Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams

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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

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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.

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

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]

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.

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, talking to you from my home office in sunny Seattle, Washington. And welcome to my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through disability inclusion. And as you know, every month I have a wonderful guest host. This month, it is Jeremy grand staff, you'll hear more, a lot more from Jeremy in a bit, but Jeremy, could you please say hello?

01:07

Well, hello, Dr Kirk, it's such an honor to be with you and and to be part of your space. I just appreciate such a great opportunity to collaborate with you on many levels, but this is definitely one of the highlights of my week. So thank you for having me on great and I'm going to, I'm going to give you a little bit of background about me, in case you don't know me yet, and I'll keep it brief, I promise. And then we'll, we'll talk to Jeremy at some length

01:39

about disability inclusion, employment of people who are blind, the importance of accessibility, and his very interesting life story as well. And then we'll let you know how you can get in touch with me, how you can get in touch with Jeremy, and we'll open it up for any questions, comments, any of you may have who are joined with us here live today. You're watching the recording. We'll let you know how to get in touch with us. So again, I'm Dr KURT ADAMS. I am a blind person. Have been since age five, when my retins Both detached. I was in kindergarten and I went to a school for blind children, State of Oregon, Oregon State School for the Blind. First, second, third grade had a wonderful teacher named Mrs. Summers who taught me how to read Braille, which opened up my world and write Braille. Then I had a great O and M instructor, Mr. Pearson, who taught me how to travel confidently and independently with a long white cane. Wasn't it wasn't very long when I was six years old, but I was, I was using a cane and then learned how to type on a typewriter. Today, it would be called keyboarding, but the model then

02:57

blind kids and deaf kids went to state residential schools primarily and learn the skills of disability to the point where we could then go to public school in our hometown, our neighborhood. So I started that in fourth grade, went all the way on through school, lived in small towns here in the Pacific Northwest, was always the only blind student in all of my classes after I left the school for the blind so through through elementary, middle school, high school, college masters, PhD, always the only blind person. So I've had that experience. Also had the experience of graduating from college with great academic credentials, phi, beta, kappa, cum laude, four point by econ degree, then running into those barriers to employment that so many of us significant disabilities face. I've had that experience also through many twists, through many twists and turns.

04:01

Became the president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, the social enterprise employing about 250 people who are blind and deaf blind, and a variety of businesses, including aerospace manufacturing, making parts for all the Boeing aircraft later was privileged to step into that same president and CE role at the American Foundation for the Blind, which is the most iconic organization in the blindness field. Helen Keller was the brand ambassador there for 45 years. And when I moved from Seattle to New York, and we're in those offices at AFB, I could walk down the hall and sit at Helen Keller's desk, play with her typewriter if I ever needed a shot of inspiration. So I've, I've had the opportunity to be a frustrated person with a disability seeking employment, an opportunity.

05:00

To be a successfully employed person with a disability in corporate America. I was in banking and finance for 10 years, and then an opportunity to be the employer of

05:12

hundreds of people who are blind and deaf blind. And so I have, I have good 360 degree views of employment for people who are blind, and I formalized that experience by pursuing and earning a PhD in leadership and change through Antioch University. And my scholarly focus was on employment of people who are blind. My dissertation is called journeys through rough country, an ethnographic study of blind adults successfully employed in American corporations. And no, I just, I just had it brailled and hard copy Braille. I've had the electronic file since 2019 when I completed but I just started rereading it, and it's pretty good. I'm pretty I'm pretty happy with the first 25 pages I've read this week.

06:10

I set up a consulting practice a little over two years ago when I made the change from leading the American Foundation for the Blind, relocated from the Washington, DC area back to Seattle, very much driven by my

06:27

commitment to family. My wife and I are joyous grandparents. We have a 232,

06:34

month old grandson, eight month old granddaughter. They live a mile away from us here in Seattle. So quite, quite a lifestyle change happened a couple of years ago, I set up a consulting practice, primarily to work with companies who are interested in winning the fierce competition for talent by expanding their thinking around diversity, equity and inclusion, to embrace intentional employment of people with disabilities, in particular people who are blind, and having those conversations about the fact that only 35% of us significant disabilities are in the workforce, there are many people who are eager to work, looking for those opportunities, have pursued education and training and may not have had the chance to get that foot on the career ladder, and we talk about how people develop talent and skills, and that we develop mastery through overcoming challenges and the lived experience of disability gives us ample opportunity to face and overcome challenges on a very regular basis, which leads to development of resilience and perseverance, creative problem solving,

07:57

the ability to analyze and manage risk, the ability to put together diverse teams and work with teams as we're all interdependent on one another, and good communication skills, I think, which are necessary we are to not only survive, but thrive as people with disabilities And in these environments that were not surprisingly, created primarily to fit people without disabilities, and as we strive to create a good person, a fit between ourselves and the environment, the creativity that goes along with that.

08:35

So I've been working directly with companies. I will note one partnership with a cyber security company called Nova coast, we've developed a fabulous program to launch blind people into cyber security careers.

08:51

You can find that it's called the apex program. You can find that at WWW dot the apex program.com

09:00

and it's a 10 week virtual training that leads to certification network plus and security plus certifications, and then opportunities to interview with employers who are desperately seeking qualified, certified

09:16

Cyber Security employees. As on any given day, there are 755,000

09:22

open cybersecurity jobs in our country, and we're set up with vocational rehabilitation in 20 states now. So if anyone listening is interested in cybersecurity careers,

09:37

please visit www dot the apex program.com,

09:41

another aspect of my consulting business which is really interesting is working with startup companies that are seeking to be very innovative and using technology in order to create a more inclusive world for people with disabilities. When I was a.

10:00

Uh, in the President's CEO role at the American Foundation for the Blind, I was quite regularly contacted by companies who thought they had a great idea of some sort of technological innovation that would be helpful to people who are blind. Sometimes these were well intended people who were seeking to solve a problem that really didn't really exist. Sometimes they were seeking to solve a problem for which there was already a solution, and sometimes they had a pretty cool, new, innovative idea. And inevitably, they were all seeking funding and wanting to know if AFD could provide startup funding. And I was

10:46

easy, easily, quickly able to say, No, we don't do that.

10:52

But as I shifted into an entrepreneurial space myself, with my company, which is called innovative impact LLC, I continued to be contacted by by innovative people wanting to do good in the world

11:12

through scaling their companies, and I have found myself now an advisor To and a shareholder in four different companies, one of which is called curb cut OS. And curb cut OS is one of several intersections between myself and Mr. Grand staff Jeremy, who's who's on the call. So

11:42

a mirror, a tangled web we weave sometimes. So I met Jeremy at an NFB conference. He had his own management consulting business at that time, and I was fairly new at the American Foundation for the Blind. I was working to restructure things, streamline, get focused, moving to a systems change model

12:09

focusing on public policy and research to influence decision makers, rather than direct service to people who are blind their families and professionals in the field. So quite, quite a cultural transformational shift I was working with the board and staff to manage

12:27

and Jeremy had such excellent expertise and experience in working with leadership teams that I engaged Jeremy specifically to work with my senior leadership team to structure how we would meet, how we would engage with one another,

12:47

the cadence of meetings, the content, the structures. And he was so super helpful to me and helping move things forward. And I'm proud of what was accomplished during my six years at AFB, and it is indeed a systems change organization focusing on research and public policy to make big things happen

13:11

in the lives of people who are blind. Jeremy, thank you for the part you played in making that that shift

13:21

while I was at AFB, also, one of the things I did was to take a very small consulting activity and work to create a sustainable revenue generating social enterprise around technology consulting. We were small group, we needed to find partners in order to take on large projects, and one of those partners was a company called nebula Media Group, which has been rebranded it is now curb cut OS.

13:58

When I left AFB and started consulting. I reconnected with what is now curb cut. Os they built my website, innovative impact. Dot consulting,

14:13

they laid a vision out to me, which is very exciting around their approach to digital accessibility, which we'll talk about more here in a few minutes,

14:26

their philosophy,

14:29

their vision, to really make changes in the landscape of digital accessibility. And asked if I would like to pitch in, which I happily agreed to do so. I am a strategic advisor to curb cut OS. I am a small shareholder, which is fun.

14:48

And

14:52

as I, as I say, as I reinvigorated my network, I also reached out to Jeremy say, hey.

15:00

Know, you've been in the consulting space. You've been successful at it. I'm starting it. I wanted to reach out and reconnect with Jeremy.

15:09

I introduced him to curb cut OS, and they

15:14

very, very wisely, also engaged Jeremy in a formal way. He's part of the curb cut OS team, so we're back working together again, which is great, and I really want to

15:29

give space here for Jeremy to talk not only about curb cut and his role there, his vision for the organization, but also his own experience. Jeremy is really uniquely positioned as a leader

15:46

in the blindness field, disability inclusion field, I'm I'm keenly interested in leadership as one of the

15:54

the engines for driving significant change, and as most of you probably know the outcomes for people with disabilities are

16:05

are very deplorable. As far as I mentioned, 35% of us are working as opposed to 70% of the general population. Our home ownership was about a 10th of the general population. Million blind people living in poverty in the country, so we need changes and doing more of the same as not getting as where we need to go. So I'm very interested in disruption and innovation and leadership for change, and I'm also very interested in people with the lived experience of disability being in leadership roles where disability inclusion is concerned. And Jeremy has a

16:49

really unique breadth and depth of experience, and now in the position he's he's out with, with curb cut OS, he is in a position to exert that leadership influence and really make some great things happen. So Jeremy, I'm going to turn the floor over to you and listen attentively as you talk, and I may jot down a few questions that I can come back to later. But so glad you're here. Thanks so much. So glad we reconnected and that we're back back in the boat, rowing the same direction.

17:24

Well, Kirk, it's because of this event that I actually have my job today, because that was the first time that I met my boss, Mark pound, and so

17:37

it was extremely humbling

17:41

listening to your introduction.

17:47

I don't know that I actually knew that I made that big of a difference back in our first encounters. And I think I kind of assumed that that you know you were happy, right? But I knew you were happy, but that was absolutely just very humbling, and so thank you so much for that.

18:10

So as Kirk said, my name is Jeremy Grandstaff. I live outside of DC, Washington, DC and Burke, Virginia, with my seeing eye dog, Ozzie, and my partner, Jerry, I have

18:25

an interesting

18:27

I think sometimes we're always so close to our life story Kirk that we just don't actually start to look at it or think about it.

18:38

But I grew up in a small town in mid west in the Midwest, in Ohio called Marengo, Ohio. I think there were maybe 300 people in my town,

18:52

and

18:53

I don't think about that time of my life a lot. My sister has recently launched a website called My brothers are blind, the letter R blind.com

19:04

where she's kind of on her own journey as a sighted sibling of three blind brothers. And one of the things that she did recently, Kirk was interview all three of us, and it kind of created this reflection of where did we start, and how did we end up where we all are today?

19:27

So some key pieces that I tend to highlight

19:32

at the age of five. So again, I had been blind since birth. I have levers congenital and morosses, and and so I would actually say, probably for the first I believe it was year of my life, my parents weren't really sure what was going on, right? This is 1976

19:51

they had someone out to the house from

19:55

what is now BVI, or Department of digital.

20:00

For the visually impaired. I don't know what it was called back then, but a lady came out to the house, and the way the story is told to me, I was two years old, and

20:12

my parents were told that I would be better off being placed in an institution, and that that was going to be my life. And

20:22

as I said, the way the story was told to me, my dad will just say politely, though I'm not sure it was that politely told them that they might as well get the heck off of his property, because that was not going to be the life that his kid had. And so I have to actually give pay homage to my parents, right? Because they really took this approach that they were going to do whatever it took for me to be quote, unquote normal. And obviously we don't. I don't like using that phrase today, but that's how they looked at it, right? They just wanted me to be able to have the same life that everybody would have if they could see.

21:05

So at the age of five, I was riding my bicycle around our farm and riding up and down the gravel road and scraping my fingers on mailboxes, as I would, you know, take them out on my way by at the

21:19

I know, right

21:22

at the age of seven, I used to run barrels, which is a horse racing activity, and my dad and I developed

21:34

the situation where there were three barrels, and on the top of each barrel would be a can, And in the can was a beeper, and the beepers had different frequencies, and that's how I would know where they were, and so I would run the barrels. At the age of 10, I came up from ossb, Ohio State School for the Blind, where I also, by the way, Kirk, got a very good foundation in Braille and those type of things remind me one day, Kirk, to tell you about the the note that I typed that was supposed to be my teacher telling the librarian I could do something, but I typed it and signed it, Mrs. Perano, like that would be how a teacher would write a note to the librarian. Thought I would get away with that. But at the age of 10, I came up to public school, and at this point, we're talking 1970 I'm sorry, 1986 87 and

22:31

one of the distinct memories that I have in that whole process was sitting in a room with all these teachers and my parents, I later found out it was my IEP, and I am telling them how they are going to accommodate me as a student. Now mind you, at that particular time, my school system was extremely small, so there was no process in place for somebody. I think they called it back then mainstreaming right up into public school, and so the teachers had no idea what to do, and my job was to really take a step back and look at how could What did I need, and how could I ask for the things that I need. And so I distinctly remember

23:22

in that meeting, the teacher asking my parents about something that I would need, and my mom looked at me and said, I don't know why you're asking me. I'm not the one who needs it. Why don't you ask him? And so from a very early age, my parents taught me that my job was to advocate for myself. They also taught me, and my dad hates when I talk about it this way, but there was a role in my house. If you were going to fail, it better be the most spectacular failure you've ever had. Now I'd say it joking like that, but really, what my dad meant was, if it doesn't work and you fail, whatever failure may be, you better be able to look him in the eye. And yes, as a blind person, I was expected to still look my parents in the eye when they were talking to me, or at least look in their direction, right? But my dad would say, you better be able to look me in the eye and tell me that you did everything you could in order to prevent that from being a failure. There was not an acceptable response in my house of I can't do that because I'm blind. That just was not acceptable, and that's at the foundation for most of my life now it also created a little bit of a perfectionist in me, but that's a whole different that's a whole different ball game. Kirk,

24:48

so you know the to complete this tour, if you will, through my life story. I went to college in Bowling Green, I got my my bachelor's degree, and.

25:00

Management Information Systems and international business. My first job, right out of school was working for IBM Global Services. I was promoted to management in about a year of starting my job. So I had 50 people that reported to me, and I was 23 or 24 years old. It was empowering, scary,

25:26

and never once did I ever

25:31

have conversations

25:35

with my boss that were, I can't see, I can't do that, right? It was always, I remember we used to use something. I don't remember exactly what it was called in IBM, but was a archaic mainframe system, one of the most inaccessible things I've ever seen, and I didn't want to cause a problem for IBM, so I just figured out how to work around it. And that's kind of always been my philosophy. I worked at IBM, I ran my own business as a management consultant for 20 years. By the way, when you're running your own business, it's really easy to decide, I'm the owner of the company, so therefore we're only going to use things that are accessible, right? But I remember my business partner coming to me and being like, let's start using Google Docs, because he loved it, and we could collaborate on it. And at first, that was extremely scary to me. But you know what? I figured out how to use it. I put myself in a position where it was my job to figure out how to work with the tools that I had.

26:40

I did work for a management consulting company for a little bit.

26:46

One of the things that I actually think about when I think about that experience,

26:54

there was a software that we used. I'm not going to mention the name, because I don't want to embarrass the company,

27:01

but Kirk, I have to tell you, in the three years that I worked for the consulting company I worked for

27:07

all three years I spent fighting a battle with this vendor, because my job depended on me doing that job using their software that wasn't accessible at all. And I remember one time getting to the point where I had absolutely just I was in a showstop situation,

27:32

and I emailed the vendor who I'd been trying to get a meeting with, and I was like, I said, if you don't give me a meeting with you, my next step is to either call a lawyer or publicly embarrass you on Facebook and LinkedIn. And I actually got scolded by the director of HR because I talked to a vendor that way,

27:52

and then I was told, you better figure out how to use it, or I can find somebody else to do the job. Now we can get into the legalities of that, because I'm sure that there are some. But when you are working for a company, you had actually mentioned this in your opening Kirk, when you're working for a company and you need the job, you don't have the luxury of saying, well, I'll just sue you,

28:18

right? And I needed my family needed to eat. We needed to have money coming in and money on the table. So

28:27

I figured out how to work with it, and I'm going to tell you how I got that vendor to meet with me. Is I did a zoom call with myself. I shared my jaws and I shared the screen, and I showed them exactly what was happening for me.

28:47

And then I said, Please don't make me post this publicly. And I had that meeting in about 10 seconds. I'm not kidding. It was the quickest. Well, okay, we'll say 10 minutes, but

28:59

and so I understand what it's like. I well, I'll complete that part of my life by also saying,

29:08

after working for that company for three years, I was also told that I wasn't able to get a promotion. And the big driver in that

29:19

was that, as a blind person, they did not feel I would ever be able to do the job that a sighted person could do.

29:28

And I will own for you and all the people listening to your amazing live stream that I know in my life, I've been discriminated against in many, ways, but never before did someone actually make it so blunt

29:48

and on video, and it just rocked me,

29:54

and it it rocked my world

29:58

and and I don't even know that.

30:00

I've ever told you this story, Kirk, but I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, thinking to myself, how could I have given three years to this company? What was I thinking?

30:14

And I instead of getting down on myself and letting that defeat me,

30:21

I walked into my office, the same one I'm sitting in now,

30:26

and I wrote down on a piece of paper. Mind you, by the way, I couldn't read what I wrote, right, but I took a pen and paper and I wrote down, Today is April 1, on June 3, June 18, which happened to me, my birthday. I will no longer work for people who do not value me and the expertise and the wisdom that I can bring their company.

30:47

And Kirk, I sat down and I found 10 events, one of which was your event. And I said, wow, these events looked interesting. I think I can learn something by going to these. And it is because I came to your event that three months later, on June 17, one day before my birthday, I started working for curb cut OS and, well, there you go,

31:17

monthly live stream. That's right. And I think it's also, you know, it kind of comes back to this, like

31:27

I talk about it as confidence or advocating for yourself, but really what it comes down to is this, I had a choice to make that day. I could feel bad for myself. I could feel bad that I was discriminated against so blatant, I could feel bad for them, and the way that to this day, I'm still not sure, though maybe they do know now that it was not the right thing to do, but instead, I chose to say, No way. This is not going to stop me, and this is where I'm going to go, and I have something to bring to the world. And I think as people with disabilities, it's really critical to learn

32:12

that part of your job is to educate. And that's just how it is. We can be upset at that, about that, but truthfully, if someone is going to let us, and yes, let's use the word intentionally, let us educate them,

32:30

then that also means that they're open to learning. And if someone's open to learning

32:39

and you teach them, then they just become your partner advocate. But if you're not advocating for yourself, you can't expect them to advocate for you as well, right? So,

32:55

so curb cut and stop me anytime but curb cut OS, we're digital accessibility company. We are doing for

33:09

the digital accessibility field and digital accessibility world for our clients, what the curb cut effect did for physical

33:21

accessibility. And that is something that I, you know, I like to tell people. For the first time in my life, me being a blind person,

33:31

it actually opens doors to that conversation. You know, one of the things that I've heard you and other people talk about before is there's over 1.6 billion people in the world who have a disability. They leave 12 point some trillion dollars a year in shopping carts that are unaccessible because they cannot buy from them. Now that's an astronomical number, but let me make it real for everybody who's listening. As a blind person, I have been buying things online for over 30 years, and the last time I did the math, I have left $260,000

34:15

of my money sitting in a shopping cart somewhere because I couldn't complete the buying process, and instead, I would take my business elsewhere. So when it comes right down to it, disability, inclusion, yep, it's about doing the right thing. Yep, it's about creating opportunities for everybody, no matter if they have a seen or an unseen disability. But when you get right down to it as a company, it's about not losing business to other companies. It's about being able to capture more market share, because people with disabilities, whether they can be seen or unseen, are now able to buy from you. And that is what I love about what we do, we do auditing, we do remediation, we do.

35:00

Systems maturity modeling, we do document remediation, we've got SaaS solutions called the accessible UX platform. We've just launched our partnership. My understanding is a Kirk that you played an extremely amazing role in that with Ipsos, marketing, leading marketing research firm, and we offer something called a three way accessible UX audit, but very bluntly, it's an automated audit, a manual audit,

35:38

and then also a user flow audit,

35:42

or an audit of user experience. And when I talk about this, what I love to say to people is this,

35:50

if you're going to look at the user experience that someone has when they come to your website or they use your application, and you don't first check as well to see if there's an accessibility problem for people to be able to access it, then the user experience is never going to be quite as great as you want it to be, right? And so that's a little bit about me.

36:16

A couple questions. Oh, sure, absolutely yes. Go ahead,

36:22

first, not a question, but just comment. So the curb cut effect, for those who don't know the curb cut is the ramp that leads from the sidewalk into the street. Those weren't really around till the mid 70s, when our brothers and sisters who are wheelchair users demanded that the regulations requiring them be enforced, and they occupied the Federal Health,

36:50

Education and Welfare building in San Francisco for almost a month. They did

36:56

nonviolent protests in Washington, DC, and there's a great documentary called crip camp that talks about that, the Netflix documentary that you can find, I highly, highly recommend it.

37:10

So I'm quite you mentioned your sister

37:13

with three blind brothers. Bless her,

37:18

where were you in the birth order? I'm just curious, were you the trail blazer for your other two blind brothers? Out of that work? That's a great question. I want to take a step back for 10 seconds before that though Kirk, because I love the curb cut effect, I absolutely do, and I'm going to own for you, my friend. I did not know what exactly that was until you actually explained that before. And what a moving picture. And what I love about this and building the point being now that recent research study half a percent of the use of Curb cuts is by people in wheelchairs now, so it's

38:02

that cyclist skateboarders, parents with strollers, people grocery carts, people with roller bags. Everyone uses them

38:13

well. And so before I answer your question on the birth order, one of the things that I also like to highlight right is three years ago, during the pandemic, me and my husband Jerry started watching the Netflix Netflix series The Crown amazing. And we got through two or three episodes, and Jerry looks at me, and he goes, I can't watch this anymore with you. I was like, why? And he's like, Honey, it is too much information on the screen. There's too much happening in the background. I've got to tell you, too much. It's exhausting me. I can't keep up with this. And I have to tell you, Kirk, I came late to the audio description thing. It just I had thought not to be seen as a blind person, so I didn't want somebody telling me what was on screen. I'll figure it out right. Very stubborn attitude.

39:08

And I remember Jerry saying to me, why don't we just turn on the audio description? And I'm like, Okay, fine. We'll do it just for this one show. Because I was hooked on the ground. I wanted to watch it right,

39:18

you should know. And just so Kirk gets the visual on this. For anybody who's saying I'm picking up my phone and I'm acting like I'm scrolling through my phone. My house now has audio description on on every TV. And it is not just so Jeremy knows what's happening on the screen. It is so that my loving partner jerry can look down at his phone and scroll through his reels while we're watching TV and not have to, you know, be able to be told what's on the screen and not have to watch it. So, as you're saying, we designed audio description for people that are blind. The added benefit is now sighted people don't have to constantly look at their screen.

40:00

Right, right, and I'll yeah, and I'll throw it closed captioning was created by the deaf, deafness community. It was in the

40:08

communications and visual Accessibility Act of 2010 the CVAA, that certain amount of programming was required to have closed captioning. Now over 50% of the use of closed captioning is by hearing people, because they can track the dialog just what you're saying a noisy Sports Bar, they can read what the announcers are saying or

40:32

doing household chores, glance up, catch the dialog if they missed something. So that's another curb cut

40:40

example. And yeah, the big one in 1948

40:45

Robert Irwin, who is blind. He was the president of the American Foundation for the Blind. At that time, was interviewed in the New York Times about talking books, which were created by AFD and Helen Keller and Eleanor Roosevelt and the gang to record books for blind people on a records. And

41:05

Robert Irwin said the use of talking books will be very limited, because there won't be a case in which a sighted person would ever want to listen to a book. So it's

41:18

interesting, right? Because then we have, I think when you say that, and I've heard you say that before, I always think of Jerry, who he doesn't read anything. He well, he obviously he reads stuff, but he doesn't read a book. He listens to it on Audible. That's what he does, right? I was the first born, so my parents, I one of the things that I want to encourage you to do and

41:42

I hope this is okay, Kirk, but definitely go check out my sister's blog and her journey. It is. She did an interview with all three of us brothers. She also interviewed my parents, and she let me and my little brother Corey, interview her on her journey. And it was actually, it's been really neat to watch her go through that journey. You know, she had to, like, learn not to post things that didn't have alt tags, if you're going to be talking about blindness, right? And, and, and that kind of alignment or congruence, as you and I have been trained to call it,

42:22

but Integris, you know, action.

42:26

But one of the things that I distinctly remember hearing my parents say, and I think the sister, my sister's journey, has really allowed us as a family to kind of take a step back right and look at it all. I was the first born. My parents didn't have any idea what to do, and the state told him to put me in an institution. So that was never going to fly for them. And so I remember my dad telling me at a very young age, you have to be smart. He's like, you're not you're not going to make it in athletics. You're not going to be able to do that and be, you know, a successful football star, baseball star, right? And he and that's what my dad knew, right? And so he said, even though he knew I was going to end up smarter than him, he needed me to be smart, because the only way I was going to be able to move away from Marengo, Ohio to a city that had a transportation system that I could be independent, which was going to make me know I was a productive member of society, was to be smart, and so I remember like being a kid in geometry and my dad, every day, would sit down and draw out the shapes and the pictures in my book, because we couldn't get a book in braille, and he would draw them out, and he would teach them to me. And you know, then I also remember the you think you're smart conversations, right, which are always fun too.

44:04

There's a couple things that I wanted to quickly touch on, very quickly before I stop talking, just as starting points. I think especially since you are very focused on disability inclusion and employment,

44:21

you know, again, helping people feel comfortable. Sometimes we use that word I like to use, you know, giving people the right to educate me as a recruiter on what they need. It was really simple, and I implemented this when I was a recruiter for my previous job. Um,

44:42

every time I'd call to schedule an interview with someone, or every time that someone would go to schedule an interview, I would ask the question, is there anything that is going to help you be able to more fully participate throughout the interview process?

45:00

Process,

45:01

and what I distinctly remember is one conversation where I asked that question, and the person was on the phone with me, and they go, I don't even know what that would look like. I mean, I'm fine. I I, you know, I've got some ADHD, so maybe if you could send me interview questions in advance, so that I could actually know what I'm answering.

45:26

But had I not asked that question

45:30

integral,

45:32

I would have never opened the door for them to feel the comfort in saying. I don't even know what accommodations are, but this is me, and I also remember them saying, you know, no one's ever asked me that before. That makes me know that your company really cares about its employees. So we had the perception thing that would come out of that, and that's definitely part of it. Go ahead, I have two more questions for I want to ask one, and then we'll pause and let people know how they can get in touch with each of us.

46:12

And then I'll ask the other so the first one,

46:16

what you described

46:19

about working around and being at IBM and accessible mainframe and trying to figure, needing to figure it out

46:26

tools that weren't accessible and you figured it out.

46:30

You know, that's

46:33

resonates with me around having strong internal locus of control, which means you believe in your bones, you can figure stuff out, you can make, make your way. You can get it done.

46:45

When I did my dissertation work and interviewed blind adults successfully employed in large companies, they all shared that. And I think I have that. I think I got it

46:58

from my family and also the School for the Blind, where I was with other 120 other blind kids, and they had us backpacking the Three Sisters wilderness area and horse camping and

47:10

making igloos up on Mount Hood and in the tide pools on the Oregon coast, searching for sea creatures and, you know, things so and you know You were riding your bike on the ground road. I was climbing trees and building tree forts and

47:26

floating, floating down the creek on a log and doing all this stuff I would never let my kids do because it was crazily unsafe. But

47:35

anyway,

47:38

you and I were both blind as very young children, and there was no question, does this kid need to learn braille? Does this kid need to learn how to use a cane? Does this kid need these skills? But were the exceptions only something 10, 15% of us are totally blind. A lot of kids have some usable vision. There's a lot of question around whether or not they need blindness skills. Do they need Braille? Can they use magnification now? Can they just listen to it? People become blind later in life.

48:13

Not everyone had parents like ours. Dad set you up with barrels, with beepers.

48:20

My parents quit their jobs so they could move to another state so I could go to a better school for blind kids. So for those people who didn't have those gifts given to them, of those experiences that establish that strong internal locus of control, as far as building confidence, kind of building that resilience muscle. Any thoughts for for people who are listening, who are either blind, newly experiencing, progressive vision loss, have someone in their family

48:57

who they feel could use a shot of confidence? Any any little steps you would recommend that people think about, gosh, that's such a loaded question, right? I mean, because, first of all, to your point,

49:12

I was an extremely privileged person,

49:16

right? I just have to own that.

49:21

And and before i di further into this Kirk, I have to tell you, I did something the other day that I never in a million years that I would do. I chose when I went to an immersion weekend for an organization that I'm with last week, and

49:39

I chose to leave my seeing eye dog at home. Now my cane skills are probably not as great as yours. I've had a seeing eye dog since I was 18, but one of the things that I've learned over the last eight to 10 years is that I needed to make sure that I didn't let my cane skills go just in case, right?

49:57

Kirk, I'm proud to tell you.

50:00

That I took 42nd street in New York City, from Eighth Street all the way over to Times Square, and I did it with my cane. And had you asked me six years ago if I would ever do that, I would have told you you were absolutely crazy. I know exactly that stretch of 42nd

50:21

street of independent travel. I came out of the Port Authority, and I was like, What in God's name was I thinking?

50:29

But

50:31

to your point,

50:34

and I have a friend of mine who's actually going through this very thing. So the first thing is, you gotta ask questions you're not there is no question. There's always the phrase, there's no question that's too stupid. I don't like that because that assumes that we would even regard ourselves as stupid. I like to say there's no question not worth exploring,

50:58

even if the answer is, I can't help you. Then say, Do you know someone who can right? My friend that is losing his sight? I love him. I love him with integrity. I love him with all of the heart and soul that I have. But one of the things that I am really struggling with him on is he has not fully lost his sight, but he's starting to lose his sight. And so he keeps putting off the conversation around, what is technology look for me look like when I lose my sight? What is Kane skills look like. And so one of the things that I've been trying to help him understand

51:47

is that if he starts to explore the tools that he can use 10 years from now today, it's going to be much easier for him to make that transition, because he will already be familiar with those tools. And so I think that's the first piece. The second piece is learn. Don't be afraid to learn. Look at different ways that you can do things. And there's an irony, by the way I would tell most of the sighted people that I know to do the same thing, because they will not always have their sight, or they will not always have their legs, or they may not always have their hearing, and so know what's available to you and explore it why you can and not have to be responding to the pressure of not being able to right.

52:48

Surround, yeah, surround yourself with

52:53

all different types of people. You know one thing,

52:59

I think, Kirk, you're going to smile when I do this. But one of the things that I heard someone talking about over the last week

53:09

is this interesting concept that happens when we say, Oh, they're blind. They're just like every other blind person that I know.

53:18

Blind people have just as much diversity, experience and diversity in capabilities as sighted people. And just as there are some sighted people that I love to death and that I would do anything for, I can also tell you that there are some sighted people who really need to embrace themselves and learn and grow and be that growth minded person that is going to transcend their own barriers, whatever those are, right? And I focused a lot on my answer of blind and sighted, but I also think about and and I'm going to own for you. Before I took the job with curb cut, this had never crossed my mind. I feel a little vulnerably dumb for saying that honestly. But

54:13

you think about the number of websites that you go to, and on the homepage, they've got this flashing thing going across a slideshow, and it just keeps flashing and flashing and flashing. If you've got an athletic epileptic disorder, I'm sorry I'm not good at saying that word seizure disorder, you see that and that's going to drive you right into a seizure. Never occurred to me that if your website has too much text, someone with a neuro diversity, um,

54:44

with someone that is neuro diverse will not be able to spend more than three minutes on your website, and you'll lose them. And if your job it let's, you know, take it away from like companies and, um.

55:00

You know, trying to sell to more people. If you're a government agency,

55:05

and I have a neuro diversity disorder, and I go to your website, and there are 17 paragraphs of things that I need to read. I'm sorry your agency cannot serve all the people that you're supposed to serve. And so Jeremy, I recently asked our daughter, Rachel, who's in her mid 30s, what does TLDR mean? You know what it means?

55:30

Too long to read and to God, too long didn't read? Yeah, my, my, so Jerry, who you know? Yeah, Jerry will litter. I'll be like, oh, did you read my post? He's like, Yeah, it was more than three sentences. I couldn't do it frustrates me, right? I'm like, but it was so good. He's like, Yeah, sorry, no, can't do it, right?

55:56

So, so we're this hour has flown by. I want to I do have one more question I want to squeeze in. But before I do, yeah, how can people get in touch with you?

56:08

So first of all, to find out more about what we're doing, you can go to curb cut os.com, that's C R, C U R, B, C, u t, O s.com,

56:18

I would actually recommend maybe putting a slash Ipsos partnership, all one word, IP, s, o, s partnership

56:27

on the end of that, because that's going to take you to the three way audit I was talking about. I'm on LinkedIn,

56:34

so you can always find me by going to linkedin.com/i.

56:38

N, slash, Jeremy Grandstaff, all one word, J, E, R, E, M, y, G, R, A, N, D, S, T, A, F, F. You can also email me at Jeremy G at curb cut, os com, and for those who may need to call or text, you can get a hold of me at the office via phone or text at 202-810-5368, 8105368,

57:04

my job in doing what I do for curb cut is to really look at, how are we building partnerships in order to best serve and engage Our clients, both from, you know, generating new clients, but also looking at creating shared experiences and ecosystem mergers that are going to take what we're doing to next level, and at the same time Kirk take what other companies are doing, and other partners that we have are doing to the next level as well. And so I am open to exploratory conversations at any time. Wonderful, and for me also LinkedIn there every day. Kirk Adams PhD, and I have a website for my consulting practice, innovative impact dot consulting. There's an inquiry form there. I'd love to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, about employment people with disabilities, and that's my that's my question before I open it up.

58:10

So just a quick

58:13

advice, one or two things people might think about if they are a blind or visually impaired person, either seeking employment and running into accessibility issues in the employment process, or in a workplace where they're running into accessibility issues with the productivity tools they're expected to use to do their jobs. I know you counter both of those things. Any, yeah, absolutely, any, any bits of it, of advice that people might consider absolutely there are so many different approaches to what do you do in the in the job market, right? How do you get another job? It's almost overwhelming. I remember when I was actually looking at, how do I get out of my other job? And wound up getting this one. I must have got 17 invite events, invites a day to events where it was telling me what to do

59:10

to get it to get a job and to improve my employment. Piece, I think I'll take the external piece first, right.

59:19

There are organizations. One comes to mind, Penny forward, for example, that as a whole course on how to

59:29

really look at your career, where you want to go, and how to get there. And I think that that's really important. But one of the things that they talk about is, how do you handle discrimination within the hiring process?

59:42

When does it matter? And when do you just see that discrimination as maybe this is not who I want to work for, right? And I think that you have to make a judgment call sometimes on how important is this issue to me for.

1:00:00

How important is it that,

1:00:03

and how certain Am I that I've been discriminated against, right? So let's say I get rejected, and I've went through four interviews and they say, unfortunately, we've decided to pursue a different candidate. It's very difficult for me to be able to say I was discriminated against when I went through four interviews and I got a general rejection, right? I may be able to make a case, but it's hard to make that case, and so it may not be worth my time. Now, in my particular case, I still worked for a company, and they literally said on video, we don't think you can ever do the same job that a blind person can. And I want you to know in full disclosure,

1:00:55

I walked away from that company, I set them up and did my job extremely well. When I say, I set them up, I set them up for success, and did my job extremely well,

1:01:07

and I walked away, and I chose not to pursue legal action. But for me in my life,

1:01:17

that gives me the upper hand, and I'm totally comfortable with that, because I know I did the right thing, and I will always know that, for me, there are going to be times when you're going to need to have a lawsuit. We know that as blind people, as

1:01:34

you know, people who are deaf or obviously what the people in wheelchairs did in order to get the curb cut, sometimes you've got to take those stands, but what you want to do is you want to be strategic, and more importantly, you also want to make sure that taking that stand is not just the right thing to do, to take the stand, but it's The right thing to do for you.

1:02:02

We also live in a different world. Kirk, I was thinking about this, right when I got my job with IBM.

1:02:09

God, I'm embarrassed to say 25 years ago,

1:02:15

that's a little interesting. But when I got my first job with IBM, I did a phone interview with Katie Johnson. I'll never forget her, by the way, Katie Johnson with alternative resources. And I called her up. I had heard this ad, you know, it said, Let alternative resources begin your career. And so I was a snotty little 20 year old, 22 year old. So I called up, and I was like, Hi, Katie. This is Jeremy grand staff, and I hear you're going to begin my career, right? And we start having a conversation. It's on the phone. The blindness never come up. It was never a discussion point. She never asked about it, because how would she know? It isn't like she could look me up on LinkedIn. This is, you know, back when there wasn't social media. She offered me an interview. So I had my parents at the time, because I, you know, was staying at their house. The interview was in Columbus, Ohio, so my parents dropped me off a block away from where her building was. Now, you may say, Well, you didn't know the area. How would you have found it well, the whole concept of me doing that

1:03:24

is I needed to put myself in a place where, while I was independently walking into that job interview. So when I walked in with my seeing eye dog and Katie came out to meet me, you could hear it right. She was like,

1:03:42

Oh, you're Jeremy and a god lover. She did so great. Kurt. She's like, Oh, Why'd she come on back? Let's talk, right? We're having this great conversation. And all of a sudden she, you could tell her, her, her lack of certainty kicked in. And she goes,

1:04:02

um, I have a question that I'm just not sure now, never mind I won't ask it. And I was like, you know, Katie, what you want to ask me is, how am I going to be able to use the ticketing system that you guys are using to log phone calls that I'm going to be answering, and what you really want to know is, is it going to be accessible for me, and am I going to be able to do the job? And I said, tell you what. Let's save that conversation for after you've made the decision that I'm the right person for the job. That way, you don't have to worry about me ever saying you discriminated against me, and I don't have to worry about you making a decision based on whether I can use a ticketing system or not. Why don't you decide whether I'm the right person for the job, and then we'll figure out the logistics after that. And what that actually showed her was,

1:04:58

this does.

1:05:00

Fire of mine,

1:05:02

that I wanted her to hire me, not because I was a blind person, but because I knew I would be able to make that work. And I think to your point,

1:05:16

there are always going to be times that we do have to go above and beyond, you know? And I there was one piece Kirk that I wanted to just quickly touch on, very quick,

1:05:28

the other piece that I want to encourage people to do, and especially like we've come a long way in 25 years, right? If you are having a struggle at work, whether it's accommodation, whether it's a mental health challenge, which is huge right now, whether it's anxiety, whether it's I'm not feeling well, whatever it is, please do justice to The person that you work for and help them, help you by telling them and and I know that I'm going to get a little pushback, I'm sure, from somebody for saying what I'm saying. But if someone uses that situation, someone that you work with uses that situation as a way to punish you or demean you or put you in a bad place. I assure you that their supervisor would like to know that they've done that. And I also assure you that if the company is going to let that happen, my friends, it is not a place that you want to be, and it is not a place that is worthy of you being there. Well, Jeremy, well, in a couple sometime next year, we'll do another we'll do an hour of our self disclosure to transform corporate culture. Oh, I love it. You just touched on it. So exciting. Very exciting. So anyone who's joined us live today have a question or a comment for either Jeremy or myself.

1:07:09

Hearing none I will say thank you, Mr. Grand staff, for your insights and your willingness to share your journey.

1:07:19

Next month,

1:07:22

supercharge your bottom lines for disability inclusion will be not on the last Thursday of the month, because that is Thanksgiving. I will be feasting and watching football and taking a nap, as I hope many of you will be doing. We will be convening on Thursday November 21 at 11am Pacific Time. My guest will be a very innovative company called inno search. I n n o search, and they have standardized, simplified the E commerce shopping experience for people who are blind. It's awesome. We'll talk to them on November 21 thanks, everyone live and watching the recording, get in touch with Jeremy or I, if we could be of any service. Thanks so much. Thank you, Kirk. Appreciate you being so accommodating with your time. Absolutely take good care to be with you. All right,

1:08:19

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,

1:08:32

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

Dr. Kirk Adams and Evan Amundson discussed the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and its benefits for businesses hiring individuals with disabilities. Evan highlighted that WOTC can provide tax credits ranging from $1,200 to $9,600 per eligible new hire, with over 2 million eligible new hires in 2023. He emphasized the importance of vocational rehabilitation agencies in connecting employers with qualified candidates. Kirk added that only 35% of people with significant disabilities are in the workforce, despite many being highly motivated and qualified. They also mentioned other tax credits, such as the Disabled Access Credit and Barrier Removal Deduction, to incentivize businesses to hire and accommodate individuals with disabilities.

Dr. Kirk Adams, Managing Director of Innovative Impact LLC, hosted a webinar discussing disability inclusion and employment. He highlighted that only 35% of blind individuals are employed, compared to 70% of the general population. Lucas Behnken, producer of the documentary "Surpassing Sight," shared the film's goal to change perceptions of blind capabilities through the story of a blind team in the Race Across America. The film aims to catalyze social impact by connecting employers with training programs and tracking employment outcomes. The project includes private screenings, a red carpet premiere, and a long-term strategy to raise awareness and funds for employment opportunities for the blind.

Introduction and Overview of the Webinar

• Speaker 1 introduces the podcast, emphasizing its focus on disability rights, employment, and inclusion.
• Speaker 2, Dr. Kirk Adams, welcomes everyone to the fourth episode of his monthly live-streamed webinar series.
• Dr. Adams mentions the partnership with the documentary film "Surpassing Sight" and introduces its producer, Lucas Behnken.
• Lucas Behnken introduces himself and his production company, Sterling Light Productions, and provides a brief background on the film and its foundation.

Dr. Kirk Adams' Background and Employment Statistics for Blind Individuals

• Dr. Adams shares his personal story of being blind since childhood and his education at the Oregon State School for the Blind.
• He discusses the employment challenges faced by blind individuals, noting that only 35% are employed compared to 70% of the general population.
• Dr. Adams highlights the disparities in employment outcomes, including higher unemployment rates and lower income levels for blind individuals.
• He emphasizes the importance of meaningful employment in providing financial stability, dignity, and positive self-identity.

Success Stories and Personal Experiences of Blind Professionals

• Dr. Adams shares success stories of blind professionals who have achieved significant careers in large corporations.
• He recounts the story of a blind woman who overcame obstacles to become an executive in a telecom company.
• Another story involves a blind man who participated in freestyle bike tricks with his sighted peers, fostering a strong sense of self-efficacy.
• Dr. Adams discusses his professional career dedicated to creating opportunities for blind and disabled individuals to thrive in employment.

Dr. Adams' Professional Achievements and Leadership Roles

• Dr. Adams details his role as President and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind in Seattle, where he oversaw businesses employing blind and deaf-blind individuals.
• He highlights the success of these businesses, including aerospace manufacturing and advanced manufacturing for the U.S. Army.
• Dr. Adams shares his experience serving on the Board of Trustees for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and his leadership role at AFB.
• He recounts his meeting with Jack Chen, a blind Assistant General Counsel for Google, and their shared commitment to creating opportunities for blind individuals in the workforce.

The Race Across America Project and AFB's Involvement

• Dr. Adams describes the Race Across America project initiated by Jack Chen and Dan Berlin, involving blind professionals on tandem cycling teams.
• AFB sponsored the Race Across America team, marking a significant milestone in their efforts to change perceptions of blind capabilities.
• Dr. Adams shares his transition to a new role as a consultant and his partnership with Dan Berlin, leading to the Apex Program for training blind individuals in cybersecurity.
• The Apex Program has expanded to 16 states, with a target of training 400 blind individuals annually in cybersecurity.

Introduction of Lucas Behnken and the Surpassing Sight Film Project

• Lucas Behnken introduces himself and his background in creating social impact campaigns around documentary films.
• He explains his involvement in the Surpassing Sight project, which began with footage from the Race Across America.
• Lucas and his team, including director Ramon Fernandez, interviewed subjects and created the film to highlight the capabilities of blind professionals.
• The film includes a diverse team of blind and low-vision professionals, ensuring authenticity and impact.

The Film's Social Impact Campaign and Distribution Strategy

• Lucas emphasizes the importance of using the film as a tool to make long-term change and enhance lives.
• The film includes an audio description track, ensuring accessibility for blind viewers.
• Lucas and his team have been conducting private screenings to build advocates and gather feedback on the film's impact.
• The goal is to create a concierge service to connect blind professionals with companies and track their employment outcomes.

Lessons Learned from Previous Social Impact Campaigns

• Lucas shares insights from his work on the documentary "Molly," which focused on adoption and foster care.
• The campaign involved private screenings, partnerships with nonprofits, and a large theatrical release to raise awareness and funds.
• The campaign resulted in significant donations and increased visibility for the organization, highlighting the power of a well-structured social impact effort.
• Lucas emphasizes the importance of building a team dedicated to the social impact campaign to ensure long-term success.

Call to Action and Invitation to Get Involved

• Dr. Adams and Lucas invite viewers to get involved in the Surpassing Sight social impact initiative.
• They provide contact information for those interested in volunteering, donating, or collaborating on the project.
• Dr. Adams shares his email and LinkedIn information for further discussions.
• The webinar concludes with a call to action, encouraging viewers to check out the Surpassing Sight website and join the effort to change employment outcomes for blind individuals.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

disability inclusion, employment opportunities, blind professionals, Race Across America, social impact, documentary film, employment statistics, internal locus, meaningful employment, cybersecurity training, private screenings, social action campaign, employment disparities, film distribution, stakeholder connections

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

wonderful. Welcome everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams, Managing Director of innovative impact LLC, welcome to my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through Disability Inclusion, I began this monthly series in February, so this is the fourth episode. It is being recorded so we can share with folks later. Every month, I partner with another ecosystem that shares my passion and focus on accelerating inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. This month, we're featuring a documentary film and social impact project called surpassing site, and the documentary films producer Lucas Behnken is with us today, Lucas, if you want to say hi and just a brief headline about who you are, and we'll dig deeper into your amazing background in a bit.

01:35

Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm Lucas Behnken and I'm a producer, and have a production company called Sterling light productions. And I was the producer and production company for this film titled surpassing site, which we have now established what is called surpassing site foundation to be the distribution campaign for the film,

01:57

fabulous. So a little background, I want to talk just a little bit about myself, a little bit about employment of people with disabilities, employment of people who are blind in particular, and then tell a very interesting story about how we all came to be here today. So again, I'm Dr Kirk Adams. I am a blind person. My retina is detached. When I was five years old in kindergarten, I attended a school for blind children in the state of Oregon. Oregon State School for the Blind first, second, third grade. Learned to read and write Braille, travel confidently with a white cane type on a typewriter, and was given some real gifts there. As I went to school with 120 other blind kids, I was given a strong internal locus of control, which meant I felt in my bones, as I left third grade and went to public school in fourth grade that I could be successful in whatever I chose to do with my life. I also was given the gift of lofty expectations from the school and my parents about what I could accomplish. And I was given skills. I was given, like I mentioned, Braille skills, key it was typing then, but keyboarding skills, skills to travel confidently and independently. And those are three of the main factors that lead to successful employment for blind people as we become adults, unfortunately, the employment outcomes for us are not even close to what they should be. Only 35% of us are working, compared to about 70% of the general population that are working age, that are that are in the workforce. So about half, if you look at the actual Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment rate people who are actively seeking employment, if you see the general population is 4% for people with disabilities, is going to be 8% so our outcomes are always half as good or twice as bad as the general population. As far as employment goes, for those of us who are employed, we're in a much narrower, narrower band of occupations than the general population, and over half of us that work are working for government or nonprofits, which are great places to work, but they definitely have caps on the level of income one can achieve As composed to other employment settings. So this persistent unemployment problem leads to things like poverty. A third of people with significant disabilities live in poverty. Our home ownership is 1/10 that of the general population, and leads to health disparities educational achievement. This disparities, all, all kinds of bad things. So I have devoted my professional career to creating opportunities for other people who are blind and have other disabilities to thrive in employment. There's lots of ways to tackle lots of problems. My My choice has been to focus on employment, because I believe that meaningful employment not only solves financial issues, but it also provides individuals with the experience of the dignity of work, the positive self identity that goes with meaningful work. So I have pursuit of creating those opportunities for people who are blind. I have earned a PhD in leadership and change my dissertation, which is called journeys through rough country as an ethnographic study of blind adults who are successfully employed in large corporations. And I interviewed blind people working at companies whose names we all know, Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, Chase, at&t, etc. And I found a couple of really interesting things, one that almost everyone shared that strong internal locus of control that I mentioned earlier, believing in their bones they could forge their own path, and they could, without exception, trace that to an experience, experience or set of experiences, that gave them That sense of their own mastery of their own destiny. Two examples, I like to use one woman who's been employed in a large telecom company as an executive for 45 years, recalled that shit when she was a young girl, 10 years old. She and her twin sister were sent to a sleepaway camp, a summer camp, and when it came time to do horseback riding, the counselors told this young blind girl that she was she wasn't allowed to ride the horses because it was too dangerous. And blind kids hear that a lot. You can't do this. You can't do that. Her sighted sister, however, was allowed to ride the horses. So that night, they slipped out of the cabin, went to the stable, and they got out two horses, and they rode together. And she this was so animated when she recalled that night, writing swiftly through the night with her twin sister side by side. And that gave her that sense that she could really do anything that she set her mind to in a very different setting. One of the people I interviewed, a very successful person with computer science degrees and law degrees, very responsible positions in tech, who's blind, recalled growing up in one of the boroughs in New York City, and falling in with a group of 1213, year old boys in the neighborhood who did freestyle bike tricks. They would ride their bikes and stand up on the seat, or stand up on the handlebars and jump over benches and do all kinds of tricks. And he was doing that with with his neighborhood crew as a blind person. And as I often tell Parents of Blind children's you can measure your success to the parent of a blind kid by how many, how many trips to the emergency room do you make? So I think in that case, that young gentleman had his parents in and out of the ER often, but he certainly grew up with that strong internal locus of control. So a couple other things I've done. I had the privilege of serving as president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, and we employed, and they still do employ dozens and dozens of blind and deaf blind people, some with additional disabilities, and businesses that generate revenue and support the organization, some of the most interesting being aerospace manufacturing, 120 blind and DeafBlind machinists making parts For all the Boeing aircraft, computer numerically controlled advanced manufacturing, producing issue items for the United States Army, the entrenchment tool, the omnimo Hydration systems and a number of other very successful business enterprises. While serving in that capacity, I was invited to join the Board of Trustees for the American Foundation for the Blind AFB, which is the most iconic historic organization in the blindness field. It was Helen Keller's organization for 45 years, where she served as global brand ambassador, and when I. And my wife moved from Seattle to New York in May of 2016 so I could step into that leadership role at AFB. I had the opportunity to sit at Helen Keller's desk in the morning and play with her typewriter and read a page out of her Braille Bible, and get get tied right into that history and that impact that she had, and gain that inspiration to try to do the best I can to carry on that legacy of creating opportunities and being an advocate. In May of 2016 when I arrived New York, I got a telephone call from a gentleman named Jack Chen, and Jack said, I work about 10 blocks from you at Chelsea Market. I'm Assistant General Counsel for Google, and I'm blind, and I heard you came to AFB, and I want to welcome you to the city. So we met for breakfast and became friends and colleagues and developed a deep relationship and also a shared commitment to devoting our time, energy and resources to creating opportunities for people who are blind in the world of work. Several years, fast forward, I got another call from Jack saying, I'm working on a an amazing project. I have a business partner named Dan Berlin, who's also blind. Want to get on a call with the three of us and talk to you about this project. So Dan another worth another hour conversation. Very successful blind entrepreneur, was a chemist by training,

11:44

worked for a large

11:47

pharma school, pharmaceutical company that we all know. When his vision got to the point where he could no longer perform the job duties that he was accustomed to, he chose to leave at employment. He purchased a small flavors company. He became our country's largest importer of vanilla. Sold that business has a nonprofit called Team C possibilities. He provides scholarships to blind college students. He organizes outdoor adventures. He's taken blind young people to run along the Great Wall of China to run trails in Peru of Machu Picchu, another Outstanding, outstanding blind individual. And Jack and Dan said that they wanted to undertake the most rigorous physical challenge that they could find and involve blind professionals in doing so to document it on film and use the documentary as a tool to change perceptions of employers around the capabilities of people who are blind to encourage blind people to pursue their dreams and ultimately to move the needle in those terrible statistics of blind employment that we talked about earlier, and they told me what we have chosen is called The Race Across America. I had never heard of it, but as they explained it, it's the longest single stage bicycle race in the world. Cycling teams start with their rear rear wheel in the Pacific Ocean in California, and they continuously ride as a team to Annapolis, Maryland, Atlantic Ocean. And Dan and Jack proposed putting together four tandem cycling teams, each with a blind professional on the back of the bike. That position is called the stoker, and a sighted person in front that person is called the pilot, and they wanted to put together all the logistics necessary to continuously HAVE THEIR TEAM CYCLE across across the nation. They wanted to document it. And then they had their ask, would the American Foundation for the Blind consider being a sponsor of our race team, and

14:25

coincidentally, as karma works,

14:29

AFB Centennial was approaching, we had put together a budget to promote the centennial, and one of Our line items was to sponsor a signature event. So being a good CEO, I did not say yes, but I said, I will put you in touch with our chief communications officer who owns that budget, and you can talk to her about your project, which they did, and the decision was. Made for AFB to sponsor the Race Across America, Team C to C as the signature sponsor sponsorship event for our centennial. So we're proudly the American Foundation for the Blind was proudly the first sponsor for Team C to C's Race Across America. Now I'm going to digress just a little bit, but it's still pertinent. When I made the decision to leave the American Foundation for the Blind and step into a new role as a consultant, in the summer of 2022 I had reached out to friends, colleagues to let them know that I was seeking fun, innovative, high impact projects that would accelerate inclusion of people who are blind in the workforce. And one of those people I reached out to, of course, was Dan Berlin. Shortly thereafter, you and his wife were on vacation. His wife went on a dive trip, and one of the women on the scuba diving trip, named Janice, turned out to be the co founder of a very successful cyber cyber security company called Nova coast. Nova coast was founded in Santa Barbara, California, about 30 years ago, they worked mostly with large global financial institutions. They're very entrepreneurial. They create business activities where they see need.

16:32

They had created a training program,

16:36

virtual training program, to train people to get basic certifications on cybersecurity for entry level cybersecurity jobs, because they could not find enough people to hire, and they knew others in the industry could not find enough good people to hire, so they created a business unit around training. They moved their headquarters from Santa Barbara to Wichita, Kansas, and there's only one reason anyone would do that, that's taxes. They found themselves in Wichita. They connected with a blindness agency there called envision that I have done lots of great projects with in the past. And they were talking to them about employment and the fact that only 35% of us are working, and the fact that there are 750,000 open jobs in cybersecurity on any given day in our country. And envision asked, Have you thought about training and employing blind people in cybersecurity and novacoast? Honestly, as many, many employers would say, No, we've never thought. We've never thought about that never, never crossed our minds. Tell Tell us more. So envision and novakos partnered. They made the novakos training program accessible.

17:57

They branded it the apex program,

18:01

and set it up with vocational rehabilitation state agency in the state of Kansas, and they waited for the students to come, and the students did not come. So at the point where dan met a co founder of novacoas, they had had the program in place for several months were disappointed that they weren't having students register. It wasn't working. Dan suggested they contact me. So they contacted me, and fast forward again. I've partnered with the novacoas program, thanks to Dan Berlin, thanks to Jack Chen, thanks to Race Across America, and we have the program set up in 16 states now. There are 32 students in process going to be earning their network plus and security plus certifications. Our target is 400 blind people a year, going through the 10 work, virtual training, becoming certified and entering cyber, cyber security careers, so that that is an example of a successful employment program that's having, making an impact. And turning back now to the film project, and I'm going to let Lucas talk about his vision. He has a great track record in creating social impact campaigns and movements around documentary films he's been involved in. And the vision here is for the film to be a catalyst to bring together, resources, stakeholders, be a nexus of connections that will spawn dozens more Apex programs will will find programs that are working and help fund them that will facilitate sharing of knowledge, that will connect employers with training. Programs will connect Guide. Government, corporate, nonprofit and community stakeholders together in that shared effort to really, truly change the employment situation for people who are blind and have other disabilities. So I've just said a lot of words. I'm going to let Lucas take it from here and talk to you about the film, his vision, where we're at with the process of creating this really, truly innovative social impact effort. And then we will let you know how we can all connect one another. And then we'll see if anyone has questions or comments or thoughts, but for now, the talking stick goes to Lucas Behnken,

20:49

thank you so much, and wonderful to hear your story. And so just thrilled with our partnership and getting to work with you and be integrated into all that you've built over over many years. How many years now? 5045

21:13

and well,

21:14

I don't know. You can go back to first grade, I guess so,

21:18

over 55 from that first year when Mrs. Summers taught me to read Braille and convinced me that I could be and do whatever I wanted to be or to

21:28

that's where it starts, as as you point out. And I came to this project also through Dan Berlin, who had a financial advisor that was connected to a business partner of mine, and at that time, Dan had finished the race with Jack Chen, and they had filmed the footage, which Jack had a strong vision for, is to start to make this film, and make and film the race in order to highlight the story and continue to carry on the message that they had carried with the race. So the race itself was a call to action and highlighting the unemployment rate of the blind, and so they spoke about that during the making at their events, in the early promotion of the race itself, what they were racing for, and then along the way, they captured the entire race. And at the end of that, they had the footage, and they didn't have someone to complete and turn it into a film. And so Dan had reached out to my partner, and that partner reached out to me and asked me if I would talk to him about what to do with this footage and how to have it have impact. And so we spent a few months I was introduced to Jack through through that conversation around consulting, and I started to talk to them about my work, and I put a lot of focus and select the products that I participate in based on if, if I see a way to use the film as a tool to make true impact and true change and and long term change and enhance lives long term. And so I learned about this topic through them, sharing this with me, which was a really incredible experience, and to your point, Kirk, where you have these experiences of talking to organizations even about employing the blind or low vision that they had not heard of that I also was in that situation. I didn't understand or know much about it at all, and I was humbled and honored to join with them in putting this film together, turning this footage into a larger project. And what we came up with was I would put together a team to go back and interview all of the subjects that raced, all the crew members and family and friends of those that were blind, that raced and were championing this cause. And so I brought on a director named Ramon Fernandez, and him and a gentleman named Arturo, went around the country and filmed these interviews, and then we spent the next year and a half putting together the movie. And during that time, Dan and Jack were very involved in curating the Edit, because the purpose of the film was to make sure that we had this message deeply embedded in the story. And so they were very involved in that. We were very intentional about Brad. To sing what we preached. And we hired a wonderful composer named Stephen let's who is blind, and he has a couple of organizations, one called Able artists. And he brought on also blind musicians and vocalists to create the score. And we brought on a sound mixer, who was blind, and a sound designer, and then we were very focused on including an audio description track in the process of creating the film, because often with films, a film is finished and mixed and mastered and delivered, and then the distribution company is required to put on subtitles and put on an audio description track. But what that does is it makes it difficult for it to have focus or attention or be thought of as a part of the film, rather than an afterthought. And so we worked with the audio describer, a man named Joel Snyder, who we also interviewed in the film. So he's in it talking about audio description, and then he audio describes the film, and he would ask us to leave longer amount of time between certain areas so that he could describe what's going on in the film and introduce people in a different way, versus just having a subtitle come up with their name that you could not hear. And that was a integral part of how we put the film together, and we finished the film close to a year ago. And a big part of my company as well is that social action campaign, distribution strategy. And I really preach that independent filmmakers and documentarians, they put together budgets to complete a movie, but they're solely dependent on a distributor to distribute it, and that's not a negative thing in itself, but those distributors don't have their attention on the longevity of the campaign as much as they do making a large, impactful release. And so we we as Sterling light, really strive to focus on building a budget that matches the making of the film, to build the strategy around the release of this film, and so we've put together additional funds for funding the social action impact team that we put together based on each specific film, so a lot of distributors or production companies might have a marketing team or a social impact team within the company. I differ in that. I believe that gathering the people who are going to work on this film from that community and who care about that topic and that community, and so that's what we're presently building right now and over the past eight months, Jack and I and Dan for a first few months, and then Jack and I for the past five or six months, have been traveling the country, doing private screenings and building advocates, finding Our team members for the social action campaign and building funds for the strategic screening plan to build the momentum and build the awareness around what we're doing and what we're where we come to realize through doing these screenings, through talking with all of the organizations through Discovering, how do people react to the film, what does it cause them to believe and understand? And then, how do we curate the calls to action based on those responses? And the largest area that we've decided to tackle at the top level is being a white glove concierge service of sorts, to where individuals who see the film most most of the responses have been that they've been opened up into a whole new understanding of what the capabilities and possibilities are of those that are blind, specifically in high level positions in the workforce. And so we realized that often the organizations, as you described, like novacas, haven't heard of these positions being filled. By those that are blind, and then the the fact that you describe of how many people are unemployed, that are capable, that are college educated, prepared and ready, but no one knows they can do these things. And so we want to be a catch all for for providing the companies with the people, and connecting the people to the companies now that they've become aware. And the power of a film is that it is a massive marketing tool. You can hit the movie theaters, you can hit the screen platforms. You can hit the entire entertainment area, which we were also very focused on making this film. It's, it's an entertaining sports adventure film that highlights this cause. But it's, it's not just a fact driven documentary informing you of something. And so merging those two things together makes it

31:05

an entertainment experience, and so when we release in a large platform and do a global release, we need to be prepared for the response that people have. I've found that in a lot of experiences, individuals will have a large film come out, and the in influx of interest happens, but there's no team there to take it on, and so you'll have a two people at a production company getting 1600 responses to every type of social media and and trying to find out how to get involved, and there's nowhere to take it. And if that happens for five to six weeks, it all dies out. And so the reason we would delay this release and build this slow process of putting in the staff in place, putting in the function in place of this concierge service of the people trained to do this. And then as we build the early phase of partners and and the interest in the campaign will be prepared when we go out to to truly make change and track it. That's another major gap that we've discovered. Is that the known percentage rates of unemployed is there, but we actually, or I haven't, discovered that the numbers are actually known or when people get hired, where? Where can we find that? And so we want to be a hub of starting to even backtrack and then track when individuals get hired, listing them and how long they stay employed, because that's a large part of the topic as well, is these individuals keeping and retaining jobs and lasting and building wealth and capacity, and so that's, that's the top level of our vision.

33:11

Lucas, I have a question for you. You, you said, so now we're in this private screening phase. You just did one in Atlanta on June 27 we'll have a screening for a small select Group here in Seattle. So if anyone on the call either live here or seeing the recording between now and June 27 if you would like to talk about coming to see the screening, please get in touch with me, or Lucas through LinkedIn, or our email addresses, which we will give you. And then, after the private screening, then comes 20 big red carpet premier Galo, wonderful events. When everything's in place, the funding is in place to put together the social impact team, the strategies can be implemented, etc, but right now, we're at the private screening phase. And you said part of the private screening is to gage how the viewers have experienced change in what they believe and understand. And you had also mentioned that before you were connected with Dan and Jack, that your level of understanding of the dynamics and issue issues around employment people are blind was was negligible. If that's a that's a right characterization. But Can, can you just talk a little bit about yourself. You've been working in this space now for a year. What? How? How have your beliefs and understanding changed?

34:50

So about my beliefs over the last few years working on this project,

34:54

just your your beliefs and understanding around employment of people who are blind capability. At ease, what, what, what you what were your beliefs and understanding before you got connected with Jack and Dan and Race Across America on the project and

35:13

how those have evolved?

35:14

Absolutely, yes, you know, I've always, and I say always, you know, as as far back as my my working life,

35:26

had had a very

35:32

positive view on the possibilities of anybody being able to do anything, and so that that core belief has stemmed through a lot of a lot of my work and my nonprofit work in Los Angeles and into Atlanta, I've, I've always been a champion for never assuming that I know much about the capabilities of someone, and then having witnessed, I guess, from early on, I feel like I'd always witnessed that somebody who didn't think they could do Something did something, or someone that others thought wasn't able, wasn't capable of doing something, did them, and somehow that stuck with me, and in my early years in Los Angeles, I formed a non profit that has now branched into training former incarcerated in filmmaking, and in that subject there, there's a core, you know, belief in in the culture that individuals who have been former incarcerated a are either criminals or not capable of of doing something because they were in jail. And so I remember going through that journey of of having to reshape individuals preconceived ideas about someone who might have served time, whether two years or 40 years, and who they are versus who people think they are. And went through that, that experience, and then I,

37:30

about 10 years ago, worked on a film

37:34

titled Molly, where I I was also able to you, use this, this method of social action campaign with a documentary, and that that topic was adoption and foster care. And the gentleman in the film, Molly had rescued, and now has rescued over 18,000 children off of the streets and similar, individuals assumed that street kids aren't capable of things or or not smarter, not able or must have been there for something that they did. And what that film shows, and what Molly shows throughout his work of 30 years is that the kids that he rescued, the schools that they formed, became the most well respected and successful in grades that that were in the country. Their athletic teams became the number one in the country. They succeeded to going to the Olympics. All of these otherwise assumed individuals that could not do, I witnessed do. And so by the time that I came across Jack and Dan with this film. I think my belief in the possibilities was high and and my response to the situation was shocking and not not having realized this whole area of blindness and low vision was, was such a major topic. But I, I was, it was like, it was like, that experience where, like, Oh, of course this, this is a problem. And of course they can, individuals that are blind can do all of these positions that I just didn't think about, and so I was convinced quickly of the capabilities, and then mainly, I've just been amazed and and inspired to. So what I've found is it really inspires everyone to overcome whatever their considered adversity or considered disability is. I've found that that's been an experience that we've had with this film, is that most people relate it to being able to overcome and live with who you are, and it really reshapes the word of of disability. And it's that's a difficult but important topic to address, because some some individuals so called disabilities are obvious, and some aren't. And then those ones that we consider obvious are labeled as the ones with disabilities, when in fact, we all have them. All have things that that we have to master, that are different than the other things that other people have to master. And so I found this, this, I found this encouraging, that that it levels the playing field of what, what we consider capable or not capable of anything of any number of positions, jobs or just tasks in life.

41:26

And let's talk about Molly a little bit more as a model of a social impact campaign, and how it relates to what we're trying to do here with surpassing site. So you worked on an incredible documentary portraying one man's terrific work in Kenya, rescuing 18,000 kids from the street. Now that film could have been streaming on a streaming service. Lots of people could have watched it. Lots of people could have been moved, saying, that's incredible. Could have had a thought, how can I help? And nothing could have happened. However you structured it, in a way that lots of things did happen. And that's the intent here with surpassing site, is to structure this social impact effort so that lots of things happened as a result of people seeing the film. So if you could talk a little bit about how you what you put together, what happened in conjunction with the film being seen by people and what the impacts were, I think that'll help people understand what we're trying to achieve here with surpassing sight. Yes,

42:32

absolutely. Yeah, that that film, in a similar way, was a gentleman who had worked with this, this man for quite a while, and there had been a book written on him. And this man, John came to myself and my business partner Scott Hayes, and asked Scott if he would put together a documentary. And Scott and I partnered. Scott brought me on to produce this documentary on this gentleman named Molly. And John financed the documentary as a way to to instead of putting donor dollars directly towards the organization, he put donor dollars towards a film to be a way to share the message, and be a marketing tool to spread the word about what this man is doing. And we put the film together. We made the film, and it was about his whole life, of a 30 year journey of him being an orphan child to becoming very wealthy, and you know, one of the wealthiest gentlemen in the country, to realizing that he had forgotten his past and forgotten those that were on the streets like him, and decided to sell everything he owned to start rescuing children. And he rescued these children one at a time, and ended up turning his whole life into rescuing more children and building a place for them, and he's now built this entire eco village and sustainable home and model for taking care of others. And so we finished the film. And to your point, there was an opportunity to sell directly to a streamer and release it and have a decent marketing campaign, and we won a bunch of film festivals and took it around in in that way, but I really encouraged my my partners, to take the chance on finding a way to build a campaign with some other partners, and so I did some private screenings with a few people through my lawyer and a few other contacts and agents and managers, and did a private screening for a gentleman who was so moved by the. Film, and that he said, I want to take this film on and fund the social action campaign. And at the time, that was going to be a 500 grand commitment, and we would build a company and start planning this social action campaign and decide what it would be it, it ended up being $2 million towards this campaign, and we built a company called for good, and there was about 16 staff members, and bought a building, and worked out of this building for a year and a half on figuring out the best ways to make the most impact, the most change, and reach as many people as possible and around the cause of you know, for that film, when people finish the film, they were inspired to help a child, but we wanted To inspire people to be like Molly, not just only give directly to moly, because we knew that would occur, and that was low hanging fruit, in a way, and and so how do we enhance the reach of getting a message out that's about an Unknown gentleman in Kenya, which is not the most sought after type of project for the US distribution market. And so over that year and a half, we formed partnerships, we connected with musicians to write songs, some of the greatest songwriters in the world. We then secured what's called a Fathom event with AMC, which is a one night event. And we were intentional about going that route because to rally everyone on one or two or three nights in a row around an event that you want to communicate to them. That is an excellent route. And with the Fathom Events, you're allowed to curate the first five minutes where the trailer space is. You can put in your own content of highlighting other organizations. You can make your own videos and put that before and after. You can have Q and A's after the events. And so we we secured 1000 screens to do a three night event, which was their largest event at the time and still is having a three night event. And in order to determine how to fill these seats and reach people where they're at, we came up with the idea to partner with as many nonprofits and organizations in the United States that we could, and so with our team, we called every single one of them, and we partnered with 143 adoption and foster care agencies in the United States, and a lot of those had numerous branches. So, you know, there's quite a few 100 base camps of individuals and organizations that committed to not only bringing people to the theaters, but we worked with AMC to allow us to have a volunteer outside of the door of the theater, which is uncommon. It's not common for them to let filmmakers be in you know, have have that space, but they were for the cause. And you're always casting the vision for the cause when you're working with these these organizations, because they're very interested. There's just a lot of rules and regulations that you have to navigate, and so to provide that time to be able to do that is important. But we were able to get them to be allowed to have a table outside of every theater, so that in Boise, Idaho, when someone came out of the theater, they and felt led to help a child. They they were already moved by moly, and had a way to access and connect to Molly children's family and be connected to them and reach out to them. And we had the website embedded in the film and a call to action there. But then there was someone outside the door with their flyers and their current need. So someone says, I want to help a child. And they say, well, there are six children in city hall right now. If, if you want to get involved, here's our program. You can come to this class and talk about being a foster parent, or do you want to adopt? And that that connected 1000s of people to hundreds of organizations and caused 10s of 1000s of children to be adopted or fostered, or, you know, connected with parents, connected to kids that have aged out of foster care. And along with that, once we were done. With this theatrical we had an eight week study guide that these organizations had the DVD and the link to the film, and a study guide to have accessible in part of their programming of when someone was new to being interested in foster adoption, they showed them this film because it caused their their heart to be moved enough to take the next step and and see the possibilities of how much you can do. That's what that film did. And so, so that was, that was a major part of the impact campaign. And then we've continued to do events up until now. This was six years ago, and Molly is still a few weeks ago, toured 10 locations and screened the film and talked about his work. And we've continued to get updates from these organizations about the impact made. And to date, I would say it's around $40 million that has been donated to Molly children's family since the making the film available. And so what was considered a few $100,000 a year nonprofit is now close to $5 million a year. Nonprofit that's that consistently brings

51:32

resources to the organization for more kids to be impacted in in Kenya and then beyond. So that's a bit of the way that we strategize that, and to add on to that, two years after the premiere, and then we made it available on Amazon and all of the streaming services, and had it for rent and purchase. But about two years later, the same investor of the film wanted to do an update video. So we were engaged again, and we made a 20 minute update video. And my strategy with that video to release it, was releasing that along with a couple of dubbed language films. So we always had it in subtitles and other languages. But to do a dub, you hire an entire other cast to do the film in that language. So we released German and Spanish dubbed version along with this 20 minute update video, and the investors wanted to make it available for free, and so I partnered with 14 large influencers on Facebook, and we had built a very large Facebook account around 800,000 members, and so our plan was to stream live this 20 minute video and the film. But in Spanish, Spain and Mexico released the Spanish dub and in Germany, released the German and those 14 influencers on Facebook restrained our live stream on their feeds. And there's some back end ways you can do that. And those pages, some had 12 million followers, some had 16 million, some had 4 million. But that one stream, which I released over five time zones so that it would hit at a certain time across the world,

53:31

was viewed 255,000

53:33

times. So it's really the largest live stream on Facebook to ever have been accomplished. And that was and then all we were promoting is the release of the film on YouTube for free in 16 languages and two Dubs, and then links to Molly. And we then told all our partner organizations this is happening. And if you want to push any of your activities around what you're doing for your work, feel free. And so that was another angle that we did for continuing the long term social impact

54:09

so Lucas, as you mentioned, every documentary, every social impact campaign built around that documentary is is unique, flavored, flavored by the people who get involved. Those people get involved because they're passionate about a cause. So the surpassing site social impact Initiative is a sprout which we are tending and feeding, and we are looking for people who are interested in participating in small, medium or large ways. So if people on the live stream now are viewing the recording, would like to raise their hand and say, How can we help make the surpassing site and. Should have a truly transformational effort in changing the employment situation for people who are blind. How? How should they get in touch with you?

55:09

I'm available at Lucas at surpassing site.com and I formed a foundation so it's Jack at surpassing site.com and our foundation will be running this whole campaign, and there's a fund that's being raised to take the film around prior to distribution, and then Jack's larger vision is a 30 to 40 year plan to have a $70 million endowment over that long term effort to truly provide resources to all the organizations that do work in this space. And that's one note that I want to leave with, or at least say is that there is so much incredible work being done. And to your point, Kirk, you did so much at every organization you were with, you're still doing it and see success all of the time. We're just able to highlight that in a big way through a film. And that's what our big hope is, is, how do we highlight all of the all the work being done, and have a hub for people to come and see all the work being done? Because without something like this, it's it's not able to be seen.

56:25

Great if people want to get in touch with me. LinkedIn is a great way to do it. Or my email is Kirk Adams, 00, [email protected], I will happily talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere, if it leads to greater opportunities for people are blind and have other disabilities to experience the dignity of meaningful employment. And let's watch the trailer, and then we'll see if anyone has any questions or comments. Well, in in in respect of time you want to see the trailer, email Lucas with a k, l, u, K, A, S, at surpassing site.com and let's see if there are any questions or comments from anyone who's with us. It was playing

57:10

it, but it didn't have the audio. But at surpassing sitemovie.com is two different trailers, and there's the audio described version and the non audio described version just at surpassing site.com and that's our basic site, with just the trailers. And then we can send you the campaign vision deck. Should you have interest? Perfect.

57:37

Any questions or comments from anyone who's been with us for the last hour, hearing none we'll thank you all for whoever was with us today, live whoever is viewing this recording, wherever you may be. And please do check out surpassing site and join us in changing the employment rate for people who are blind. And thanks Lucas for your time. Really appreciate it.

58:03

Thank you so much. Thank you for all that you're doing as well. Glad to be along for the ride, peace, onward and upward, onward and upward.

58:14

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

Dr. Kirk Adams hosted a webinar on disability inclusion in cybersecurity, highlighting the Apex program, which prepares blind individuals for cybersecurity careers. The program, developed by Novacoast, offers a 10-week training course for CompTIA Network+ and Security+ certifications, costing $7,500. The program aims to place 400 blind individuals annually in cybersecurity roles, addressing a significant employment gap. Key features include flexible learning, employer support, and a strong industry network. The webinar emphasized the transferable skills from contract management services to cybersecurity and the potential for career growth, with starting salaries around $35,000 and potential earnings of $95,000.

Outline

Introduction and Overview of the Webinar

• Speaker 1 introduces the podcast, emphasizing its focus on disability rights, employment, and inclusion.
• Speaker 2, Dr. Kirk Adams, welcomes everyone to the monthly live stream webinar titled "Supercharge your bottom line through Disability Inclusion."
• Dr. Adams introduces himself as the Managing Director of Innovative Impact LLC and shares his background in disability inclusion.
• He introduces two teammates, David Main and Katie McAuliffe, and welcomes a new team member, Kalana.
• The agenda includes a video about the Apex program, perspectives from David and Katie, and a Q&A session.

Background of the Apex Program

• Dr. Adams recounts the history of the Apex program, which began during his tenure at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB).
• The AFB was named as the third central nonprofit agency under the Ability One program, leading to a five-year cooperative agreement.
• The research phase identified three lines of business: contract management, digital health, and cybersecurity.
• Despite the pandemic, the research highlighted cybersecurity as a promising field for people who are blind.
• Dr. Adams transitioned to his consulting practice, Innovative Impact, and connected with Dan Berlin and Jack Chen, who were involved in the Race Across America.

Development of the Apex Program

• Jack Chen and Dan Berlin were organizing the Race Across America and seeking sponsors.
• AFB sponsored the race, and Dan Berlin introduced Dr. Adams to Novacoast, a cybersecurity company interested in hiring blind individuals.
• Dr. Adams met with Novacoast's CEO, Paul Anderson, and was given the green light to develop the Apex program.
• Katie McAuliffe joined the team later, bringing extensive experience from IBM and Novell.
• The Apex program was created to prepare blind and visually impaired individuals for certifications in networking and cybersecurity.

Personal Stories and Success of the Apex Program

• A video featuring personal stories of individuals involved in the Apex program is shown, highlighting their struggles and successes.
• One participant, David Jr., shares his journey from a severe accident to pursuing a cybersecurity degree.
• Curtis Jackson, another participant, discusses his experience with unemployment and how the Apex program changed his life.
• The video emphasizes the potential for blind individuals to succeed in cybersecurity careers.
• David Jr. and Curtis both found employment at Novacoast, proving the program's effectiveness.

Vision and Future of the Apex Program

• David Main outlines his vision for the program's growth, including expanding to more states and potentially international markets.
• The program aims to offer high school students the opportunity to earn certifications before graduation.
• The goal is to support students beyond entry-level training, providing further certifications and job opportunities.
• Dr. Adams expresses his admiration for the program, stating it aligns with his career-long mission to create opportunities for people who are blind.
• Katie McAuliffe discusses the unique features of Novacoast and how the company's support enhances the Apex program.

Career Opportunities and Industry Support

• Katie McAuliffe explains the various career paths available in cybersecurity, from entry-level roles to specialized positions like threat hunters and penetration testers.
• The industry is supportive of continuous learning and certification stacking, allowing for career advancement.
• Novacoast's annual cybersecurity conference provides opportunities for graduates to network with industry leaders.
• The company's staffing division, Novaco Staffing, helps place graduates in positions.
• Dr. Adams emphasizes the importance of vocational rehabilitation partnerships and other funding models to support the program.

Q&A Session and Closing Remarks

• Amanda Gomez from Vibrant Works asks about accessing the training independently of state vocational rehabilitation.
• Dr. Adams confirms that alternative funding models are possible and shares examples of successful partnerships.
• Katie McAuliffe provides pricing information for the program, which costs $7,500 and includes both CompTIA certifications.
• The program is designed to be flexible, with students having 10 weeks to complete the training, but the pace can be adjusted.
• Dr. Adams invites further questions and encourages viewers to visit the Apex Program website for more information.

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 and welcome everybody to my monthly live stream webinar, webinar called Supercharge your bottom line through Disability Inclusion, I am Dr Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington, where it's pouring rain outside. For those who don't know me, I am the Manning managing director of a consulting practice called innovative impact. LLC and I work with companies to help accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce and to help them supercharge their bottom line through Disability Inclusion. Immediate Past President and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind. I before that held the same roles at the lighthouse for the blind Incorporated, and I am featuring today a wonderful partner Apex program, which prepares blind people for careers in cybersecurity. And I have two of my Apex program teammates here, David main and Katie McAuliffe, and you'll hear from both of them a bit later. I also want to welcome kalana to the innovative impact team. She joined us Monday, and she'll be working with all of you to share social media and so welcome. Thank you. Thank you, kalana, so the and then we'll after I tell, after I tell my story of what brought us all here today. Then we'll show you a six minute video produced by working nation about the apex program, to give you a flavor of what we're doing here in creating these career opportunities for people who are blind. And then we'll hear perspectives from David and Katie. We'll make sure you know how to connect with Apex program, and then we'll have some time for discussion Q and A. So the story really has two, two interweaving narratives. The first is, when I was at the American Foundation for the Blind, we were given the opportunity to be named as the third central nonprofit agency under the Ability One program, which is a federal procurement and employment program that allows nonprofits employing people with disabilities to obtain government contracts. And we entered into a five year cooperative agreement with the AbilityOne commission, and the first phase was called research and study, and we we spent two years doing in depth research. AFB is a renowned research organization, and our charge was to identify three new lines of business that could be introduced into the Ability One program that would create career pathways into competitive, integrated employment and fulfilling careers for people who are blind in knowledge based work. And we identified three lines of business. One was contract management or civilian federal agencies. The second was digital health, or telehealth, and the third was cyber security. And the criteria we were using in our research work, we wanted to find industries with a wide range of career paths, industries that have projected long term above average growth and employment opportunities, industries where there were career paths that were accessible to people who are blind and have other disabilities, industries where advanced degrees were not required,

04:21 industries that had

04:24 strong infrastructure around commonly accepted certifications, industry associations, and finally, industries that that had indicated that They were being proactive around Diversity Equity and Inclusion and cybersecurity fit all of those criteria. We finished our research and study phase, delivered our line line of business analyzes to the AbilityOne commission, and then the pandemic set upon us, and we did not see a way to. Operationalize at that point. So we exited the cooperative agreement after phase one. But cyber security is something I immerse myself in for several years, as far as a field of endeavor for careers, for people who are blind. Fast forward a little bit as I made my change then stepped out of my role at AFB and launched my consulting practice. Innovative impact I did. I did what they call activate your network. So I went, went through my LinkedIn, and reached out to people that I had great relationships with and shared my passion for employment of people with disabilities and let them know I was setting off on a new adventure and was just looking for fun, innovative, high impact projects with cool people that would accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. And I reach out to a blind friend and colleague named Dan Berlin, and now I'll start the second part the second narrative. In 2020 as a FB was preparing for our centennial, centennial year in 2021 I was contacted by a blind friend and colleague named Jack Chen, who at that time was Assistant General Counsel at Google working in New York at Chelsea Market offices. Afbs offices were about 10 blocks from his when I first moved to New York to go to AFB in 2016 Jack reached out and said, We should meet. We did. We became friends. He reached out to me in 2020 to say that he and a blind person named Dan Berlin who I didn't know yet, we're putting together a team to do the race across America. And the Race Across America is a single stage bicycle race, the longest in the world, from the Pacific Ocean and Santa Barbara, California, Santa Monica California to Annapolis, Maryland. And a single stage race means someone on the team is always peddling. And they put together four tandem bicycle teams with a blind professional on the back and sighted guide on the front, and they wanted to put together the logistics to compete in this race, and they were looking for sponsors. So AFB had put together a budget to celebrate our centennial in 2021 and we had designated $25,000 to sponsor something cool. And I passed Jack and Dan on to our communications lead, and she thought it was a perfect fit. So we were the lead sponsor at AFB of the race across America. And footnote, there's a documentary film called surpassing site, and Jack and team will be my guest here next month, last Thursday in May, and talk about the documentary film. In any case, I had reached out to Dan as I activated my network and told him I was looking for fun, innovative, high impact things to do with cool people. And he called me about a month later, and he said my wife and I were on vacation in the Seychelles, and my wife went on a dive trip, and she met a lady who was a co founder of a cybersecurity company called novacoast, and they are very interested in creating a significant presence in cybersecurity for people who are blind. And David main will tell you how that program was developed, but they were just at the beginning stages. They, as a wonderful, privately held entrepreneurial company, put resources in places where they want great outcomes. So I had the opportunity to speak with their CEO, Paul Anderson, who was here in the Seattle area. We talked about the possibilities of engaging significant numbers of blind people in the cybersecurity industry, and I was given the green light to join David and his Apex program team. And then Katie joined us a bit later. So with that, if we could show you the video and give you the flavor of where we're at with the apex program, and then we'll hear from David and Katie.

09:44 I've tried to give my kids the best life that I can. I've been a good dad. I've sucked as a mother, but I've been a good dad. Every parent wants to provide the best they can for their kids, and knowing that you have a disability. That is going to take years to recover from. I think that wears on me. That's a lot of pressure. A young man ran a light at 70 miles per hour, hitting me so hard that I wound up breaking both my ankles, on my ribs, damage to my head, damage to my arms, my retina was partially detached to later fully detached. The last few months before I lost my eye, I was taking Vicodin like Tic Tacs. Within a year of that, I was divorced and raising the kids on my own. After six years, I returned to school to kind of recreate who I was. I'd always loved computers, and David Jr had started at a local two year college taking network classes, so I started taking the same degrees he did. And the student walked up and said, you know, if you take 12 more credit hours, you can get your cybersecurity degree too. I know Inkling what cybersecurity was. I'm like, but that sounds cool. I'll do that. The shortage for cybersecurity analysts is massive, hacking, ransomware, malware is prevalent and getting worse, cybersecurity analysts, or SOC analysts, analyze the suspicious activity and try to prevent it before the hackers can cause any damage. Colleges, universities, two year schools cannot produce enough analysts, so there's a great need to fill these roles. Once I got my degrees, I started looking for work. I wanted to work at a specific company. I met with the recruiter, and unbeknownst to me, that recruiter had decided that, because I had one eye, I could not work on computers all day long. Eventually, I found novapost. They hired me in as a security operations center analyst. I'd come down here to meet with some organizations, and one that I met with was envision, they are a nonprofit that works with the blind and visually impaired community. I had no clue of the unemployment situation for the blind and visually impaired. Most of the jobs that they work are menial, minimum wage type positions. The high end jobs were working in a call center, and that there was really no better option. After that meeting, the light bulb went off. There's a great unemployment in the working age of people that are officially impaired, and there's a great employment gap in this field. So my boss, Paul and I developed the apex program, which is a 10 week training program where we prepare people that are blind and visually impaired for certification exams in networking and cybersecurity. I know you can be a blind cybersecurity analyst, because I have individuals that are blind that are doing it.

13:10 I am Curtis Jackson. I was born blind due to congenital glaucoma, and glaucoma runs in my family. Growing up in a town with the only blind person I did kind of lean into the idea that people thought that I needed to be in the special ed classes, even though I knew I didn't belong there. After I left Louisiana Tech, I bounced around for a few years, and then I got a telemarketing job. It's not what I want to do, but if I don't do it, I'm not going to be able to take care of my family, I did that for a couple years, and then I get told we're in your positions, so you have six months to find another job. Some notification on Facebook came up about the cybersecurity program called the apex program, and so I filled out everything that I needed to and got started on May 1. I'm like, this is a 10 week program. We'll just see what happens. What happened was, at the end of the program, David was so impressed with me, he said he wanted to get on a call. And next thing I know, I'm getting an email that says, novakos offer letter. So I immediately go to my boss's office and put in my notice.

14:27 Curtis is our first student that graduated to come to work at novacoast. Just amazing. From day one, he was like, I can't wait to work. You know? I can't wait to change careers, to get a career. Our CEO told me, If you come across a student that you think would be a good fit for our culture and that can do the job, let me know. And I Ding, ding, ding, he's the guy.

14:50 It feels great to say I am a SOC one analyst. I think having this job will give me a chance to do more things. With my family, and hopefully I can use this experience and opportunity to help others change their lives. In 2017

15:10 a recruiter decided that with one eye working, that I couldn't do the job. A few years later, we proved that somebody that can't see very well could do the job. And yesterday, we proved that somebody that can't see it all can do

15:28 the job. I look at it as me starting this job to help blaze a trail, working with others and pioneering so other people can start this job all across the country, across the world.

15:42 Nobody gets through life alone without help. It just it's impossible, but to be able to know that I am helping people get a better career, I could not be happier. Yes, blind people can do this, and we need to do this nice father, me too.

16:07 Well, I want to thank Joan Lynch, Ramona schindelheim, Melissa Panzer at the working nation team, for creating that and I'll thank Google for covering the cost of working nations. Great work on on the documentary. So, so with that, David, let's fast forward a little bit to where we are. Now you want to talk about, maybe fill up, fill in a little bit, anything that couldn't fit in a six minute video, and talk about there's a lot. Talk about your talk about your vision. Talk about your vision for the future of the program.

16:47 Yeah, so my vision is to see the program grow. Because of we don't generally take money from students. We rely on state vocational rehab agencies to cover the funding, which means we have to get set up with each state individually. So my vision is for us to be able to eventually get set up with every state and eventually take the program International, providing more opportunities around the US right now, I believe we're 1214, states, so we have a lot of ground to catch up to, but the vision is to keep growing the program. We want to do things like offer high school seniors, high school juniors, an opportunity to start earning these certifications while they're wrapping up high school, so they can go right into their chosen careers when they graduate, just like everybody else does. We want to expand what we offer to give further certifications. Once someone's in the workforce, there's a lot of work to be done. What we're teaching now is the entry level, the basics of what you need to start the job. But we want to support our students along the way. We want to see the staff augmentation section of the program to expand to more companies. We want to to get more companies to sign up and say, hey, we'll interview your your students for positions. So that's that's kind of the focus as to is growth, both in the US and in the job market.

18:36 Thanks, David and I,

18:39 I've said this numerous times since I've been involved with the apex program, I have been devoting my professional career to creating opportunities for people who are blind for 30 years plus. And if I were going to design something from scratch, it would look an awful lot like the apex program. And love for Katie to talk about how the apex program fits into the cybersecurity world, since she has been immersed there for a while now, and also some of the unique features of the entrepreneurial company, novacoast, some of their other activities that fit so well, making the apex program so dynamic.

19:25 Katie, great. Thank you, Kirk. I really enjoyed being here today. David, I can't watch that video without getting teary every time. So that was just so beautiful. So yes, as Kirk said, I work for novacost and have been at novacoast to be 14 years in June. And prior to that, I come from IBM and from Novell, or basically other it computer cybersecurity companies. So that has been my entire career is working in that space and managing teams, etc. Are in that space. Novacoast is private, no outside investment. I think we're going into our we're in our 28th year, I believe. So we've been in business quite a long time. Fabulous expertise in a very boutique area of cybersecurity, security, software development, identity and access management, but really very focused on security and high end security. We have our clients are really the global financials who have very sophisticated security systems. And the reason why I say all this is when you think about the apex program and the training that we are talking about here today, the fact that apex is a division of novacost, which is a true long term entrepreneurial cybersecurity company just gives a lot of benefits to the program. David came up through our security operations centers as an analyst. He wrote the curriculum for this has a great background in it. And then the other organizations, like Kirk mentioned, novacoast being the parent company, apex is a subsidiary or division. And then we also have novaco staffing. So for a very long time, we've been doing staffing and placements of high end engineers and developers in our customer base or with other organizations. So novaco staffing is going to support apex. We also have a division called novacoas Federal. We do business with 40 federal agencies. They've been working with us and some of our graduates in terms of placements with the federal government. And we have a cybersecurity conference we run every year with 120 CISOs. So we've developed this whole community of organizations that stand around Apex willing to support us and support our graduates. And to Kirk's point, I sort of agree. It's a perfect storm of a number of things, and so we're very grateful for that.

21:56 When we we have a newsletter. We just issued on our second one this week, I will invite anyone who's interested in the apex program to go to the apex Program website, which is www dot the apex program.com there is an inquiry form, so if you are a prospective student or employer or service provider, please fill out the form. We will happily dialog with you whatever your level of interest is. A couple things to add. So the White House, July last year, created a national strategic framework on workforce development and education for cybersecurity. And they cited in their 62 page document that at that point in time, there were 755,000 open jobs in cybersecurity. And I believe the newsletter cites 63,000 open jobs this week for those holding the certifications that the apex program prepares people for program is very young. We are very much in the spirit of continuous quality improvement. We are evolving as we go the program is on a new learning management system. As of April 1, there are four distinct different accessible ways that students can access the curriculum, depending upon their preferred learning style, certifications, network plus and security plus our industry recognized the certified find bodies called CompTIA. The testing body is Pearson. The tests are accessible to screen readers. Students can access the curriculum virtually. It's designed as Curtis, mentioned in the video to be a 10 week program. 20 hours per week is the pace that is preferred. We are nothing if not flexible, and students can access that 20 hours and get that done whatever works for them and their lifestyle. Students are monitored. There are daily quizzes. The learning management system gives visibility to student progress, and then if student seems to be getting off track a little bit, David main swoops in and touches base with the student, and they have conversations and one on one time until things are back on track, the tools that people use are basically web websites and search engines, so get questions often, what level of technical expertise does a person need to have in order to be successful? And taking the course, being certified, and doing the entry level work, and it's really being able to efficiently operate in a website and a search engine. Productivity tools commonly used in the industry have proven to be largely accessible, I think, as we can all say who are blind and been in this world, it's tough to find anything that's perfectly accessible, but I would say they're largely accessible. We have run across some issues. We're able, Katie is able to call up the C suite people at the people who produce these tools, and say, Hey, you have an accessibility problem. And as most of us also know, they'll say, Oh no, we're 508 compliant. And we'll be able to say, No, you still you have some issues. So we're using this as some action research. And

25:56 the long term, I believe,

25:59 when we're fully mature, we can move 400

26:03 blind and visually impaired individuals per year into cyber security careers. When you have those kinds of numbers, you can really impact the industry. Also add that were we're very open. Not only open, our mission calls for including people with other disabilities and military veterans. We began with focus on blindness and visual impairment that will continue to be one of the pillars of the program. Again, back to my comment that if I were able to create a program from scratch, it would look a lot like this. As I said, the environment is largely accessible. A majority of the jobs are remote. And as we all know, transportation is always a top barrier to successful employment. When, when we do research and we ask, what are the greatest barriers to employment, there's there's always a battle for number one and number two on one, employer, attitudes and transportation. Sometimes it's one, sometimes that's the other. When you do your research, another factor is degrees are not required. And I I say I'm a disability employment expert, not a cyber security expert, but I've learned that certifications are the key, and Katie can talk to this better than I but once you have your foot on the cybersecurity career ladder, there are many directions you can go, many careers you can pursue, depending on what you're interested in, and what I learned also is that once a person is employed at a company, this industry is very predisposed to supporting employees to grow and learn and to stack certifications, To add other certifications. Katie mentioned the Innovate division of Nova Coast hosting to cyber security conferences per year, where they fly in 120 or so chief information security officers, which I've learned are called CISOs. So 120 CSOs gathered for three or four days, and there's an opportunity to speak to each and every one of them. David and I attended two together, and we have a robust list of over 70 CSOs who indicated that they their teams would gladly interview graduates who come to them with a net network plus and security plus certifications. Again, there's the staffing division of Nova coast that can help with placement and connecting graduates with interviews and employment opportunities. And yeah, Katie, maybe you can expand a little bit on what the opportunities are once the person has completed the program, become certified and got that entry level security analyst job, where can people go from there?

29:10 Sure that's it's a great conversation to have. And I'm always conscious of the fact that if you don't come from the IT world or the IT industry, or what we really have only been calling cybersecurity for a few years. You don't know what the jobs are and what they entail. And a lot of times you don't know the acronyms, for instance, that we use all the time. So the best thing of all is, again, if you graduate from this program, when I should say, when you graduate, get your certificate of graduation, and then you'll take these two exams, and you get your certifications. You are prepared to be an entry level because of your certifications, your entry level, let's say a help desk person, a security analyst, as David and Curtis described in that video, the biggest. Is getting experience. So once you're in that job for six months or so, a year or so, you really can get better at it improving. There are, I don't even know how many more types of jobs and careers once you're in the door, there are things you could maybe you're interested in software development. We have, I think, a student in the class now, David that has a software development background, it's fine, get in the door, get in into a security role. There's always a need for software developers if you're in cybersecurity. Specifically, there's jobs like threat hunters that dial in or connect to organizations and roam around the networks and look for malware or malicious software, executables, et cetera. So that's a threat Hunter. There's penetration testers. If you think your security is great at your organization, then you usually pay someone to try to break in to your IT environment. But to the point that Kirk made, once you are in the computer industry or in this role in cybersecurity. You're not and you certainly don't have to do the same thing for the next five years. You can go left, you can go right, you can be promoted. And again, we have also jobs, marketing jobs and sales jobs. I mean, the industry has all those normal jobs as well. So it's really a great entree into the space. One other thing I wanted to mention Kirk that we you talked about briefly as well when we were talking about the White House and their strategy document on cybersecurity and workforce education, there's a federal government division called NIST, National Institute of Science and Technology. I believe NIST runs a website called Cyber seek. So again, it's C, y, B, E, R, S, E, E, K, cyberseek.com and that actually will tell you, you can click state by state by state, and you can see how many open cybersecurity jobs there are in your state. This data is gathered through the Bureau of Labor and Statistics constantly, and it's constantly updated. And if you scroll down to the bottom of that screen, you also see that there's a place where it says what types of certifications are required, how many jobs are available. For instance, that requiring the Security Plus certification, which is one of ours, and it's the second most requested certification in terms of open job opportunities. So anyway, I'm just saying like we we can talk about it all the time, how we have this real need to fill these roles, but the data is absolutely there, and you can check in your own state, and then you can see that a certificate like we'd give you in the apex program really is an entree into very viable employment.

32:47 And David, you, you were a hiring manager. You started at a security operations center, which I now know as a soc. You started working at a SOC, you managed a SOC, you needed to hire lots of people. And Apex program really started as you develop training programs for the general public, so that people, people could come work for you, get the training that they needed. And then at the evolved into the accessible, blindness focused Apex program. So could you talk a little bit about the characteristics that lead to success in the cybersecurity world? What types of folks tend to thrive?

33:30 So I would think

33:33 puzzle solvers, for lack of a better term, somebody that you know won't just look at something on the surface will will be a little bit analytical, a little OCD never hurts. I use my son as an example. He's got, he's autistic and has OCD, and he's probably our top analyst, but somebody that will pay attention to detail will for each of these events that come out, there's what we call a runbook so they don't no one has to recreate the wheel. There's a runbook that tells them if A happens to be if C happens to D. So someone that can follow instructions and will will follow along with what the run book says to do, be analytical. So the analyst job is to look at an event and determine, did it really happen, or is this a false alarm. And so you need that, that and that analytical, at least desire that to to dig into things, to go that next step. You don't have to be overly tech savvy to learn to do that. You know everything else can be taught. But if you if you can follow along instructions, and you're willing to take that extra step to find out what's really going on. To do some analysis to solve the puzzle you can do really well in these careers.

35:06 Terrific. Thanks. So again, I'm going to going to invite you, whether you're viewing with us, live or recorded session, if you have any level of interest in the apex program, please go to the web page. Fill out the inquiry form you'd love to talk to prospective employers, prospective students, prospective partners, service providers, folks in the nonprofit sector. You wonderful people who work in vocational rehabilitation. We're really building a village here. And welcome everybody who shares the common goal. Let's do something about the horrible employment outcomes for people who are blind that have not changed much in a long, long time. And again, I my vision is 400 blind people a year entering cybersecurity, and cumulatively, over 1012, years, four or five, 6000 blind people in cybersecurity, which will change an industry. So that's what I'm hoping to accomplish. Would love to work with you to make that happen again. It's www dot the apexprogram.com, and if we have any questions, comments, thoughts, this would be the time to speak up.

36:26 And Dr Adams, this is Amanda Gomez. I'm down in San Antonio at vibrant works, getting getting a nice overview. Yeah, what is the possibility of accessing the training independent of state? VR,

36:39 oh, yes, that was a great point. So we are open to any model that works. So my heartfelt conviction is I make every effort to create structures where vocational rehabilitation is a partner. They have funding that we taxpayers provide through the Department of Education. So I always, I always, want to fully involve vocational rehabilitation. We're certainly open to other funding models, and we'll give you one. We're working with the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind. They do not have a training contract with the state of Illinois. They have a placement contract, but they have included the apex program now into grants, grant proposals that they've made. One is for a state of Illinois Workforce Development Grant, and they put in the tuition and cost for five students in that grant. And another is requesting funding to cover costs for 35 homeless veterans in the Chicago area to go through the program. So we're interested in flying people being trained, certified, hired, and there's, there's many, many paths to get there. So thank thank you for that question. Excellent question. I'm making a note to mention that next time, next time we talk about the program,

38:09 yeah, and I was going to say Kirk even envision, who was our first partner in Wichita, Kansas. Envision is using a grant to fund a number of the students that have that they have sent through Apex versus voc rehab. And I think it was a local grant. David might know more about it, but yeah, I mean the idea being, obviously, that we want to fund the students being able to take the course in whatever manner that works, the you know, the quickest, the fastest and the easiest.

38:39 Or is there pricing information on the website?

38:43 There is not pricing information on the website. The course is $7,500 and again, it's 10 weeks online on demand, about 20 hours a week. So 200 hours, we have found some students take a little longer than 10 weeks. Some actually take a little bit less, but that's about the expected time frame. And then that cost includes the ability for the students to take both exams. So CompTIA is network plus, and CompTIA Security plus twice. So every, everybody who takes these exams, every population cited none. There's a, you know, 30, 40% failure rate on the first time you take the test. I think it's 30% David, is that right? Anyway, they're hard tests, so we actually fund the ability for the students to take the test twice. And these are accessible, you know, if they can use JAWS or their screen reader, and we get that all set up for their ability to take those so that tuition includes all that.

39:46 Yeah, it's about a 30% sale rate. So regardless of site it not site it, experience doesn't matter. That's, you know, that's the way the exams are. So we'd like to give that second attempt. I. Um, the first attempt, when they get their score, will tell us how they did on the exam, not just point wise, but the areas of the exam they were weak in. And I will go back and make them a study packet to help with those areas so they're stronger the next time through.

40:17 Okay, I have another question. If no one else does, do you think someone transitioning from CMS to this particular role would be a good transition? I don't know. I know the skills are super related, but what could you see as that transition?

40:32 Yeah, so for for David and Kate and others, that's contract management services. Okay, that is an employment program under Ability One with the Department of Defense where blind and visually impaired individuals are closing contracts. There are hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of open contracts, and those funds are obligated until the contracts are closed, so when the process is completed contract was closed, then the funds go back to be used for other things, federal government and absolutely perfect, Very, somewhat similar, I think the cyber security processes seem somewhat more structured than the CMS processes that I've witnessed when I was at the CEO the lighthouse in Seattle. We stood up three Contract Management Services offices in San Diego, and I spent quite, quite a bit of time there. So I that is a great point you're making my next presentation stronger, because I'm now putting great, transferable skills between contract management services and cybersecurity analysis. So thank you for that.

41:53 Yeah, I mean the attention to detail that David mentioned, the puzzle solving which contract management can be at times, and just being able to follow a process or dig in and figure out why something isn't correct, yeah, I think very transferable. I bet cybersecurity will end up paying more, though, in the end,

42:15 I will say that's clearly true. People doing contract management services are paid according to the cert Federal Service Contract Act, which prescribes what the pay is. So the we haven't really talked about that, but I think David, if you want to, or and, or Katie, want to talk about kind of starting salaries and the quick acceleration to higher levels in the general terms, that would be helpful.

42:47 Yeah, so starting salaries on the very low end, probably 35 to $40,000 a year, and six months to a year. You can be looking at 70s, 80s, 90s a year just depends on what flavor of cybersecurity you decide to go into. Nobody really remains a level one analyst for a long period of time. They find out what they like to do in cyber, and they pursue that. And those fields all pay well. You know, they all do. I won't name a company that, in the past, has headhunted me, but they required a Security Plus certification and two years experience, and they were starting remote work at $95,000 a year. So the the low end is 35 to 40,000 and there really is no ceiling. It just depends on what specialty that you go into in in the field of cybersecurity,

43:55 yep, and then they want you to have some experience. So the the whole like, what's going to happen for our students is they're going to have the certifications, they're going to get the experience, and then everything only goes up from there. All

44:08 right, I will come back up some more questions. So the two certs that students would graduate with from the program are the CompTIA network, is that correct? And the other one, what is it that they what are the search that they have when they're done

44:23 network plus and Security Plus? Oh, right, okay, and we teach network plus, because if they're novice, that gives them all the building blocks that they need, even for their security career. And then security plus is the entry level cybersecurity certification.

44:45 In the industry, if someone obtains these credentials and then gets an entry level job, and they see that pathway that like I want to specialize in, this, is it typical for their current company to pay for additional certifications? Or in the industry, is that self funded after the initial. Cert.

45:02 A lot of times, the employer will pay for them to get a new cert, or at least reimburse when they get a new certification. So I've seen employers pay for them to do boot camps and get a cert. I've seen some that'll just reimburse, but generally, yes, they it's in the employer's best interest for them to get certified. Thank you

45:23 and Amanda, we're totally open as if new questions arise, please reach out. Thank you. Well, we'll talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Move this program forward. True. Appreciate you being here with us today, and really appreciate your insightful questions. So with that, we will wish you all a great rest of your day, and please join me next month, last Thursday of the month, 11 o'clock Pacific, where we will feature the documentary surpassing site,

46:03 and the surpassing site's

46:07 intention to create a social impact program based on the film, to accelerate inclusion of people who are blind in the workforce, which is what we are all about. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great rest of your day.

46:22 Thank you everybody. Thank you

46:24 Take care everyone.

46:27 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] kirkadams.com, together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You.