Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: July 14, 2025: Interview with John Robinson, Founder, Our Ability, Inc.

In this 30-minute episode, Dr. Kirk Adams speaks with John Robinson, quadruple-amputee entrepreneur and CEO of Our Ability, about the journeys that led them from navigating New York's subway and Amtrak to building tech that removes barriers for people with disabilities. Robinson recounts his path from NBC ad-sales to launching Our Ability, explaining how collaboration with Syracuse University students and successive IBM Watson and Microsoft Azure grants birthed the Jobs Ability AI engine. Today that platform draws around 15,000 monthly visitors and has matched more than 10,000 job-seekers with roles at companies such as CVS and Pfizer, proving that inclusive technology can scale.

The conversation pivots to a new frontier: adapting that same AI core to connect disability-owned businesses with corporate procurement opportunities. Prompted by a Fortune-500 client, Robinson is gauging community demand through a concise six-question survey sent to DOBEs, already yielding a 9 percent response rate with overwhelming support. Adams underscores the larger vision, closing the procurement gap, expanding entrepreneurial possibility, and demonstrating that inclusion is a strategic advantage, before urging listeners to complete the survey, share it widely, and join a follow-up discussion in six months when the beta marketplace goes live.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor 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, doctor Kirk Adams.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody. This is Doctor Kirk Adams, and you are listening to the very cleverly titled podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. And my guest today is John Robinson, who is founder and owner of Our ability. And I've known John, I think it was 2016 when I was Recruited to lead the American Foundation for the blind. As president and CEO. And left that that same role at the lighthouse for the blind here in Seattle and moved to New York City, lived in Brooklyn, worked at two Penn Plaza, which was right next door to Madison Square Garden in the heart of the Big Apple. And as a totally blind person my greatest orientation and mobility accomplishment was to learn how to take the F train from Park Slope to J Street Metro Tech and transfer to the A, and then take the A into Penn Station and up to 34th and into the office. So took took some leaps of faith. I know, I know, native New Yorkers, blind people who grew up there. It's not a thing. But but for me, I had to I had to screw my courage to the sticking point on that one. But anyway, I met I met John very soon after I, I it might have been because I had been very, very involved with disability in here in Washington state, and I think I was trying to connect with whoever was doing something locally.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: And someone said, I should talk to John, and I called John, and you you graciously made the trip into Manhattan, came came to the office at AFB. We had a good talk and we we were very closely aligned on a number of things. Yes. As people with disabilities and entrepreneurs and innovators and leaders, I'll, I'll venture to say. And we've we've had a an ongoing dialogue since then. I really appreciate what John has done with our ability as far as creating a platform for people with disabilities and employers to connect. And now there's an exciting new venture, which I'll ask John to tell you about, which will also support the thriving of people with disabilities in business. But, John, I usually let my guests do most of the talking, so I probably just said about 90% of the words I'm going to say. So I would love to have you tell folks about yourself, your journey so far, how you became so passionate in advocacy and activism. What our ability is doing. How did our ability come to be? What's it doing now and where do you see it going?

 

John Robinson: Well, there's a lot there. Doctor Kirk Adams, I remember that meeting very well. You're exactly right. That's how it started. So if you were navigating the F train and God bless you for doing that. I was navigating the Acela train from Albany, actually, Rensselaer, down into Penn Station. And so that means, for me, navigating a lot of stairs, navigating elevators that don't work, navigating, carrying my backpack around so that I can use the washroom. I'm a quadruple amputee. I'm three foot eight. Limited extension of my arms and my legs. So our disabilities are different, but the the challenge of journey is is a challenge, and that's part of it. Similar. And so I remember the train trips very well to New York City. I very much try to avoid it as much as I possibly can. Mainly because it's just easier for me to jump in my truck with my hand controls and drive somewhere. But excuse me, new York is not easy to drive around, and it's not easy to park. So I do avoid New York as much as I can, but if I have to be there, it's it's navigating the train and the elevators. And so I empathize with what you were saying because.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, now now that I've heard this, it's even even more meaningful that you made that trek. So I really appreciate you coming in to see me.

 

John Robinson: We were at the time I was three years into this organization. We we have a s corp, so we have a corporation, and we had a nonprofit as well. The nonprofit was the one that was running the disability in New York entity, then NY, before the name change. We were happy to do it. It was something that we wanted to do. We had some businesses that supported us with some donations and businesses interested in what disability N was doing. Price Chopper Market 32, KeyBank, MT Bank among among those.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: On for those for those who might not be familiar, I'll just give a really quick overview. So the disability in is disability. I in as an all in lean in disability in.org. It started out as the US Business Leadership Network. It was an initiative of the US Chamber of Commerce in the very early 2000. And it is a group of major corporations. 70 of the fortune 100 publicly traded large companies that have made a commitment to accelerate disability inclusion, really in three ways to employ more people with disabilities, to include people with disabilities, and design and marketing of products and services, and to do business with disability owned businesses. There is not a supplier diversity designation for disability owned business other than service disabled veterans like there are for women owned in eight A and a.m. Hubzone. So Disability In has created a certified disability owned business enterprise designation themselves, and the companies who are members have all agreed to count spend toward those certified disability owned businesses toward their supplier diversity goals. They have 20 plus local chapters, and they have a large annual international gathering. And they do some great things, particularly particularly in that sphere of very large, very large, publicly traded companies. So bless them for what they do.

 

John Robinson: Yes. And that's all exactly right. And at the time they were growing, we were growing. We had taken on the challenge of being the, the NY or disability in New York. But as we grew, we really wanted to focus more on technology and technology as a catalyst for opportunity. So we we started thinking about using our jobs board, which we had up mainly because of those businesses that were members they wanted. They had wanted to post jobs on our website and recruit. And so we realized that was a better opportunity for us to utilize technology. And so somewhere around 2018, we started having conversations with Syracuse University. Syracuse has a big information technology school. I'm a graduate of Syracuse. I still at the time had been on their alumni board. They came to us and asked us if they could use a capstone project in their grad school program to do something meaningful in the disability space. And what what could we use? And so that was a lot to unpack. And I realized what I really wanted to do is to see if we could use technology to do a better job in matching people to employment.

 

John Robinson: We, you know, we we in the disability space have lived and know about the unemployment or underemployment rate of, of our community. And so that's always been in the back of my mind. So we took the students we started working with IBM Watson. We quickly transitioned to Microsoft Azure. And Microsoft then gave us after many conversations, gave us an AI for good grant and then a second round of it, really to see if we could use gen AI to understand job descriptions and understand people. You know, now you think about where we are with ChatGPT and OpenAI, and it's also easy. Well, it wasn't easy five years ago as we were starting to build this. So we did. We built it, we broke it, built it again. And so now where we are today is if you upload the a resume PDF of your resume you or PDF for a LinkedIn profile, which is actually easier. You are the you have the beginnings of your profile. You answer a few questions, and then we pretty much instantly match you to jobs that are in our system. So this is what we've been working on.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: You know, and that's a that's uploading to our ability.

 

John Robinson: Yeah. It's our ability. You can find the the login button and our, our ability jobs. It's at the top of the screen if you're navigating our system is also built by someone who's 100% blind. So it better be accessible inside. I laugh because I know it is and we care very deeply about it being functional and usable and that the job recommendations do the right thing and that you to jobs. So this is what we've been working on and it's been growing. We have about 15,000 people per month coming to our website, and we're really proud of that. But we've also been kicking around other ideas. And Kirk, this is. This is part of, you know, the the open exploration of entrepreneurship here. You know, we've thought about the written language, what's written in job descriptions. We tinkered with an ableist language filter to filter out ableist language. But that kind of it can be done through existing systems. So then we started considering what else could we do? And one of our clients asked us, would we be interested in taking a look? Could we use our matching system to tweak it a little bit and match businesses owned by people with disabilities? Those adobes that we were talking about with disability in with purchasing opportunities, could we sort of turn it on its head and reverse it and really provide meaningful contracting opportunities through technology? One of the frustration points that I've had as as Adobe, I'm proud of my Dhoby logo and the work that we've done way back with the US BLM.

 

John Robinson: But the truth is, you don't get a lot of contracting opportunities. And it seems to me that's that's a sticking point. So I thought very deeply about the client asking us that. I ignored it. Then I talked to Karthik Sahni, our chief technology officer, talked about it with him again, ignored it, but it came around to the idea that at least we want to ask the community. One of the things that we did the first time in building the job platform on the job matching system is we just built it. We were very much if you build it, they will come you know, sort of mentality. And we did. And people have come this time though before I invest dollars before I get if I get investment dollars on this, I want to know what the community thinks. So we sent out an email blast to existing disability owned businesses that we know and ask them to fill out a survey. You know, I understand it's problematic for people to fill out surveys at times. And I understand also we can all be distrustful of that and me included.

 

John Robinson: But I wanted to know what other people thought. And I will say as I sit here today on July 7th, Kirk, we have about 40 respondents and that's about 9% of the emails. So I guess on that standpoint from my old advertising days, that's not too bad, right? What I will say is, except for two, they all want this system and they they want we did a word cloud and the words that came up were contracting matching business opportunity. Yeah. And so, you know, the first time I jumped, I jumped into the pool, built jobs ability, built the matching system, did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. This time, I try to be a little bit smarter about how we spend our time but I also want to then then do some fundraising around it, because we want to be able to, to fund it in other ways. And if we're going to do that, then we need to know how the community feels. And so that's that's where we are right now. And it's exciting. It's daunting. But I, I don't want to just be an entrepreneur that builds a widget. I want to be an entrepreneur that helps helps our community, people with disabilities. And I think that's what this thing can do.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Look, I know, I know, you're teaching. Teaching about disability and entrepreneurship. And I'd like to say a few things about it and get your your reflections, so. Sure. When I did my dissertation, which was published in 2019, it was an ethnographic study of blind adults employed in large American corporations. So I interviewed a lot of really cool blind people working at a lot of companies whose names we all know and learned a lot about what they saw as the factors that led to their success and also their frustrations and disappointments. But in doing the literature review, you know, you you mentioned the unemployment and underemployment earlier. So of those of us with significant disabilities, which would include you, you and I only 35% of us are in the workforce. And that's about half of the general population. So we're working age adults, about 70% in America are working. Yeah, about 35% of us. And we're in a much narrower band of occupations. And at least in the blindness community, over 50% of us who are working work for the government or nonprofits. So beautiful places to work. But your, your, your income has ceilings in those settings? Yes. Of the 70% of the general population are that are working, 12% are self-employed. So if we can use a blunt instrument saying self-employed equals entrepreneurship, there's about 12% of the general population for us with significant disabilities. The 35% of us who are working, only 6% of us are self-employed. So only about half as many self-employed folks percentage wise. And it's really interesting. I had had met a professor, a blind Professor Wilson, who was based in London, and he studies disability and entrepreneurship, and he was coming out to Seattle for the Academy of Management International Conference in 2021.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: And asked me to be on a panel which which I did, and then I have been connected with this group of scholars who study disability and entrepreneurship. And it's it's really fascinating because to have a successful employment situation and to be able to thrive in employment as a person with an impairment or impairments. The key is the fit between you, your particular characteristics, your impairments and the workplace, the work that needs to be done. The tools that are done need need to be used. So if you are self-employed and creating your own business, you can create a fit. You can design it to work for you. You can design it to use the tools that you want to use. You can design the schedule, the flow to, to work with you and your impairment. So I just see entrepreneurship and disabled owned business as a huge field of opportunity to create more opportunities for us to thrive. That's what that's what I'm interested in creating more opportunities for more people with disabilities to thrive and self-employment. Entrepreneurship. Being a business owner gives some really unique opportunities to do that. Also, these researchers have found that the lived experience of disability allows you to create the strengths and characteristics that are indicators of possible success as an entrepreneur. And those are things like perseverance, grit and resilience and creative problem solving and being able to work in diverse teams and good communication skills and all those things. So what you're doing, what you're endeavoring to do to create a place where disabled business owners, entrepreneurs can match with customers is is essential. And I'd love to get your your thoughts on any of any of what I just just blurted out.

 

John Robinson: I mean.

 

John Robinson: I believe in my opinion that you're exactly right. If I look at my personal experience and I was unemployed after I graduated university in 1990, I chose to go into a field of media, a very vain industry. I really wanted to run a TV station. That was what what what I studied to do at Syracuse University. And I interned to do it, a TV station in Boston. Ultimately what I finally did get a job four and a half years after I graduated, and it was in sales. And you talk about problem solving and communication as assets to the disability community. It really that those two elements became the foundation for me to be a successful salesperson. In spite of, you know, being challenged and getting around, you know, at 30 years old, sure, I could jump in the car and and carry a backpack and meet my clients and do the things that the the station managers wanted me to do. But I'm glad I'm not doing it today because I'd have to do it all through. Through this medium, through technology. But I learned a lot about myself, then business, and then I put the two of those together and realize, what did I want to do? And I did it in large part because I was disabled. It really, you know, being disabled really did hone my problem solving skills and my communication and not I don't mean communication, writing, speaking necessarily, but what I do find is to be able to communicate your needs and someone else's needs, and to put those two things together.

 

John Robinson: A big part of communication is listening. And if you're going to get into sales, you better listen, not speak, so that that's what it did for me. Today? Yeah. Syracuse University is named me a professor of practice for the past two years. A big part of that is to create disability entrepreneur opportunities. Out of that is a class once a year. This past cohort, we had about 50 people signed up. We started with 26, we ended with 20. And to a person and this this was interesting to me, to a person, they were all disabled and they all wanted to carve out their niche to help the community of people with disabilities. And it gets to what you were saying that that's that's a strength. If we in the United States could harness this strength and and support and cultivate, we could create more, more Our solutions. And that's really what a business is. It's the solution to a problem. And so I, I'm, I was really, really And buoyed. Powered. Excited. Use whatever adjective you want or misuse everyone you want that that there is this community out there and that it's it needs something. And jobs ability has been great to help people find jobs, but, you know, I want to do more with it. And. Yeah, and that's what we're here for.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I'd like to talk to you about customers a little bit. So we talked about disability and taking nothing away from what they're doing there. They are there to serve their members and provide value to the members. And their members are corporations, and they're large corporations, and they have the needs of large corporations. So it's it's a very rare disability owned business that is going to be able to meet the specific the supplier needs of a major corporation. So when I think about customers, I think about the clients I work with primarily, which are kind of 50 to 200 million techie and a fast growing, privately held. You know, they're not disability in numbers or they're never going to be. And individuals I encounter now, they would be thrilled as they work on disability inclusion in their workforce because that's what I work with. They want to be able to, to find vendors suppliers, disability owned businesses. And then I think about individuals and you know, many of the disability owned businesses honestly start out as kind of cottage industries. And a cottage industry is not what ExxonMobil or Boeing or Microsoft is going to be doing business with. So, so I, you know, as I, as I contemplate this project that you outlined to me several months ago, I get increasingly excited about how a truly dynamic engine can be created to bring supply and demand together with through the particular lens of disability owned business and disability disabled entrepreneurs. So I know we need more disabled business owners to fill out the survey, and you can kindly tell us how to do that. But then I'd love to get your thoughts on who who you see the customers being.

 

John Robinson: Yeah, that's such a great, great question. You know, I, I'm going to answer the answer it with the with this. I know myself really well, Kirk, if if this system hadn't been in place right when I started our ability and I had seen a contract opportunity out there for massive web design or or a commercial production or generative AI. I would have done everything I could to expand our business to get that contract, but I didn't. You talk about cottage industry, and you're exactly right. A lot of times we start this because we need to. But then. Then the element is What if we can? What if we had a contract opportunity and I didn't see those out there? I had to forge it. I had to make it happen. I didn't see it. And so I do believe if we could create a a micro universe of our community and business opportunities, we could also expand the imagination of the community of people with disabilities beyond what they're thinking about today. And I'm talking about those with businesses, And that's I keep coming back to that. You know, my three in the morning where I'm. Where I'm awake. I'm not sleeping. These are the things that I think about. Yeah. And then on the other side of it is if you are a Lowe's, CVS, Pfizer and I'm, I'm picking on our, our long term corporate supporters. But if you're one of them and you know that there are 12 businesses out there that can can send you information and maybe get a contract, that's one thing. If you know that there are 1200 potential, that's a that's a whole other, other opportunity.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: And I think the other opportunity here is to understand what the customers see as their future needs, so it can help to shape what businesses people with disabilities create or focus on. So so I'd love to do. I'd love to do a research project where we identify a couple of ideal customer groups and we do some ethnographic research, and we talk to their people who are involved in planning and strategy and find out what. What do you see? What do you see your spend focusing on five years from now? Ten years from now, what are you going to be buying? You know, and and that would be information that would be so helpful to not only current people, business owners with disabilities, but those who are contemplating going into business or starting that entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial journey to have some indicators of which direction ahead.

 

John Robinson: We probably could work with Syracuse University to to do that survey or that that study, I said, surveying the top of my head. We could do that. So that's something that I'll I'll put on my to do list and talk with people at the university, because one of the things that they asked us to do is what kind of research should we do out there? Yeah, so.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: That would be vital.

 

John Robinson: I agree, I think it would be vital and I would pull you in on that because I'm going to need other experts beside myself. I can't, I can't and don't want to do it alone anymore. I think one of the, you know, I had a lot of vim and vigor when I was 35 and then when I started this at 40. The reality is, at 56, I want to build true partnerships and lasting partnerships. Right. That's I feel a lot different about it today. And so I believe we could get that pulled together through the university and their and their, their mechanisms. Yeah. And and some of our friends.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: That would be exciting work. So I this half hour just flew by. I will reserve the right to ask you back to talk as the platform develops to match disabled business owners and customers. Do you have a name? Do you have a working title?

 

John Robinson: No.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: For that project.

 

John Robinson: It'll be some version of our ability. Jobs is one of those, too. I really don't.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

 

John Robinson: This. That. Probably the smart thing to do would just be an element of jobs ability, but I just don't. I don't know, this time, I don't know.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: No worries, no worries. But if people want to get in touch, people are listening to this and get enthused and want to be engaged. How do people get in touch?

 

John Robinson: Yeah. Please do get in touch with us. There's our ability. There's about three different places you can connect with us on there. There's a couple of form fields that HubSpot helps us with. You can also email me at info at our ability. Com. That's the simplest way. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm certainly all over LinkedIn. So really those are the the Instagram as well. Those are the best four ways. And I would love feedback. I, I really I really do now understand. If you email me about this, I'm going to send you back the the survey because we do want to increase our survey results. But but yeah, I would love feedback because that helps us craft what we want to build. And again, this time we want input from the community before we jump into it. And I'm glad we jumped the last time or I wouldn't have done it, but right this time it's a little bit different.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: You're you're older and wiser.

 

John Robinson: I don't older. Yes.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, for for me, it's it's Doctor Kirk adams.com is my website. Same, same. There's ways to get in touch there. And it's Kirk Adams, PhD, on LinkedIn, which I'm on every day. And thank you for listening to podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. John, we'll have you back in about six months when you have a name for the platform and it's up and running and for everyone listening. Philip. Survey. Share it with other people with disabilities who either are business owners or contemplating becoming business owners entrepreneurs. And with that, let let's go create a lot of opportunities for people with disabilities to thrive.

 

John Robinson: Excellent.

 

Dr. Kirk Adams: Thanks, John.

 

John Robinson: Thank you.

 

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