Matching People with Disabilities and Employers with John Robinson

Mai Ling Chan 00:00 
Have you ever wondered why so many talented people with disabilities are still underrepresented in the workforce? Well, in today's episode, we're uncovering what's really holding companies back and how we can drive change. 

John Robinson 00:15 
There's always going to be questions around how do we communicate? What's the communication method? What are some of the ways that disability manifests itself? Yeah, we can talk about that in generality, but when you talk about specifics, it really does come down to one -on -one conversation. 

John Robinson 00:32 
And so what we impress upon the businesses is ask questions with some love and kindness, but ask questions on how somebody's gonna perform the job function. 

Mai Ling Chan 00:45 
Welcome to the Exceptional Leaders Podcast. I'm Mai Ling Chan, and together with James Berges, we're getting you top tips and resources for building and scaling your disability -focused offerings straight from the forefront of disability advocacy and leadership. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:03 
Before we get into today's interview, I want to let you know that my co -host, James, is currently traveling through Greece, but he'll be back soon, and he will definitely be sharing some stories from his amazing trip. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:14 
Today, we're shining the spotlight on John Robinson, CEO of OurAbility, Inc., and expert in disability employment and advocacy. And as we are celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month, or NDEAM, John is sharing his insights on how we can push the needle forward for inclusion in the workplace. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:31 
In this episode, John's going to be highlighting the importance of employment as a driver for independence and economic empowerment for people with disabilities, and how the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, has shaped disability employment over the past 34 years. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:45 
He'll also be talking about the role of technology in breaking barriers and helping people with disabilities find meaningful work, and how the language in job descriptions can be changed to be more inclusive and attractive. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:58 
And that is so important. I really hope you enjoy listening to that area. But before we get to that interview with John, I wanted to share the amazing progress we've been making with my exceptional leaders network. 

Mai Ling Chan 02:08 
We've been meeting for a few months now and have been deep diving into things like organizational tools, resources, and most importantly, creating highly productive and valuable connections with each other. 

Mai Ling Chan 02:19 
And these are your fellow accessibility and disability leaders. And several members have already linked up to support each other to work on joint projects, cross promoting, and appearing as podcast guests. 

Mai Ling Chan 02:29 
And I'm just so happy to see that this group is flourishing and growing. And I will definitely be sharing when our next opening is as soon as that comes up. All right. Please don't forget to share this episode or any of our previous ones with anyone who's passionate about making changes in the world of disability and accessibility, just like you. 

Mai Ling Chan 02:47 
All right. Now let's dive into this powerful conversation with John Robinson. All right. So I am super excited to be here with my long -time friend, John Robinson. Before we started, we started to try to figure out how we knew each other. 

Mai Ling Chan 03:02 
And we were introduced by Kirk Adams, who is someone who is very well known in disability leadership. So welcome, John. 

John Robinson 03:09 
Thank you, Mai Ling. Great to see you again. 

Mai Ling Chan 03:11 
Thank you. And I'm also excited to have you because October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which is on DM. And I know this is a really busy month for you, so I'm glad that you're able to squeeze me in because we're going to be talking about all things related to disability employment, which you are an expert in. 

Mai Ling Chan 03:28 
So before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about you and the work that you do in this space? 

John Robinson 03:34 
Sure. You're right. This is a national disability employment awareness month. It's, it's our biggest month of the year. It's where we get a spotlight on, on what, what is important, which is employment, economic empowerment, entrepreneurship, et cetera. 

John Robinson 03:48 
And that's everything that we stand for as a company. I founded our ability incorporated about 13 years ago as a way to help myself a generation too late. And I say it that way because I was unemployed after college. 

John Robinson 04:03 
I went to Syracuse university to study television, radio, film. I graduated 1990 with a degree. And while my peers all got jobs, I was unemployed for four and a half years. And if you think about the American with Disabilities Act and when it was signed in July of 1990, my career trajectory follows in line with the ADA. 

John Robinson 04:25 
Well, the first four and a half years being unemployed. That's the sort of the infancy of the ADA when things are getting implemented. And then early in my career, a few missteps, some success, again, very similar to the ADA. 

John Robinson 04:40 
And now is, uh, you know, past middle age, we're 34 years in the ADA, right? We're doing well. Most of the people working in the workforce have worked under it. So there's more understanding of inclusion. 

John Robinson 04:53 
And now it's a matter of doing the practical work, which is helping people find jobs, helping people match to jobs, doing skill assessment, doing resume building, and then on the other side, getting companies to understand how to recruit individuals with disabilities, what skills we have in the marketplace, how our language and our job descriptions matter. 

John Robinson 05:13 
And so these are all the things that we do on a day to day basis, but in October, we get to talk about it in a, maybe a little bit higher profile than otherwise. 

Mai Ling Chan 05:22 
Amazing. So I have to say, I feel like you've been doing this work like behind the scenes for years, and it's in like the last year and a half where all of a sudden, all of these companies are looking to make sure that they have hired people with disabilities. 

Mai Ling Chan 05:35 
Is that just me or is that true? 

John Robinson 05:38 
No, it feels like that at times, and there's no doubt we've had a jobs board up and a mentor network up since, you know, 2012, but a couple of points that have changed our conversation around this one in 2014, the American with disabilities act was reinvigorated thanks to president Obama. 

John Robinson 05:58 
And then, you know, the, uh, Congress after that, and there was actually for the first time, some teeth put into the ADA around employment numbers. And so the office of federal contract compliance and the department of labor can get companies to that are contracting with the United States government to be thinking about adding employees with disabilities and there's real numbers there now. 

John Robinson 06:21 
And so that in 2014 really jump -started what we were doing. And then again, during the, uh, the past administration, the Trump administration, there was a, a, a lull, but the COVID years again, reinvigorated disability employment when we hit the need for more hybrid, more remote people that might not look the same when we needed those employees in corporate America, then it opened the minds and hearts of businesses too. 

John Robinson 06:56 
We could, we could talk to people with disabilities. And then also maybe the third leg of that, the third step of that is that we all went through a mental health crisis during COVID. And so now the stigma around mental health issues isn't as strong as it was say 10 years ago. 

John Robinson 07:15 
And so people with disabilities have a better opportunity to employment than they ever had before. And yep, in part to what the federal government did in 2014, but also in part to COVID and the fact that most of us have woken up to the fact that people with disabilities can do the job. 

Mai Ling Chan 07:33 
I love that. So out of the three, I'm going to take a step back to the post COVID was when employers realized that everyone could work from home and be effective. Right. And then now they're trying to bring everyone back to in person. 

Mai Ling Chan 07:47 
And has that affected and I think I'm walking right into the answer. But John, has that affected the job availability for people with disabilities? 

John Robinson 07:57 
It has, it has to some degree, although I think, I think a couple of things are happening, you know, two things can be true at the same time. It definitely has impacted people with disabilities at employment, but there still are enough remote hybrid positions that there are opportunities for us. 

John Robinson 08:13 
I think what, what really happened is people with disabilities started to present their skills in the marketplace. And so hiring managers were more open to that. I think that has stayed true. Yes, we're going back to work in theory. 

John Robinson 08:28 
I'm not so sure how much we're going to go back to work. I think that to some degree, that's, that's a CNBC talking point. The reality is most businesses that I know have some version of virtual and they're staying that way. 

John Robinson 08:41 
Yes, you might be going into the office three days a week, but you're probably at home two days a week. You know, if we ask our children, you know, three or four years ago to study at home, and then we're used to that. 

John Robinson 08:56 
And then you get, you graduate after doing that school work at home. And then what's to say, we can't go into the marketplace and work from home, right? We can't. And so, you know, we've proven it. Our children have proven it and certainly people with disabilities prove it. 

Mai Ling Chan 09:12 
I love that. Then speaking to your third point, the neurodiverse mental health and mental health awareness movement, I'm going to say. For our listeners, you may have seen that a lot of big companies are really doing a huge push to find and hire people who are neurodiverse and seeing the value of our very excited and active brains. 

Mai Ling Chan 09:34 
I'm including myself in this. I don't know, John, if you know, but I was diagnosed last May as an adult with ADHD and that has really changed the way that I've perceived myself in the world. It's been really amazing. 

Mai Ling Chan 09:46 
So how have you guys, like, I guess, prepared for that or reacted to this at our ability? 

John Robinson 09:53 
Well, I think for us, we're, we're agnostic to disability. We're, we'll, we'll take any disability, right? We, we just want to help people that want to find a job and our system takes disability out of it and starts matching people and their skills and their interests and their past work history and education to employment. 

John Robinson 10:12 
So we've, if you think about it, we've taken off the company name from the job description, we've taken off, you know, maybe some of the nuance in the job description that would tell people what it is. 

John Robinson 10:21 
And we just talk about what skills are required to do the job. And on the other side, on people's side, we've taken off the disability. We've taken off the name. We've taken off any, any private information. 

John Robinson 10:31 
And we take that skill assessment and we match it to those jobs. And then when we make the marriage again, then, then we want people to feel comfortable, self -disclose if they so choose. I think what has happened is we, we have probably more people who are neurodiverse or, or have mental health issues than ever before. 

John Robinson 10:51 
We certainly know that in general population, but we've also seen it in our system and it would, it would stand to reason that that percentage of that population does match the positions. And so businesses are becoming more accustomed to the nuances in recruiting and interviewing and hiring that population. 

John Robinson 11:10 
There's always going to be questions around how do we communicate? What's the communication method? What, you know, what are some of the ways that the disability manifests itself? Yeah, we can, we can talk about that in generality. 

John Robinson 11:25 
But when you talk about specifics, me interviewing you, you interviewing me, it really does come down to one -on -one conversation. And so what we impress upon the businesses is ask questions with some love and kindness, but ask questions on how somebody is going to perform the job function. 

John Robinson 11:44 
How are you going to do the job mailing? Right. And how are you going to do the job, John? And if my answer should be what triggers the business into employment. At the same time, we tell individuals with disabilities, you can self -disclose if you want, but there's also this, this fine line of oversharing. 

John Robinson 12:05 
And so maybe what we do is we answer questions on how we're going to perform the job. So if a question comes out, John, is there any accommodation that you need in selling advertising for this TV station? 

John Robinson 12:21 
Yes. I'm going to sell advertising for this TV station. This is as if I was 1995 again. And to do so, I'm going to need a step stool for the photocopy machine to be able to photocopy the sales sheet. 

John Robinson 12:33 
And I'm going to need a step stool in the bathroom so that I can reach the sink in the toilet. Right. And that's that, that basic. And so I answered the question based on how I'm going to do the job and how I'm going to be comfortable in that job. 

John Robinson 12:46 
And I think that's, that's the playing field we all need to be on so that it is level for each one of us and so that we can show our skills and interests in performing any job. 

Mai Ling Chan 12:59 
I love this, I love how you gave an actual example of how to respond to a question. How involved is our ability in this, in the matchmaking process? 

John Robinson 13:08 
Well, we have a technical system. So we've, we've got an art generative AI system that we've been building for four years, you can log into, to our ability, either our ability .jobs or any number, one of our websites. 

John Robinson 13:21 
And if it says log in or create a profile, you sign in with Google. Uh, you immediately are in the system. You upload the PDF of your LinkedIn profile. That takes two minutes. You answer six questions that takes another four minutes. 

John Robinson 13:35 
And then we are immediately or start matching you to jobs. So we've, we've cared very deeply about can we condense the amount of time it takes to help people on our end, because VR counselors, commissioner for the blind counselors, community college, college universities, counselors, it takes a long time to do an intake form. 

John Robinson 13:55 
We should be able to do it in under six minutes. So we've done that. And so if people come into the system, log in and upload the information and then answer questions, we can start matching you to positions. 

John Robinson 14:06 
That's what we care deeply about. So our system is, is AI focused. It's reading any one of 50 ,000 jobs in real time. It's reading what candidates answer in real time and making that marriage. Then it'll do it again tomorrow when you come in and change an answer. 

John Robinson 14:21 
And again, tomorrow when the job descriptions change. And so that's, that's what we've, uh, what we built and we're excited that we built this and we're seeing more and more people click apply, which, which is the most gratifying thing. 

Mai Ling Chan 14:34 
That's great. How is this different from like, indeed? 

John Robinson 14:37 
That's a great question. Mailing it really isn't, it shouldn't be much different than indeed, except for two things, and this is what's really important. One is we're people with disabilities that built the system for people with disabilities. 

John Robinson 14:48 
I'm a quad amputee, Karthik's blind. You know, we, we, we live this, we live this experience. And so the, the LinkedIn's of the world, the indeeds of the world, the monsters of the world are not run by people with disabilities and that matters. 

John Robinson 15:01 
Even some of our competitors in the disability space are run by able -bodied individuals. You know, I know from my personal experience that I've, I'm dealing in the disability space. I want that organization run by somebody with a disability. 

John Robinson 15:15 
So that's a, you know, B is the, the bigger entities have not invested the time and money necessarily to do that job matching to that level. They've got a lot of money, right? They've got big footprint, so to speak, it indeed monster in LinkedIn, but they haven't really done that skill assessment matching and that job description matching the way we have. 

John Robinson 15:40 
You're starting to see it a little bit with LinkedIn. I'm not surprising because it, you know, they've got a lot more resources, they can do it pretty quickly. But we've really thought about, Hey, if we take the name off and we take the company name off, we start matching interests and skills with job descriptions, we could do a better job in placing people with disabilities. 

John Robinson 15:57 
And so that's why we've done that. 

Mai Ling Chan 16:00 
I love it. I love the passion that has now jumped out of you, John. All of a sudden, I was like, whoa, yeah, this is the soapbox. I can feel it. Fantastic. How many years again have you been doing this? 

John Robinson 16:11 
Too many, too many. Uh, I started this company in 2012 and so we've, uh, you know, I've been a public person speaking about disability, advocating for disability since that time. The jobs board just by itself has been up all that time, but really the, the workaround candidate assessment, the workaround generative AI has been in the last four years and excited to what we have built and excited to see what we build again for more years. 

Mai Ling Chan 16:38 
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. That's why I brought together 43 disability -focused leaders to give you more of what you're looking for. 

Mai Ling Chan 16:51 
You will hear their stories in three best -selling books, which focus on general offerings, augmentative and alternative communication, and speech -language pathology. 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. 

Mai Ling Chan 17:12 
Now, let's get back to our amazing interview. On this show, what I love to do is spotlight you, the person who is creating this and growing with us. I know that there's a number of different committees and things that you're involved with. 

Mai Ling Chan 17:24 
Can you share with us what has become available to you? 

John Robinson 17:29 
You know, I think I, I underappreciate my position and I underappreciate what, you know, what I've accomplished, I guess I, I try to be humble because we've got to, we've got to take the next step every day, right? 

John Robinson 17:41 
I come from a sales background. And so, you know, you have to have, you know, five telephone calls or five emails and some success stories to advance, advance your sales success. You know, I can still have that mindset as a business owner. 

John Robinson 17:54 
I don't really ever get a chance to take a step back and say, wow, we've, we've done, we've done some cool things. 

Mai Ling Chan 18:01 
Yeah, but this is the show for that, and I told you, so hopefully you got your notes. 

John Robinson 18:05 
You can still, you can hear it's still hard for me, you know, but I have been recognized by our chamber of commerce in front of 1500 people in, in the capital region of New York is as a champion of change. 

John Robinson 18:16 
I have been recognized by the Obama white house for what we've done on disability employment. Um, I think maybe more exciting recently is I'm on a, uh, private public committee for employment for, uh, the chief disability office for governor Hochul. 

John Robinson 18:32 
And I, I, I applaud our governor here in New York state to have a chief disability office, to have a chief disability officer and to be working towards employment first, finally in New York state. I think that's, those are all new things and really, really important things. 

John Robinson 18:49 
So some of the private advocacy that I've done, at least somebody's listening and greatly appreciate that. And I love that committee and we're making changes in New York and that's a big deal. That's one thing that I'm really excited about. 

John Robinson 19:02 
And then just recently, a trustee of Syracuse university and his wife gave some resources so that Syracuse university could hire me on a part -time basis as a professor of practice for disability entrepreneurship and employment. 

John Robinson 19:18 
And what we're really trying to do is to bring our ability more in line with what Syracuse wants to do in regard to disability entrepreneurship and disability accessibility. There's no reason why we cannot create more entrepreneurs and disability that have accessibility as a focus. 

John Robinson 19:35 
And so we're excited about that work and where that's going to take us, you know, for the, for the years to come. 

Mai Ling Chan 19:42 
Excellent. Oh, that's exactly where my focus is too. So I really love that. We'll have to talk more offline about what you're doing. Oh, this is fantastic. Okay. Another thing that I know that you had rolled out and I wanted to make sure we talked about it was a dashboard for Abalis language. 

Mai Ling Chan 19:57 
And if you could expand a little bit on what Abalis language is first, that would be great. 

John Robinson 20:01 
Ableism is intentional or unintentional, hurtful, sometimes words, sometimes actions towards people with disabilities. And so it's, it's, it's similar to racism or sexism, but it makes some sense. If you're, if you run across some ableism with people with disabilities, we certainly understand as people with disabilities, I think at times the general population may not. 

John Robinson 20:24 
We've known for a long time that there's a reason why people with disabilities do not apply to more positions. And one of the reasons is that the language in a job description, and this is language that could be anywhere also, by the way, but we tend to look at our data set of job descriptions, that the language and job descriptions can be limiting to people and stop people from applying. 

John Robinson 20:49 
You know, a very typical example would be must have a driver's license. Well, what is the skill required in that job description? Is it a driving job? Is it a CDL license you need because you have to drive up an 18 Wheeler? 

John Robinson 21:03 
Yeah, sure. You need a driver's license, right? Or is it a pharmacy tech at a local pharmacy and you're really just asking somebody to be able to get there on time? What is it you're really asking? And so we've built through our AI, some modeling to not only look at words, but look at phrases, look at phraseology, look at rationale around the phraseology and make recommendations. 

John Robinson 21:29 
So we just come out in the last month with a dashboard that we make available to our major subscribers as part of their subscription. So it's, it's part of the, part of the deal where they can look at their public jobs, they can click on their own public jobs, and if there's ableist language in their public jobs, we show that to them in this public dashboard, along with the rationale and along with alternatives for, 

John Robinson 21:57 
for making changes. We don't change any language. We never will, but we do make this sandbox available to our partners. And then also on that dashboard is an open text space. So you can cut and paste text and you can put it in there. 

John Robinson 22:12 
And again, you can see what may be deemed as, as ableist in that text. And so we're excited about that. It's brand new. We're hoping that more of our partners take advantage of this, or if people want to subscribe to that alone, great. 

John Robinson 22:24 
Happy to work with you on that. 

Mai Ling Chan 22:27 
So I'm interested, what's been the response on that? Are people surprised and going, what? They had no idea. Or are they like, yeah, that makes sense. 

John Robinson 22:35 
There's always surprise. Absolutely. And I, it's never, it's never a negative surprise. It's never, Oh, we don't believe in that. No, it's like everything else in disability. It's an awakening that, Oh, okay. 

John Robinson 22:46 
That makes some sense. Why you might parse that phrase that way and why it might be hurtful. So, uh, we're opening the hearts and minds of others and that's what we want to do. 

Mai Ling Chan 22:59 
So I'm treading lightly on this very political type of conversation, but I'm going to use the word woke, which is now out, but when it was, yeah, when it was, uh, you know, it was new and it was overwhelming, there was such value for me personally, John, because I am a woman of color, I am short, I'm barely five feet, um, half Chinese, half Colombian. 

Mai Ling Chan 23:20 
And I realized that I had so many phrases and things that I used that came from my cultural background, from where I lived in New Jersey, I'm now in Arizona. So those are all not accepted here, but, um, I had such an awakening and I thought that I was doing well, and then there was always another level, especially during this woke period of, Oh, you can't say that now. 

Mai Ling Chan 23:39 
Oh, wait, you can't do that. You know, saying things like, Oh, somebody's shortcomings, like, Oh, you can't say that that's offensive. And I'd be like, Oh, wait, I'm the short one. I shouldn't be saying that, you know? 

Mai Ling Chan 23:48 
So it's interesting, right? So just like now looking at this at a, at a corporate level, you know, how is the response where you are really trying to educate people and bring them up to the next level without treading, you know, on that like woke and that political kind of tone. 

John Robinson 24:04 
It's one of the reasons why we're doing it in a private space. The other reason is this isn't about a gotcha, a gotcha in bad language, but it really is, is, Hey, why aren't people applying to this job? 

John Robinson 24:15 
Right. And if you really want as many applicants as possible to this job, wouldn't it make sense that you'd be careful of what's written in the job so that it's more inclusive and more welcoming. And, and we put it in that those terms, they are, you know, businesses understand that and it's definitely not, you know, again, jump on Twitter, jump on X and say, Hey, so -and -so company didn't do it. 

John Robinson 24:39 
Right. No, it's more of, Hey, look who is doing it right. And, you know, we want to, to show those job descriptions off because that's a success story. And that's what, that's what we want to talk about disability inclusion. 

Mai Ling Chan 24:51 
I'm going to share an example of marketing, just something that caught my eye. It was for a local YMCA, and it had an image of someone with prosthetics, and they were going to get into the pool. It said, special sessions for disabled swimmers. 

Mai Ling Chan 25:07 
This blew up on the internet. I remember seeing that, and it was like, why do you have to spotlight that you have to be disabled to have these sessions? It's really interesting, and when you get it, you finally get it. 

Mai Ling Chan 25:19 
I don't know how to explain it, and so for our listener, I don't know if this is helping you in any way to understand why this is so important, but John, could you give us an example of a job description that you've seen that is something that is kind of subtle, but once you get it, you're like, oh yeah, we can't do that anymore? 

John Robinson 25:35 
Yeah, there's a couple of instances there is a lot of language and a lot of job descriptions about must be able to stand for eight hours and is that really what you want or are you saying they need to be there at a certain height for eight hours example, uh, we're, we're working with a company right now who is, is going to be interviewing somebody who's lost their leg and the way that the job description has written that person wouldn't apply to the job. 

John Robinson 26:04 
But the truth is, if that person is in a chair that raises up, they can do the job, right? And so that's an example exactly of what we're talking about must be able to stand now, is that really what you mean? 

John Robinson 26:16 
Or do they need to be at a certain height to reach the cash register or the machinery or whatever it is for an extended period of time, then say that if that's what you mean, right? And so that's the kind of work that we're doing in the ableist language modeling. 

Mai Ling Chan 26:32 
I love that. Okay, then the other big elephant in the room is the accessibility resources that are already available at the company like screen readers and, you know, like, are these things that our ability is getting involved in also to say instead of waiting for the interviewee to request this, that the company already has that and that they're sharing that these are the list of the things that we have available. 

John Robinson 26:54 
Yeah, we don't do that as much as we, as we could or should, but one of the reasons why we don't do that sort of accessibility to technology on the corporate levels, because everybody's a little bit different. 

John Robinson 27:04 
And so our, our mindset has always been, yes, if, you know, when we work with a company, uh, like some of the larger companies that we work with, we will definitely give the point them in the right direction for accommodations and technology as, as needed. 

John Robinson 27:20 
But that's almost a step too far at the beginning. What it really should be is a conversation between you and me on what do you need and what do I need to be able to perform the function. Nobody knows my accessibility needs better than me. 

John Robinson 27:35 
And if there's an entity out there that assumes I need something because I'm a quad amputee without having asked me, that doesn't help. And at the same time, I don't want to place people solely on an accommodation and accommodation is it's the law to be reasonably accommodated to perform the job function, but my accommodation and your accommodation might be slightly different. 

John Robinson 28:00 
And even if our disability is exactly the same. So that's why the conversation of, again, to my example before, John, what do you need to perform the job? I know what I need to perform the job more than anybody else. 

John Robinson 28:13 
And I'm going to tell you what I need. And that's when that should trigger. We certainly will help and support companies as we work with them after those conversations. We do not build our modeling or our success based on an accommodation because that can be problematic. 

John Robinson 28:30 
What you would get then in that instance, as people are matched to a job based on accommodation, not based on success or interest. And if you think about it in all of our careers, anybody listening or you and you and me here, we've all had jobs we've liked and we've not liked, but the jobs that we haven't liked usually because the fit isn't exactly right. 

Mai Ling Chan 28:54 
Yep. 

John Robinson 28:55 
If you're placing somebody based on accommodation, it's not going to be a recipe for success rather than placing somebody cause they really want to do the job because the company really wants to hire that, that skillset. 

Mai Ling Chan 29:06 
Excellent. All right. So again, in celebration of October, which is a National Disability Employment Awareness Month, I'm thinking my one takeaway is asking people what they need, but what is something that you would like for everyone to know? 

John Robinson 29:19 
Just to realize that there are 50 million people with disabilities in the United States, all of our disabilities look a little bit different. 72% are invisible. You don't necessarily know there's somebody with a disability when you're on the other end of phone call or an email or, or even a zoom or teams, but we're more prevalent than, than the world knows. 

John Robinson 29:39 
And yet we're still 65% unemployed and we're still two and a half times more likely to be under the poverty level. And when disability is presented, be present to that person as a person, not as a person with a disability and understand what, you know, people have an interest in getting up, going to work, buying a house, having a family, driving a car, whatever it is. 

John Robinson 30:03 
Right. We all have similar hopes and dreams and interests and employment usually is the catalyst for that. And if you make a good match in employment, you're going to have a very loyal, long -standing individual working with you, and that's really what's important. 

Mai Ling Chan 30:19 
Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much, John, for carving out some time to spend with us and to bring us into this really, really important conversation. How can we continue to follow you? you 

John Robinson 30:29 
You can follow me, ourability .com, O -U -R -A -B -I -L -I -T -Y .com, present on LinkedIn and Facebook and, uh, excited to, excited to be followed. 

Mai Ling Chan 30:41 
Excellent. Thank you, and I hope that you're really busy this month. 

Speaker 3 30:44 
Thank you. 

Mai Ling Chan 30:46 
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. This helps the show a lot. Or have a great guest referral, reach out to us at xleaders at gmail .com. 

Speaker 3 31:02 
And if you want exclusive tips on becoming an exceptional leader, deliver straight to your inbox. Just go to ExceptionalLeaders .com and sign up for our mailing list. Thanks for listening.