Disability and Inclusion in the Entertainment Industry with Jake Linn

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Jillian Mercado who is on the Albert, I believe.

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She said disability is a club that anyone can join at any time.

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Then she went on and she said, you know, you could be old, you could be dead, even if you're dead on your deathbed, you could have a disability that counts.

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It's like, yeah, that's true.

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You're listening to the Exceptional Leaders podcast.

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Each week we give you a front row seat to our conversations with new and successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders, making an impact in the special education and disability communities.

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They share their intimate experiences so you can start grow and expand your impact.

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I'm mailing at mailing chan dot com and I'm James burgess of slp transitions dot com.

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And today meling, we are going to be chatting about jake lin and his work spotlighting the disability community in Hollywood and Inequities in the entertainment industry and in this episode you're going to expand your awareness of how people with disabilities are marginalized and he gives us resources like his sight disability in Hollywood, which helps support and change the dialogue around diversity and inclusion in Hollywood, which is so important.

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Oh, I loved wrapping back and getting time with jake.

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He's been been doing what he's doing for a number of years now actually, I think he said on the, on the interview, like two years to get to the point where they are to be able to launch these um these sections that he's gonna be doing each month and I was so impressed with him when we first met two years ago, he was a student and now he's in his master's program, still a student, but definitely more more wise and aged as we all are.

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But it was just one of those fantastic um connections and I'm so glad to have him back on and be able to share his progress and success at this point.

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What did you think of the interview James?

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Well I loved it and a couple things stood out to me, mailing one is that you mentioned he's just a student and I think you said he, he didn't even study anything related to disability studies.

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So this is really just something he's doing with his own fruition in his own time and he's reaching out to people in Hollywood, which I've tried to reach out to publicists and I didn't get an email back.

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So I'm curious did he mention how he even started getting that ball rolling?

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Because he said once he got one person then it kind of snowballed and you know, it's the power of networking and compounding where he had one person in Hollywood for an interview, then they introduced him to someone else.

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And it takes off from there.

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That's exactly it, you're exactly right.

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And when he started, he only knew one or two people and I was referred to him through somebody else and I gave him a number of people and I have to say, especially for our listener.

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The power of networking is it just defies reason just want you to know.

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Um, you don't want to always be reaching out to people when you need something.

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So it's always great to connect with people when you don't.

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So if you have social avenues that you can meet people, if you have projects that you work on, that you can meet people that are outside of your bubble, I always say this James, you know, get out of your fish bowl for me.

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It's the speech therapy fish bowl.

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So um, I was able to connect him with people who were, you know, movers and shakers in this area that I was blessed to know because I had met through other channels.

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Um, and so he even mentioned that that, you know the cup that I think it was maybe three good referrals that I gave him really gave him a starting point as well as someone else who had done that.

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And so just from two or three people, you know, knowing the right two or three people that opened up the doors for him and he, he said he and his team went into meeting people and getting stories that they had no earlier plan for, like they had no idea where this was really going to be going.

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And it turned out to be amazing.

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That's so great.

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But I should have known you were the great connector mailing.

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I feel like you're in the center of the web of different people.

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So I mean that that's great though and especially the fact that it's a good cause highlighting disability and feeling that inclusivity, you know, it's really like what we see on the screen shapes our our feeling and how we show up in the world.

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You know, if I don't see myself represented, then I feel like I'm left out of the conversation and so what he's doing is highlighting different stories from actors, directors all across the board and showing how diversity matters.

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And not only does it shape our perception of ourselves, but I kind of went down a rabbit hole from this interview mailing looking up how Hollywood has changed legislation to for example, he mentions jake mentions the movie boy erased, which is a really good movie about sad but poignant movie about conversion therapy and how when that movie came out, it showed the story of someone who was marginalized and changed the conversation, but also I believe laws around gay conversion therapy camps, which is it was a horrible thing that people had to go through.

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And then I found other examples, like even back in 1948, there was a movie called the snake pit, which I didn't know this, but it was a movie that depicted how people with mental illnesses were treated in mental institutions.

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And after that movie came out, it caused 27 states to change legislation around living conditions in these institutions.

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So really the power of to me is like filmmaking and showing these stories is not only shaping how you feel as an individual, but it can stir the collective conversation and actually stir legislation.

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So, absolutely, that's very cool, yep, that's what I love about what Jake and his team are doing.

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And again, you know, they're in, they're young, they're students in school and they have a fresh approach to it and if our audience gets a chance, I really hope that you get the opportunity to go to their site and follow what they're doing.

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Just real groundbreaking stuff.

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Yeah.

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So that's disability in Hollywood on all the social handles for Jake's work.

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And then I also did want to quickly mention on the same note, I found something called the disability film challenge which was put on by easter seals And that is 75 films made and acted by people with disabilities submitted and they collaborated with Sony Studios.

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And I think a lot of these people who put on these independent films ended up getting acting roles after they were in the, in this independent film studio.

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So it's just really cool.

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There's all these different initiatives to get people with disabilities in film in tv and behind the camera as well.

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Absolutely.

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And I have to put my little claim to flame in there.

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I did interview the founder of the disability film challenge Nic Novicki.

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So if you want to go back, it was, I think it was two years ago now and I had him on and that's when this was just starting to take off.

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It does launch every year in the spring.

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And so if you want to be involved, you just have to have one person on your team who has a disability who is helping you to create this film.

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And then there are other metrics that they have, but you should probably be looking like now if you want to start putting your team together and then submitting and then the actual awards happen in the spring.

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So fantastic.

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James, I love, love, love the space that we're in.

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I know anything else going on mailing.

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I know you are feeling better I think Yes, oh my gosh, so I got and I got it organically.

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It was after my amazing birthday party celebration came back and two days later I was down and it it this was a tough one for me.

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This is the first time I had gotten an organically.

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It started out like a cold seems so much better now.

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But oh my gosh, it was a good two weeks of just really being sick, which I'm not used to.

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So I apologize at the beginning of this interview with jake that I do sound like I have a cold but I didn't want to miss the timing of this.

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So for our our listener, I apologize to you, I hope it's not too hard on the ears.

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I listened to it.

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I didn't think it sounded too bad.

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We'll let the audience decide.

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We'll do a poll.

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No and I apologize if I sound too relaxed because I just came back from vacation from Mexico from Mexico, went to Sayulita which is a small beach town and it was really nice.

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I just went for pretty impromptu and the first time I've traveled internationally really, even though it's only what a two hour plane ride, not a huge plane ride, but did a lot of surfing unplugged a little bit and came back with a tan and a sunburn.

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Somehow both.

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Oh you got your vitamin D.

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Right?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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That hopefully will help my immunity or at least my happy chemicals in my brain.

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So definitely feeling that excellent.

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Besides that, that's about all I have going on.

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But I encourage everyone to follow us on social media if you want to learn more about what's going on in our episodes at Exceptional Leaders on instagram on the website, exceptional Leaders dot com.

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We'd love to hear your ideas and give us a like share the episode rating all that jazz.

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It helps us out a lot and we want to hear what you think because it's it gets lonely just talking on zoom.

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So we would love to continue the conversation in another format.

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Even if you have a referral for a guest that you think we should interview.

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That'd be great, yep, love it.

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Thanks so much.

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Follow us and we hope you enjoy the show.

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All right, let's get to it.

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Okay, well, today's interview is very interesting for you, the listener.

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I'm going to be apologizing first hand because I feel like I'm a little nasally today, I've been fighting what I thought was a cold and strep throat and just found out that its covid, but I did not want to miss recording with our guest today, jake lin.

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Um he has been very busy, he's been a busy little guy here and I want to capture him in the moment um and I wanted you to be able to hear where he is at in his amazing journey, so please welcome Jake Lynn.

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He's an undergrad at the Art Institute of Chicago which actually has claim to fame there, as was seen in ferris Bueller's Day off, he's currently going through his masters degree at CSU sacramento and Jake reached out to me a couple of months ago.

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No, I want to say last year, jake, help me out here.

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How long ago was it?

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I think it was probably last year, I've been doing this for 2.5 years.

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Oh my God, that's right, it's been a while, it's been a while and he's just one of those people that I got the email and I was like, oh, this is really interesting and so I've been involved in a project with him.

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It's coming to fruition now and I thought this would be a great time to introduce him to you as the audience so that you can hear what he's up to and also help to promote him and his team.

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So jake um usually I give a much better intro on what you're doing, but I think you'd be the best person to share.

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Yeah.

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Hi everybody.

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My name is Jake, jake from State Farm.

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It's a hard name to remember and essentially I'm conduct initiative that actually was in, it's called disability in Hollywood.

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And disability in Hollywood is an awareness campaign where we're sharing interviews with prominent disabled folks in the entertainment industry and they're discussing their stories, their experiences and recommendations for change.

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Wow, okay, so you were a student when you had this idea, You're saying that started two years ago.

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What prompted this?

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I feel like when a student for what now, 17, 18 years, it's never what prompted this?

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Well, I was an intern at american Association of people with disabilities was just a nationwide organization advocating for equity and rights for people with disabilities and I was accepted to their internship, which wow.

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Did not expect.

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Congratulations with a Q.

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And that was with two other people.

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Surely cardio and Courtney Felli and we came together had to do a final project and we were thinking what's super similar that we're all interested in and it was media representation for people with disabilities because we have, we all have our own experiences of how that has negatively impacted our lives and pretty much it's just gone from there.

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We're not even really associated with a P.

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D.

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Anymore.

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I mean this has been 2.5 years now.

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We're finally releasing this initiative and we have interviews going on until february of next.

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Wow, I have so many questions.

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Okay, How many, how many people are on your team?

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So right now I would say three.

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But it's mostly me and a wonderful also fellow ap D intern, Christine Kanagawa.

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But Kourtney and Shirley have been hoping along the way for two years.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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And how are you funded?

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We're not it's pretty much just self Yeah.

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And I it hasn't been really expensive.

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I mean thank gosh for school because they fund zoom and then I think the only greater expense was hiring BSL interpreters, interpreters.

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That's been the only real expense.

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Other than that it's our time.

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But I'm more I'm happy to do it.

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I mean this this seems to be discussed and needs to be changed.

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Okay, well doing interviews on zoom takes a lot of time and I know that because this is what I do as my passion project for the podcast and I've been involved in an interview with you and your team and it takes a lot of planning a lot of just you know, being present and oh you did research on me before.

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Also.

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I did.

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I mean the whole process was really interesting because before I didn't know anyone in the entertainment industry and I just sent out a post and Gail Williamson of K.

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M.

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R.

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She reached out and said, Hey, I can help you.

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And she was the original talent agent which really started the game, were allowed a lot of people with disabilities to become in the entertainment industry.

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And then it was pretty much referral after referral.

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I mean I went from nobody 2.5 years ago and now I know more than 75 people from across the entertainment industry, talent agency, talent managers, people in sports writer, its author all I mean it's it's been great.

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It's been absolute privilege meeting all these people.

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Yeah, it's relationships.

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I keep saying that that that's how you, that's how you grow your network, right?

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And I need to catch back up with you because I know there's a couple of people that we knew, you know, the same people.

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Um and I am always looking for wonderful guests for the podcast.

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So let's definitely catch up after this and for our listener, take notes, this is how it happens is you know, you're listening to jake, he's a student and he just started reaching out and uh and now he's well connected.

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So what's the final product going to look like.

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So from all of this, I should also explain.

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It wasn't just reaching out to people, we had to make legal documents which I had no really idea.

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And so it took a long time to get those documents but it was pro bono work from lawyers which greatly appreciate and then from there it started so gail that referred us I think to Eileen Grub and yes, they were previous guests.

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If you want to listen to them on the show, they were about a year and a half ago.

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And then pretty much from that, that's how we were introduced to actors.

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But I was also thinking the entertainment industry is so much more and along this process.

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I was really learning about discrimination for people in the industry even if they were prominent or not and that really flabbergasted courtly Shirley and I said okay we should probably talk about this more because originally we were only thinking of just actually I don't think really knew what we were getting into.

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Yeah, I mean I wasn't expected, I think Eileen for example, she said that she had to hide her walking breaks to get roles.

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Yes, can you believe that I just I want to I want to highlight this.

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She had to um have them capture her walking across the room without showing that she had a significant change in her step And so that's how it was always in her in her presentation which is amazing and if you know Eileen google her Eileen Guba, she's gorgeous, she's smart, she is so proficient, she's so good at what she does and to hear this and know this, I met her in real life at one of the conferences and I was like what you know, just to understand that to capture that, that they had to edit out her disability is amazing.

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And then an advocate, Tatiana lee was trying to remember Tatiana, she was told that she couldn't get a job in this industry and then going to Ryan J.

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Haddad who he's more well known industry, he was in the politician and he's a playwright and he was told that where his play was going to be held, it's gonna be inaccessible.

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I have years who have told me that the stage was inaccessible because no ramps so they had to be hoisted over but it's not just actors who are affected either.

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I mean one of the reasons what you see on tv and film directly impacts everyday people and I can get to that later because its impact in my life and I'm not really, I'm in retail, it's impacted me and I'm just an ordinary person.

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I'm not, you know like, but then I wanted to interview content creators and that was hard to, because it's defining this to be, you have to reach out research and I was able to meet a lot of talent managers that way, but for example, Anastasia Pagonis too is a gold medalist, he's a paralympian, Just 2.4 million Tiktok viewers which is amazing.

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They even got here because very a lot of people.

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But she told me that people don't even think that she's capable.

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It's like she's a gold medal.

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I mean it's pretty capable.

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Yeah and it's just it keeps going on from there and we have 75 stories to share.

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How did you end up grouping them?

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It was whatever most fit best I think.

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I mean it depends on the days on the months because sometimes there's holidays in certain months that we have that we try to be aware of because diverse inclusion is very very important, disability isn't just a monolith.

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Anyone, any anywhere could be affected.

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Jillian Mercado who is on the L word, I believe she said disability is a club that anyone could join it anytime.

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She then she went on and she said, you know, you could be old, you could be dead even if you're dead on your deathbed, you could have a disability that counts.

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And it's like, yeah that's true.

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Well you and I are disabled right now.

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We are on zoom and I see we're both wearing glasses.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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Yeah, yep, yep.

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And some of us like myself have been for years dealing with things and using strategies um for a different quote unquote disabilities and not realizing, you know that this was an a disability because it's just who you are.

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I have a number of colleagues like myself who have realized that we have been struggling with A.

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D.

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D.

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All our lives but it's been managed for some people not managed well.

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And so now they're looking into alternatives.

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But you know there are all of these issues that we've been dealing with as adults um that we did not realize fit into these different categories.

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It's just that's how life is you know.

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But obviously for other people it's more overt, especially if it's a physical disability.

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Every building is different.

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I mean thinking sometimes it impacts your life greater than others.

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But I mean for me I have a D.

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H.

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D.

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I have a variety of mental health disabilities.

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I was diagnosed with migraines and if I have a migraine attack on the ground and if I didn't have medication I would just be on the ground crying constant wouldn't be able to really function.

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And that's just my experience not gonna talk about other people's but yeah I mean I pretty much just live with it.

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It's my everyday life.

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I don't know what's different.

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But If you're like me you can't get enough of books, podcasts, blogs and other ways to find out how to create, grow and scale.

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That's why I brought together 43 disability focus leaders to give you more of what you're looking for, you will hear their stories and three best selling books which focus on general offerings augmented and alternative communication and speech language pathology.

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I invite you to search for becoming an exceptional leader on Amazon so you can learn intimate startup pearls of wisdom and keep growing your brilliant idea.

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Now let's get back to our amazing interview.

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You know what's fantastic is the work that you're doing is showing us that it is us, you know, it's not us and them.

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I think that's the most important thing is we're starting to realize that ramps are required for everyday life.

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You know, I like talking about like text to speech.

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My husband who doesn't have any significant disability, loves to use text to speech.

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And it's interesting because that came out initially for people who had more difficulty, you know using their fingers to type.

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But I think accessibility features are fantastic.

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You know there's so many so many times that I'll use the door opener because I have boxes in my hands, you know at the post office, don't you do that, you know, you hit the thing and the door opens thank goodness Yeah, I think it's gone very far over the years.

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I mean haven't really paid attention to those sorts of accessibility because I don't have a disability where I use a lot of those devices but I would say people become more accepting people with disabilities even when I started the project, which is really interesting because there's I'm not gonna say this before and after.

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But I think a lot of people are working on these issues and so it's just creating more noise in the world and you can't just not ignore What 25% of the American population or 50% of the world they've been trying.

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I don't know why because Hollywood or the entertainment industry in general, they make change.

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I mean what you put out their religious perception and I'm gonna give a separate example of conversion therapy which is you know, a conversion therapy conversion therapy is where people who are LGBT plus can be sent to these therapies and it quote unquote converts them into being straight.

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It's not scientifically proven and it still exists.

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And I believe 28 states around the nation.

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And there was a film called boy a race that came out that we discussed this and we think it was 2018 along with the miseducation of Cameron Post.

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And because of that film, I believe it's three or four state legislators passed a ban on conversion therapy.

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That's how powerful Hollywood is.

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Also.

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13 reasons why suicide.

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It was very controversial but suicide became more well known and it's the second leading cause of that for People to age 15 to 25 minutes.

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Hollywood really really creates these discussions and acceptance and equity.

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And that even goes into not just people in the industry, but everyday life people.

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And I can talk about how I've been affected personally if you would like, you know, that's my next question I was going to say, so having deep dived into this deep dive into an area that you know I guess was not on your radar prior.

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How has this affected you?

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Yeah and I didn't really think about it either because I've never seen myself represented on screen and I think it's effective even more after conducting this initiative because like wow this takes me a minute and really think about it and just think how there really isn't anyone who's out there like me do I not matter?

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I mean I'm gonna start a person.

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I mean but it's it affects me not in the grid, it doesn't you know, impact my daily life but just trying to find myself on screen it makes me want to cry because I want to see someone like me.

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I think it'd be really cool and it might change the narrative for people who have the same disabilities the same identities as me.

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But mostly in education.

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I mean they were refusing to allow my 50.

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Force to come into place.

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And so we had to get an attorney.

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I mean just stuff there was that and then in the workforce and primarily worked in retail at a grocery store, used to work in my manager said that she was going to lay off this person with a D.

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H.

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D.

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She said that specifically because they couldn't concentrate and that I was at a job recently where I mean it wasn't really a disability accommodation but I was into.

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And I could still use my right hand.

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But they said they stopped scheduling me.

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And the reason was because we can't handle your restrictions.

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Yeah.

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Well I stopped working there anyway.

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They just stopped scheduling me and I'm like okay, whoa.

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But and that's that's that's my experience, that's nobody else's.

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But that's what I have seen.

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And then surely who is blind?

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She's the co founder in Hollywood.

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She sometimes walks with the game sometimes doesn't and people try to help her, which is very dangerous.

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And then Courtney, she has discussed how she has chronic illness and basically the assumption is that she can't do anything.

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Just looking at what's in the entertainment industry.

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Courtney pretty much any chronic illness that's basically you're dying or you're just depressed with your life and then surely discusses pretty little liars.

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Where this person walks with a cane at nighttime with sunglasses.

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It's a really big and then for me for a.

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D.

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H.

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D.

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I think of sex in the city where Kerry says a.

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D.

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D.

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Another dating disaster and she can't handle the person because he can't concentrate.

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It's all over the place or victoria, which in a song she says, I'm so sick of it.

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Your attention deficit.

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Never listened, never listen.

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That that's in people's minds even as people think of it as a joke who are the creators, it impacts people's lives millions, billions.

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It does, wow, The work you're doing is enormous.

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Um and I feel like this kind of inception, because you interviewed me because I was doing all of the interviews, um with people in Hollywood and or not Hollywood mostly like acting and theater and then now I'm interviewing you because of the work that you're doing, but this is what, this is, what we're meant to do is to help to raise the awareness, you know, increase the noise, it's just incredible.

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So when does this actually become available?

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So this is an awareness campaign.

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So it started in May and it's just short videos of all the interviews like May of 2022, right May of 2022, so pretty recently and then all the way through february and we might do another round.

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It depends, I'm going to wait till august and just have a little bit of a breather because it takes a lot of time, especially by myself, but we might do another round and I should mention the whole point.

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So there's the awareness side and you know, trying to get people to learn about these issues as much as possible and ideally become trending, if not, that's fine, but simultaneously I created a memo that is being sent to heads of entertainment industry officials to try to convince them hey or make them or make it in the known like, hey, this is the problem, this seems to change and then I provide solutions and that's all on the website.

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So anyone could download that if they wanted to.

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Fantastic.

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Okay, so how do we plug into what's going on each month?

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Social media, that's what I do.

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So we have a facebook tiktok twitter instagram and it's under what, how do we follow Hollywood except twitter, which was hard, that's disability and age, but it's disability, Hollywood across the board, that's really long handle.

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And what are we, what are we doing?

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Are we looking at videos?

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Are we listening to information?

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What is the platform?

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Yeah.

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So for all the platforms, we use it to share individual stories, perspectives or advice or just experiences of discrimination they've been through.

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So it's essentially just a long awareness campaign and ideally it's built up as well because of the followers, people have, the more people hear of it, the more people want to watch it and this is going to february and then simultaneously if you want to find potential solutions or how to not maybe solutions, but how to combat this that's on our website and I'm, that's in the how can I help such contact us?

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And below that should be a paper very, very short paper that describes.

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It's a policy memo essentially.

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So I mean I can see that now it's pretty simplistic too, but hire people with disabilities from the top to the bottom If characters are disabled only hire people with disabilities to play those parts and it's a big one because this whole time it might have changed maybe half a percentage 1% essentially the same where There's only 2% of disabled roles on TV and film and out of all those people it's only 5 to 10% of those 2% have a disability and then fostering an environment supporting people with disabilities by including them and newsletters, focus groups and training just talking about disability.

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And then in America making sure that sets stage office etcetera to be accessible.

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Including interpreters.

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And I've been hearing this a lot through the actors and it's not A.

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D.

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A compliant and that's illegal.

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You don't want to lose lawsuit on your hands.

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But it's just it's just basic law in the United States.

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Excellent, wow.

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You've done so much work.

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You've grown so much since our interview.

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Um speaking of when does my segment become available?

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I believe yours comes out in July July 1st to 3rd.

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Excellent.

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Yeah.

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And I think that's why we also wanted to push this episode so that people would know and again, it's just more layering more information.

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Just fantastic work that you and your team are doing jake.

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Thank you.

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You provide a unique perspective where you've worked with a lot of people with disabilities and also as an owner of a business that you've made these changes.

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I mean you specifically talking interview how it's hard to ensure equity and inclusion, but you do your best because you're always learning and use the example of pronouns and how you use that for interviews and you always talk about that and that's just having to grow with the times pretty much and doing your absolute best.

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And it is hard.

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I mean with this whole pandemic, a lot has become into the known or that you have to advocate for.

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I think that's what social media and there's pros and cons to this.

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But definitely with the pandemic, I've been more aware of a lot more social issues and how to actively either advocate for or combat or there's so much.

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But basically you always have to learn and if you don't you get left behind.

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Absolutely.

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It's also wrong to not advocate for these issues too, because then you're basically saying it's okay that people are less equal than you and it's not and that's why we need the work that you're doing combined with the work that everyone else is doing to continue to raise this awareness and help to shape you know, our understanding of the world as it is.

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Thank you so much jake.

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Please also extend to thank you to your other team members and I totally appreciate your time and energy that you've been doing this for two years to create this for us, we'll continue to watch what you're doing and support you out there and please let me know if I can help you in any way.

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Well, thank you so much for having me.

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We hope you enjoyed this episode and invite you to leave us a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify and share the show with people you think will find value from it.

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This helps the show a lot or have a great guest referral reach out to us at X Leaders at gmail dot com.

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And if you want exclusive tips on becoming an exceptional leader, deliver straight to your inbox, just go to exceptional Leaders dot com and sign up for our mailing list.

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Thanks for listening.