Disability Matters with Joyce Bender - Albrecht Tracy Powell

At Highmark Health, we believe what makes us unique makes us better. Our differences broaden our perspectives and foster a variety of skills to complement each other, creating a stronger and more vibrant workforce. It's this belief that earned us recognition as the best place to work for the 10th year for individuals with disabilities in a survey by the American Association of People with Disabilities and Disability:IN. We'll continue to celebrate and benefit from the inclusion of all people. To find out more, visit highmarkhealth.org. Welcome to Disability Matters with your host, Joyce Bender. All comments, views, and opinions expressed on the show are solely those of the host, guests, and callers. Now the host of Disability Matters, here's Joyce Bender.

Hi everyone, welcome to Disability Matters with Joyce Bender. I am always excited knowing that I have these great listeners across the Americas listening to the show. I can't thank you enough. Whoever you are, wherever you are, you know what you're doing. You're helping make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities. I would also appreciate it if you spread the news because the more people That here, hopefully, the more change we can create. And around the world, oh my goodness, what are you, what are you doing there in Singapore? After the United States, of the 143 countries with listeners, the largest after the United States is Singapore. Do you know how I love you, Singapore? I mean, every week it gets bigger and bigger. I love all of you. Wow. You know what you need to do? Share this with other, you know, venues where they have American language. I got to tell you what, pretty soon you'll be pushing the United States out. Really very impressive. Thank you so much. And really all of the countries that listen to this show, but you know, I always highlight A country, and today it's Denmark. Denmark with guess how many listeners? Not like Singapore. Ten. Ten listeners. You know what I say? Thank you. Thank you. Ten people can change the world. Thank you so much. I mean it. And so you all know, I can't wait to someday go to Denmark. Although I've been to Asia, I have not been to. Denmark or Norway or Sweden or Switzerland. And I just want to tell you, my heritage from my mother is going all the way back to Denmark. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And hey, Yoshiko Dart, special shout out to you, Yoshiko. I love Yoshiko. She is The widow of the late, great Justin Dart. So who is Justin Dart? Justin Dart Jr., who passed away many years ago, is referred to as the General. Do you know why? He gave up his Walgreen fortune. That's the family he was with. And he married Yoshiko. Oh, I didn't know that. And together they went around the United States 5 times. 5. To get people united behind the Americans with Disabilities Act, which of course was voted into law. But Justin is one of the greatest leaders. I said, wow, you know you've made it when you're on Jeopardy. But Justin is a champion, a hero. So do you know why I shout out to Yoshiko every week? Because if I walked outside right now and I'm standing out there and I'm saying to everyone, who's Justin Dart? How many people would know? I'd be lucky if one person knew. That's terrible. See, we're not in enough history books. Disability civil rights. So until that day comes, boy, I've been doing this for years now. Yoshiko has been getting this shout out for years, and I will not stop. So love you, Yoshiko, and also Highmark. What a great company Highmark is. We have been on the air now 22 years. You know who the lead sponsor is? Highmark. This is a company that cares about people with disabilities, and that means they hire them. Because guess what, folks? That's where the rubber meets the road. And I have a great guest today, a leader who is on that same mission to help me get people with disabilities employed. I love him. From when I met him, I knew, oh, this guy, he's got a lot of passion for all people, not just one person, not one group, all groups. Albrecht Powell is the managing director at Accenture and just a pleasure to know and to be with. And I always ask our listeners questions Albrecht to, you know, kick off. Well, tell us about you. Our listeners always want to know. So, Albrecht, I'll ask you, you know, like, where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? How did you get to Accenture? What's your story?

Oh, thanks, Joyce, so much. It's so great to talk to you again. And, and it is— you're such an inspiration. And I'm so honored to be part of the show here with you today. I mean, the mission that you do makes a difference in the world. And from the day I met you and all the research I've done about you and the impact that you make, it's humbling to be here. So, so thank you for the invitation. My story. Well, I, I'm sorry to do this, but I got to start someplace different than where I grew up. And will you give me like 3 or 4 minutes of leeway here and then I'll get back to your questions? Is that okay?

Of course. Of course.

'Cause I made a promise to somebody that I need to honor. And this individual was a bit of a, one of my mentors growing up. So I had the chance to meet Kurt Vonnegut many, many years ago before he passed.

Nice.

So I was an aspiring writer. I had a manuscript and I got 30 minutes with Kurt Vonnegut, with him one-on-one. A little eccentric, as you might expect, but unbelievably kind. So he took some time, he flipped through my manuscript, was skimming the story. And then he very poignantly counted the first 14 pages of my manuscript. He ripped them off in front of me. He tore them up and threw them across the room. And he said, good story. This is where it starts, page 14. And he shared that way too many people start their story with, well, I was born in a small town outside Pittsburgh. And he made me a promise to never do that. So I love your question. Tell me your story. But I'm going to start somewhere else. I'm going to start my story at Gilman's Point. Gilman's Point is on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. It was 11:00 PM. We just woke up from tents that we were sleeping in, and we started our summit climb. It had snowed about 4 inches, and it was freezing. It was very cold. It was summit day. So the mountain tried to kill me quite a few times that day. I had altitude sickness. The medical term is high-altitude cerebral edema, basically swelling in the brain. And my head hurts so much, I was begging somebody for an ice pick to stick it in my eye, my temple, my nose, somewhere to relieve the pressure. I felt also pretty sure that I left my spleen, my kidneys, everything on the side of the mountain because I threw up so much. I talked to the doc. We had a really good doc on the trip. And she says, yeah, you've got altitude sickness. Some people get it, some don't. Nothing to do with fitness or health. It's just some people are attuned to it. So you're fine for about 24 hours and then Well, you're fine for about 24 hours, and she left it at that. So if you can endure the pain, you're clear to summit. Long story short, I summited. It was amazing. I made it down safe and sound. Didn't need an ice pick. But that's not the story. Everybody asks me, how was it summiting? The story is about why I did this, and it deals with changing the lives of people and helping drive inclusion. It's in one of the most challenging regions of the world, frankly. But we can talk more about that later. But what I thought I'd do is I would get back to your question because I promised a little bit about who I am and where I came from. I'm a dad.

I love that story.

Oh, thank you.

I love that story. And I'm sure my listeners love that story because we all know who Kurt Vonnegut is around the world. We know. So, wow. What, what a person. I love what he did with your manuscript.

I did too. That has always stuck with me. And I've never Introduce myself on stage or anywhere, it's like, you know, hi, I'm, I'm Albrecht, I grew up here, or even my title.

Very interesting. Very interesting.

Let me give you a little bit of an introduction because I did promise that. I, I, so I'm a dad, I'm a spouse, I'm an adventurer, I'm a community servant, I'm a business strategist and a transformational leader. That, that's who I am, and I want to make a difference in the world. So I grew up here in Pittsburgh, went to Carnegie Mellon, Started out with electrical engineering, hated it, didn't want to design circuits, went into business. I wanted to find a way to solve business problems with technology, and a company called Arthur Andersen at the time, the audit and tax and accounting firm, had this little 5,000-person division that did what they called management consulting, and I was hooked. I wanted to find a way to, you know, use technology to solve business problems. And now that same firm is Accenture. We're one of the world's largest management consulting firms. We got like 750,000 people doing this. So I lead the Pittsburgh office and I help lead our AI and data practice. So that's a little bit about me and a little teaser for what we can talk about later.

Wow. You know what? I worked with Arthur Andersen before there was a Bender Consulting.

Did you really?

When I was in IT search.

Yeah.

Bob Riddle and Larry Solomon.

Oh my gosh.

Yes.

Boy, small world.

Yeah. And Mark— Mark, I forget his last name. Mark.

Mike Sullivan was there.

Mark was one of the leaders. He was one of the IT leaders.

George.

Yeah. Well, anyway, isn't that something?

Small world.

Yeah, it is a small world. Okay. Well, can't believe that, actually. You know what I can't believe either?

Accenture.

I would talk to people at Accenture not that many, not that long ago. How many people do you have? 300,000. Next time, how many people do you have? 400,000. Oh, and when they said 500,000, I said, you have 500,000 people? Oh my God, at the rate you're going, it will be a million.

That's the plan.

1 million employees. Can you imagine that?

Yeah.

So, okay, tell everyone, what is Accenture? What do they do? And I notice you have on your website and different material, uh, we reinvent. So what, what does all of that mean?

Sure. So, um, we're one of the, the largest, as you just talked about, professional services company. Um, at its simplest, I, I like to say we help organizations become better versions of themselves. You know, our tagline is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, and that's where I'm actually excited about what we do, and it dovetails a lot into what you do, and I'll share on some of that in a few minutes. But we work with, you know, the world's leading companies and governments. We help them think about where their business is going, how technology is changing their world, and actually helping them make that change happen. We'll help with a business strategy, We'll help with industry knowledge, technology support to put systems in to enable it. We actually run parts of companies' businesses, so we do outsourcing and operations. And we do a lot with people and talent. And, you know, one of the things that's important to me is technology, I think, is the easy part. The hard part and more important part is what you do with the people that are around it.

Mm-hmm.

And you ask about the term sort of reinvention. It's an interesting term and I love where we've taken the branding. It's different from transformation. Transformation is we're going to put systems in and change the processes, finish the project. We're talking about radically changing what companies do, how companies do it. You know, think back to a great— 2 great case studies is Kodak, right? I mean, we remember them, the cameras and film and everything. They owned like 90% of the market. They had 80% profit on every roll of film and every roll of chemical or bottle of chemicals they sell— they sold. You know who invented the digital camera? Yeah.

Kodak.

And they squashed it because they didn't want to lose their market share. They didn't have the vision to reinvent themselves. Another example is Sears. You know, Sears, they, uh, growing up, I mean, you and I, Sears was the place to go. It, it, it had everything. The Sears and Roebuck catalog.

Yeah.

Had every possible thing you could buy in the world, right? In that, in that catalog. And they invested in all these stores and brick and mortar. And when the automobiles came in, people went to the stores and they saw this online thing coming. They saw Amazon coming and they're like, people aren't gonna buy clothes online. They want to go and see it. They want to touch it. They want to feel it. And they didn't reinvent. And now, you know, they're no longer. So for us, reinvention is about making those radical changes, thinking about the future, thinking about what's technology going to look like, how the world is changing, and how companies should basically reinvent themselves to the future. So I always find that really exciting.

Yeah, those are good examples. Yes. That is very exciting. So I want to talk to you about AI.

Okay.

AI cannot be going any faster. I mean, it is like speed of light moving. And as you know, some people are very nervous about AI. I'm sure you've seen the college professors or You know, chancellors at a university speaking and being booed by, you know, the freshmen in the audience, or, and/or the people graduating because of, you're taking my job. What is your feeling about the fear of, of that? And how also do you see it being— tell me this first. How do you see it being implemented? How do you see it being implemented? And then tell me why people should be or not be worried.

I— the taking my jobs, it's an interesting question. It really is. And it's one worth ruminating a little bit on. When I go back to the Industrial Revolution, right, we brought steam engines in. We brought coal-powered engines in. And that automated all the tasks that humans did, right? Yet we still had humans doing work. In the '70s, '60s, '70s, and '80s, we brought mainframe computers in that automated spreadsheets and automated accounting. And they said at the time, well, we're not going to need any more accountants, right? I'm pretty sure accounting and finance is still a pretty strong discipline out there. And we still need them. We just have different tools now to help us do what we used to do. And, you know, to your question of is AI going to take all of our jobs? I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. AI is a tool. It's like Excel. It's like a personal computer. It's like a disability aid. for a person. It's there to help. How we use it is the interesting question. So, you know, we see AI being implemented everywhere, and your light-speed analogy is a pretty good description around it. Nothing in my entire, you know, 37-year career and my tender young age, a couple years beyond that, I started when I was like, you know, 6, I have not seen anything move this fast. the internet, the mobile devices, the computing age back in the '70s, nothing has moved this fast. And we're way beyond companies asking, should we be doing something with AI? The questions are now, where do we apply it? How do we scale it? How do we actually create value from it? And I think there's a lot of AI activity right now. Almost every large organization has AI initiatives underway. There's a big difference between experimenting with it and reinventing with it and how a company will operate with it. And I think that's where this is a really exciting time. We're still in the AOL CompuServe dial-up age of AI. We haven't crested the wave yet. We're still in the infancy. So I, you know, I see almost every business function having an opportunity to use AI, customer service, software development, finance, marketing, supply chain, HR, running a business. We've gone through this generation of, you know, the early AI was ChatGPT, right? You talk to it. But now we have agents that do the work of a human. And this is back to your question of, is AI taking jobs? Is it taking jobs? Yes. Yes, it is. There's automated— there's tasks that we can have a tool do now that is more efficient. When was the last time when you took a vacation, did you pull out a map?

True.

You use your GPS and you pretty much blindly rely on your GPS. And there's times whenever it'll take you into a lake or take you on a dead-end road or something, but that's one in a million. Right, or 1 in 100,000, right? We trust this technology. My view is, is that, you know, these tools, these agentic tools, are able to automate parts of what a human does, but generally not what a whole human does. And I think there's still a need for humans in the equation. And that's where the whole topic of responsible AI, ethical use of AI becomes so fascinating. is how do we apply these tools to drive business value? We want that, we need that, but at the same time, look at the human in the loop and how do we inspire them? How do we keep them working? How do we keep them engaged in the process? And I think there's room for both. I think the wave of the future with AI is how humans and machines work together. I don't know if that answered your question.

Yes, you did. The issue I worry about for people with disabilities— many people with disabilities are poor and do not have access to what other people have. My fear is a lot of those people do what would be referred to as— I don't want to say menial jobs, but jobs like call center. Things like that, things that will be gone because of AI. I'm just concerned. Well, what are they going to do? Everyone work in a hotel? No, because they also are automating different jobs. So the only jobs right now that is like across the board.

Mm-hmm.

are the trades because of all the data centers being built. But still, that's not for all people with disabilities and wheelchairs or, you know, whatever. So that, that's what worries me. I've had meetings with disability rights leaders about this saying, okay, we need to stop talking about, oh no, and start saying, so what do we do? As you would say, Albrecht, How do we reinvent our education?

Boy, there's a lot there. Okay, well, I'll answer that in 2 sides. I think the first is independent of folks with disabilities. We can't automate apprenticeship out of work.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, we still— I mean, that, that's the risk right now, is that AI is taking entry-level jobs. You know, one of our children is a whiz-bang software developer, truly gifted, dealing with disabilities, but has been able to be wildly successful. And they're worried that AI is going to come take their job. as a developer. My counter to that is actually you're in an interesting position because you've got a few years of hands-on experience where you've actually learned this and know how to do this. So when AI comes in and does something, you can figure out whether it's hallucinating, whether it's real, whether it's actually working or not. Because I'm telling you right now, AI is great, but it's not infallible, right? It, it, it— if you blindly trust it, we're not to the point of your GPS yet. Where I'm pretty good blindly trusting when it tells me to turn. Much of AI, we're not quite there yet, and that's where we need people in the loop. So I think folks still need— and any company that takes the apprenticeship out of the equation, they're going to be hurting. They're going to make money now, but 5 years from now, there's going to be nobody to oversee these AI tools, oversee the solutions that they come up with. So I think that that's one part of the equation. The other, for folks with disabilities, I, I'm actually cautiously excited because I'm seeing AI has this just enormous potential to make a lot of work more accessible through technologies, whether it's voice technologies, translation, transcription. They're doing things with Thought now, right? Where people can think they have brain waves and you can think something and something will act on that. You know, communication tools. And I look at somebody, you know, I don't have a good example, in a wheelchair. And, you know, we have motorized wheelchairs. Yay, that's wonderful. But now how do we take that technology a step further? How do we have somebody that You know, we've got a lot of these adaptive and assistive technologies, but I think AI is going to take it a step further. It's going to augment what these technologies do. It's going to augment what people are able to do. And somebody that can't— maybe has communication issues with autism, but they're super smart, they just can't get the words out. They've got their touchscreens now. How do we make that so they're able to have as fluent a conversation as we're having right now? But powered by AI. I think this is one of the biggest opportunities for AI is to help enable people that, you know, may not have the ability for that today, or it's just emerging today. You're probably seeing this more than I am in all the circles that you work in, but that's where I get really excited.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and there are other things about it, although, you know, there's the downsides. This is like the internet. There's the downside, there's the great side. You know, there's bad people that are on there and there's a million great things that can happen on the internet. Well, same thing with AI. Now, here's something that you and I were at that meeting at Pitt on health. that sort of alluded to this. But who knows? AI. AI could solve the cancer story.

Mm-hmm.

Do you know what I mean? AI could solve— why, they already have that testing your AI knowing your genetic disposition, what could happen to you, you know, if you're a candidate for cancer or whatever it would be. But I said to someone that day, I said, yeah, what if, you know, it's always learning. AI keeps learning, AI keeps teaching itself, it keeps doing more and more. Who knows what could happen? I mean, wouldn't that be great if it would? If, you know, if it did that, wouldn't that be fantastic?

It absolutely would. But I don't think— and again, this is all just my opinion, certainly not my firm or whatever. It's just one person. I don't think AI is going to solve cancer.

No?

I think it's going to be people that are leveraging AI as a tool to be able to help solve cancer.

Mm-hmm.

And that's where, like, I teach at the University of Pittsburgh, I teach AI and analytics. And one of the things I tell my students is, you know, I don't care what tool they're learning. I'm not teaching them a tool, I'm teaching them how to think. What we need is people to come up with use cases for what is the whiz-bang new way to be able to leverage these tools and capabilities to solve different problems. So, you know, I'm eager to get involved with a group that's looking at, again, like adaptive disability technologies and figuring out what AI can do. I don't know, like we don't know, we haven't figured that out yet. What's the art of the possible? How do you get somebody to just think something and they can do it? We have virtual reality now where somebody can sit in a room with other people and maybe they can't physically get there. But you can be there, and VR is becoming so good and so deep and so immersive now you can be part of that. I think the potential here is frankly unlimited. And I think another aspect to that is I think this is going to give people the opportunity to learn skills and take on jobs and roles that maybe they never thought they could before. And I'll use me as one example. I love music, like with a passion. I have not— this notepad has more musical ability in it than I do. I have none. All— every— my kids, my wife, they play instruments. They're beautiful. I can't make music. But I wrote a song a few years ago about a lonely consultant being on the road and being away from my family and missing my kids and all that. And I've always wanted to do something with it. And I came up with a pretty good set of lyrics, I think, but I didn't know how to put it to music. And I started using some of the whiz-bang AI tools, right? And it— I worked with it. I told it I wanted a Bruce Springsteen riff with a harmonica and kind of a twang to it. And we went back and forth and back and forth, just like I would with the band. And I released a song. It's My Heart Stayed Home. It's the Runway 28 Project because I always fly and I have a picture of like taking off on Runway 28 at the Pittsburgh airport. And I have a website. I haven't done anything with it yet, but I have a website. I have a brand. And now I'm excited. It's like, I wanna write more songs.

Wow.

I'm not a musician, but now I am. What do I do with that? Am I gonna make money from this? Absolutely not, 'cause it's hokey. But it's something that I can do. And look at, look at taking that now at the art of the possible for other people that don't have the— whether it's the ability or the skill or what have you— and use AI to help them do things they never thought they could do before.

Right. Oh, that is so true. Well, hey, we're going to talk more to Albrecht, but right now it's time for our news. Mathis on the mic. with Jennifer Mathis. Hello, Jennifer. How are you today?

Hi, I'm good. Thank you.

Good. And do you have— well, we know you have news.

I have news. There is always news these days.

Let's hear your news for the day.

So this week I want to highlight a letter that was issued last week on Thursday, September 3rd by 18 governors led by New York's Governor Kathy Hochul. And this letter pushes back on and opposes the memo, the June 18th memo from the Justice Department that reversed its decades-long position on community integration for people with disabilities. walked back the federal government's lead role in enforcing Olmstead, signaled that it won't be enforcing Olmstead anymore, embracing a radically different position than it has in the past, saying states have no obligation to provide home and community-based services to people with disabilities under the ADA or Section 504. So that was a huge deal. As we have talked about on the news segments before on your show, there has been an effort by national disability groups to get governors and get attorneys general from the states to join a commitment. We have a draft— not a draft, but we have a statement. that we've been asking governors and attorneys general to sign on to that basically affirms their commitment in the wake of this terrible Justice Department memo and change in position. And so this letter, it's to the Justice Department from 18 governors, was done in response to that effort. So This was really great to see. I just wanna highlight a couple of things that it says. It talks about how the ADA has been a much-celebrated bipartisan law for many years. It says, as governors, we are deeply concerned by the federal government's retreat from its longstanding role in protecting the right to community integration, and that such actions signal to programs serving people with disabilities It says that community integration is a principle that Americans are proud of and is a North Star internationally for people with disabilities. It talks about how community integration has changed lives, has transformed this country, how red states and blue states have for decades invested in home and community-based services, developed supported housing. Expanded access to education and employment opportunities for people with disabilities, strengthened community services, and that that is not just showing progress under civil rights law, federal civil rights laws like the ADA and Section 504, but also reflecting a shared conviction that this is the right thing to do and that people with disabilities belong in their communities. It says, we strongly oppose any federal actions that would weaken protections against unnecessary segregation or diminish the right of people with disabilities to receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate to meet their needs consistent with established Olmstead precedent. It said it's not a bipartisan— it's not a partisan issue. It talks about the history of both parties in addressing the rights of people with disabilities to live and receive services in their own homes and communities. So this is a very significant thing. I'm gonna just briefly read off the states that are on this letter. It's New York, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico. North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin. And so I would say 2 things for folks to do on this. Number one, if those— if one of your governors is in those states, if you live in one of those states where the governor joined this letter, please thank them. And also You should continue to ask your state attorney general to join such a statement. And we have this statement on the Bazelon Center's website. It's on DREDF's website, dredf.org. It's on AAPD's website, aapd.com. And so you can find that statement and ask your state attorney general to sign on to that. The one that we did, that the advocates did, is a more bare-bones statement than this one by the governors, but it doesn't matter. The attorneys general can sign on to that statement. We're going to pivot from governors now to just attorneys general since there are so many governors that signed this excellent statement from the New York governor.

So what I have to say about this, first of all, I'm so happy to hear that news, Jennifer. I'm so happy to hear that. But what I have to say is, if you're listening right now, you need to tell other friends of yours or other family members, you need to make those phone calls that Jennifer talked about, you know, to your governor's office, the attorney general, because guess what? This could end up being you. You know that poem, And Then Who Will Come?

Indeed.

Who will come for you to help you? You know, anyone can be, God forbid, in an accident. Something can happen where, you know, they could end up in an institution. But with community living and integrated services, you can live, you know, out in the community on your own in a community living facility, whatever it is, where you can go out and about and do whatever you have to do. But imagine now if instead of that, you had to go to an institution. Institution, forced into an institution or nursing home. As I said, anything can happen, God forbid, to any of us. Don't let that happen to you or a family member. You've— and your friends, you know, we're all supposed to be kind and help one another. So I say make those calls today and go to bazelon.org. Is it on the back? Where is it? Where do they find it?

Yeah, you can find it on our website. Also, DREDF, D-R-E-D-F.org, has like a whole page that's devoted to this, and We have a statement for states, and there's also a background piece that explains it and explains it for advocates, explains it for states why this is so important. And I would just say the reason this is so important is because after that memo that the Justice Department did, that didn't change the law. The law is still what it is. Olmstead's still the law, but the risk that that memo is going to get picked up and people are going to sort of ask courts to, you know, adopt those arguments. The risk is primarily at this point with states. And so it's really important that we get states to commit to saying, we're not going to join in on those federal attacks on us.

I have a question. Where did that letter go? The letter the governor signed?

It went to the attorney general, to Todd Blanche.

Yeah. Okay. Well, we have attorney generals, so.

Yes.

And you know what? Keep us apprised of what's happening there. And listen, you've made a difference before, Albrecht. When Jennifer speaks, people listen. So we've had in the past this huge upswing from our listeners. Do something about it. You're our crusaders. Get out there and do something. Thank you, Jennifer. Talk to you next week.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. So many things going on, Albert. So many things.

It's not the news I was hoping that that should be talking about, but but I'm glad that you're getting that out there, and I've already taken notes to once this hits the recording to forward this and forward that news out to my whole network because that's. That can't happen. Yeah, you've done so much to the world. I mean, we've all— everybody's done, but you've done so much to advance things, and now I feel like we're moving backward. It's sad.

Yeah, that's why— what, you know what, Senator Harkin taught me this. He said, don't think phone calls don't matter to a governor, to an office. Of a statesperson, they do. They do make a difference.

Good to know.

So, you know, get out there, make those calls, send those emails. Okay, well, I was talking a little bit earlier, Albrecht, how we are with the Pitts Ambassador Program. Do you want to talk about that for a minute?

Yeah, I mean, I— the University of Pittsburgh, you mean?

Yeah.

Pitt is— I'm so inspired by everything that the university is doing. And there's a bunch of programs the university has that is driving engagement with the community and things around this. I mean, we went to the Conference on Health and AI. I mean, that's an amazing program to advance healthcare and figure out how technology can drive that. We have a program as part of this called the Super Analytics Challenge, where we get students from universities across the region to go work together and leverage, you know, AI and data and technology to solve some of the most challenging problems in our community, you know, homelessness and workforce development and food insecurity and mental disabilities was one of the ones we did. And we're really making a difference there. And it's one of the things I'm proud to be affiliated with, with the university and all of these outreach programs that they're doing that's bringing technology to the forefront of how they, you know, how they help drive change in the region and the community and for humanity.

Yes. Well, I'm also honored to be involved. Well, I have waited and waited and waited to ask you. I know Boy, if the listeners thought Kurt Vonnegut was something, wait till they hear this. So, Albert, did you really climb Mount Kilimanjaro wearing a kilt?

I did. This was an interesting story, and I'll keep it short. We were doing a project at work. It was for a large— one of the largest private companies in the world. The owners were Scottish. It was a 5-year project. We were in the middle of it. Some challenges, motivation, everybody was kind of down in the dumps. So myself and 2 of my colleagues had this brilliant idea. Let's go do something big. And we says, we're going to go climb Kilimanjaro for charity. I'd never done anything like that. I mean, you remember me in your office. I am not the mountain climbing physique, nor was I at that point. But we made a commitment to raise money to help African schoolchildren. And I have Scottish ancestry, and I made a commitment to folks at work, hey, if we raise X dollars, I'll wear a kilt to work. And they're like, you know, the next day it's like the money came in and it's like, ah, shoot. So I got a kilt and wore that to work. And then I says, okay, if we raise this much, I'll wear it to work for a month. And so needless to say, I'm wearing my kilt to work every day. And then we did the— I always says, okay, if we raise this much, I'll actually climb Kilimanjaro in it, which I did. So I've got pictures of me up on the mountain in my kilt. I will admit wearing a kilt in the traditional Scottish fashion with how cold it was on those last couple of days, things get a little bit breezy and chilly, but I'll leave that to everybody's imagination on that one. But what was interesting is everybody asked, oh, was it great summiting and everything? It's like, yeah, that was fine, but We had the opportunity to work with African schoolchildren, and I spent 2 days in a school with— it had a dirt floor, holes in the roof. The children in the school, like, this was their pen, the inside of a Bic pen, right? Not an actual pen, just the inside, writing on the side of newspapers, right? Trying to take notes and trying to learn. And these kids wanted to be doctors and engineers, and they just— they didn't have the most basic talents to do this. I learned enough Swahili at the time to do one quick lecture in Swahili, and this little, I don't know, 14-year-old in the front row stands up and says, excuse me, sir, but you know we all speak English and your Swahili sucks. So it was a humbling experience for me, and it's one of the two things that got me into really into inclusion and diversity in this whole space is seeing and being with people that were so different than I was and realizing that we sent over notebooks and pens and, you know, something as simple as that changed their lives, right? And there was another school nearby that the students there were disabled and they didn't— they had crutches made out of you know, a tree branch. So, you know, we raised some money, we sent over some basic, you know, mobility aids for people, and we brought some technology over and made a difference. And it's one of the things that, you know, I— it was a humbling experience for me. I've always prided myself in my career believing that everyone's equal, right? I mean, you write a performance review and I don't care what your skin color is, your sex, if you're disabled, You do a good job, then then that's how you get your performance gets written up. And I I think on one level that's good, and I think it's okay to think that. But I also learned that people are different, and if we actually take the time to understand the differences in people, and I think that's one of the biggest challenges in our society, especially here in America, is we don't travel, we don't spend time with people that are different than us. I think getting to spend time. matters. And like at Accenture, you know, I brought a developer onto one of my projects and I remember the day I brought him in, he was blind and came in with his seeing eye dog and we sat him down and I introduced him to the CIO of this company. And the CIO was like, what the heck are you doing, Albrecht? It's like, well, this is, you know, Bob, our newest coder. He's like, he's blind. It's like, yep, he is. Can't see, can't see very well, needs a dog, needs help getting to the bathroom. The CIO started to just pull me aside and started to go off on me. I said, can we just give him a chance? He's the best developer we had, outshined everybody else, needed a magnifying thing on their screen, used some adaptive technologies. needed some accommodations to get to the restroom with their dog and a place for the dog to go to the bathroom, but the best developer we had, the CIO apologized to me after a while. I've brought people into projects that I have that have autism. And I mean, they struggle with eye contact. They struggle with social. Going out for dinner is tough for them. But man, some of them have come up with the brightest ideas, the smartest thoughts that nobody else on the team was able to do. These are the people I seek out on my teams. I don't want people that look like me on my project because I'm coming in with a point of view from a time period, from a background. I don't want anybody— I mean, I want some, but I don't want people that look like me. I want people that look different from me, that act different from me, that are different from me. And I found that, you know, that's why I'm so excited about what you do, Joyce, is, you know, when I look at folks that have got, you know, what you— what we call traditionally disabilities, many times they're not. Many times they're abilities. Many times they're— something happened to them or they're a certain way and they're just different than I am. Let's embrace that. Let's figure out how to leverage that and find the power within that. So anyway, that's—

Oh, I'm taking that and I'm sending that around the world.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, Albrecht, that is wonderful that you feel like that, and it's so true, you know, it really is. It's so true. Well, I can't leave out that you're also a great bike rider. To ride 500 miles across Alaska, I mean, you— wow, you'd like climb Kilimanjaro. You do all these things. You must have incredible energy.

I wouldn't so much say energy. I would say passion to try and make a difference. This one, I'm going to go out on a limb and be kind of vulnerable with you, if that's okay. This was a bike ride, 500 miles on a bicycle in 6 days from Fairbanks to Anchorage. Like, that's almost 100 miles a day on a bicycle.

Wow.

It was an epic ride, an epic challenge. I was so excited about it. And, you know, I looked at the cause for it and it was for finding a vaccine for AIDS. And I was like, eh, whatever, epic bike ride, right? And this was early in my career. This is one of the reasons that got me inspired with inclusion. And I got up there and my— as I was raising money for this, I had a very senior executive come and tell me, why would I want to donate money to help those people? And they said something even worse than that about what should happen to them, which I won't repeat.

Oh my goodness.

And it really shook me to my core. And I started thinking about it and I had people tell me, it's like, oh, you're going up there with people with AIDS? Well, they're different. They're all drug users or they're all homosexuals or whatever. And it really got me thinking. And I'm big on stereotypes. We all have them, right? I hate them, but we have them. And I grew up very sheltered, Western Pennsylvania, little white picket fence, if you will. I didn't know people that were gay. I didn't know people that were Lesbian that were, you know, I it just I didn't know them, and I was a little nervous when I went up there, and then I met them, and I'm like, why in the world was I feeling the way that I was? Because these are really cool people. That bunch of them are still my best friends. We hang out. They've got better relationships than most of my heterosexual friends do, and they they may dress different. They may like a different gender of a person. Who cares? Right. And that also made me realize how important diversity is, how important inclusion is, and take the time to get to know the human and break down these walls. And that's what we have to do more of, Joyce. We have to break down walls. We have to get people to experience people that are different than them. And that actually helped put me on a crusade. Some of the messages I got from people going into that and facing my own stereotypes. And that's why I spend time with people that are different from me any opportunity that I get. And that's why I want to spend time more with you and what you do.

Well, I'll tell you what, as a woman living with epilepsy, and I've been— my company's 31 years old, I fight the fight every day. But I have to tell you, sadly, That many people with epilepsy hear that same thing. You mean you're going to try to help those people? And people with mental health, you mean you're going to help those people? Or as you said, someone blind, do you think they can do this? And I always tell people, just so you know, you're all the temporarily able-bodied.

Exactly. I love that.

Yeah, you're going to be joining us. And, and that's not all. Not only are you temporarily able-bodied, you probably are working next to someone with a non-apparent disability. So watch what you say. Watch what you say. Well, um, well, you've done so many great things, Albrecht, and you are such a good, good man. Uh, so someone had to impact you. Who is your role model?

Oh, geez. Joyce, you're killing me. I, I'm sorry, I need 2 minutes. I don't have one. I have been so fortunate in my life to have different people inspire me in different ways. There's people I've looked to for leadership, people who have demonstrated that, that, you know, you could be successful while still doing the right thing and taking care of people, standing up for people when it wasn't necessarily easy or popular. That's one of the big things. I intervene. If I see something, I say something. And I've had some mentors, and it's no big names, nobody you would know, but people in my life that have touched me that way. Some of my greatest role models are people that have actually worked for me. And I've watched them overcome obstacles. I've watched them take risks. I've watched them reinvent themselves, right? And do things they didn't think they were capable of. And I've learned a tremendous amount from them. And then there's obviously people in my own life, my spouse, my parents, my children, my mentors. They taught me what really matters in life and what's really important. You know what?

They did a great job.

Thank you.

They did a great job. Well, folks, you can see how much I love him. Could keep on talking forever, but Voice America won't let me do that because we've come to the end of the show.

Oh.

And the end of every show, as you all know, I have a quote. So today the quote is, take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step, said the great Martin Luther King Jr. And in the words of Mary Brocker, when you get up tomorrow, remember, choose joy. You won't be disappointed. Talk to everyone next week.

Voice America would like to thank you for tuning in. Please join us next Tuesday at 11:00 AM Pacific time and 2:00 PM Eastern time for another installment of Disability Matters, right Join us next time right here on the Voice America Variety Channel. We are the leader in live internet talk radio. VoiceAmerica.com.

Join us next time right here on the Voice America Variety Channel.

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