Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion: February 27, 2025: Robyn Grable, Founder and CEO, Talents ASCEND

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

 

00:00

Music.

 

Speaker 1  00:09

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

 

Speaker 2  00:37

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

 

Speaker 3  01:02

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

 

Speaker 2  01:06

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

 

03:34

The second thing,

 

Speaker 2  03:36

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

 

04:53

and then I also had

 

04:57

Jeremy's note takers talking. I.

 

Speaker 2  05:00

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

 

08:02

That was big doings for me.

 

Speaker 2  08:05

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

 

13:05

So,

 

Speaker 2  13:08

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

 

Speaker 3  21:09

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

 

Speaker 2  24:10

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

 

Speaker 3  25:37

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

 

26:14

leadership and project management. Yes,

 

Speaker 3  26:17

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

 

Speaker 2  30:36

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

 

Speaker 3  30:58

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

 

33:53

What's what's your definition? Less

 

33:55

than 200 employees, okay?

 

Speaker 3  33:59

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

 

Speaker 2  35:16

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

 

Speaker 3  36:09

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

 

36:18

just analyzing the posting or you interview, right?

 

Speaker 3  36:21

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

 

Speaker 2  38:01

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

 

Speaker 3  38:41

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

 

Speaker 2  39:02

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

 

Speaker 3  39:18

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

 

Speaker 2  41:00

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

 

Speaker 3  41:14

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

 

42:40

let's get down to brass tacks. If

 

Speaker 2  42:43

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

 

42:58

Yeah, absolutely so. Talents ascend.com,

 

Speaker 3  43:02

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

 

Speaker 2  43:53

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

 

Speaker 3  44:09

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

 

Speaker 2  45:01

And thank you so much, Robin, that 45 minutes

 

Speaker 3  45:04

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

 

Speaker 2  45:09

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

 

47:02

Jeremy, raised your hand. Do

 

47:06

I have to do anything? Did? No,

 

47:07

I got it. Oh, I got it.

 

Speaker 4  47:10

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

 

Speaker 2  48:53

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

 

Speaker 3  48:56

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

 

Speaker 2  49:04

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

 

Speaker 3  53:13

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

 

Speaker 2  54:51

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

 

56:34

takes work, but it does work. It

 

Speaker 3  56:36

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

 

Speaker 2  57:09

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

 

58:15

Thank you.

 

Speaker 1  58:18

Thank you for listening to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, we hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at WWW dot DRK adams.com, together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You