00:09

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,

 

Speaker 2  00:37

so welcome everybody to the cleverly named podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, and today I have a guest a new friend, Tiffany Martin, and Tiffany was introduced to me by a mutual friend of ours, Dr froswa Booker DREW Thank you, froswa, for connecting Tiffany and I You're a master connector, and we appreciate you. And Tiffany is also a blind person like myself. For those of you who don't know me, again, it's Dr Kirk Adams. I am managing director of innovative impact LLC, which is my consulting practice. I am the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind. Prior to that, the same roles at the lighthouse for the blind Inc, here in Seattle, I have devoted my professional and academic careers to creating opportunities for other people with disabilities, particularly blind people, to thrive in our society. And my main focus has been employment. I think a good, meaningful, well paying career addresses lots of issues. So I've spent my time focusing on helping create conditions in which blind people can

 

01:55

be meaningfully employed.

 

Speaker 2  01:57

And I was introduced to Tiffany and we share many of the same interests and values. So Tiffany, if you would like to introduce yourself to the vast podcast audience, or

 

Speaker 3  02:14

as Dr Kirk mentioned, I am blind. I became blind at the age of 28 so I was sighted, I ended up getting diabetic retinopathy, and so I had to make a complete life change. But before then,

 

02:30

I lived a very

 

Speaker 3  02:33

active lifestyle, traveling started. My background is in digital marketing, and so I was doing that for a global humanitarian service named United mega here. And then I went and took all, you know, my gifts, over into a ministry. And then then I went blind in the midst of that, and I realized I could do way more with technology than I felt that I could with marketing. It was a it was a gap filler for me, and their revelation came right when I lost my sight at the same time I had kidney failure, and so I was on dialysis and in and out of hospitals, but trying to maintain a nine to five as well as a five to nine the entire time. And so three transplants later, I sit before you now. I'm about to graduate from Baylor University with my MBA, with a concentration in cyber security. I went to the blind institute of technology so I can learn Web and Digital Accessibility. Became a certified product owner, Certified Scrum Master, because I wanted to understand the process in developing technology and how to facilitate that. And like I mentioned, I'll be graduating in May, and I have really high hopes in pursuing my PhD and focusing more on AI governance as well as accessibility within the corporate space. So just a lot of pivots in my life. And this one coming up, I'm looking to really step foot into academia. And that's really, truly how I came across Dr Fauci. And she said, You, I have a wonderful, absolutely amazing person that you need to meet, and that was that was you. Dr Kirk, so I'm so glad that she did that. I've learned so much in the time that we talked and shared. And so just glad to be here.

 

Speaker 2  04:52

And I want to ask you about one of your pivots. So as I mentioned in the intro, you know, my retina is detached when I was five years old. So I became totally blind before first grade. And so most, most of us who are blind aren't totally blind, only about 10% of us in the other people are legally blind and have various degrees of usable vision. So sometimes there's a question, especially for young kids, like, does this this kid really need to learn braille. Can they use other modes technology? Can they listen to stuff with me? There was no question I was totally blind. I needed to learn to write Braille. There was no question. I needed to learn how to travel independently with a cane, white cane I had in my hand as first grader, and, you know, at that time, learned how to type on a typewriter. So I learned how to type it as a six year old, so that when I was ready, I could go to public school my neighbors and siblings, which I did starting in fourth grade. But for you, you lived 28 years as a sighted person, and you kind of just said, became blind at 28 and had to learn a lot of stuff. So I think I'd like to dig into that a little bit. So many people go through a grief cycle. Many people are just shell shocked by becoming blind after living us with our formative years of the sighted person and you are an example and a role model of someone who assessed the situation and took action. And I would really like to hear, what did you you mentioned blindness to do technology, but how did you start? What did you do? First, what did you do? Second, in order to move to the place where you are now, whereas a blind person. You're about to graduate with your MBA from Baylor and planning to launch into a doctoral program. How did you get from sighted person, newly blind person, to really efficient, effective, thriving blind person?

 

Speaker 3  06:59

You know, a lot a lot of people ask me, you know, when I'm speaking or just in passing, you know, what happened? You know, how did you manage? What was it like? And I really, I don't even think to this day, I've actually truly processed it was okay. This is something that has happened to me, and I gotta adjust. And, you know, I have a wonderful, great supportive system with my parents, but I had to, you know, move back home, you know, selling my car, getting rid of, you know, my my place downtown. It was really, really something that, when you get into the thick of it, is one of those, you know, fright, like, you know, all of those, and not just my instincts kicked into, Okay, I gotta, I gotta figure something out. You know, my parents were adamant about my autonomy, and so my dad received information through a program out here at Texas Workforce Solutions. And the first time I could, you know, get an appointment, I was there, and it was my first interaction with somebody independent using technology. My case manager was a woman that was blind and immediate reaction to when I met her, was in awe, because the first thing I heard was her computer, and it's going a mile a minute. And, you know, anybody will tell you if they hear voiceover or, you know, a screen reader is just sounds like gibberish. And so my dad. I remember he got real close. He said, One day, you want to be able to do that. And you know at the time, I'm glad I have no idea with that,

 

Speaker 2  08:49

when we got onto this call and you run out a much more rapid read than I do, so you've made it

 

08:55

our screen reading technology really well.

 

Speaker 3  08:57

Yeah, I'm actually increasing my speed. My mentor, his name is Vincent Martin. He's blind himself. He has seven degrees, two of which are PhDs, and he said he reads 900 words per minute, and that's listening comprehension and retention. So I'm at 500 right now, and I'm trying to make my way up, though, but that's just the competitor in me, but yeah, like, I'm able to do that with technology. So the courses that Texas Workforce offered, they said it takes about a month, but I learned everything in about a week, just two weeks, just, you know, at the precaution, you know, and everything. But as soon as I got my computer back, I had to go. I started on a PC. Then I became a Mac person. When I became blind, I had to go back to a PC, learning jaws. And recently, I just taught myself how to use, you know, MacBook, since I was already, you know, leveraging the iPhone, iPad and so forth. But no. It's just, there's just intrinsic curiosity that that comes with, I believe would happen, you know, with my site, and I've just taken that and really challenged myself to see how far I could go. I don't, I will say this, I don't know if I would have pushed myself as hard if I was not blind, and that's crazy, but I think me pushing the limits of what I can do with the loss of a faculty is kind of just intriguing to me.

 

10:33

And

 

Speaker 2  10:36

you're about to finish your master's business administration degree, but you also are a tech founder, so I love to let people hear about your company.

 

Speaker 3  10:49

Yeah, so Visio Tech, we work on the research and strategy development of accessible technology focused on on artificial intelligence. I made the pivot a couple years back where I just wanted to focus on accessible technology, but I really from the advice of a business partner, which he he does a lot in generative AI, but I said, Hey, I think we need to go ahead and make that pivot, because AI and accessibility just go hand in hand. AI is an assistive tool. I use it for accessibility. A lot of people use it for productivity, but I really felt like this would be the gap filler with people with disabilities. You know, it's, it optimizes, you know, your workflow and creativity and things of that nature. And if we can get our hands on it, that's the, it's that access point that I'm concerned with. And so, you know, that's what we do now, like I said before, I'm taking it so much serious that, you know, I want to get that PhD. So I have a very deep understanding of not just the capabilities, but the implications of what it means on society. And so I just, I want to be well versed. I want to be on the operating, you know, operator side as well as the consumer. I want to understand that. And so I can, you know, help bridge the gap for other people as well. So, so

 

Speaker 2  12:23

you just said something in a I've heard you talk about your company more than once, but you just said something, maybe in a new way, maybe I'm finally listening, but use of AI for accessibility. So your your company is focused specifically on harnessing AI to improve the lives of people with disabilities. So am I hearing that right?

 

Speaker 3  12:49

Yeah, that's, that's where we are right now. It's been a lot of like research, you know, I've had to bootstrap the entire time, and more so now you know thing ever, but we really took a step back. Brought on, you know, new team members

 

13:08

really looking into,

 

Speaker 3  13:12

you know, how fast is advancing? I'm particularly interested in agents, just for autonomous reason, and that's just kind of like a personal goal for me with being blind, is I'm very concerned with autonomy, and to be able to leverage a tool that could, you know, operate on its own. I'm doing one thing while it's doing another, that just duplicates me several times over. And so I'm like, Okay, this could help me. I know it can help others. And so, you know, I've kind of been on this evangelist movement of trying to eradicate the fears associated with AI, particularly with with people in marginalized communities. But, you know, like everybody, we have to take, you know, baby steps. So that's kind of where we are.

 

Speaker 2  14:05

Yeah, I have two, two things come to mind. First is there, there are people listening right now who are jumping up out of their chair saying she is doing something that is so important and meaningful to me. I need to, I need to engage. I need to experience this, I need to get involved. So how can those listening want to learn more about Visio tech? How do they do that? I

 

Speaker 3  14:29

mean, I'm always on my phone, even I have the meta glasses on right now. So I'm hearing everything you know going on, not right now, of course, but I'm very active on LinkedIn. I found my people and LinkedIn, you know, other techies with disabilities and so forth. So, you know, you can contact me there with an eye, by the way, Tiffany with an eye. Yes, you know, my mom's had to be different for whatever reason. I. Yeah,

 

Speaker 2  15:00

it's got style. Well, it's T, I F, F, A, N, I

 

Speaker 3  15:04

m a, yeah, but either that or via email, Tiffany with an i at Visio tech, V, i, s, i, o, T, E, C, H, dot, C, O,

 

Speaker 2  15:17

okay, Tiffany with an i at Visio tech.co

 

Speaker 3  15:21

right? And the funny thing, oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, you know the funny thing about the website, so just kind of going back, I've been very, you know, obsessed with no code, low code. But with the new models that have been coming out, I've been playing around with programming because that was something that I was starting to learn right before I lost my site. So there's, you know, there's times where I'm testing it out on the site to, you know, see if it works. Just to see, you know, like, as somebody that had, you know, little to no understanding of programming that was, you know, trying to start life happen, and coming back. And I'm like, this tool, you know, there's so many tools out there, Claude winds, serve cursor, GitHub copilot, you know, I'm like, Wow. You know, people who have no experience in coding can now, you know, learn how to do that. So, you know, you might see little things on the side, and it's me just like, you know, working through it. So,

 

Speaker 2  16:25

yeah, and then the you said marginalized populations. So you are an African American woman who was blind, and I just saw a stat recently. It was focused on Silicon Valley, but it's probably a pretty good snapshot of tech. 70% of the employees are non disabled white males. So you are living with several identities related to marginalized populations, and as you look at the institutional barriers that exist around in our country, race, sex and evilism, any reflections, any any thoughts, any dynamics that you find uniquely challenging or uniquely satisfying and occupying these overlapping identities?

 

Speaker 3  17:20

Yeah, it's a very peculiar town that we're in.

 

17:25

It seems like every time I'm,

 

Speaker 3  17:28

you know, opening up my phone, there's an update, there's something that is at risk of being removed, that specifically impacts my life. You know, we're talking about education. We're talking about like, section 504, and accommodations and workplace, and it's just, it can be very overwhelming right now. And I'm not going to sit here and say I'm an optimistic at all, but I do see similar to what happened when I lost my sight, when there are challenges that we face and barriers, it is an opportunity to set the world on its head and really come together, but use our voice and amplify our voice with allies and so forth to make it known. Of the possibilities, you know, that comes with the accommodations that come with the technology that comes with, you know, just the the assistance. I will say this and I stand firm. I've said it on, you know, other interviews and podcasts, di is not a license for mediocrity. It is just an opportunity for people in marginalized groups to be afforded opportunities that their counterparts had. It has opened the door for a lot of incredible, great minds. And one thing I will say about people with disabilities, we have an intrinsic ingenuity about us, an adaptability that I think is second to none, that I think all businesses could benefit from. And so I'm a living witness of that Baylor, they removed, they waived the GRE, which I think is a barrier in education, but that's, that's a whole different podcast, but by them doing that, they gave me the opportunity. It's an r1 university, and I am on par to graduate the top 25% of my class now,

 

19:44

sorry, is that fabulous?

 

Speaker 3  19:46

Yeah? Like, thank you. That I don't know if anybody will be able to witness that or in experience that if they did not give me the opportunity, if accommodations weren't set in place, but because it is. And I can now see the possibilities. I am now able to contribute, not only to that university, but other people, other organizations I contact because of what I am learning there. So you know, if I'm, if I'm a walking billboard for why accommodations matter at this time, at this specific time with the political climate, I'll be that for however long that takes.

 

Speaker 2  20:20

Well, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this meritocracy concept that's being mentioned a lot, and I think if you take us, everyone takes a few steps back. I think we would all it'd be hard to disagree with the thought that we want people to be able to contribute as fully as possible to our society and bring their talents and their skills and their strengths into the mix. And there are barriers that have prevented really talented, motivated people with unique strengths, people with disabilities, from fully engaging in the workplace. So you can call it what you want. Most recent label has been diversity, equity, inclusion, but it's really about talent management, human resources, finding the best fit for the talent skills and strengths of people that contribute to organizations and society. So we may be calling it something different in a year, but I think from a strategic business competitive standpoint, I think anyone who wants to have an effective business that adds value, provides value for their customers, is going to realize that they need to hire the best and brightest people they can, and if they're using stereotypes and discrimination as a shorthand to eliminate people from their talent pool, that's not a wise business decision. We

 

21:57

both agree with that.

 

Speaker 2  21:59

So PhD next for you, when I talked about that, I had earned my doctorate in leadership and change and first of all, Dr frost wall and I started at the same time, and she finished long before I did, but I did become Dr Adams in 2019, it's been very, very meaningful for me and you. And I talked about that. I'd love to hear your vision for the future of yourself. Tech, I know you mentioned that you're, you're seeking the PhD so that you can have the deepest grounding and understanding of AI and accessibility and those intersections that you can but what, how does that? How does that look say seven years from now, and it's dr, dr, Tiffany Martin and Visio Tech is a scaled, active company. What? What changes do you see happening in the world because of

 

22:57

what seven years from now

 

Speaker 3  23:01

I see myself definitely

 

23:07

in between research and teaching.

 

23:10

It's a passion I never knew that I had

 

Speaker 3  23:13

until I started speaking, but I'm very, very passionate about passing on that knowledge and and cultivating people and and ideas that long outlive me. I see myself doing a lot of advocacy work on the hill. And so, you know, I want to be fully prepared, you know, adding knowledge with passion to be the best advocate I can for all of the communities I represent. But it's is something that, you know, hopefully down the road, if kids come into play, you know, with my husband and I, that they could see and they have no idea of what a barrier is, because I was able to set that precedent for them. But

 

24:07

I just see myself pouring out to to people,

 

Speaker 3  24:12

you know, I just, I want to use the next seven years to not just learn, but to really get aligned with other organizations and where, you know, the research that I conduct can be utilized. I don't see it as a singular effort, just for Visio tech, but you know, anytime I could partner, or, you know, get involved and get into organizations and they can leverage life experiences that I have, as well as the knowledge and so forth, and I can help, you know, their teams, and help create better services and products and systems that serve all people. That's kind of where I'm at. So you know, it's a lot of. Movement. This is a pivot that

 

25:05

I am trying to prepare my best for.

 

Speaker 3  25:09

But yeah, going from marketing to tech and then going into academia. Yeah, I'm excited, quite nervous. I'm a control freak, and this is one of those things. I'm going by faith. But yeah, I believe I'm ready, and I'm just gonna, you know, keep my head down and start making some waves and hopefully change some things and be that catalyst. So, yeah,

 

Speaker 2  25:37

I don't want people to think that tiff needs all work and no play, as I did the presentation you made, and you made a Bob's Burgers analogy in reference. And I said, I love Bob's burger. So we had a little back and forth about that. But so in between starting a company, finishing your MBA, preparing for the PhD, networking, engaging, advocating, speaking, What? What? What do you do for fun?

 

Speaker 3  26:09

I'm a self proclaimed foodie. I'm always like researching places and dragging my husband along, like, hey, let's try this. We are active, so one of the things I'm very proud that I got to do is I got to snowboard. Coming up. We're going on a cruise with the family, but I'm gonna see if they let me jet ski. I used to do it when I had my site, and I'm like, it's just open ocean. Like, why not? But

 

Speaker 2  26:45

that's great. You and your husband come to Seattle. It's really nice here in August and September, and we'll go eat at a lot of good places.

 

Speaker 3  26:55

There's actually a conference, and I cannot think of it in Seattle that I I want to go to and I think it's in June. I had a friend send it to me, but I definitely thought of you when it came across. I'm really see if I can make that happen.

 

Speaker 2  27:12

Let us know to eat to some places that aren't on the tour sky. So this is this time has flown by. I again. This is Dr Kirk Adams. If you want to get in touch with me, I'm on LinkedIn to Kirk Adams PhD. My website is Dr Kirk adams.com D, R k, i, r k, E, D, A M, s.com My email address is Kirk Adams at Dr Kirk Adams com, and Tiffany for you to tell people one more time how they could get in touch with you and anyone listening to this podcast, I will speak for Tiffany to say we will happily talk to anyone who's interested and accelerating inclusion of people with disabilities in our society. Feel free to reach out.

 

Speaker 3  27:57

Yeah, so they can reach me on LinkedIn, Tiffany with an I actually put blind on there so you can't miss me. But yeah, LinkedIn is a great spot. If you want to see pictures of myself and my husband and my family. You know, just having fun, it's not all work. You can catch me on Instagram at Tiffany Jansen, that's t, I, F, F, A n, i, j, A n, C, y, n, and then you can also email me at Tiffany with an i again at Visio tech.co, that's V, i, s, i, o, T, E, C, H, dot, C, O,

 

Speaker 2  28:38

well, I want To express my gratitude to you, Tiffany, for your time and attention and being present with us here, and your friendship, your advocacy, your allyship, your engagement again. Dr, dr frost Bucha DREW Thank you for introducing me to Tiffany Martin. Everyone have a great day. Thanks. Stephanie,

 

29:02

thank you.

 

Speaker 1  29:05

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 WWW dot DRK adams.com, together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You.

In this episode of Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion, Dr. Kirk Adams speaks with Robyn Grable, Founder and CEO of Talents ASCEND (https://talentsascend.com/).  

00:00

Music.

 

Speaker 1  00:09

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,

 

Speaker 2  00:37

hello, everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through disability inclusion and today, we have a marvelous guest who is out there doing great work. Robin Grable is here with us. If you want to say, Hi Robin. We'll get back to you in depth.

 

Speaker 3  01:02

Hello everyone. Thank you. Dr Adams, appreciate you being here. Appreciate me being here. Yeah, and

 

Speaker 2  01:06

you and your company is talents ascend. Talents ascend, which is a beautiful name, and mine is innovative impact LLC, so we've got talents ascending. We've got impact innovating at all kinds of good stuff happening here today, but we're going to talk about how employers can access unique, highly motivated, highly talented pools of potential employees, and that's something I focus on. For those of you who don't know me, I am a totally blind person. My retina is detached. When I was in kindergart, I went from being a sighted child to a blind child, really, overnight. And my parents were in their mid 20s at the time. They had never met a blind person in their lives before I became one, and no, they were told Kirk can't come back to school here at the neighborhood school. He needs to go to the State School for the Blind kids. And wound up going to the Oregon State School for the Blind for first, second and third grade, and had a marvelous launching pad. There some things that happened as a 678, year old I've only come to appreciate much later, and I can distinctly say that I was given three gifts during my my time. There one was my blindness skills as a totally blind kid, there was no question that I need to learn braille, that I need to learn how to use a cane, and only about 10% of us who are legally blind are totally blind. So a lot of kids, there's some question, can they use magnification nowadays? You know, could they just listen to everything? But I needed to learn braille, and I did. I use it every day, and I learned how to travel confidently with a white cane, and I learned how to type on a typewriter so I could start into public school and type my spelling test and type my papers and my tests and things. So I got those blindness skills, which we all, all of us who have an impairment of some kind, whether it's hearing, vision, mobility, cognitive, need to learn alternative techniques that other people don't necessarily need to know, but we do, and those skills are so important.

 

03:34

The second thing,

 

Speaker 2  03:36

the second thing I was given was a strong internal locus of control, which just meant I felt in my bones that I could solve my problems, forge my own path, create, create a way forward. And they really did that through experiences. This was the 1960s I would I would say the school was run by some really cool hippies, and they took us backpacking in the Three Sisters wilderness area and horseback camping up on Mount Hood to build big snow forts, huge snowballs and in the tide pools and the Oregon coast, feeling around for starfish and sea anemones, I remember being at a cabin up at a mountain lake using a cross cut saw to cut firewood and just all kinds of experiential things that just gave me that strong internal locus of control or agency, as opposed to A strong external locus, which just gives you this feeling that things are happening to you, there's not what you can do about it. So I had the blindness skills, I had the strong internal locus of control,

 

04:53

and then I also had

 

04:57

Jeremy's note takers talking. I.

 

Speaker 2  05:00

Um, I also had high expectations so my parents, my dad was a high school basketball coach. My parents didn't want to see anything less than an A on a report card. They expected me to do chores like my brother and sister, and a lot of kids with impairments don't have that because people like my parents weren't familiar with people with disabilities. Schools aren't used to working with people with disabilities, so oftentimes kids have to deal with low expectations from their family, their school, a lot of caretaking, a lot of kind of paternalism. So sometimes that stuff gets internalized. So again, I was given the blindness skills, the sense of agency and the high expectation, which, which really enabled me when I started into public school as a fourth grader in the sink, sink or swim Public School of small town Pacific Northwest noise like I was equipped, equipped to deal with that fast forwarding I went on through school that very well, academically, participated in varsity sports, was involved in other extracurricular activities, was the sports editor of my little high school paper, which meant I got to write a monthly, no weekly high school sports column for the Snohomish Tribune, our little town paper. So I had a had a job as a 16 year old, which many, many young people with disabilities don't, don't get that experience. So so I had a lot of nice things given to me through the course of my life. Earned a scholarship, full scholarship to Whitman College through a foundation called the Jesse Ridley Foundation, which provided full scholarships to blind students going to a small select number of schools, and a recruiter from Whitman College, when he visited the high school, saw me with my white cane and my braille, and said, Can you stay after the presentation? Because we have access to this foundation, and we've never been able to use it, because we've never had a blind student at our college before. Would you like to apply? So I did that. So again, I was given a gift through no real effort of mine, I had to maintain a three to five GPA, and at the end of every semester, I wrote a letter to the foundation and told them what I had learned, sent to my transcript, told them about my classes, then told them what I was planning to learn the following semester, and then they and told them how much tuition and room and board was, and they sent me a check. So I was an 18 year old to get a $24,000 check in the mail was pretty exciting, and I went to go to the bank and deposit it get $100 bill.

 

08:02

That was big doings for me.

 

Speaker 2  08:05

The other thing that happened, and this, this is something I think Robin and I will really want to talk about, is the special skills and capabilities you developed, develop as a person living with a disability, or person who's had the experience of being a military veteran. You know, looking at the book The Talent Code, we learn skills and we develop capabilities and characteristics and strengths through overcoming challenges. And you know, world class musicians and athletes and chess champions. You know, they do that systematically. There's a program start right? I studied piano for eight years. So you start with scales and forwards, coordinating your left hand and right hand, and you play increasingly complex pieces. And so you set your set challenges intentionally. Some people call it scaffolding, but that's how you achieve mastery as a person living with a disability every day you it's not that, it's not that regimented or calculated or thought out, but you are faced with challenges daily and as you grow and attempt to thrive in more and more complex settings. Going through school, employment, housing, relationships, you're faced with increasingly difficult challenges, and you overcome them. So I had some experiences I look back on as a 18 year old, as a freshman in college, that my classmates weren't having I couldn't get all my materials in Braille like I did in K 12. So I was getting some books on cassette recorded by a volunteer group Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, which is now a Learning Ally, some textbooks. I got some I did. And I had some money from the Washington State Commission for the Blind to hire readers so I could pay my classmates minimum wage to read me textbooks that they needed to read anyway. So I was interviewing people, hiring, sometimes, firing, invoicing, paying. So I was managing accounts payable and accounts receivable and hiring and documenting and reporting to the state and all those things. And my my classmates weren't needing to do those things. There was a concept called the expanded core curriculum that was developed by my former place of employment, the American Foundation for the Blind, some years ago. And this is, this is news that blind students get to receive at some point, and they're told, hey, hey, blind kid, you need to learn all the stuff the sighted kids learn, and nine more things like the use of assistive technology, Braille, how to travel safely using a cane or a guide dog. Career Exploration, because we know blind kids graduate from high school have a far less comprehensive view of the world of work than their sighted classmates do, and advocacy. So how to advocate for yourself as a skill we need to teach our disabled kids my my story that I often repeat is my senior year in high school, there were about 30 of us who were college bound. And first period, we all went into physics. Second period, we all walked into math analysis, and third period we all walked into chemistry, and the chemistry teacher said, Oh, no, you cannot take chemistry. That is a safety issue. You need to go to the office and get a get a different class. And I, I was upset, and I went home and talk to my parents, who are both teachers, and they said, Well, if Mr. So and So says, then that's that's that. So they didn't have the information. The school didn't have the information. So I was not given the information that I certainly could have taken chemistry and been very successful. I now know blind PhDs in chemistry. I know blind people who teach chemistry at the university level. So I did not have the self advocacy skills. I was not taught them. I also did not have a network. I did not know any blind adults who were successfully navigating the world that I can turn to for advice and help. So to to all people involved with young blind people, let's take advantage of the great tools we have today with technology, connect with community and find blind adults who are doing great things in the world, and then build that that network for our young, blind and disabled people.

 

13:05

So,

 

Speaker 2  13:08

as I mentioned, I was the president, CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind till about two and a half years ago, which was Helen Keller's organization. Very moving moment for me, being in the New York offices and walking down the hallway and sitting at Helen Keller's desk and playing with her typewriter where she wrote all of her books and speeches, and just feeling that power. And prior to that, I held the same role at the lighthouse for the blind Inc here in Seattle, Washington, which is a social enterprise employing blind and deaf, blind people in a number of businesses, including aerospace manufacturing, and been a supplier to the Boeing company since the 1950s 110 120 blind and deaf, blind machinists. I'm doing advanced manufacturing, and I was chatting with Robin before we before we started our session. She's in South Carolina. And just prior to my transitioning from the lighthouse to AFB, I was involved in the lighthouse purchasing a manufacturing facility in Somerville, South Carolina, where Currently there are about 30 blind people, 30 blind South Carolinians, employed as part of the Boeing 787, supply chain there. So I I've had a lot of really interesting experiences and employing people who are blind and deaf, blind, being a blind employee myself. I spent 10 years in corporate America and banking and finance, I've been a frustrated, disabled job seeker, having the experience so many of us have with in my case, getting graduated from college with cum laude, phi, beta, kappa, and sending out my cover letter and my resume and getting. Phone interview and being excited and going in for my in person interview, and walking in with my long white cane, my slate and stylus and some braille paper so I could take notes, and that employer sitting across the table, not surprisingly, had probably never worked with a blind person before, had no idea of the tools and techniques and technology we use, and could not imagine how, how could this blind kid do this financial analyst job he's applying for? So I had, I had that experience multiple, multiple times, and then I started disclosing my disability earlier in the process. If you have a visible disability, there's a point at which you need to decide when to disclose your disability. So I wasn't disclosing until I walked into the in person interview. So I changed my strategy and was putting in my cover letter. I've been totally blind since age five. Here's how I've done all this stuff that's on my resume. Here's how I'll do the job. And then then I wasn't even getting the phone interview, so I certainly, over the years, have talked to many, many, many blind people and people with other significant disabilities who've had similar experiences. Sent out 10 times as many resumes gone, 10 times as many interviews as their brothers and sisters and neighbors without impairments. And that is why only 35% of us with significant disabilities are in the work workforce, as compared to 70% of the general population. We're also in a much narrower band of types of occupations. We're largely confined toward the bottom of the org chart. The majority of us work for nonprofits or government, which are wonderful places to work, but have limited salary ceilings, so we have lower incomes, less wealth, more poverty, and all of the outcome disparities that come with poverty, around depression, substance abuse and dropout rates, marriage dissolutions and all those things. So that's what I dedicate my time to, and my my professional and academic career. I have a PhD in leadership and change. It's called journeys. I did a dissertation called journeys through rough country where I interviewed 11 blind adults who self identified as successfully employed at large American corporations, and learned a lot about their journeys and what their success factors were. And I talked about some of them already, the blindness skills, the internal locus of control. Other things included family support, the opportunity to work as part of a team or a group as a young person, supportive and immediate supervisor, a commitment from top management to accessibility, and although all of them self identified as successfully employed, they all also expressed disappointment, disappointment that they were perhaps the only person with a visible disability who'd reached their level in their organization, disappointment that people who were hired after them, who had less experience and less skill were promoted beyond them, disappointment that there weren't people in the C suite or at the board level with disabilities, disappointment that they had to continually fight for accessibility, that their employers would often make changes to systems that they needed to use for their work without taking into account accessibility. So walking in on a Monday morning and finding out you couldn't do your job because the new system was not accessible. So it was a very enlightening experience for me. I I have come to believe that a good, meaningful, engaging career with fair compensation solves a lot of issues. People with disabilities in our in our country, it's also a matter of self identification of the dignity of work and the respect and the feeling of self worth that comes to be being a contributing person in society. So I did start a consulting practice, innovative impact LLC. I work with companies to help them win the battle for talent by accessing underutilized, overlooked pools of highly motivated, talented people with lots of strengths, people with disabilities. And as I began that journey, I had reached out to a gentleman named Ed Hinkler, whom I respect greatly. And. Told him I was transitioning into this consulting role, and he said, Well, you need to meet Robin raybel. So Robin and I got on a call several years ago now, and she had been devoting her time, energy, effort and talent to creating opportunities, particularly for our veterans, and had broadened her scope to include people with disabilities. We've been in close contact ever since. I applaud her for what she is doing. I want to support her efforts at talents ascend in any way I can, and I would love to turn hand the talking stick to Robin for a while, and Robin would just love to hear your journey, what brought you to the point of creating talents and what motivated you. How do you define your purpose and what what is the scope of what you're doing now, and where do you hope to take it so if we could go, where have you been? Where are you now, and where you're going? That would be a wonderful thing to hear from you.

 

Speaker 3  21:09

All right. Well, thank you so much, Dr Adams for having me on and talking about that. This is a topic I love to talk about. As you know, it's very near and dear to my heart for several reasons. I am a service disabled veteran, so I have a couple of things more invisible disabilities, so I don't have to necessarily disclose them in the work situation. But I am legally blind in my left eye from histoplasmosis, a condition that I got suddenly when I turned 40, all of a sudden, I couldn't see out of my left eye. And it came to be that I had histoplasmosis. So it was very strange to go from having 2020 vision to all of a sudden not being able to see out of one of my eyes, which caused problems for my right eye because it had to work harder. It had to work twice as hard to help me see, you know, perfectly. So my journey started nine years in the Navy, and at a time when women, you know, were questioned as to why they served in the military. It was 1979 when I went in the Navy, and, you know, it was a tough time, because they people didn't want women in the military. So you couldn't ask for help. You couldn't ask for, you know, assistance on anything. You really had to be strong. And when I got out of the Navy, I was told my skills didn't translate, so I really had to start over and face those barriers of you know, do I tell people I'm a veteran? Because they want to question, well, what did you do in the military? Very similar as you were talking Dr Adams about your journey, and I'm just so first of all, let me step back here and say, what a blessing that and a journey that you've been on because at in the 60s, having going, gone through what you did with your parents and how they supported you and all the things, it's just amazing. I love, love to hear that I've not heard your complete story before, so that just amazing. But as you were talking about the barriers that you know the disability community faces, it's the same, unfortunately for all underserved talent, veterans face these barriers of trying to figure out how they navigate a brand new world of civilian life after they've served in the military, how do they take their skills? How do they get people that don't know anything about the military to accept their skills and what they can do, versus judging them for what they don't understand about their skills or what they don't understand about their experience. Very similar to, you know, someone not understanding how a totally blind person could do a job, it's like, well, you have to give them the opportunities. So I got out of the Navy, my skills didn't translate. I spent about 12 years in 10 different jobs, four different states, just floundering about

 

Speaker 2  24:10

that. Yeah, a little bit. So the skills don't translate. So I have had the privilege of working fairly closely with the military in some aspects. When I was the CEO the Lighthouse for the Blind, we operated base supply centers at Joint Base Lewis McChord, here in Washington state, for Irwin China Lake and Point Loma Fallon, Nevada. So spent some time on on military bases. We also produce some issue items, the on the move hydration, which was a co brand with Camelback, the entrenchment tool, the canteen cup, other other issue items, and that was under a program called AbilityOne. And whose largest customers, Department of Defense, we did contract management for the Navy and Defense Contract Management Agency. So I know I seen the capabilities, the quiet, competent skills that people in the military possess. So so how? How is it that the private sector employer has challenges conceptualizing how those skills can translate?

 

Speaker 3  25:37

It really comes down to Great question. Dr Adams. It comes down to perceptions of titles, and it's one of the reasons we don't use a resume at talents ascend. We don't use an application process. Because if you put down a title that you're in infantry for 30 years in the Army, and somebody sees infantry and they say, I don't need a security guard in my company, I don't know what else to do with you. Instead of looking at the skills that that person earned in their time in the military overall, not just that title, they just judge people on their titles, and they they miss out on all the underlying skills

 

26:14

leadership and project management. Yes,

 

Speaker 3  26:17

absolutely. I mean, if you look at we use infantry as a as an example all the time, because it's one of the most misunderstood. If you look at the actual job responsibilities of somebody in the infantry, there are things like supply chain, logistics, human resources, leadership, teamwork, equipment, maintenance. There's so many other things that somebody who has a core title of infantry as their specialty. They earn throughout their career in the military. My title was data processing technician, but I did things from payroll to programming to analysis on submarine tracking. I mean, I did all kinds of things in the Navy, but when I got out, I just couldn't. I didn't know how to as well translate that. I mean, I went into the Navy right out of high school. I just did, I was doing my job. It was, you know, I had all these skills, but I didn't know how to really speak to the language that somebody who had no knowledge of the military. And to your point about the disability community, if you don't, if you've never met a totally blind person before, if you've never worked with a totally blind person, or anybody who has any sort of visible disabilities, you don't know what you don't know, right? And it's the same way for the military people just and they're, you know, people shy away from things they don't understand, rather than just being open to how do we figure this out? I've got this great human being in front of me. They have skills. Let's figure out how we can help them work within our organization, and you end up with this wonderful employee who is more productive, stays longer, has more problem solving skills, more resilience, more innovation, all of these great things that the ROI brings from from hiring someone with diverse able, you know, diverse abilities and military skills and all these things. So fast forward, I did finally get a job working for a large corporation, doing the same job I was doing for the Navy when I got out 12 years previously. And it really, I mean, I lost 12 years of time and promotion abilities and and pay and so, you know, fast forward another 13 years, and I was working on my Masters, and had really had nothing to do with the military up to that point, I'd kind of had a just lost the vision of it, and unfortunately. And so then I met an army veteran's wife, and she said her husband had been out for six months, could not get an interview. And it really it was my God given gift to be down this path, because I truly believe I was born to do this. It hit me really hard that that was still happening, and so at the time veterans ascend was born, and the whole concept was to be able to help somebody take their experience and be able to turn that into skills, communicate what those skills are worth and the value of those skills, and how you tell someone that as You're doing interviews or you're applying for jobs, you're networking, etc, and then help businesses understand the skills that somebody in the military brings. We quickly added military spouses in 2019, in 2020, we created ability ascend at the time, which was for our disability community, and it was all the same, same barriers, the same conversations, just a different community of which veterans fit into. I'm a service disabled veteran, so I, you know, I fit into that category as well. And then we opened it up in 2022 to everybody, while still focusing on promoting. Working and advocating for military veterans, military spouses, diversity, abled and justice impacted. But it's, it's, you know, it's a simple concept. And I think where people go wrong in missing out on this talent these talent pools, is they just don't want to take the time to think outside of the box and say, How do I understand this human being better? How do I understand and help get their skills into our organization? Because there is such an ROI in doing it, but we just don't. People just don't take the time. So we're on a mission. Go ahead.

 

Speaker 2  30:36

I'm curious. So you you talk to wife of a veteran, spouse of a veteran, and they related that their husband been out six months and couldn't get an interview, so that that sounded like the spark. But then, how did you actualize that? Did you just start making phone calls? And yeah, what did you What did you do? It's been

 

Speaker 3  30:58

a journey. It's pretty journey. Dr Adams, so I knew that. I knew the problems because I'd been in HR, the corporate company I worked for was a, you know, an HR related company, and I'd been in HR for a while working with all types of businesses. And then I started getting back into so I switched my major for my masters into I was in psychology, but really leadership coaching veterans and how if they had someone that could bridge that gap for them, how much more successful could their transition from the military be? And so that really said, Okay, this is my journey. This is where I'm going and it took us. It took us four years because I had that idea in 2014 we have to get rid of resumes. We have to get rid of applications. Because that's truly, truly the issue. When somebody looks at a resume, they immediately make judgments, perceptions, right, wrong or indifferent. It happens, and that's the barrier. But even before a human being gets that resume in the big world of corporations, now, they've got automatic or automatic applicant tracking systems that filter people out previous title, education, skills, keywords, right? Yeah. Same thing for the disability community. They're looking for previous title, all those things, so they're not even getting to a human to look at the resume. But if they do, then there's still that bias and that barrier, because I don't understand what to do with you. I don't want to take the time to learn. And if I, if I mess up and hire the wrong person, I'm in trouble. So we decided that that's that's really that was what was going to happen. We were going to build an AI skills matching platform to take somebody's occupations, turn them into skills, take a business owners jobs that they need to fill, turn those into skills, match the two together and have conversations. Really facilitating interviews is that that's really our mission, is to break the barriers for people to get to an interview. Because once you could get to an interview knowing that they're you know, you may be in the military, you may have a disability, you may be just as impacted. They already know that up front, they're valuing the person, because they they see tangibly. You have the skills that I know I need for my business. It breaks the the mindset of I don't I don't know how to figure this out. I don't know how to understand you. We we unders, we give them that information. So it's just, it's so rewarding. I love where we are and where we've come and, gosh, where we're going right now, this year and last year, we decided to focus on small businesses because, for a couple of reasons. One, there are 33 million of them in the US.

 

33:53

What's what's your definition? Less

 

33:55

than 200 employees, okay?

 

Speaker 3  33:59

And that's not the SBAS definition. The SBAS is 500 but we chose 200 primarily because they don't at that level. They may not have an HR expert on staff, or they may not have an HR person that's doing the hiring for them, and so it's left to someone who that's not their core strength. So we want to help those small businesses, but they don't have the time, money or resources that these corporations have, and job boards and applicant tracking systems and staffing agencies, they're all built for large corporations who have the luxury of time, money and resources. So we're focused on small businesses, but the flip side to that is a small business offers someone who's diversity abled, someone who's a military veteran, military spouse, the opportunity to come in and have that sense of purpose, be truly valued for who they are and what they bring to the table. Because every hiring decision in. Small business is critical. And, you know, in a 10,000 employee company, you hire the wrong person. Yeah, maybe it's a little inconvenient, but in a small business, it is. It is life and death. You know, hiring the wrong person. So, yeah, so

 

Speaker 2  35:16

how does the job analysis happen? So I know in the disability kind of world. There's, you know, concept of job analysis where you know someone who's a vocational rehabilitation professional, sure, in the old days, would actually go in and observe a job and break it down into the actual functions and and sometimes that results in Job carving. You know this, this person with a severe disability could do A, C, G and J, right of this job, and another person could do b, d, e. So you know that job analysis is so important in the disability employment space, and so you mentioned AI breaking down jobs into into the skill components. How do you How does that happen?

 

Speaker 3  36:09

Yeah, so it's really just basically what the job entails and the skills that the employer is looking for. Now, would we when we have someone

 

36:18

just analyzing the posting or you interview, right?

 

Speaker 3  36:21

Yeah, it's really just them saying, giving us the title, and we break that into skills, giving us the parameters, what their criteria that they're looking for. If we have a situation and we we're very much about the relationship with our clients too. We get to know their business so we know and our concierge managers who are talking to candidates. If we know that this is a, you know, a manufacturing space, and there are parameters where safety is an issue, we talk to the candidates because we don't ask what a candidates, they self identify, that they have a disability, but we don't ask what it is doesn't matter to us. We want to get them to an interview. Doesn't matter. But if there are those kind of parameters that we know, we'll let the candidates know about them, and they can decline the opportunity. They can say, No, I'm, you know, I'm not physically able to do that, or I can't make that happen. A lot of times our the disability candidates that we have will want to work remote. So we do a lot of work trying to find them remote positions so they can work from home, or that kind of thing. So we were very much about understanding the clients, the small business, what they do, what they need, and then finding them the right candidate. Our AI really is that first pass, if you will. Of here, you've got the skills you're located where we need you to be. Your salary requirement fits their salary range. Great. That's, that's kind of like the basic stuff. And then our concierge managers talk with every candidate before they send them over. So yeah, we're, we're doing that. We're having those conversations. But yeah, great question.

 

Speaker 2  38:01

Good. So there was a, there was a research study that I, I cited in my dissertation. The researchers asked lawyers and vocational rehabilitation counselors the same question, and that was, what, what is the greatest barrier to successful employment of people with disabilities, and the vocational counselors all said employer attitudes, yes. And the employers said lack of understanding of our operational needs. Sounds like you are delving into understanding the operational needs at the business level, yeah, because

 

Speaker 3  38:41

at the end of the day, we want the small business to be successful and we want the candidates to get into careers. We don't just want them to get into a job that you know may give them a paycheck. We truly want them to find a career and a home that they can grow in,

 

Speaker 2  39:02

as far as what would be appropriate to share in detail, would love to hear some success stories of some of the businesses you've worked with, or some of the people you've placed, to get a bit of a flavor of how impactful this can be, both for a business and an individual.

 

Speaker 3  39:18

Yeah, and it's there's so many different stories. We've worked with over 200 employers in our time. We stood the business up in 2018 I didn't think, I don't think I finished that part of the story, but yeah, just so many with just really saying this process was so easy, we've had one, you know, one veteran in particular, this process was so much easier than trying to apply for jobs online, and when I got the interview, they understood me. They already knew and valued who I was, so it there wasn't. They didn't have to worry about imposter syndrome, or, you know, thinking, Okay, how do I explain what I did in the military? I don't. Need to explain what I did in the military, or what my title meant in the military. I can just talk about my skills. So there's so many of those kind of stories on the flip side to a business, you know. Again, we could cite all kinds of research on the ROI of hiring veterans, hiring military spouses, hiring disability candidates. There's just so many, you know. And companies will come to us and say, I can't believe how easy this process was, and you found us the perfect, the perfect person for our company, not just in the skills, but in the character fit, and who that company is, and how that that, you know, candidate, fits into their company. So it is very much for us about the relationships and making sure that there are real careers with real candidates for these small businesses. Unlike any other service out there is really just trying to put bodies in seats, which all the time. Yeah,

 

Speaker 2  41:00

of the 200 businesses you've worked with, are there any patterns as far as type of industry or focus of the business or geographic any anything emerging? Not really.

 

Speaker 3  41:14

I mean, we, we are here in South Carolina, headquartered in South Carolina. That's where we started, back in 2018 so we have a bigger network here on the East Coast, I would say, if for any geographic. But, you know, heavy military states, of course, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, you know, those are some of the heavier veteran states. South Carolina's got a great population of veterans, so, but from a type of place, probably, you know, professional services project managers, IT, which you know, are great for the diversity able, because they're just so smart. My grandson is on the autism spectrum, and he is so smart, but he needs things very structured, you know, and he sees things in black and white. It's, there's really no gray area for him, and that's a good thing, and businesses need that. So it's, it's, it's about finding the right fit. We're all different human beings. We don't all like the same things. We don't all have the same skills. So if we can find where our skills and where our culture fit is, we're going to be so much happier. We're going to engage more businesses. Are going to make more money, be more profitable, hire more people, just such economic returns on it. Well,

 

42:40

let's get down to brass tacks. If

 

Speaker 2  42:43

a person is a veteran, a person with a disability, person who's justice impacted, and they would like some support and finding great career opportunities, how do those individuals engage with you and how? How do businesses engage with you?

 

42:58

Yeah, absolutely so. Talents ascend.com,

 

Speaker 3  43:02

if you're if you're watching, you can see the QR code there in my background. That'll take you right to our website. We've got a section for employers. We've got a section for candidates, and then once you're on the candidate page, if you are a candidate, we also have our nonprofit called the ASCEND collective, and that's where each community can find additional resources to support them. They can reach out to us through our contact us page or our email address on the website. We have a ton of resources all across the country that we've curated over these years, and if we don't have one to in our library, we will find a resource. We will find somebody that they need. So talents ascend.com and talents is plural, and, yeah, just find us there. We're on LinkedIn. We're on Facebook as well. So reach out. We love to help people. That's that's what we do all day.

 

Speaker 2  43:53

Good. And if I, if I'm a small business owner and I want to win that competition for talent. Find uniquely motivated, talented folks that you're working with now, just how does that work? Yeah,

 

Speaker 3  44:09

same thing. Reach out to us from the website. You'll see the employer page. There's buttons there to book a time with me, book a quick call just to ask some questions. We're here to help. And again, if we're not the right fit for your business, that you know, we're just not the right solution, which you know we're every No, no, one size fits all kind of thing, we will find another resource for you, but it's it's for us. Reach out talents, ascend.com Find me on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. Happy to answer any questions about our service. Our service is affordable, access to diverse, high quality talent for small businesses. We're built to work with small businesses. That's our core function, in a cost effective, economical but very effective way. So wonderful. Yeah.

 

Speaker 2  45:01

And thank you so much, Robin, that 45 minutes

 

Speaker 3  45:04

flew by. It did thank you. Dr Adams, I always learn

 

Speaker 2  45:09

a lot I talk with you, and so much, so much resonates with me. Yes, you talked about the automated tools used for resume screening, and it makes me think early work experience. I grew up in small towns in the Northwest, and when kids turn 16, they got driver's licenses and they got jobs. And so many young people with impairments don't have that early work experience. They're getting their foot on the career ladder later in life, only less than 25% of us get any paid work experience before we're 23 years old, and over 70% of the general population gets some sort of paid work experience by that age. So if you're you're sending in a resume for an entry level job, and it's blank, right in the work experience category, and you're competing with people who've had a variety of jobs. Start starting at that, at that in the teen years, you're you're at a disadvantage, unless people can really understand why, right? So really, really valuable information for those of you who'd like to get in touch with me, also LinkedIn, Kirk, Adams PhD, and my website is Dr Kirk adams.com so dr Kirk adams.com would love to talk with anyone, anytime, about creating meaningful, engaging career opportunities for people with disabilities and just a pleasure, Robin, as always, to spend time with you. To Dr Adams, thank you. Please reach out to talents ascend.com and if we have those in the audience, if anyone has a question for either Robin or I

 

47:02

Jeremy, raised your hand. Do

 

47:06

I have to do anything? Did? No,

 

47:07

I got it. Oh, I got it.

 

Speaker 4  47:10

So, Robin and Kirk, amazing conversation. Seriously, every time I get the opportunity to drop by your live streams, I feel like I'm walking away with so much knowledge. And Robin, you brought some amazing stories to that when we think about because we're seeing a lot of people in the blind community experiencing some challenges with layoffs and so forth right now, especially where I live. I live in DC, and I'm just curious, and if both of you might offer the one or two biggest tips that you would offer someone who is maybe facing that, oh my gosh, I've got to find something as quickly as I possibly can, right, and kind of trying to navigate what may be a different space for them. A lot of my friends right now are happen to work in government, and I don't want to get into the politics piece, right, but Right, like some of them are seriously considering, oh, my God, what do I do next? I don't know if I really want to be here in government, right? And so I just was curious. If you know, looking at this, Dr Kirk with your vantage point of all the work you've done, and Robin, with the work you've done, are there a couple tips that you might offer to someone who is really trying to navigate what may be a very different job search process than what they're used to.

 

Speaker 2  48:53

Robin, would you like to take a stab at that first? Or would you like me to i

 

Speaker 3  48:56

It's your show. Dr Adams, you go right ahead. I do have, I do have a couple things I definitely want to add to but I'll let you

 

Speaker 2  49:04

go first. I Jeremy, think about the book forces for good, which I talk about, probably ad nauseam, but it talks about, in order to make anything transformational happen at a societal level, you need to align the four sectors, the government, the corporate, the nonprofit and the community. And I think that's true at a micro level too. So if I were suddenly thrust into a situation where I needed to find gainful employment as soon as possible, I know that vocational rehabilitation gets a bad rap, but there is a vocational rehabilitation system in our country. Every state has at least one vocational rehabilitation agency. Some have two. They're funded by the Department of Education. Their annual budget is 4 billion with a B dollars. So. So if you do not have an active your person with a disability, and you don't have an active open case with your vocational rehabilitation system, you should do that even if you've had terrible experiences in the past, as many of us had have had, but they are there with our taxpayer dollars to help you and be a squeaky wheel. Open a case and be a squeaky wheel. Next is looking at the corporate sector disability end as an organization. I've spent a lot of time with disability. I in.org they've got 100 and what, 474 80 corporate members that have all made formal commitments to hiring people with disabilities. There's a corporate partner list on their home page. You can see who all those corporate partners are. I would zip through and find some that are have a presence in your community, or that's resonate with you that you'd be interested and excited about. And then I would probably look at LinkedIn and find some people who work there and reach out for informational interviews. I'm a big fan. I've used them throughout my life 99% of the time. If you reach out to someone and say, Hey, I'm really interested in what you're doing. I'd really like to learn from you. And I have half an hour of your time, you're going to get a yes. So I tell young blind people when you're looking at and I did my doctoral research in large corporations. So look for a couple things. Look for visible commitments to accessibility on the home page. Is there an accessibility statement? Look for Employee Resource Groups. Do they have one that's focused on disability? Do they have any statements about the recruiting process and the hiring process being accessible. Do they offer accommodations? So just look, look for those kind of public signs on the nonprofit side. In any community of any size, there will be community based nonprofits that have philanthropic dollars and expertise focused on employment people with disabilities. So I would just you do a little search engine search you're in your community and and find those non profits and reach out to them. So obviously, this takes some work. And then in the community, advocacy organizations for for those of us who are blind, the American Council, the blind National Federation of the Blind, has a national, state, local chapter system. Many other disabilities have similar advocacy organizations, type, type in your disability of choice, advocacy or members or association, and you know, find, find the chapter near you. So I would cover all those bases, the government, the form of VR, the corporations, and the structure of disability, and the local nonprofits, and then the community organizations,

 

Speaker 3  53:13

yeah, all great stuff. I you know, the only thing I would add is, don't waste your time just blindly applying, and I don't use that, no, no pun there, blindly applying online. Don't, don't waste your time doing that. It is just a total, total waste of time. If you do see a job online that you are interested in, as Dr Adams said, find somebody who works at that company and get that informational and interview, get that connection, network, network, network, because here's what's going to happen. People that know you are going to know the kind of business that deserves you. They're going to know the connections. If they don't, they'll know somebody who does all the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon you can go through, but that will be your better use of time while you're doing that networking. Really figure out who you you know who you are and who you want to be in a career. Because a lot of times in these situations, people have worked and they're forced to listen to the barriers that they've they're facing, and they're forced to say, Okay, what do I really want? It's just like COVID did with us. You know, everybody was in questioning what's life all about now, and so I would say, take the time to really understand what your skills are, so that you don't have to go into an interview justifying what your past title was. You can go in knowing what your value is and what you bring to an organization, no matter what organization you're you're trying to work with, but yeah, just know your skills, know your value. And network, network, network. So

 

Speaker 2  54:51

I Robin 33 years ago, when I turned 30, I'd been in banking and finance and security. These public finance for 10 years and decided I didn't want to do that the rest of my life. I got what color is your parachute out of the Talking Book in Braille library. I read it. I did every little exercise. What did you like most about first grade and what did you hate most about your worst job? Did all that stuff, and I got great clarity up and that I should be in the nonprofit sector. I should be in leadership. I should be focused on creating career opportunities for other people who are blind. That really set, set me on my path. I did take the time to do that, and I highly recommend. I know, I know there's other tools that can assist you in getting that clarity. But it was certainly time well spent, absolutely and I and I did the informational interviews, and I talked to the President of Planned Parenthood of Western Washington, reached out to her and told her my little story, and she said, Well, I was in securities and banking and finance, and I pivoted to the nonprofit sector, and I would recommend you do that by becoming a professional fundraiser, because you spent the last 10 years talking to wealthy people about money, and we have a huge Need in this sector, yeah, and that's what I did. My first nonprofit job was a development officer for the Seattle Public Library Foundation, raising money for the statewide talking book and pray library. It

 

56:34

takes work, but it does work. It

 

Speaker 3  56:36

does it does work. You bring about another point, though, too. Dr Adams, you know, if you've got time in between, you know you're looking for a new career and volunteer, find places that you that's right here, because not only will that get you out into the community and make connections for you, but you'll gain new skills and you can take with you then, so that you don't have to volunteer eight hours a Day, but find something you could volunteer a couple of hours a week, etc, but definitely look at volunteering to help you bridge that

 

Speaker 2  57:09

gap. After this fabulous person told me I should become a professional fundraiser, and I started applying for jobs and not getting them, I didn't have experience, I got a newsletter from the state talking book and Braille library saying that they needed to raise $200,000 or close a program. I called the librarian and said, How about I volunteered 20 to help you raise that money, and that'll give me something to put on my resume, absolutely, and that's what I did? Yeah, listen to it. Listen to a book from Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic on how to write a grant proposal. And did something, got some checks. They created a job. There you go. There you go. Spot on. Well, we have to do this again. Yes, time, time flew by. As I mentioned before, it's always great to spend time with you. Yes, please. Everyone talents with an S ascend.com to reach Robin at Dr Kirk adams.com to reach me. Everyone, have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks Robin.

 

58:15

Thank you.

 

Speaker 1  58:18

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 WWW dot DRK adams.com, together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You

In this episode of Supercharge Your Bottom Line Trough Disability Inclusion, Dr. Kirk Adams speaks with Future Gen CEO, Eddie Mazzariegos, about innovative ways to improve employment outcomes for youth with disabilities.

They explore how technology-driven career exploration can reduce barriers, highlight new opportunities, and empower students — especially those who are blind or visually impaired — to chart their own professional paths.

Eddie also shares the inspiring story behind Future Gen, the platform's collaboration with vocational rehabilitation programs, and practical tips for educators, families, and advocates aiming to supercharge career readiness and break the cycle of chronic unemployment.

📌 Key Topics Covered:

• 👉 The importance of early exposure to diverse career pathways
• 👉 How short-form video curation personalizes career exploration
• 👉 Strategies to build confidence, self-advocacy, and high expectations
• 👉 Partnerships with schools and vocational rehab agencies for inclusive education
• 👉 Real-life successes and how to scale meaningful impact

For more insights or to connect with Dr. Kirk Adams: ► Website: https://drkirkadams.com | Email: [email protected] 📧️ | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkadamsphd/

Learn more about Future Gen: ► Website: https://www.futuregenxyz.com/ | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmazariegos/

Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe for more conversations on disability inclusion and employment!

TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

disability inclusion, employment for disabled, career pathways, workforce participation, chronic unemployment, poverty issues, home ownership, health disparities, blindness skills, high expectations, internal locus, career exploration, future Gen, mentorship programs, career readiness

SPEAKERS

Speaker 1, Speaker 2

Speaker 1 00:02 Welcome everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams speaking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington, and this is my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through Disability Inclusion, where we focus on employment for people with disabilities, and that is my passion, both professionally, personally, academically, what I have focused on. And each month, I bring a guest who shares that passion with me to create career pathways for people with disabilities to thrive our world. And today, I have the pleasure of having a conversation with Eddie mazzariegos from future Gen. And Eddie, if you can just say hi, and then we’ll come back to you in a bit.

Speaker 2 00:53 It sounds perfectly fine. Hi everybody. My name is Eddie mazzaregos, as Dr Kirk just mentioned, and I’m Di Len as a neighbor nearby Kirk here in Tacoma, Washington,

Speaker 1 01:06 and you are the CEO of a fairly new company called Future Gen, which is addressing some really pressing needs in the space of employment for people with disabilities. So it’s a pleasure to have you here, and we’ll hear a lot more about future Gen in a bit. So for those of you who don’t know me, again, it’s Dr Kirk Adams. I am the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, prior to that same role at the lighthouse for the blind here in Seattle, I’ve spent the last 30 plus years really focused on employment issues for people with disabilities, people who are blind, in particular, and there’s, there’s, there’s some really well documented reasons why I do that. Only about 35% of us with significant disabilities are in the workforce. That’s about half the workforce participation rate of the general population. So with chronic unemployment, chronic lack of workforce participation, come to poverty just to just to be really clear about it. So a lot of our people in our community live in poverty.

02:23 Many people have a small

Speaker 1 02:28 transfer payment from the government. Social Security, disability insurance being the most typical one, where people get a $1,700 or so per month, which is is not a living income level in our country. So along with poverty comes a lack of home ownership. Our home ownership rate is about 110 that of the general population. Health Disparities, lower life expectancy greater substance abuse issues, depression, mental health issues. So I say, if you look at people with disabilities, blind people in particular, compared to the general population, our outcomes are either half as half as good or twice as bad as the general population. So we really want to address that by being thoughtful and understanding what all the dynamics are to this complex problem. And I want to talk about young people in particular. So as we look at the demographics, as I said, Only 35% of us are the workforce. Of those of us who are working, the majority of us,

03:49 more than half, work for nonprofits or government,

Speaker 1 03:54 which is a lower income ceiling than general employment, and we’re in a much narrower band of occupations. We know, and I know blind people are capable of being successful in any profession you can think of. I know blind chemists and blind auto mechanics, of course, lawyers and software engineers and cyber security analysts, teachers, any occupation you can can think of, but we’re grouped in a narrower band than the general population, and we’re also tend to stick at the Bottom couple levels of the org chart. So you don’t see a lot of people with significant disabilities up in for management at major corporations, CEOs of companies, nonprofits, et cetera. So we really want to address that, and the route really starts in childhood. So. And you know, there are people who’ve lived their lives as sighted people and become blind as part of the aging process, or through accident or or or illness, but I really want to talk about people who are growing up visually impaired. So something like only 10% of us are totally blind. I am totally blame myself. Many people, most people who are legally blind, have some level of vision, some some usable, some more usable than others. But it’s, it’s really a quite, quite a wide spectrum, and so my retina is detached when I was in kindergarten, and I went to a school for blind kids, because that’s what kids with disabilities did 60s. And I went to the Oregon State School for the Blind and in first, second and third grade, and I was given three things that are now that I know through research, and I am a researcher. I have a PhD in leadership and change. I did an ethnographic study of blind adults successfully employed in large corporations. But through research, I now know I was given three things that are strong predictors of future success in employment as a blind adult. So so first I was given blindness skills. So being totally blind as a six year old, there was no question that I needed to learn braille. I needed to learn how to travel independently and confidently with a white cane. I needed to learn how to type on a typewriter. So when I started in public school, I could type my spelling tests and my assignments and papers and things for teachers. So I so I learned those things as a six year old, and we now know that the stronger your blind, your specific blindness skills are, the more likely you are to be able to succeed in appointment. The second thing I was given was high expectations. The school I was at, there was 110 120 blind kids. It was K through K through eight. And I know lots of blind kiddos have additional disabilities that are challenging. You know, the philosophy of the Oregon State School for the Blind was that you should be performing at grade level consistent with what your sighted brothers and sisters and neighbors would be doing, as far as reading and math and things like that. So the school held high expectations of me and my parents did as well. They were very young when I became blind. They were in their mid 20s, but my they were both teachers. My father was very involved in athletics. He had a career as a high school basketball coach. They didn’t want to see anything less than an A on a report card, and they didn’t use my case. The third thing I was given was a real sense of agency, or a strong internal locus of control, which means I really came to believe in my bones that I could create my own path forward. I could solve problems, I could figure things out. And, you know, the school gave us a lot of experiences. We went horseback camping in the Three Sisters wilderness area. We went up on Mount Hood and built snow forts of huge snowballs. We got on the tide pools on the Oregon coast and built around for starfish and sea anemones. And we climbed trees and scraped our knees and did all the things kids that age should do and that strong internal locus of control is opposed by an external locus of control when you and that’s a feeling that you really believe things happen to you, you can’t do much about it, kind of at the whims and mercy of fate, rather than creating, creating your destiny. So I was, I was given those three things, not not all kids with disabilities, blind kids are given those, those things. No kids with usable vision. Sometimes there’s a question, does this kid really need to learn to read Braille? Could they use magnification? They listen to stuff. But in my case, that literacy question was was clear. I needed, needed to get those blindness skills. So

09:32 looking at

Speaker 1 09:35 developmentally appropriate stages of life, know you as a parent. If you’re a parent of a blind kid, or you’re a young blind person, or have a young blind person in your life, you want them to be doing what sighted kids do at that at the same age. So if your four year old sighted child is out tussling around in the sandbox on the playground with the. Neighbor kids. You know your blind child should be doing that with a probably with a cane in their hand. If your middle schooler, sighted son or daughter is going to meet their friends to go to the movies, your blind child should be doing that too. They may have a different transportation solution, but they should be doing those things so it’s it’s typical that those developmentally appropriate stages can be managed up until the teen years, and then some things start happening. I grew up in small towns in the Pacific Northwest. When kids turned 16 in the towns I grew up in, they got driver’s licenses, which I didn’t do, and I lived where there was not public transportation, and most kids got some sort of job, did something for pay, and the statistics show that less than 23% of us with significant disabilities get any kind of paid work experience before the age of 23 and that’s opposed to over 70% of the general population get some some kind of paid work experience. So so that’s kind of where the divide tends to start. And if you don’t get that early work experience, and the others competing for jobs, have it, you, you’re you’re at a significant disadvantage, looking at the factors that lead to successful thriving as blind adults, looking at blind kids and blind adults, there was there was really good research done the American Foundation for the Blind, my organization I proudly led, and Dr Phil hatland, Among others, developed concept called the expanded core curriculum, and this, this may not be welcome news for any young, blind kids listening to this, but you have to learn all the stuff the cited kids learn, and nine other things, right? Nine more things. It’s a lot of hard work, and those things include those blindness skills that I mentioned, Braille. If you’re not able to read print with magnification at the same speed as a sighted kid, you need to learn braille. You need to learn to use assistive technology, screen reading software, refreshable braille displays, zoom, text, JAWS, NVDA, all those things, orientation and mobility skills I mentioned cane travel you need to be able to travel confidently throughout the world independently. Self Advocacy is another part of the nine elements of the expanded core curriculum, and my my little story is, when I was in high school, Snohomish high home of the Panthers here in Washington State, I was one of about 30 kids who are kind of the college bound group. And in my senior year in high school, we all went to physics first period, and we all went to math analysis, second period, and we all went, went to chemistry third period, and I walked into the chemistry class the first day, and like the teacher, just, oh, no, this is a safety issue. You cannot take chemistry. You need to go to the office and have them give you another class. And I was, I was quite upset. I went home and told my parents, who were both teachers, and we were very isolated. We weren’t connected with any blindness organizations. Didn’t know any blind adults, really. And you know, they just said, Well, if, if you know, Mr. So and So says, then you know, that’s that. So I was assigned to study hall and spend an hour reading trashy novels in Braille in the library third period my senior year. And now, you know, I know that the people around me didn’t know better, but they certainly didn’t tell me the truth about the capabilities of blind people. I now know, blind people who are PhDs in chemistry, blind people who teach chemistry at the university level. So self advocacy is one of the nine elements of the core curriculum that I didn’t, didn’t really have. And I’ll get to, I’ll get to another element in a moment that’s related directly to what Eddie’s and his company is doing. Before I go there, I want to touch on the important importance of the IEP. So if you’re a child with a disability, if you have a kid with a disability in school, you’re entitled to an individual. The Education Plan, the IEP, and that’s where the school, school district commits to providing services and training and specific focus areas. So it’s really important that the IEP be really well done and thorough, and that blind child or child with a disability should be in those meetings, because that’s where you learn. That’s one way to learn self advocacy. Sometimes the school district will have a team of specialists. You know, your your parent probably doesn’t have a lot of experience in these spaces. They you may feel overwhelmed. So I remember talking to one parent of a blind Katie said, you know, if they bring six people to the IEP, I’m bringing seven, they bring 12. I’m bringing 14. If we have to have it in the in the gym, we’ll we’ll do that. So I really recommend getting connected with advocacy groups, the National Federation of the Blind or the American Council of the Blind, or both.

16:05 Anywhere you live, there’ll be a chapter

Speaker 1 16:09 within striking distance of you. So ACB and NFB are great resources to find some successful blind adults who can really weigh in and speak with authority and expertise on the IEP, which leads us to the specific part of the IEP of the expanded core curriculum, the ECC, which is career exploration. So it was understood through research that blind kids don’t have the same level of understanding as their sighted brothers and sisters and neighbors around career possibilities, career pathways, professions, whether that’s because their family and school holds slow expectations for them and doesn’t expect them to have the same range of opportunities as their sighted classmates, or isolation. For whatever reason, research is clear that blind kids don’t have the same level of understanding of careers, pathways possibilities as their sighted peers do, and Eddie and his company future Jen, are addressing that in a very cutting age modern way, using technology. And I know they are working with school districts and kids with disabilities here in Washington State to open up that world of possibility as far as future employment and careers go. And I know Eddie has some family dynamics with with his brother that really has ignited this particular passion for him.

17:53 So I really like

Speaker 1 17:56 to turn it to you, Eddie, and just kind of ask where, what, what’s the journey been to bring you up to this point in life, and where are you out with your company, and where do you see things going? And you know what’s working well for you. What are the challenges that you still need to overcome to take future Gen to where you see it going. So, kind of, where have you been, where you’re at, where you’re going, what, what’s what’s working well, what are the challenges you’re facing, and how can people get involved in and help you in your noble cause to move forward? I do want to, acknowledge one really interesting thing is that you’re very proud of being an Eagle Scout, and I know that you have engaged people of Norman, fellow Eagle Scouts, enlisted them in the mission. That’s very interesting to me, personally, my my father, who’s passed away now his, his he was born in 1939 his his father was a doctor, and he was enlisted in the military in 1941 and was an Army doctor, and actually worked at a prisoner of war Camp in Texas that housed German prisoners of war, and he came back to Lake Quinault, where they lived in 1945 and then he passed away in 1949 so my my dad really grew up largely without a father, and he and his brother, my uncle, Lou, Who’s 11 months older, both got very involved in Scouting when they both became Eagle Scouts, and it really helped shape their lives. And they, they with, with, without, you know, Father present. They both became remarkable men and leaders. And, you know, they, they’ve have fond men. Series of scouting and being at the jamborees and the journey and the pathway of Eagle coming in Eagle Scout and the guidance they received from adults involved in scouting. So it was very important to them. And so when you mentioned that your pride in that, to me, it really resonated. So I just wanted to acknowledge that, and with that, I will stop talking. I will ask you, Eddie, to tell our live and the audience viewing the recording about future Gen pathway so far, where are you at? Where you going? So Eddie, it’s yours.

Speaker 2 20:43 Thank you, Kirk. I appreciate it. It’s a I was keeping track. I think you asked maybe 12 questions. At least. I’ll start with the one you just mentioned here. But before I say that, there’s a you’re very true. You’re very right when it comes to there’s a saying, once an eagle, always an eagle there. If you really like look around. We’re kind of sprinkled over everywhere you look. And this is a little side tangent from your initial question, but there’s about trying to remember how many millions of us who have become alumni at this point in time, and that’s actually kind of where I started future Gen, I was a I’ve always been very passionate with the question, what do you want to do in the future and in doing so, I have always involved myself in creating mentorship programs, career exploration programs and company culture programs for the past decade, despite this young face, and outside of future Jen, I just had a strong love for that. And at some point in time, I was talking to some buddies of mine in college who, go figure, were also Eagle Scouts. And we just started talking to ourselves like, hey, what’s the what’s your next, what’s your next project? And at the time, I share to everybody that I really do think that people are asking for more guidance in the world, but not necessarily always in the shape and form as as a mentorship program. I wonder what that could be. And you know from those discussions, one of them actually ended up helping me build future Gen where it is. And the founding team of folks that ended up creating future Gen actually were a bunch of Eagle Scouts. I literally had a when you become an Eagle Scout, there’s this organization called the National Eagle Scout Association, and they give you, they ask you if you want, basically, like, a Yellow Pages book of all the contacts of Eagle Scouts. And I remember, I didn’t know when or this would apply or be important, but I just remember when it was offered when I was 18, and I was like, Yes. And you know, four years after that first point, I remember pulling that book out and telling myself, I need to talk to the smartest people that are out there to talk about, talk about this real problem that I really think that’s out there. And little di we know that’s how future Gen kind of got all started. But you know, before I maybe start talking about future Gen, and you know why we really believe everybody should love what they do and how we can really get that done. And, you know, get people excited about the question, what do you want to do in the future? Because it’s really a story about you. It’s your adventure. It’s something is your journey that you should always be excited about. Maybe I should maybe talk a little bit about who is Eddie,

Speaker 1 23:40 yeah. And I think if you just gave a headline for context of what future Gen is and what what you do,

Speaker 2 23:49 of course, of course. So if I had to put it all in a nutshell, future Gen is a Gen Z career readiness and exploration platform. We essentially curate short form videos of working professionals from YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram to identify the career and skills acquisition interests of the future workforce. So we share these career insights of students and young adults across their entire support network. I’m talking about their parents, their teachers, their counselors, anybody that it touches the lives of these kids and together, put put these insights in a way so they can collaborate on what comes next. Me myself again. I mentioned that I’m an Eagle Scout. I also describe myself as, again, as a mentor and as a lennial, who, over the past 10 years, have been very involved in creating career exploration, mentorship and company culture programs. Again, despite this, maybe the smile here, young smile here, but that’s that’s me and myself and the company. In a tiny nutshell, I’m happy to dive into anything specific. Kirk, yeah.

Speaker 1 24:57 Well, I just thought. Yeah, it’d be good to have a snapshot. Well, we can dig into details a bit later, but I want to hear the story of Eddie,

25:10 who is Eddie, gosh,

Speaker 2 25:14 well, I’ll maybe give a little bit more than a nutshell, but not too long. But I come from. Come from an immigrant family. My My mother is from Ecuador. My father is half Spanish, half Guatemalan. And the reason why I bring that up is, when you’re the first born of a whole generation, which which I am, and you come from that background, it’s kind of expected, or there’s high pressure, to become the family’s first doctor, lawyer or engineer. And at age 12, I declared to the world that I’m going to become the family’s first emerging trauma surgeon. And so I did everything that I could to really get myself into that space, from internships to volunteer opportunities, etc. And, you know, captain of soccer teams, etc. And I was fortunate enough that, before going to college, I was given an opportunity to go to a medical apprenticeship program at Harvard University to discover what I didn’t want to become a doctor. So I did the most sensible thing any you know, 1718, year old kid could do, which was when it was time to apply for college all my personal statements that were written for for medical school related opportunities, I decided to scratch everything, and in front of our only family computer in the living room, I rewrote all my personal statements for environmental sciences two days before the last before applications for do at University of California schools, and which I don’t recommend, by the way, but I was fortunate enough to the reason why I did that was because of my Eagle Scout project actually just reopen a entire wildlife corridor in my local area, and that just opened up my eyes even further that there are just countless ways to add value to the community. And so after getting into UC Davis, which into their environmental sciences program. Guess what? I quickly learned that I had a huge love for the world of finance. And so I had asked myself at a point in time like, How on earth does somebody that loves medicine, the environment and finance make me me? Because at any point in time, I don’t believe pursuing a passion is a waste of time, and I definitely didn’t feel like I was wasting my time discovering more about myself. And so I was fortunate enough to kind of define my own North Star in my early 20s, which I still follow today. So whenever I find myself in a fork in the road making to to many, a tough decision, it’s pretty simple to me. So my North Star, my compass, essentially, is, I hope, to become somebody that’s able to make long, lasting impact and helping as many people as possible, which isn’t a job title, but it has been my guiding compass and whatever I do, and that was whether I was back in, and you could say maybe that foundation was put in the boy scouts. Go figure our Scout Law, our scout oath, or Scott motto. I saw all that lives and breathes still in me. And you know, I hope to, I hope I continue to showcase that compass of mine through my actions. But yeah, that’s that’s a little bit about myself and a little more than a nutshell.

28:51 So it’s hopefully I didn’t bore anybody.

28:54 Oh no, not at all. So

Speaker 1 28:57 very, very inspiring, actually, that you had that level of self awareness at that age. I feel like I stumbled along my path in comparison. But then, how did these passions and this level of self awareness and the North Star coalesce around creation of future temple.

Speaker 2 29:27 I think, a big passion to why I would always, I was always, always a huge advocate for mentorship programs at a company level, like at Hyundai, or for smaller club and organizations that I was involved in, such as my college clubs, or in the local greater Los Angeles area, for the for the Boy Scouts down there, our Area Council down there.

29:54 I just always have,

29:56 I’ve always seen

Speaker 2 29:59 I am not. Where I am today because of my own self. There’s a saying in the south which is, if you see a turtle on top of a fence post, it’s most likely the turtle didn’t get there themselves. And so I recognize that I didn’t get where I am today by myself. I actually as many times as I also stumbled to I also asked for a lot of help, and it’s something that I know that is not easy for everybody to do. To ask for help, you’re showcasing vulnerability when you are asking. But I really do think that it’s a position of building in public when you’d be surprised. When you’re building in public, how many of those are in your corner, you’d be surprised how many are out there. So how it ties to future Gen is that I realized for my own self, that I got to where I am today because of the many, many of thought leaders and individuals that decided to say yes to me when I asked for help. And so with future Gen, was an opportunity to like, How can I also pay it forward and say yes to not just folk on a one to one basis, but at scale?

Speaker 1 31:13 Have you created the companies prior to this, or is this your first venture, as far as actually creating a corporation and developing

31:23 a product, taking it to market.

Speaker 2 31:26 This is the first company I ever led from scratch. I’ve supported ideas and projects and initiatives, but as in terms of a company that

31:37 it’s more than just an expensive hobby,

31:41 the first

Speaker 1 31:44 and tell, was there an aha moment? Was it

31:51 I’m, you know, I

Speaker 1 31:55 have a company myself, innovative, impact consulting, but it really came out of my career in focusing on creating opportunities for opportunities for people are blind, and when my it was time to close the chapter at the American Foundation for the Blind and relocate back to my hometown in Seattle and start the Next chapter, it kind of happened by osmosis. Those people I worked with before and had relationships with reached out to me and asked, Can you help with this? Can you help with that? Can you give us some advice? You connect us with some people? So it kind of developed naturally for me. But I’m just, did you wake up one morning and say, I’m starting a company, and it’s going to be called Future Gen, and that’s what, this is, what we’re going to do, or how did it actually What’s the origin story of the company? I’m very curious.

Speaker 2 32:52 Thanks. If I had to go back to inspiration, I guess you can say, with future Gen, a lot of it really had to come from a mixture of experiences that kind of come together. So Kirk, you mentioned my little brother, which I know that you and I have talked in passing, but to share a little bit more to the audience here, I have a little brother. As I mentioned, I’m the oldest of not just my generation, but essentially also my family here and my immediate family. And so I have a younger brother. I have a younger sister, but my little brother, there is actually an 11 year gap between us and between which is quite a bit actually. He’s actually graduating high school this year, but super smart kid, super funny, musically talented, but for some reason, just doesn’t, didn’t see what others saw in him. And when asking myself, did I ever see that? Did I ever myself directly experience that problem? I would say, potentially not, but I cared about my brother very much, and I historically, we’ve seen so many good friends of mine also struggle with this. And I started thinking to myself, Okay, well, how did, how did, how was I so certain with all the actions that I’ve done? Maybe, maybe there are some and who are some others that have also may have experienced certainty in terms of very specific decisions of what they wanted to do, or maybe at least the next step. And I started thinking to myself, Okay, well, I don’t want more people like my brother that experience the what’s next question in a daunting way, because it can have I’m going to continue, but I’m going to ask Kirk I noticed that it is only the two of us now and or it is the we may have lost our other host.

Speaker 1 34:54 Oh, well, kalana got us started and set the recording. So perfect. I’ll continue that. Perform recording. So carry on, carrying on then.

Speaker 2 35:06 And so there’s that experience that was there. I’ve also experienced as as often, as you mentioned, not challenged. I’ve also experienced a lot of no’s. I remember another big experience that was big to me in creating future Gen was in college, there was this club that was relating to finance, and it was very, very elitist. And I was fortunate enough to earn a position in leadership, and I started to administer some change in there, and the change was not welcomed, unfortunately. So I was unfortunately removed, but I didn’t take that remove as, hey, that’s just it, and I decided to actually create my own organization that was much more inclusive of anybody that did not have finance experience. And that was actually a huge uplift in learning how to build career exploration programs from scratch, making partnerships with universities and local companies, being able to actually build workshops with other PhD and colleges nearby to make sure that folks that are really wanting to upskill themselves they can. So I’ll stop there. There’s there’s several others, but those are two very big things. Was, I understand that there is a need for access, and there’s a hunger for access, but it’s not necessarily always as accessible. And everybody, I think, could benefit so much when they hear their first Yes, when you have your first Yes, you’d be surprised how much confidence that gives into an individual and just how much more drive that feeds anyone.

Speaker 1 36:47 And I know you’re working with kids now future dens working with kids. I know the Tacoma area with various school districts, and you have a contract with our Department of Vocational Rehabilitation here in Washington State. So tell us what the experience is like for a young student with a disability has the the opportunity to access future Gen platform, what, what is? What is their experience like? What? What? What value are they gaining from future Gen Yeah, of

Speaker 2 37:27 course. Be careful Kirk, because I can talk about this part all day. So So, yes, future gens, one of our what contracts that we service is with Washington’s department of vocation rehabilitation. They have a specific program called pre ETS, which is pre employment transition services. And we specifically help the job exploration slash career exploration side of that their efforts, in which case the full picture is to really help students with documented disabilities between 14 to 21 transition to the workforce successfully, and so we have been had the wonderful opportunity to service hundreds of kids and growing here in Washington State. And the I’ll share a more recent one. I’ll use a las names for some folk, but I’ll tell you something that was really, really cool, because this is a this is the work that I love. This work that seeing the smile on other kids, that it’s just it is amazing. It’s very meaningful in its own, in his own regard, too, but actionable too, which is great. So what we do is we typically go into schools. We onboard again, school on students that can have a range of high needs, ranging from sometimes sensory challenges to

38:59 short attention spans to just

Speaker 2 39:06 physical challenges as well. And as we do so, we start showing them these videos, and we capture, again, their career skills, acquisition interests, from their engagement with these videos. They’re liking, their disliking. You know, it’s a passion is we believe is a superpower, and we introduce, well, what are the necessary skills that are needed for these, for these potential occupations that you just never even knew existed? And so there’s this one individual. I’m going to call him Connor. And this the student, Connor, I remember we had like an A B test, which was, we’re going to have some workshops. We’re going to work with the student manually to try and gather what our current

39:49 What did you say, A, B,

Speaker 2 39:52 something? Oh, yes. Sorry. Maybe some spark, our startup talk right there, which is, you have a control group. And then you have, like, a real group testing out the product itself. And so with Connor, in a specific example, this is a student that, if handed a, you know, a laptop or tablet of any kind, if frustrated, will throw their laptop across the room. Their eyes are, you know, darting left and right. Their attention is everywhere and so initially, when we first started servicing this specific student, we decided to do, okay, we’re going to do a manual career exploration workshop with this individual, and then we’re going to compare how the results are on the Atlas or career Atlas. And Connor, turns out, before he touches the future. Jones Corrales, we found out that he, he loves the content creator economy. He has his own YouTube channel. He’s posting all these videos. He’s just super like, all about YouTube, essentially. And so we discover, like, Okay, this guy is probably going to have something interesting and or interesting or aligned with entertainment, possibly, okay, let’s, let’s give him Corrales, now that we have a strong understanding what he may want. And I remember, when first giving him, handing over corals to this the student Connor, I explained quickly, you know, or I explained to him, you know, how to use future Gen. And was it I walked to I walked I took two sets back, and Connor, he was just liking and disliking videos within two seconds or less.

41:33 This is web based or app based, revolt.

41:36 He’s on a tablet. Connor’s on a tablet.

Speaker 2 41:38 Yes, in this case, on tablet.

Speaker 1 41:42 And he’s get, he’s given glimpses through video that you’ve

41:47 harvested

Speaker 1 41:49 from the virtual world, right? And then he can say,

41:54 I like that. I don’t like that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 42:02 And typically, most students, they’ll spend about 30 seconds and 90 minutes or 90 seconds on a video and decide whether they like or dislike from there, once they get the hang of things, they may be shorter, shorter to maybe 15 seconds, but Connor here immediately, was adding or putting input within two to three seconds for a number of videos. And so I stepped away thinking results, his results are going to be interesting. And when he raised his hand to announce that he was done, I walked back over to his seat. We looked at his results, and guess what? The number one recommended industry that was for him was entertainment theater. And we were like, Okay, what, what’s, what else is there? And we started diving into, specifically into, like, Hammerman opportunities. And it was just, it was like, Wow, I’m so

Speaker 1 42:52 how long did that initial assessment take

Speaker 2 42:57 Connor himself? I think he probably did that all within maybe six or seven minutes. Oh, okay, which is very, very speedy compared to other students that are taking more of their time maybe, or maybe have different, different high needs.

Speaker 1 43:18 So this is in a school based situation that sounds like you were there to guide him and give him that support. And I’m imagining as future din grows and more and more school districts and vocational rehabilitation systems that adopt use of future Gen, you’re not going to be able to be with each user. How how can people do this from home? Does it need to be in a school based situation? What are the various scenarios in which young people with disabilities can’t access the value of future general Well,

Speaker 2 43:58 as of right now, the the best way we’re more locally engaged here in Washington, go go figure, especially with the contract. But when it comes to if you are a pre es eligible student here in Washington State, you we can’t contact you with a local RTC, a regional transition counselor, etc, and then we can get you access. I will say, though, even though I mentioned that example, that that was there physically, we’ve already had two schools successfully do it themselves without my presence there necessarily, other than maybe some. Hey, here’s your email to get things started that’s that’s also been really cool. At this point in time, we have more of a we don’t necessarily do something called direct to consumer. We typically do more organizational engagements. But hey, if anybody’s listening and curious, I’ll drop my content. Ask the email or information down here, and can change that

Speaker 1 45:03 and speak if you speak it as well. People listening to the recording can access it. So let’s do that now. How and then, I want to ask some the future of future Gen questions. But for now, how can people get in touch with you. Eddie, how can they learn more about future Gen and how it can be so helpful to young people with disabilities in that vital element of the expanded core curriculum, which is career exploration?

Speaker 2 45:34 Well, we can find you. Can find us on the internet. You can type in future Gen, x, y, z, Career Compass. I just dropped the URL in the chat here that’s reported anywhere. Sometimes when you just type in future Gen, there’s like a power plant that pops up. That’s not a line the the green energy in that kind of space we do support the climate workforce. Give us a highly separate discussion. But future Gen career, compass, XYZ, put the any combination source together, we easily pop up in the top.

46:12 You can also easily most active, also on LinkedIn.

46:17 I’ll also share that here as well. Spell

Speaker 1 46:19 that last name goes or the people out there? Yes,

Speaker 2 46:24 so Eddie spelled E, D, D, I, E, and my last name, maze rigos is m, a, z, A, R, I, E, G, O, S. So happy to also do a quick screen share, if that makes any sense at all, yeah. Why not? Yeah. Okay. I’ll go ahead and give a quick screen share, then and close some text. Because I don’t know about you, Kirk, but I

Speaker 1 46:55 opened way too many and then and then for me, if anyone wants to talk about careers, employment for people with disabilities, blind kids, opportunities for blind people and people with other significant disabilities to thrive in the world of work. I will, I will talk about that all day long so you can reach me at Kirk Adams at Dr Kirk adams.com is my email. So Kirk Adams at Dr Kirk adams.com I’m also very active on LinkedIn, Kirk Adams PhD, and you can find me, we can set up time to talk. So as as we, as we, as we spend the next few minutes. Eddie, what are the top two or three things that you and your team need to accomplish to to move the company forward to where you where, where you see it going, which is obviously to serve a lot more kids and a lot more settings. So what are the top two or three things you need to get done?

Speaker 2 48:07 Well, as of right now, we’re actually looking at putting together a much larger agreement with, again, the local Department of Vocational Rehabilitation department here in Washington.

48:21 But if I had to say two or three things,

Speaker 2 48:25 and if we were specifically talking about career exploration and what I described as the tech accessibility space, our team actually has a whole plan, actually, for 2025 specifically just catered to this one, is we have to go ahead and partner ourselves with the research institution to make sure that we are scientifically backed. So we have many smart people that are here on the team, including our chief science officer. And he again, talk about gentlemen another time, but he’s somebody that is really a lot of the thought capital comes to really building the career exploration focused algorithm, I guess you can say, but there is a hunger for evidence that’s out there in as much so needed nothing that’s wishy washy. So we’ve been talking to a couple of universities that are considering to partner with for the long term. Another thing that we see ourselves really become much further and have a much wider impact is becoming the del facto technology partner here with Washington’s department vocational rehabilitation, pre ETS program here, which we’re in heavy discussions with that would actually enable us to be able to have an impact across multiple other states and be competitive in that sense, because we would then have a government level entity that we support and for a lot of many other states, that’s a more than a request. This all. Then sets things up for ourselves to go into a place called Transition Tennessee, which we have been in touch with that organization as well. They have, they’re a hub, I guess you can say, a lot of resources for building a more inclusive workforce. And they’re again a specific segment for pre ETs and job exploration, slash career exploration. So those are kind of like three things specifically, there’s, you know, at a high level, there’s several other things that we’re specifically diving on. But do we really want to talk about, you know, being section 508, compliant, um, I’m happy.

50:38 There’s, there’s other things good.

Speaker 1 50:39 Well, you’re on a great path, and you and I met the fall at Seattle disability Connect, which is a event that happens quarterly on the Microsoft campus. Actually, one this evening, january 30, 2025 I’ll be there. And really just a pleasure Eddie, to have you with me today. For anyone listening, if you have a young person with a disability in your life and you’re cognizant of their future, it would behoove you to reach out a future Gen, G, E and x, y, z, you can find them on, on with the search engine. Of course, connect with Eddie and we’ll, we’ll do it. We’ll do what we can do to make this valuable career exploration tool available to you and your loved ones. Again, this is Dr Kirk Adams. This has been super charge your bottom lines for disability inclusion. Next month, on March 27 I’ll be back, and I’ll be having a conversation with Aaron De Blasi of mind vault solutions, and we’re going to talk specifically how a blind person such as myself, who is not a tech whiz, can use AI tools to create to create content, to create impactful professional content. Using artificial intelligence, we’re going to walk through a real world example and give everyone a step by step guide, step by step guide on how to do that. So again, Eddie, thank you so much for your time and attention. It’s really been fortunate for me to have connected with you and future Gen I’m excited about what you’re doing. It’s sorely needed. I wish it had been around when I was in school, because I can honestly say I had no clue. So thank you for what you’re doing.

Speaker 2 52:42 Thank you Kirk and thank you for having me here. Take

52:46 good care. Everyone. See you next month. Bye.

KEYWORDS:

 

disability rights, employment inclusion, blindness skills, guide dog, Deloitte Consulting, Harvard Business School, private equity, mentorship program, technical training, leadership development, corporate partners, family support, employment rate, strategic objectives, financial support

TRANSCRIPT:

 

00:00

Music.

 

00:09

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,

 

00:36

welcome everybody to podcasts with Dr Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And as you may or may not know, I am the managing director of my very own consulting practice, innovative act LLC, where I focus on fun, innovative, high impact projects that will accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. And I say I help companies supercharge their bottom line through Disability Inclusion. I am the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, prior to that, held the same roles at the lighthouse for the blind. Inc, you're in beautiful, rainy Seattle, and today I have a guest that I have the privilege of knowing for quite a number of years. We used to be neighbors in Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia. Now we're 3000 miles apart, but I'd like love to introduce you all to Catherine Webster, who, among other things, is the founder and president of a foundation called together achieving dreams, which is helping young blind people move forward and thrive in life. I had the privilege of having my first call as a mentor to one of the young blind people that the foundation is working with. And Catherine, welcome to my podcast.

 

02:07

Dr Kirk Adams, it is such a pleasure. I always love chatting to you, with you, and even better than it's on a podcast platform, thanks

 

02:15

for having me so the whole world can listen in on our conversation, exactly. So I would love to hear about your journey a little bit. When I first met you, you were kind of just beginning in the professional career. You were in a leadership role with the blind students of the National Federation of the Blind. You surprised me in how new you were to blindness and how excellent your blindness skills were. So would love to just get a little bit of your personal story that has brought you from birth to now.

 

03:00

Yeah, absolutely great question, and always way longer than than I want to share. So I will keep it short and sweet. But like Kirk said, like you said, I long story short, I guess starting from the way beginning, I was born totally blind, which wildly enough, when I was 16 days old, I got vision in one of my eyes. Saw that well, you know, visual impaired, quote, unquote, for years. So I, you know, leaned on large print and didn't know braille. Starting in high school, started learning braille. So all that to say I was in denial in those in those years where, like every teenager is in denial and had having no vision in one eye and having limited in the other I wanted to still do whatever I wanted to do. So I was a cheerleader, I wrote, I did track, I was integrated into, you know, public school systems. And I grew up actually, in Connecticut. My mom moved us here from Florida for the awesome public schools, and grateful for her for that choice forever. But long story short, around high school, had several surgeries, cornea transplant issues, whatever it is, and I started realizing there are some things that I just can't do. And for me, that's a challenge. I want to be able to do anything, and if someone tells me I can't, I want to prove them wrong. So how I approach that is acceptance on some of the pieces. So cheerleading, with with all sighted cheerleaders, and me, once it got to a certain point, there's a safety risk. So I did step back on that, and instead leaned in on, you know, sports where I could do it fully independently, rowing, track and field, etc. So starting college, I got a guide dog, and that was kind of my first step of acceptance. And I still, I mean, I tell high school students who are blind all the time to to, you know, accept yourself, embrace a cane, all that stuff easier said than done when you're in those environments. But I used college as that rebranding moment where no one knows who I. Am or hardly anyone, and I've got a social magnet of a guide dog, use that slightly as a crutch, socially speaking, and all that to say, as I went into my last year of college at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, I ended up losing my vision two weeks before graduating from just a freak accident retinal detachment that went wrong too much filled up whatever. So after that, had no more vision. And at that point, I had already signed with Deloitte Consulting. I was terrified, and didn't really know how to take it, but I'll also understood fake it till you make it is kind of the mantra for any young professional. So leaned on that a little bit. And during my college years, while I didn't heavily lean on Braille or anything like that, I started to need to as a decrease. So it almost gave me those training wheels before losing the rest of my vision to be successful. And I appreciate your compliment on having good blindness skills. But it definitely, in the beginning, was a fake it till you make it, until I gain that confidence. And like, you know, use JAWS the screen reading software. And you

 

06:15

were, you were in a STEM field in school, right? I

 

06:19

was, I studied statistics in computer science, and it's funny. I'm sure you How did

 

06:25

you do that? As a very low vision person,

 

06:31

were using assistive technology? Were you

 

06:33

I was I was actually using Mac initially, with Zoom, and then as my vision decreased, I switched over to Jaws, a different screen reader, yeah, and on Windows, and that was much better. But I got the pushback that many students get, as I'm sure you hear all the time, like, why don't you do English or history, which is great if someone wants to, but I wanted to do daft and Comp Sci. So. So then started at Deloitte, and like you mentioned, I wanted to give back in a lot of different ways, because so many people, sighted or blind mentor me tremendously. You being one of them, and I wanted to, it was kind of that time of my life where I wanted to also give back. So started doing different leadership roles within the National Federation of blind and also, as we'll get into it. Started the town Todd foundation a couple years ago now, but pivot after Deloitte, I was there for almost four years, and then went to Harvard business school to get my MBA. And now I work in private equity at KKR in New York City. So I can't believe it's been 10 years since I graduated high school, but lots, lots has happened.

 

07:42

Yeah. So just curious. So you said something along the lines of, I'm paraphrasing. If someone says I can't do it, I'm doing it. Where does that come from?

 

07:55

That's a good question. I think it comes from two things. It comes from my mom's personality, she's always taught my brother and me, he cited, obviously I'm not she's always said, shoot for the stars. My dad also has instilled that in me. So I think part of it's that, and growing up with a single mom, she made everything happen, and I never knew when we were struggling, even when we were I think the other part of it is when you're frustrated of things you know you can't inherently do, it makes you want to do things even better. And I love shattering misconceptions. That's probably because I'm stubborn, as you know, but part of it's also just, I you've got to have tenacity to, like, make it in the world. And it's frustrating as a blind person, having to educate every day. But if you don't do it, who's going to do it? So I think it's, you know, built up frustration and and admiration. Okay,

 

08:53

two sides of the coin, frustration and, yes,

 

09:03

so the foundation,

 

09:07

the name, has a lot of significance, I know, and what, what sparked you to take your volunteerism and your leadership with the National Association of Blind students and formalize it, and put it into a structure, and really do it

 

09:25

that that took a lot of years of thinking, and you may agree or disagree here, but there's a lot of nonprofits in the world. Most are doing awesome things. Not all are the most efficient in the world. And me being a business person by trade, I only wanted to start a nonprofit if I thought that it would do something meaningful and actually change something in a grander way. Um, so when I was at when I was in business school in Boston. I was kind of struggling with back and forth with, do I go the entrepreneurial route and start a nonprofit from scratch, or do I escalate a different one? And what it came down to for me was representation matters, and I have such a niche focus in my mind of what I'm passionate about, which is increasing employment for the blind and low vision community in like high paying gainful employment jobs, and that doesn't exist. So the our approach is very unique. And to your point

 

10:36

on, have you read my dissertation? No, but now I want to it's called journeys through country, an ethnographic study of blind adults successfully employed in large American corporations. So I interviewed a bunch of 100% too. I'll send you a link. So I interviewed a bunch of people who were working in name brand corporations, whose names you would know and found out the factors that led to their success. And I won't digress too far, but two, there were nine themes and two, two main ones. One was everyone had a great sense of agency, that they could forge their own path. They had a strong internal locus of control. Felt they could create their destiny. All of them could trace that back to something, an experience, a relationship, family. A lot of them were. You were a cheerleader, a rower, a runner, a swimmer, all those things. So a lot of the lot of people attribute it to some outdoor experience, some athletic experience, and then the other one was disappointment. Everyone was disappointed. Like, why am I the only blind person who's made it this far in this company? Why aren't there any people with disabilities in the C suite? Why do I constantly have to fight for accommodations? Why do I keep having to educate people? Why are people hired after me getting promoted beyond me. So

 

12:03

yep, yep. And the hard problem is I would love that, because the disappointments so real, and like my dream one day is to run the Todd foundation. Of course, I sit in a corporate America seat that I'm very, very happy in. But that's also the internal struggle, because you want awesome blind people running awesome blindness organizations too. So there's a lot of pieces there, but I would, I would love to read that. So when I decided on Tad, it really came down to my father had passed away in 2017 right after I lost my vision. His name was Tad, so of course, named after him, and that loss paled in compare. Or my losing my vision paled in comparison to losing my father. So that put a whole new perspective on blindness for me, where I was like, This literally doesn't matter. It's one part of me. It doesn't matter. And yes, of course, during grieving, you go, you grow like, empathetic, etc, and I think that was a big part of it. But I decided finally, when I was sitting in a class at Harvard Business School and entrepreneurship that I wanted, I wanted to take that step, and I wanted to bring a team of sighted people and blind people together to really make magic happen around effectively changing the employment rate,

 

13:21

and how are you doing that? What? What are the program activities currently?

 

13:28

So chat is structured with three under, under, kind of pinned pillars that go toward our mission of increasing employment for the blind and low vision community. The first is our fellowship program. So think I want to say mentors on steroids. So each of our students, college, whether undergrad or grad school, blind students, are paired up with a sighted mentor and a blind mentor in their career interest area. At the same time as that, we have immersive in person, weekend programming throughout the academic year, where we're all together shoulder to shoulder, doing very intense technical skill training, leadership development, networking, soft skills, that's in person, yeah. Okay, cool. So those are four weekends, and then in between all of our weekends, we have virtual on demand trainings where students are able to hone in on the skills that they need to work on more at the individual level, and then in person, we're bringing it all together and getting them the every every session, they're presenting on new topics they've never heard of. They're assessing company 10 Ks, they're writing, they're doing financial modeling, they're building PowerPoints. They're doing things that any person going into the workforce should be able to do, but we're giving them the head start. We're vetting their materials. We're working with them on making it excellent, and we're making sure that they're comfortable as a blind person, kind of leveraging their those alternative techniques and approaching them. So I always say, if you start. Go with blindness skills, go get blindness skills training, and then come to us. We don't focus on that, but we certainly compliment, you know, using the assistive tech to make magic happen in the in the workplace. So that's the first pillar. The second piece is working with companies and community partners on different access points of bringing blind and low vision folks to work. So whether a company wants to hire people, we're kind of vetting those students, providing the resumes, making sure they're a good fit prior to the interviews even happening, whether it's an internship, a full time job, an experience, whatever it is. But then we're also working with companies on just understanding disability and blindness, as I'm sure you do a lot of too, if just there's still the stigma and there's still a lot of conversations to be had and questions and uncertainty that companies sort through as they work on this, and I think part of that's leaning on Diversity and Equity and Inclusion goals with companies Of like, what does that really mean in practice? But then it's also putting light on you may have never met a blind person, like, here is capable blind people doing things in the world that are that are certainly qualified and talented for your company. So that's the second piece. And then the third is working with families of little blind kids, so think zero to five years old, making sure the parents are setting up their young, young kids for success as early as possible. And I think that's the biggest gap, because it's great that we're hitting college students, but there are so many blind people not getting to college because they're not taught from a young age that they have what it takes.

 

16:39

Yeah, that I wasn't aware of that piece of that pillar that's that's really exciting and super important. Yes,

 

16:49

yes, huge. So that one we're launching this year. It's always been one of our core pillars, but it's been on, I don't want to say, the back burner, but it hasn't been the highest priority. As we launched the fellowship program and we, our organization started in formally speaking, two years ago, so January 2023, and we've had now two iterations of the cohort program. We're in our second year right now, so things are going awesome, and we're really loving what we're doing with the students.

 

17:18

So you said ultimately you would like to be the person running tad together, achieving dreams foundation. So tell, tell, tell me the vision five years from now. What? What is the scope

 

17:39

five years from now? For Tad,

 

17:41

yeah, I've got happy achieve

 

17:45

that dream. The dream, the dream,

 

17:49

exactly, so I think right now we've got a just to clarify, we've got an awesome, full time director, and I'm going nowhere anytime soon, understood, but dreaming huge. I think so. If I were to take it step by step, we have 15 students right now in our program. I think we'll have 50 next year, and I think we'll have 500 in the next five years. Wow. And I truly feel that way, because we had nearly 100 applicants last year when we didn't even put out a flyer, we didn't market it at all, and every student we had the first year wants to come back for more and wants to learn more. So in that front I think we'll have 500 qualified blind students in five years ready to be employed in high paying positions where they deserve to sit. I think from a company standpoint, today, we've got 11 corporate sponsors and corporate partners we're working with. I think we'll have 100 and again. Now that we have the infrastructure of a full time person as of two months ago, I feel sky is the limit, and now that we can really put the dedicated time in terms of families being a bit more realistic, I think will hit 100 families in terms of impact of them having a strong network as they raise their little blind kids. So that's my dream. Five years from now, if I were to say it more intangibly speaking, I want companies to know who we are. I want them to trust our process of making sure the students we work with are qualified and capable. And I also want this shift to happen where the unemployment rate isn't at 70 or 75% it's much lower, and there's actually representation where you step foot in a building and it doesn't feel like you're the only person that's educating everyone around you. Let's do that. So that's my dream. Let's make it happen. Kirk, that's a good treat.

 

19:47

So if you were going to point out kind of the two or three biggest wins so far over the past two years, what would you say?

 

19:58

I think the biggest win. On the first year? Well, the whole board always tells me that I have, like, extremely high expectations for people, and that that I am a tough cookie. So leaning on that, I think our baby goal was that we executed an amazing program. The ambitious piece that we met the metrics on is we had 100% placement for our first year. So 13 students came through our first year program. 13 had experiences over the summer that, to me, before we scale, largely speaking, is exactly what I want every

 

20:35

single year. And summer is actually a work experience with a company, yes,

 

20:40

with a company roughly 10 weeks, yep. Okay, cool, in person on the job. So I think that was one of our biggest goals. I think the second is how much we are branding ourselves, the amount of and it just baffles me, because we do little pieces of marketing, whether they there's a magazine article about us or whatever it is, but where companies are reaching out to us, cold calling us, you know, on LinkedIn and social media, saying, Hey, what's this all about? We want to help. To me, that's when I know the word is getting out there. And when that happens, it makes like we're not doing the cold calls. It's the other way. And I love that, and that's how I know that we're being successful and we're kind of getting in the right pockets of space,

 

21:26

absolutely. So to get to get from here to the dream, I could call them challenges, but I'll call them strategic objectives. So what are the two three key strategic objectives you're going to accomplish to get to where you want to go.

 

21:43

The two that come to mind, just from a key performance indicator perspective, is every nonprofit, of course, needs financial support, and we continue to push that. As we get more money, we hire more staff, and we need staff to really run the infrastructure of our programs, coordinating the mentorship program, in and of itself, is a big lift. So strategically speaking, as we continue building our corporate partners, it's making that happen. I think the second goal is to use our students as success stories every single year to expand how many students were reaching, and we're doing that. But as we get more students in the program, and they're graduating, building out that alumni network of now, they're all mentors of the incoming students, and that being kind of a cyclical process, I think, will allow us to reach every single goal that we've set and we've we've put together just year over year, how that growth is going to look like. So I think increased staff and students being those storytellers, to bring more folks in and to get companies more comfortable. The more spaces we're in, the more the more times you know, people want to reach out and be intentional.

 

22:58

The research shows a company that hires a person a disability is more likely to hire another a company that hasn't done it yet. So proxy and that just

 

23:12

shows that that we're just like anyone else, right? I mean, I think our strategic thinking is a bit stronger, but besides that, we're equally as capable, if not more capable.

 

23:22

So the folks listening to the scintillating conversation we're having, how can they help you to achieve those objectives?

 

23:34

I'll keep it to a couple, though the sky is the limit on how we can get folks connected to tad first and foremost, of course, check us out on tad foundation.org, T, A, D, foundation.org, or reach out to us over email. [email protected] we are looking for blind people, whether they are working they're college students. We need mentors and mentees. We're looking for sighted folks who care about this type of work to lean in as mentors, volunteers, whatever it is. If you know a blind person, we want to know them, and we want to know you beyond that, though, I always tell everyone to ask questions, because I think the biggest disadvantage is when people are curious about something, and they don't ask, and then they don't know, and then the stigma continues. So if you're listening and you know nothing about blindness, love that we would love to hear from you, I get asked silly questions all the time, and I absolutely love it, because it's a moment for us to educate people, and it's a moment for you to know that there are other people in the world doing things just the way you are, maybe a little differently. So I would say, engage in any way possible. Know that that we are out here doing awesome work, and would love to connect with you.

 

24:55

Fabulous and By that same token, I am available my. Mission in life is to create opportunities for people who are blind and have other disabilities to thrive, whatever way that means for them. And my particular interest that I share so strongly with Catherine is around employment, a good, meaningful job, cures a lot of other deals. So very interested in working with companies who want to create a competitive advantage by hiring a super workforce, people with disabilities who have developed wonderful, unique strengths through the lived experience of disability. You can reach me Kirk, Adams at Dr Kirk. Adams.com Kirk Adams at Dr, Kirk adams.com I'm also on LinkedIn every day, and what I would like to do Catherine is have you back in about one year. I know we'll be talking many times between now and then, but have you back on this podcast about 12 months talk about how far the Tad Foundation has come over that 12 month period, because I know it's going to be a long way down that dream highway. And we can talk about your upcoming wedding 2026, when we talk next,

 

26:15

I love it. That sounds awesome. Thank you so much again. Kirk, for having

 

26:18

all right, always a pleasure to talk with you. Katherine, thanks so much, and thanks everyone for listening. Take good care.

 

26:26

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 [email protected] together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00

Music.

 

00:09

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,

 

00:37

hello, everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams from innovative impact consulting and welcome to my podcast. And I have I'm returning a favor to Donna jodhan, who graciously interviewed me for her podcast. Welcome Donna. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here, and it is a New Year. Happy New Year to you, to you too. And I'd like to take this one step at a time. What I'm thinking is to ask you to tell us about your journey which has brought you, has brought you to the point in time we're at now, what you're involved in currently, and then where, where you would like to see, where we you would like to take things, and when we, when we talk about where you would like to take things, I'd love to hear about what's working well for you, where, where you're finding successes and any challenges you might be having. So if, if we could just take it away, I'll hand you the talking stick and ask you to talk about your journey from from birth to present. Oh dear. Thank you very much. I'll do the best I can. So I was born eight hours after my twin brother Jeffrey,

 

02:04

Mom and Dad did not know that I was expected, only after he was born that the midwife told mom and dad, hey, another one is on its way, and mom had to wait eight hours for me to arrive.

 

02:22

The mom and dad asked the midwife to call a doctor, and she refused. So mom suffered for eight hours, and when I was born, mom realized right away that something was wrong with my eyes, and she said to the midwife, this child has eye problems. And the midwife refused to, you know, listen to mom, but Mom was correct. So I guess this is probably the foundation for how I was brought up and what I felt that I needed to do in order to fulfill my own life and to help others. I felt strongly that I was given an opportunity to do something after being born under these circumstances, and I think from an early age, my desire was to help others,

 

03:17

you know, to help make a better future for the kids, because I was given the opportunity to have a future. I was very privileged to have parents and a grandmother and two brothers and five dogs all helped me out. So I decided that this is what I wanted to do. I left home at a very early age, I grew up in Montreal, Canada, and

 

03:45

I don't think I can ever put a date on when I really started to get involved in advocacy,

 

03:54

but I think you know, throughout my high school and university years, I always did the best I could to help others and help the kids, but I think my whole world changed because let's just go back a little bit. I was born with bit of vision. Got a whole whack of it when I was in my teens due to a cornea transplant. It changed my entire world, and I learned so much, did so much experience, so much. Then I lost it all in year 2004

 

04:29

due to a terrific retina detachment, detached in three places, and doctors could not save my vision. So it was at that time that I decided that I wanted to apply to the Canadian government for a job, and in doing so, I quickly realized that the websites were not accessible, the attitudes were not very good, because certain.

 

05:00

Departments did not really want to take the time to ensure that me as a vision impaired person, a highly qualified one with an MBA from McGill University. They did not want to, you know, help me take the exams in order to gain a Public Service Commission job with the Canadian governments. And I think it was at that time that I consciously decided that something needed to be done. So in year 2006

 

05:36

I consulted a human rights lawyer, and after discussing, you know, matters within she advised me that I had the perfect case for a charter challenge against the Canadian government to challenge them on their inaccessible and unusable websites. And there began my journey, I would say, in a really meaningful manner. And I say meaningful because it was a way for me to not just express myself, but to show others that something should be done and must be done if we as a community, as Canadians with disabilities, wanted to find different career paths, so I assembled a small team

 

06:33

of advocates and friends, and I think they're about, oh my gosh, at least four of us to start with The lawyer. We filed our papers, and of course, they try to stay our kids, but fail. And so between 2007

 

06:49

and 2009

 

06:50

it was a back and forth battle between me and the government and my lawyer

 

06:57

and the Canadian government hired an expert from the United States who was a lawyer, but not an accessibility expert, to challenge us, and I had one of the best accessibility experts of the day. Her name was Judah Trevor Rey. She's from Canada,

 

07:18

and so the government I know her. Oh, great, yes, wonderful, yeah, you couldn't have picked a better person. Oh, she was wonderful and very calm, very kind, very understanding. And between 2007 and 2009 we engaged in this back and forth battle. And many times this government, Canadian government, did their best to discredit me, both personally and professionally, and they challenged Utah quite a bit. But Bucha and I, we were able to withstand all the that they threw at us. We went to court, the lower Canadian court in 2010

 

08:03

we won the first round. The judge ordered the Canadian government to make all of their websites accessible,

 

08:11

despite the government trying to, you know, use their expert, the late Cynthia Waddell. I don't know if you know her, or knew her

 

08:22

to you know, thwart our efforts so we were successful. The judge ordered the government to make the websites accessible, but the government decided to take us to the Canadian Court of Appeal, and this case was heard in 2012

 

08:41

and we were again successful. So thereafter, the government realized that we were serious about, you know, wanting to bring about change. This case was observed worldwide, across North America, Britain, Europe, India, and for me personally, it was quite an experience, because I don't think I really understood the meaning of going to court. I so that was a five year process of doing my math. Yeah, I

 

09:20

I don't think I understood what I was getting into, and even when the government attacked me personally and professionally, I still didn't understand.

 

09:31

But I spent several nights really examining my conscience. Why was I doing this? For whom? For what? It was never for me. It was for the kids or the future.

 

09:43

And people may say, oh, yeah, right. Wasn't it for you? No, not necessarily. Because I wanted a better future for them. I wanted to help my community. So after that, in 2012

 

09:59

we.

 

10:00

Decided to soldier on, and you just and I went our separate ways, like Peter got busy with her own stuff, I got busy with mine. But then in 2015

 

10:11

I realized that something else needed to be done, because Canada did not have any sort of legislation like the US, like the UK, like Europe, they were one of the few developed countries that did not have any sort of legislation, disability rights legislation, or anything like that. So I decided again to form a team, and we went coast to coast, we elicited the assistance of several organizations, national organizations, business cnid, the

 

10:53

CCD, like Canadian Council of persons with disabilities and many others cross disabilities organizations. We lobbied hard, and I was very fortunate again to have you to part of the way,

 

11:11

because she was very, very busy with her own stuff. And I had David Lepofsky, an amazing lawyer who really worked so hard with me, and in 2019

 

11:27

legislation titled The accessible Canada Act was passed on July 19, 2019,

 

11:36

and congratulations. Thank you very much. So this is what has laid the foundation for me. Has not been easy, because

 

11:48

advocacy is not for the fate of heart, and it started to wear on me.

 

11:56

During this period, I also fought successful cases against the Greater Toronto Airport Authority over their inaccessible and unusable websites and services and other organizations I interacted with,

 

12:14

but I decided shortly after that victory, that I wanted to pull or push my own efforts, my own advocacy, in another direction, because it was getting too hard and it was wearing on me. It was being very, very stressful on me. So I made the conscious effort that I wanted to return to what I call my roots. This being that I wanted to work more closely with the kids. It took a few years to really, you know, hone my my commitment, to decide what I really wanted to do.

 

12:58

I relinquished the presidency of barrier free Canada, because I was the founder of barrier free Canada. This is the organization that started the campaign for an accessible Canada Act. So let's fast forward to today. Yeah, but along the way, I met Aaron Di Blasi, and Aaron is never tired of pushing me and advising me and showing me ways to achieve what I really want to achieve, and I do. Thank Aaron for this very, very much indeed. So I'd like to pause for just a moment let people know who Aaron is. Aaron De Blasi is

 

13:44

a publisher of several accessibility and assistive technology related publications. His company is called Mind vault solutions, so you can search for top tech tidbits, access information, news and I have recently been engaged with Aaron. He's helping me get organized and more impactful and effective. And I think you've worked with him a lot longer than I but I'm finding that he helps accelerate things and help helps me move forward more briskly

 

14:22

with what I'm trying to accomplish. And I think this is a great way to say it like he helps me move forward more brisi, and especially when I see the first words of any email he sends, it's Miss Donna, and I know he has something to tell me, right? So the two initiatives that we are engaged in together are the access Park store, where we have brought vendors and other sellers together to sell their stuff, whether it's technology or anything that.

 

15:00

They want to sell, and it's being advertised through the accessibility information, news and the top tech tidbits. But most recently, we decided to get together on another project, and it's called the vision Tech Academy.

 

15:20

And this all came about because of a promise I made to the late John Connor Lee's. John was very, very involved with Apple. He was a beta tester. He was a teacher, tutor, a trainer. He had a website called Matt for the blind, and we have started to get involved in developing the vision Tech Academy, where we would bring users, not certainly, sorry, not users educators, together with students. But a month before, or shortly after we started, he wrote to me, saying that we had to withdraw from the project, because he was diagnosed with cancer, and he was at stage four, so I made him a promise that I could do whatever I think, because John was my mentor, my teacher, my friend, my advisor. Didn't matter if we disagreed on which coffee team we supported. John loved the islanders. I love the Montreal Canadiens, but John took the time to listen and to guide and he was never afraid or never shy to share his political views with me as well. So I lost someone really important in my life, and I thought I would I made him this promise, and here we are today. And Aaron and another friend of mine, Leo Bissonnette, he lives in Montreal, we are partnering together, partnering together, to ensure that John's legacy lives on. And this is where I'm at today. I'm also involved in something called transitioning to a new world, where I am teaching kids who are prepared preparing to leave high school, and the young adults teaching them how to make themselves indispensable assets to those companies who need to attract the attention of seniors and persons with disabilities, because these are their bread and butter customers. And I am helping.

 

17:38

There are two courses that I'm giving

 

17:41

are promoting and teaching. One is called advocacy, 101 and the other one is called entrepreneurship, 101

 

17:51

and these two courses will help participants to become more confident and independent and show them ways to advocate for themselves and for others, more powerful and more effectively. So these are the two projects that I'm presently engaged in, the transitioning to a new world. Is that something you're doing with young people in person? Is it virtual? Is

 

18:21

recorded. They watch what form does that take, virtually right now. And hopefully, if I can obtain, or

 

18:33

if I can get funding to help me out, I would like to put these courses online, and I would like to do the face to face route as well. I have already had experience with Doctor Alan chase of the I retreat organization. I participated in his camp last year, and he has invited me back

 

18:58

to do the same this year. So and I've had several interviews with people across Canada and the United States. So I'm really, really hoping that this will take off. And finally, in addition, in order to sort of support my funding, I am selling my pottery creations on the access Park store and my associates and I are also planning events to raise funds in support of the transitioning to a new world initiative. So that's where I'm at today. Okay, and access Park, let's talk about it sounds like it's a marketplace. Is it specifically for disability owned businesses or products and services that are helpful for inclusion of people with disabilities or combination? Tell, tell. Tell us more about access Park.

 

19:58

I am hoping.

 

25:00

If educators take advantage of this, they sign up. They, you know, we have a directory of where people can come to find different types of educators. Educators can either, you know, just sign up by having the first name, last name, email address and a URL, or they could go into more detail through their premium profile, where they give a biography of themselves and the courses that they offer. And I'm really and again, these educators are focused on what

 

25:34

I think they're focused on, courses, technology, courses that they can give to bridge the gap between, you know, persons with disabilities needing to learn more and being able to be more independent. That's what we're hoping for.

 

25:55

So it could be anything that the technology wise, that they would be able to teach and train and tutor. Okay,

 

26:07

so turning to challenges, you've mentioned funding and fundraising and resources a couple of times, yeah, so I'd appreciate you talking a little bit more about your thinking of how

 

26:22

that's going, and then any, any other you mentioned, marketing, yes. So you're, you're running three startups here simultaneously, which

 

26:32

is a lot, a lot on one person's plate. But as you plan success for each of the three, what, what do you see as the challenges that you're going to need to tackle?

 

26:45

I think a lot of it would be like marketing, letting people know that these three initiatives are out there. A lot of it has to do, you know, like works with by word of mouth, but with whom you know and you know, like working to convince them that, hey, these are worthwhile initiatives. These are going to benefit persons with disabilities. The persons with disabilities are your bread and butter, customers of today and the future. The kids are important. We need to make it better than possible for our kids in the future. So we need to find, or I need to find funding to continue my efforts.

 

27:34

And that is the challenge. And I know Aaron is really, you know, given me a lot of great ideas for the vision Tech Academy. I'm just hoping that this takes off, and I'm I'm very confident that it will take off.

 

27:51

Far as funding goes. I'm not familiar with Canada, of course, in the United States, the 501 c3 nonprofit where people can make a donation and

 

28:01

put a tax deduction on on their tax return. And then, of course, the for profit side, there's investors, and there's small business grants and things like that. So what? What type of and then there's crowdfunding, like Kickstarter for creative endeavors and GoFundMe and what, what are your

 

28:23

structures, as far as the type of funding you're seeking,

 

28:28

the nature, like

 

28:32

in Canada, it is awfully, awfully, awfully difficult to find funding. In the US, it seems to be a lot easier, so I'm putting most of my eggs in the US basket. Okay,

 

28:48

we've not talked about GoFundMe or crowdfunding. I mean, Aaron and I are hoping to use other methods to start with, but we're quite open to any suggestions. I'm not a marketing person. Aaron, is more of it than I am, right? So we're hoping, I'm praying, that we can attract some good influence from people who are willing to help, you know, fund this or market this in any way that they can.

 

29:22

Um, so this is the part of the podcast where we're going to ask for help.

 

29:29

What

 

29:30

people listening if they want to help move things forward? Access Park. I assume you're looking for businesses who want to offer their products and services. You're looking for customers. So Tell, tell us

 

29:43

to those listening to this recording,

 

29:48

if they're interested in getting engaged in access Park, what, what? What type of participation are you looking for? And how do people get and go get in touch with you. So we're looking to.

 

30:00

Vendors to sell their products on ancestr, and we have a ready made audience of over at least 30,000

 

30:12

people who read the aim news every week and top tech tidbits.

 

30:19

We do a lot of media releases as well. So we're hoping that vendors would see an advantage to being part of the access Park marketplace. We're hoping that customers would be able to say, Hey, this is a more accessible and usable website. I'm going to come here to buy my stuff. So it's a two pronged effort, both customers and vendors. And we've got to advertise more, because you just can't sit there and say, you know, people will read the ads every week. It's much more than that. So that's what the access Park thing is all about. Okay, and then transitioning into a new world. Are you primarily looking for? You mentioned camps, you mentioned schools? Are you primarily looking for organizations? Yes, who work with with blind youth, yes, primarily those. I have a meeting tomorrow with the American Printing House with the blind, and I'm really hoping that we would team up so that I can offer my courses. I'm hoping that the I retreat organization can help me to propel my efforts to other organizations and agencies. But the difficulty here is that a lot of these organizations and agencies are waiting for funding themselves right from other sources, so that they can pay me to do it right. So that is a difficulty with the transitioning to a new world initiative.

 

32:08

In the case of vision Tech Academy, it's all about more marketing, more advertising, more convincing of educators to place their premium profiles on our website, and you know, like advertise your own services to students. So you're looking for educators, trainers who focus on training around accessibility and assistive technology, who want to reach students right and looking for students who want to connect with, yeah, people who provide them training, correct, yeah,

 

32:48

wow, you're a busy bee. Oh, I gotta stop sometime, eh.

 

32:54

Well, please don't

 

32:56

well I want, I just want to be done. Well, I do want to thank you sir for having played a part in my obtaining my scholarship from the apex company.

 

33:08

I am really, really, really looking forward to this cyber security and thank you very much for having played a part.

 

33:17

Yes. So what Don is referencing is a training program to launch blind people into cyber security careers. I'm very involved with the apex program. And there is a website, www, dot the apex, A, P, E, X program.com,

 

33:35

and there's an inquiry form, if you are an employer, a Voc Rehab person, a blind person thinking about a cybersecurity career, please fill out that inquiry format, www, dot the apex program.com,

 

33:50

and Donna. How can people best get in touch with you if they would like to get engaged in one two or three of your startup endeavors? Well, there are two ways. My personal email address is Donna John, d o n, m, A J, O, D, H, A [email protected],

 

34:14

or my company's name, which is Donna John at Sterling creations.ca,

 

34:21

so again, it's d o n, m, a, J, O, D, H, A N, at, S T, E, R, L, I N, G, relations with an S C, R, E, A T, I O N, S dot, C, A,

 

34:37

C, A, for Canada, yes, Sir. And if you'd like to get in touch with me, Kirk Adams, at Dr, Kirk adams.com, that's d r Kirk Adams, K I R K A, D A, M, S at d r k, i r k, A, D K, N, s.com,

 

34:56

or on LinkedIn. Donna, this. Uh.

 

35:00

Time flew by. It's great to talk with you again and again. Thank you for having me on your podcast. Thank you for returning the favor and joining me and giving me such great time and attention today. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to be working with you in various ways on your projects, and let's make this an impactful 2025 shall we? We shall and I do. Thank you sir for having me on. And I enjoyed interviewing you too, and I think it's an honor and a privilege to be working with you. Thank you very much. Fabulous. All right, thank you everyone. Have a great day. Thank

 

35:42

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 [email protected]

 

35:55

together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You.

00:00

Music.

 

00:09

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,

 

00:37

hello everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams, welcome to my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through disability inclusion and today we we have a very unique opportunity to learn about a new AI driven solution for blind people such as myself to have an easier time of it. In E commerce, we're going to talk to Patrick long, co founder of inno search, in a few minutes. But Patrick, if you could say hi and give people just the sound of your voice and your title and where are you calling from

 

01:20

everybody? My name is Patrick. I'm the CEO and co founder of inno search. Ai, a company building accessible solutions for the blind and visually impaired. We're based in San Francisco, and very happy to be on the show today with Dr Kirk, and happy to share about what we're working on Great and Patrick is not we're not those of us who can see not seeing Patrick today. You may have been watching the news this week and about the bomb cyclone and all the storms here on the West Coast. We had our chair of it here in Seattle two nights ago, Patrick's on the San Francisco Bay area, so they're having some weather disruptions. So he's on his phone. Thank you for making it happen, Patrick,

 

02:12

just briefly before I before I turn, turn, turn it over to you, Patrick, to get your story. For those of you listening viewing who don't know me again. I'm Dr Kirk Adams. I am a blind person. Have been since I was five years old when both of my retinas detached and I became a blind child.

 

02:36

Basically overnight, I went to the Oregon State School for the Blind, first, second and third grade and learn to read and write Braille very, very fluently, travel with confidence with a white cane and type on a typewriter, so that when my skills were sufficiently strong, I could

 

02:59

join my brothers and sisters and neighbors in public school. So in fourth grade, I started public school in Silverton, Oregon.

 

03:08

I was always the only blind student of all of my schooling, from fourth grade through my PhD,

 

03:16

I

 

03:18

grew up in small towns in the Pacific Northwest. I was given some gifts as a 678, year old attending the school for the blind, I was given the blindest skills

 

03:32

that have allowed me to operate efficiently in the world of working and scholarship and life. I was given high expectations from my family and the school. A lot of kids, a lot of young kids with disabilities,

 

03:49

aren't given that gift of high expectations. And sometimes if we have low expectations, they can become internalized. And I was also given just a strong internal locus of control, which means I really felt in my bones that I could make my way in the world. I could solve problems, I could figure out how to get things done, and

 

04:12

that's such an important part of being able to thrive as a person with a disability in our society. So I'm grateful for those gifts that were given to me.

 

04:26

Progressing through the elementary, middle school, high school and small towns, I experienced a lot of social isolation, especially in the middle school and high school years where I grew up, when kids turned 16, they got a driver's license and they got a job of some kind, and that was not happening for me.

 

04:50

Then college was was a very, very different story. I was fortunate enough to be given a full scholarship to a small.

 

05:00

All liberal arts school, Whitman College and Walla. Walla through a foundation called the Jesse Ridley foundation that support supports blind students in college.

 

05:11

And again, a gift was given to me, which I appreciate immensely. Graduated

 

05:19

cum laude, phi, beta, kappa, four point my major, which was economics, and then face the barriers to employment that so many of us with significant disabilities face, as only 35% of us are in the workforce. So many, many twists and twists and turns later, after 10 years in banking and finance, I entered the nonprofit sector as a fundraising professional development officer. My first nonprofit job was a development officer for the Seattle Public Library Foundation raising money for the state talking book and Braille library. And then from there, moved into the nonprofit sector,

 

06:05

became the president CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, was recruited to join the board of trustees of the American Foundation for the Blind, which is Helen Keller's station, and was given, given an opportunity to step into that leadership, President, CEO role of May of 2016

 

06:27

moved from our cozy neighborhood here in Seattle to Brooklyn and worked in Manhattan, the AFB offices right next to Madison Square Garden, right above Penn Station, and subsequently moved to the Washington, Washington, DC area. So had amazing experiences living in New York and Arlington, Virginia, and then returned home to Seattle during the pandemic.

 

06:56

After six years with the American Foundation for the Blind, I had largely accomplished what I'd set out to do, which was to reorganize, restructure and bring the organization back to financial sustainability. And I decided there was time for a change. At the end of June 2022

 

07:19

my very rewarding time at AFB came to an end, and as AFB had announced I was leaving, I was contacted by a number of organizations and people I done impactful good projects work with, asking if I was available to help on various initiatives. And so I think de facto, became a consultant,

 

07:47

and I set up my consulting practice. My company is called innovative impact LLC. There is a website innovative impact dot consulting, and I've mostly focused on employment and working with companies to help them accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in their workforce, and really the bringing the demand side and supply side together, as employers are In competition for talent and needing to bring in

 

08:23

talented, dedicated, motivated employees who will help their organizations move forward. And then, with only 35% of us in the workforce, there's this untapped pool of individuals with disabilities who've developed a lot of really unique strengths. And as we look at how people develop strengths, it is through overcoming increasingly difficult challenges,

 

08:50

Grant grand masters and chess, world class musicians and athletes, they all get there by

 

08:58

a lot of hard work and dedication and setting themselves increasingly difficult challenges and overcoming them.

 

09:05

And as people with disabilities making our way through the social, built and digital environments that were built

 

09:17

primarily by non disabled people for non disabled people, we face a lot of challenges, and as we grow older and take on more and more complex aspects of life, those challenges become increasingly more difficult, so

 

09:33

we're able to develop a lot of lot of skills and strengths

 

09:38

that fit

 

09:39

what employers are looking for So resilience and perseverance and grit, creative problem solving, ability to analyze and manage risk, ability to work in diverse teams, good communication skills and so my pleasure is ringing.

 

10:00

Uh, finding employers who are open to being innovative and forward thinking and how they address their need for talent, and having conversations about intentionally bringing people with disabilities into their workforce, then then connecting them

 

10:22

with those resources that are out there. Our vocational rehabilitation system, every state has vocational rehabilitation agencies that are funded by the federal government, by the Department of Education. They have a $4 billion annual budget. They have 1000s of staff, lots lots of dollars and lots of individuals that are serving who have Each has an individual plan for employment. So there, there's a pool of of people ready and seek, actively seeking work.

 

10:55

There are other companies,

 

10:58

particularly those affiliated with the association called disability, and companies that have made commitments to hiring people with disabilities. There are

 

11:10

in any any city of any size, there are

 

11:14

nonprofits that focus on supporting people with disabilities. Many of them focus on employment. And then there are organized groups of people with disabilities on the blindness field, National Federation of the Blind, American Council of the Blind. So my, again, my pleasure, is to find those employers who want to intentionally include people with disabilities, then connecting them with those resources, the state, the government, the government, the corporate, the nonprofit, the community, those are the four stakeholder groups that need to come together in order to make anything really transformational happen. So that's, that's what I really, really enjoy doing, is connecting those dots at the same time,

 

12:01

when I was at the American Foundation for the Blind, I would I would be contacted pretty regularly by innovative people technology, folks who had had an idea or thought about something they thought would be really helpful for People who are blind, and these are usually startup companies, and they were typically looking for capital. So they want, wanted to know if AFB could invest or provide loans or some way support them financially. And that was not something we did.

 

12:38

So I was able to pretty regularly say, appreciate what you're doing. This sounds super interesting, but that's not something we do.

 

12:50

I will say some of the ideas were indeed super interesting. Some I thought were trying to solve a problem that a non disabled person might think was a big problem for us, but really isn't.

 

13:06

Some, some of the some of the ideas, were trying to solve problems that had already been solved. But there were also some very unique, unique ideas,

 

13:18

as I moved into the consulting space where I have the flexibility to really focus on whatever I want to focus on. I continue to be contacted and connected with entrepreneurs and really innovative, creative people putting together solutions for life,

 

13:38

obstacles and barriers for people with disabilities, and I have

 

13:44

really learned a lot about how these ecosystems work.

 

13:50

I've raised many millions of dollars over my career, primarily philanthropic. So I led the

 

13:59

American Foundation for the Blind and the Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc, and raise money for those 501, c3, organizations through corporate foundation grants and major gifts, plan gifts and people's wills and

 

14:13

individual donors. And

 

14:17

I had a lot of experience with that,

 

14:20

but raising capital

 

14:23

in a for profit environment is really new to me, so I I've connected with with some investors. I've been involved in some crowd funding situations where companies sought to give individuals opportunities to buy into the company. It's with small dollar amounts. I've

 

14:44

been involved as an advisor to an incubator

 

14:51

that focuses on disability owned startups, and then I've been able to become an advisor to

 

14:59

uh.

 

15:00

A small number of select startup ventures

 

15:06

that I'm very excited about that I think fill a real need. And innosearch is one of those. I'm going to turn it over to Patrick in a in a few minutes, and ask him to tell us about his personal journey, where he's been, where, how he got to where he is today, and where he's hoping, planning, tending to go

 

15:29

within a search.

 

15:32

But

 

15:35

interestingly enough, I was contacted via LinkedIn

 

15:39

in February or March, and I'm link on my on LinkedIn every day, so you can also find me there Kirk Adams PhD.

 

15:48

But I was contacted. I was contacted by

 

15:53

a

 

15:55

app development company based in

 

16:00

the UK,

 

16:02

Switzerland, and they were a shop that developed apps. They're for profit business entrepreneurs, and they had found me on LinkedIn, and they asked if I would be interested in talking with them

 

16:16

about apps that I felt could be very useful to people who are blind. So we had several aviation sessions, hour long sessions, and the first thing I said to them was, if you can figure out a way to simplify and standardize e commerce for people who are blind,

 

16:37

because as we want to do what everyone in our society seems to want to do, which is to shop with ease and have things delivered to us and have lots of choices and go to the E commerce sites that provide those services we find as blind people. It's not that easy. It's not that simple. The sites are always changing. Many accessibility issues.

 

17:06

The search functions are different, the checkout processes, the shopping carts or shopping bags, so

 

17:15

not a walk in the park to successfully navigate e commerce as a person who's blind who uses assistive technology.

 

17:26

What I primarily use is Jaws, Job Access with speech, screen reading software my PC and an iPhone with VoiceOver.

 

17:36

And then I guess about two months ago, I was connected with Patrick, who's with us today, and he and his partner, Brian, founded a company called inno search, and they are doing exactly what I identified as a primary need for a solution for people who are blind. So I was so excited but they told me what they were doing, and I told them that little story that, yes, I had had, in fact, identified this as a great need. I'm glad someone is addressing it and working with Patrick and Brian now as an advisor for a couple of months. I know they're totally dedicated to making this work. They're putting their heart, soul into in a search to make e commerce and other web based activities

 

18:33

accessible, frictionless and fun. People are blind, so with that, Patrick, I would love to ask you to tell us a little bit about your journey, what brought you to the spot you are now with innosearch, on the on the cusp of greatness. You have users. I think you told me that users have doubled over the last month, and you're generating revenue, you're in addition to e commerce, you're adding other great services. And would love, love to hear about the past president, present and future of inno search?

 

19:13

Sure. Yeah. So thanks so much, Dr Kirk for the introduction, and obviously, thanks so much for the help. Over the past couple of months, it's been really wonderful to be able to speak with you on a weekly basis and just share what we're working on,

 

19:31

issues and also successes that we've been having. So yeah, thanks so much for doing that.

 

19:39

About myself, personally, I was born and raised

 

19:45

in the Bay Area. Actually grew up in Fremont, California, attended Mission San Jose High School.

 

19:53

Yeah, I was very competitive High School, a lot of competition for grades. And attended UC Berkeley.

 

20:00

Me for economics so interesting we were we both studied the same thing economics.

 

20:08

Was always fascinated with how the business world worked, and also was always an entrepreneur at heart. Always was in my dorm room, thinking of new ideas, new ways to address markets that you know seem to have lots, lots of opportunity. So I studied economics and also got my CPA at Ernst and Young I was doing finance and accounting for a number of years before I started dabbling, dabbling into entrepreneurship. My first company, we built $100 million blockchain startup.

 

20:46

We're doing peer to peer lending, one of the first smart contract lending platforms on Ethereum at that time. And after that company wound down in 2020

 

20:59

we took a break, and that's when I was introduced to Brian through a few mutual friends, and we were just

 

21:09

playing around with the latest in AI technologies. I think this was when chat GPT started to take off, and a lot of this large language model

 

21:21

AI technologies came, came to, you know, really mature, right? And I think that was when we were really brainstorming how we could leverage

 

21:32

such a cutting edge technology to help, you know, people in need, right? I was a social entrepreneur in the past.

 

21:40

You know, the peer to peer lending platform that I had built, you know, we distributed it to folks in India, to folks in Africa, folks in South America, to do community based lending. So I was really resonated with the social impact space and ways to use, you know, new, cutting edge technology to improve the lives

 

22:03

of others. So we did a lot of research and really came across. We tried a lot of different ideas, but after actually doing some user studies and talking with early people who tested out our product, folks with disabilities, in particular those who are blind and visually impaired really resonated with what we had built, right? They said, You know, this is something they've never seen before, something like shopping on Amazon to find something as simple as like tennis balls could take them hours on end, right? So, you know, with this AI solution, they can just quickly search for a product, learn about a product right, and then make the purchase. So, you know, seeing that organic feedback right from the community really gave us a strong signal that there was a really strong need. And you know, we potentially could build something to address that. And obviously that sort of was the initial spark, right? And once we dug deeper, right through like conversations with Dr Kirk, or conversations with lots of other folks in the

 

23:14

blind and visually impaired community, talking about a lot of nonprofits, you know, and every day now, actually, we get a lot of customer feedback that's very positive, right? We probably five to 10

 

23:27

customer like testimonials every, every day, they just email us, telling them how, telling us how great of an experience they're having. That's just a further testament that I think we're on to something that's super exciting. And when we hear that, you know, maybe somebody has never done uh, Christmas shopping independently before, and now they're able to finally do it within a search that really warms my heart, and, yeah, it gives us the fuel to keep, to keep, uh, grinding on this. So,

 

23:57

yeah, I, you know, I don't want to bore you with the details, but basically, we know digital accessibility is like a really big problem. A lot of websites today are not accessible, and it's very expensive to deal with this, right? You You can hire sighted help, right, but that could be hundreds of dollars an hour, right? And

 

24:20

you know, like Dr Kirk mentioned, a lot of the blind, visually impaired people, they don't have

 

24:27

a job, right? They rely on disability aid, so typically, lower income, and like paying, you know, for somebody to help you all the time just isn't financially feasible, right? So that's why we think AI could be a great solution, because it's obviously always on very patient with you, and the cost is just a small fraction right of that side of health.

 

24:51

So thus far, we've actually built e commerce platform that is very simple, very compatible with all the screen readers.

 

25:00

Search, but they're using people. How do people find?

 

25:04

Oh, yeah, if you go to no search, I N, N, O, S, E, A, R, C, H, dot, a, i, you can access the platform on any web browser, mobile phone, tablet, we're all there.

 

25:21

Yep, that's right,

 

25:23

yeah. So we launched June of 2024,

 

25:26

now we're operating in four countries, the United States, UK, Canada and Australia. It's a very simple, intuitive screen reader, friendly, fully accessible experience. You can browse billions of products on innosearch from over 500,000 retailers, anything from your Amazons, Walmarts, targets of the world you can find on innosearch You can find the best possible price at each retailer across the web. We guarantee free shipping and free return for all purchases. So yeah, it's truly a new experience. I think we've gotten lots of great feedback, so definitely encourage you to try. There's also an AI component that you can chat with. It can provide product details, give you review summaries, do the product research for you, and also we provide AI generated image descriptions. If you're trying to buy some fashion items and you're not sure what they look like because the alt text isn't properly generated. Our AI can do it for you on the fly.

 

26:32

In the upcoming future, we're having flight and hotel booking. The flight is actually live already, so give it a try, and in the near future, we plan to release a fully voice operated commands. So whether or not you are,

 

26:49

you know, proficient or not, at your screen reader, right, you can just talk to innosearch, and innosearch can reply back with you know, different actions and also answer any product questions that you might have. So it's been really exciting. The last few months have been we've been seeing explosive growth. Sales are on track to double this month from prior month, I think we're getting to about

 

27:14

180,000

 

27:16

recurring revenue, and the users has

 

27:21

also been growing really significantly. I think we're over 1100

 

27:26

paid users now. So yeah, it's been very exciting. People keep coming back. They make multiple purchases. And last few days ago, we actually had a trivia night where we invited all our

 

27:40

search customers, I must say, whoever, whoever put those trivia questions together. The Science category was tough.

 

27:52

Yeah, that was by design as trying to stump some people. We had some easy ones as well. Oh, you stumped me.

 

28:01

I me, so how you said 1100 users to is there a cost to use in a search?

 

28:09

No, so no search, there's no cost. You can just create an account and start shopping. We don't charge subscription. And yeah, we it's there's no cost to the user. No, there's no cost to the user. It's completely free to use, create an account and place an order. So when you're saying paying users, that means 1100 people have used the site to purchase something. Yeah, that's right, from somebody somewhere. Okay, yeah, good. Well, I'm really curious about you and Brian. I know he's he's not available to be with us today, but

 

28:43

he's a very humble person. And I didn't realize until I mentioned it the other day that he has a PhD in AI. And how did you two connected? Yeah, we met some by some mutual friends. So my previous co founder and I actually

 

29:03

were in the same friends group, and so through some introductions, we just met each other. And he also plays badminton. I play badminton as well. So yeah, I mean, we just sort of hit it off and realize that we have some chemistry when working on different business ideas together, and he his background actually is in big tech. So he's worked at Google, meta and Walmart for many years, and search and AI, and so he sort of wanted a startup experience, right? He craves, sort of being able to move quickly. I think that's the big difference, right? When working with, you know, 10s of 1000s of people at a major Fortune, 500 company. The decision making is slow, right? And so he always wanted to see what it was like to work at a startup. And so, yeah, that's why we decided to team up together. I think there's a good mix more of like your.

 

30:00

A startup guy the law startups, and he is more of a big company

 

30:06

expertise, right? So he so, yeah, they would find a good, good chemistry when working together, yeah, well, the the AI part of inno search, AI is legit, for sure. Though, every time I talk to Brian, I just get a great, greater and greater sense of his, the depth of his knowledge and expertise with artificial intelligence. It's very impressive. So as far as now, you're not a blind person, you're not you're not a native user

 

30:37

of assistive technologies, but you are jumping in with both feet on the blindness community. You mentioned talking to lots and lots of people and organizations as you formed in a search, as far as you as far as you understand what's different,

 

30:56

what's what? How is the experience different for people using in a search.ai from what we're typically exposed to when we

 

31:06

try to operate in the E commerce environment.

 

31:09

Yeah. So the analogy I like to use is, when using a site like Amazon, it's very complicated and it has a lot of details, right, similar to like a college textbook. When you flip through a college textbook, there's a lot of words, a lot of descriptions, right? A lot of detail,

 

31:30

but oftentimes to make your decision, or when browsing through items, especially if you're blind, you can't have your screen reader go through every single item, right? It's cumbersome, and, as a lot of users have reported, takes a lot of time. So our innovation is we use AI and all this other technology, scraping technology, to extract the core meaning

 

31:56

from Amazon or Best Buy whatever, and we give you an experience this a lot more simple to the point. And we also have an AI AI chat bot that has already been trained, and all that information from your Amazon or Best Buy whatever, and that can answer exactly what you need, so you don't have to go through, you know, all that complex college textbook work, right? You can just simplify it to something like a children's book, so you can learn quickly. And of course, if you need more information, you can dig deeper into that using the AI, right, and then make your product choice. I think that's the big value add

 

32:36

for in research as it compared to other e commerce sites.

 

32:41

Well, you had mentioned e commerce is up and running. You have 1100

 

32:47

blind people who've used it so far. You've just added

 

32:53

booking airline flights. I think we were on the phone together where you said we had our first person book a flight. So that's very recent, and then hotels come next, and I know you are seeking investors, and you're giving

 

33:09

people opportunity to become shareholders in the company. So could you talk a little bit about the amount of funding you're seeking and what the use of funds will be. How will you use and leverage participation by investors of taking in a search to where you think it could go?

 

33:33

Yeah, sure. So we're seeking to raise 500,000

 

33:37

from value added angels

 

33:42

and primarily the use of funds would be spent on marketing. It's expensive to go to a lot of conferences and get the word out, also hiring engineers to make the product more robust, more testing, and finally, customer support. We have a lot of emails that come through. A lot of folks ask us for, you know, various debugging issues or whatever. So making sure we have funding to cover all of those

 

34:11

would be important,

 

34:13

but we're not dependent on that funding like right now. Brian and I, we've had prior successes, so we're okay continuing to fund the business, as long as it continues to grow. So I see the external money as a way to accelerate what we're already doing. But as is the current trajectory, you know, we I think we can break even within six to 12 months, right? As long as we keep growing, doubling our user account, getting the word out there, I think we'll be still very healthy, even without outside funding. Okay, so So you you'd happily talk to anyone interested in investing, but also for anyone listening who is blind and visually or visually impaired and uses assistive technology, screen reading software and.

 

35:00

Voiceover talk back on a smartphone, or if you have a family member or friend or a classmate,

 

35:08

encourage them to try, you know, search.ai

 

35:11

I went to the site. I saw deals.

 

35:18

I saw coupons. I saw, like Patrick mentioned, a very straightforward, easy to use platform that was really unlike anything else I encountered

 

35:34

going to e commerce sites. So kudos to you, Patrick and Brian,

 

35:42

if people want to get in touch with you to learn more,

 

35:47

we we've given the web. We know it's in a search.ai.

 

35:51

But if, if people would like to set up time to to really dig, dig deep with you. Or Brian, what's the best way for people to get in touch? Yeah. So we, I think I would encourage you just to try the platform first, right? Just going on innosearch.ai.

 

36:08

You know, it's E commerce site. You can buy anything from, you know, a new flat screen TV to a computer to even groceries. So, yeah, I encourage you to give it a try. But if you'd want to connect and speak with us personally. We're definitely love to hear your feedback, get your thoughts. We've actually connected with, I think, close to 100 of our users already just setting up time, one on ones, 30 minutes to chat and for your feedback, we're happy to give you some gift cards on inno search as well. But you can contact us through the contact form on the site, or you can just email info, I n, f, O at no search.ai, and it goes straight to both of our inboxes. So we're happy to chat with you there. Great in a info at inno search, which is I N, N, O, S, E, A, R, C, H, dot, a, i, Yep, that's right. And for me, I have a website, www.dr,

 

37:09

Kirk adams.com,

 

37:12

that is my good way to contact me, for those of you interested in talking about employing people with disabilities.

 

37:23

Innovative impact. Dot consulting is the site where I do that type of work. I'm also on LinkedIn, as is Patrick.

 

37:36

Final thoughts,

 

37:39

yeah. I mean, we're definitely open to collaborating with any and all people. I found the blind, visually impaired community super

 

37:51

welcoming. We've met dr Kirk. He's been, again, such a great help. Super nice, super accommodating. We've also worked with folks like Sam sevi from the blind life, or Carrie Morales from Carrie on accessibility, Steven Scott from double tap, Brian Clark from first aid for the blind, just tons of folks that have just been so welcoming and so

 

38:17

excited for what we're building and also giving us lots of great feedback. So for anybody that really likes what they've seen, or, you know, likes the direction we're headed, we would love to have a conversation and try to find a way how we might be able to help one another, because I think there's a really big need here, right? And, yeah, this is a great opportunity for us all, and I want to, I want to thank you and congratulate you for being so proactive and gathering data from people who are blind and visually impaired, talking to people who are blind and visually impaired, about the needs, about the barriers, about the issues people face of getting that that

 

39:03

lived experience of disability into the mix from the beginning.

 

39:07

Again, as I mentioned before, I've been contacted

 

39:12

quite a bit by people who had thoughts about innovations that could support people with disabilities, people who are blind, and sometimes they had not talked to any blind people. They had an idea.

 

39:25

They thought it could be helpful.

 

39:28

They didn't take the time or make the effort that you and you and Brian are have made it are continuing to make, to really understand what the lived experience is and how your solution in a in a search shot AI can really do the best job for supporting people,

 

39:48

accelerating our inclusion into this very important aspect of life in our society, which is

 

39:57

doing business online. So how.

 

40:00

Pass off to you and Brian for your approach,

 

40:03

yeah, and we will continue to do that. And Brian and I, we've had a lot of experience building product, and we know, you know, as innovators, as entrepreneurs, if you build something you know in your basement, and just speak out every once in a while, hoping that your users will like it. That's, yeah, that's not gonna work, right? I can't, I can't just sit there and use my imagination, right? Especially the fact that I'm not buying visually impaired myself. It's gonna be really difficult and possible, right? So that's definitely in our DNA, and we will continue to outreach and talk with you guys, wonderful. Well, thank you, Patrick, for being here. Thanks for making it work, even though your internet is disrupted by the wild storms here on the West Coast of the United States. And everybody go to innosearch.ai. And check it out. And December, there will be no monthly live stream webinar. I am going to take some time away to refresh and rejuvenate. And of course, we have our your end of December holidays, so we'll see you the last Thursday in January for the next episode of supercharge. Your bottom line through Disability Inclusion. Again, it's Dr Kirk Adams, thanks everybody for watching and listening. Take good care. Thank you, Patrick.

 

41:35

Thanks so much. Thanks, Dr Kirk.

 

41:38

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41:50

Kirk adams.com together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time. Keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact.