Jeanette Towles: Seasoned and Dedicated Medical Writer, AI Expert and Speaker Shares Mission of Disability Owned Business Enterprise

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, guest, and callers. Now the host of Disability Matters, here's Joyce Bender.

Hello everyone out there in TV land. That's what I call YouTube. TV Land. Um, hope you're having a great day. I'm Joyce Bender, the host of Disability Matters with Joyce Bender on Voice America, and I'm so happy to have you on the show. And you know what? I am going to start on every show showing you something for the fall or Halloween. So here you go, the Great Pumpkin. Stay tuned because there's going to be a drawing at the end of the year. I want to know what you have seen, what you have watched. And oh, if you like Jurassic Park, look right there. See my bookmark? Tyrannosaurus rex. So I hope everyone is having a great day. Thank you. Thank you to all of our listeners in the United States and around the world. Richard Roberts, I give him a shout out. He may not be with the State Department now, but he's a close friend, author, and he was with me in South Korea and Okinawa when I went with the State Department to speak as an expert on the employment of people with disabilities in a I just love him. I love Richard. So hello, Richard, and Gang Young Cho, who is my friend in South Korea. Best wishes out to you, Gang Young. Here we go. My special shout out to Yoshiko Dart. Every show, every show for years. I love her. But you know why else I do that? Because she is the widow of the late, great Justin Dart, and I want everyone to remember our history. This is sort of like my way of saying, go study the history of the disability rights community. So special shout out to you, Yoshiko, and Highmark. Oh my God, what a great company. I always say Highmark sets the high mark for other companies to follow, and they are the sponsor and have been of this show. Do you know we've been on 22 years? That's hard for me to believe. Even seems like I just started. And a few months ago, I had my one thousandth episode. Isn't that amazing? So remember, I'm gonna be quizzing you at the end of the year on what I showed you on these. So you better keep looking at YouTube if you want to be in that drawing, cash drawing. So with that, I am so delighted to have Jeanette Toles with us today. I love her. I met her a few years ago. She is just a super wonderful dynamic person. I met her at Disability:IN, and I'm so glad that I did. And like me, she is a disability-owned business enterprise. You all know I live with epilepsy and I'm hard of hearing. And my company is on a mission to find competitive employment for people with disabilities. But we are also known as Dobies, and she is a remarkable business leader, entrepreneur, and disability advocate. Jeanette, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Joyce. I'm really thrilled to be here.

Well, we're thrilled to have you here. Let's start with your story, a little bit about you, because my listeners always want to know a little bit about you.

Yeah, I'd be happy to. Um, so, um, as you mentioned, I have a disability-owned business enterprise, so I'm a fellow DOBE, um, and I came to be certified I think about 3 years into having a business. And I talk to people sometimes about why that is, you know, why did I not do that at the outset? And I think I fell into the trap of not understanding or appreciating the resources that were out there and who they're for. So I first actually became aware of a woman-owned business certification possibility, and I was like, oh, that sounds really interesting. And then I incidentally became aware of the DOBE designation and didn't realize that that was for me. And Then I looked at the list of eligible conditions and I was like, oh, I have 5 of these, so maybe I should open my mind to thinking about this. And the rest is history. I'm so glad I opened my mind to that at the time. And we're looking at about 10 years in. It's hard to believe, but in the fall it'll be about 10 years that I've had CenterX.

Yeah, congratulations.

Thank you. It's not 22 years, but it's still a pretty significant milestone.

Well, Bender is actually 30 years old.

Amazing.

But that's because I'm older than you. Yeah, I know you will do fantastic. Um, Jeanette, though, how about like, you know, where did you grow up? Um, what are some of the high points, you know, as you were growing up in school? And, you know, what path did you take? And How did you deal with disability? Let's hear a little bit about you.

Yeah, great, great part of the story, I think. So, you know, actually growing up, disability has been something I've been around for a very long time. I think at least since I was a teenager, if not before that. So both of my parents were disabled and my dad is a service-disabled veteran. So I remember when I was growing up and I was in school and he started having some of the health problems that sort of led to that service-disabled status. And it's interesting that the parallelism, because I think at the time, a lot of the guys that he was in the military with, he was in the Army specifically, maybe also thought that the resources out there weren't available to them or they didn't want to take them away from other people. So he did not have that service disabled veteran status for a long time. And then as his health condition worsened, I think he sort of did the same and started looking into it and saying, maybe I do qualify for this. And it was pretty substantial for our family to be able to do that because that meant that he had access to benefits like being able to have certain tuition reimbursement for me because I'm not honestly sure how I would have gone to school otherwise. So, um, and, and my mom as well had a, a medical condition that gave access to certain benefits for her as well. So, you know, some interesting parallels there. Um, I sort of, you know, I, I think back to when I actually came into my own disability journey, and I'm, I'm honestly not Sure. Um, I think for me, my health conditions evolved over time and probably started with something like an autoimmune condition and then later turned into, um, a condition called mast cell activation syndrome. So it's a lot to do with your immune system and sort of not being able to regulate properly. So I have an issue with temperatures. For example, if I go to hot to— from hot to cold, quickly, my body does not like that and sort of reacts. And it's also caused a secondary condition for me called, this one's a mouthful, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome or POTS. People are hearing a lot about that in the community post-COVID. So glad to see that some light's coming to that condition. But, you know, in my teenage years, I sort of didn't know what was going on at the time. And so From that time on, I sort of was often in a position where I had to explain some of these things that were going on with me, whether it was to peers or sometimes to my own family even, or to teachers and employers thereafter. So it's been quite the journey for me, I would say. I grew up in the Boston area, and I was very privileged to go to a school here called Boston Latin School. So shout out to any Wolfpack listeners. I'm sure there are some. And, um, you know, other than that, I consider myself extremely lucky for a lot of the opportunities that have come my way.

Well, you— yes, but you know, there are people where opportunities come their way, but you have to move forward and latch onto it the way you did.

100%. Yeah, I totally agree.

Yes. So not everyone becomes an entrepreneur. And when people say to me, oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, how did you do it? I say, well, do you have like 40 years to hear my story? Because— and I tell people all the time, it's the greatest thing in the world, but it is not for everyone because it is— you live it 24/7 and you're doing it all. And I love it. But I'm saying it's not like so easy that, you know, I'm going to do this tomorrow and not realize everything that goes with it. But I wouldn't change anything, and I'm sure you wouldn't either. But what gave you this idea? What made you say, hey, I'm going to try to go out on my own? What was that trigger?

Yeah, I think, you know, I totally agree with what you just said. It's certainly not the easy road, as glamorous as it may seem sometimes, but You know, and for me, one of the things I struggled with was that my entrepreneurship journey was actually born out of maybe not such a great place. You know, I'd always been a really strong contributor at work and, you know, again, grew up in a school environment of excellence. So when I started having issues in a traditional work environment and when I say issues, I mean like not aligning around what I actually needed to be successful in doing that job. I needed time to do physical therapy and things like that. And my physical therapy appointments seemed to always be at the very time these very important meetings had to happen. So it wasn't aligned with the employer at the time. And pretty much knew at a certain point that I wasn't going to survive in what I would call a traditional work environment just because of my health issues. But I had so many, so many great people around me saying at the time, look, you know, don't, don't stop doing this. Keep doing what you're doing. Maybe just find a way to do it in a different approach. And I started talking with especially a couple of strong women leaders at the time who I'm extremely grateful to, to this day. And they're like, yeah, absolutely. If you go out and do this on your own, we'll be your first customers wherever you show up next. So they delivered on that promise because I went into it not having any idea if it was going to be successful or not. No contingency plans. It was either come out of the workforce or try doing this. And I was like, well, if I'm going down, I'm going down swinging, I guess. So took a shot, started the business. But to your point earlier, had to put in the work to leverage that network of folks who said that they were going to support and they We did deliver on that. And, you know, the business grew from there. It grew mostly by word of mouth and folks hearing about, you know, some of the amazing things that we had done. And I really credit the ability to deliver on some of the promises of my company to having some of these life experiences that made me have to overcome that adversity. And then I was able to actually just apply that to the services I was offering.

Well, you are one of those people that, you know, so many people with disabilities— now, there was a time when I first started in my career that almost everyone I met was an entrepreneur. But when I say that, I mean, you know, maybe they sold one item or two items, um, not a business the size of mine or yours, there's only one reason: they couldn't get a job. They tried everything else because they could not get a job. But for someone, uh, that wants flexibility, obviously, you know, this is a great choice and a great opportunity. So tell us, how did you start? I mean, again, I tell people now, don't think like you're gonna tomorrow morning wake up and business is going to be knocking at your door. So how did you start, Jeanette?

Yeah, I think, you know, it really was about leveraging that network. And, you know, there were some nuts and bolts and things I, I had to get to know as well. Um, I'd say the financial part was a weakness for me because looking back at schooling, you know, it's just not part a curriculum to learn how to do a P&L and a balance sheet and what all of that means to the success of your business. So there were definitely some gaps I had to go be curious and intentionally look to fill, and, and there were areas of weakness. So it's, it's a tough thing to admit when you don't know something, let alone invest time, you know, in something you're not necessarily good at, to kind of build that out so that you can get to the next stage of your business. And so In the early days, I spent time doing anything and everything. And then after a certain point, once we had grown, I had to really shift focus from there and say, what am I actually good at for the business? So, you know, I'd say my approach has evolved over time, but just really being willing to roll up your sleeves and being able to talk to people and, you know, tell them your story. I think that was a huge gap for me when we first met as part of a mentorship. Program, you know, I think you called on me at the time and you were like, Jeanette, tell me your story. And I just sort of fumbled through something and you're like, what? And then, you know, I think you zeroed in on the question, why are you doing this? And I was like, well, I want to help patients. I have all of this experience with disability in my life. And at the end of the day, they didn't have access to some of these treatments. So that's what I want to be able to deliver. And you were like, why don't you just say that? So that was a foundational moment for me. So I just wanted to say thank you to that. But I think digging into your origin story is helpful in this case and really thinking about how does that actually tie back to your value proposition and what you're trying to deliver to customers.

And don't you feel— and thank you, Jeanette. But look at you now. Don't you believe, Jeanette, that You have to know you're going to have customers.

You do. And you have to get comfortable with the discomfort of that time where you don't. Because you have to anticipate it coming and just think positively and think about, you know, blue, blue sky. What does this all look like? And have a vision and be able to execute toward that, not just the, the day-to-day needs.

Yeah, because I tell people, you must know that you're going to be able to get a customer. You have to know someone is going to want to purchase your product. Or, you know, that's why you have to check, do a little research. So here we go. Sentorex, such a great company you produced and created. So tell us about it. Like what products or services do you provide, uh, where are you located, you know, what is Centerex? I'll say it like that.

Yeah, so I, I alluded to, um, patients, so that probably gave a flavor of it, but to go into a little bit more detail, um, we are a clinical and regulatory consulting firm. So what that means essentially is that we're helping mostly biotech and pharmaceutical companies, um, but sometimes also healthcare companies with their needs for documentation and processes related to the care of patients. Um, so that means, you know, offering expertise with the regulations for clinical trials, for example, knowing what all of those, uh, legal lease terms mean and how to actually apply it in the real world in clinical development. Um, and also there's a strong technology component that's always sort of been part of our DNA. I consider us a tech-enabled company in terms of just thinking through how can we use tech to get therapies to patients sooner and also make our jobs easier at the end of the day. Why not? Um, we are headquartered in the Boston area. As I noted, I grew up here and I've spent most of my life in the Boston area except for a couple years here and there. Um, and most of our staff is located in the Eastern Corridor, although we have staff all over the world pretty much at this point. Including in our Amsterdam office, which we opened in 2023. So that was a pretty amazing time for us as well.

Well, your company, what— what if someone would say to you, I'm a company and I'm looking for what? Like, what is your— what are your main products?

I would just say to them, you know, are you trying to get a product to the market faster for a patient? So drug companies, a lot of those, like, say, the commercials that you see on TV for, you know, drugs that treat atopic dermatitis and, you know, every— everything under the sun at this point, pretty much on TV. We're a little bit ahead of that process. So before anything even can come on TV, it has to undergo approval by a regulatory authority like FDA. There could be authorities in different countries like Canada, Europe as well. And they have very specific rules about what they require to be able to approve that drug. So we specialize in knowing everything about that process, all the ins and outs, and also, you know, the way to do it best based on our 20, 20 years or so of experience working in the field before we were at Centrx.

So, so then how do you— you find all of this out. And then how do you expedite this? What do you do?

Really, it kind of goes back to what I was talking about earlier in terms of the ability of somebody like myself to think on their toes and think outside of the box. So a lot of the times what you run into in this space is what I call a waterfall methodology. So essentially what that means is that Task A starts, Task A must complete and then Task B starts. But you can probably tell from the way I'm talking about this that that's not the reality of the situation. You might be working on Task A and then all of a sudden you hear from the FDA in the middle of doing that and they don't really care what you're, what you're doing that day. They want their answers so that they can make things safe and accessible to patients. So you have to drop everything you're doing and, you know, work on this other thing. But I think if you approach it such that you're anticipating that level of volatility and complexity, there are ways that you can pre-plan for like 90% of what you need to get done in that process and be prepared coming into that to work in a more agile way. So that's really what we focus on is that agile concept. It's actually a page out of the Tech Handbook. And by doing that, it's all about checking assumptions. So the, if the former assumption was Well, the team needs 5 days to review something. Okay, why, why is that? They don't actually take 5 days to review it. Everybody jumps into the review on the last day and does their review. So therefore your review actually takes 1 day. So if you plan to do it on that 1 day, you're saving 4 days that you can get your therapy to the patient 4 days sooner. And if you look at that at a macro level, that adds up to weeks. Months across the course of a clinical development plan.

Wow. Well, that is great. So someone listening right now, if they're interested in your company, what do they do?

The easiest way to find us is certainly on socials, LinkedIn. You know, we, we're always on there talking about our experience in the field, different trainings that we're doing. So You might even find out, you know, any upcoming webinars that we have that might be of interest to you. So feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. We also have a YouTube channel. So for anybody who's going to be watching this on YouTube, that'll be a quick hop and a jump to subscribe to us as well. And we have, you know, a lot of interesting series on there as well, including things about plain language and getting complex medical concepts to everyday, everyday folks in the public. We have a whole series on that so you can learn more about it.

Awesome. So your website again?

So our website is www.synterex.com. That's S-Y-N-T-E-R-E-X dot com.

Okay. Well, everyone listening, I would say check that out. Because that sounds to me like such an innovative product and process. You'll see how innovative it is in my next question, which is, in the world of AI, what is AgileWriter?

I love talking about AgileWriter, so I could probably do that all day, and I'll give you the short version here. So AgileWriter is our proprietary AI tool for healthcare documentation.

Documentation.

Um, and that's documents of all types, including those used in clinical trials as well as hospitals, academia, and other healthcare settings. Um, really what it's all about is helping to get information to the right audience, whether that's technical or plain language going to patients. And at the end of the day, we're aiming at some of the critical path items that represent inefficiencies in the in the drug development process. And think of it this way, if you can use AI to get your document done 3 weeks faster than you could before, well, that's 3 weeks faster that you can start your trial for your patients potentially. Not only that, but it's actually in a lot of cases helping patients understand better what they're actually committing to in the course of a clinical trial. One of my pet peeves that I thought of when we developed this was an informed consent form, which is essentially a document that's explaining the trial that a clinical trial participant is going to take part in. Sometimes it'll use words like pharmacokinetics and, you know, these really technical terms that, you know, frankly, before I started working in the business, I didn't know what that meant. So I don't think it's reasonable to expect patients to understand a lot of these technical terms. So it's taking aim at that issue. We want them to really understand every aspect of the procedures they're going to undergo and have them be all in and understanding and also excited about participating in the trial and what they could possibly get out of that. So that's more or less what Agile Writer is about in a nutshell.

Well, first of all, I love talking about AI. So it would not bother me how long you talk about it. But, you know, I mean, it's here, it's moving, it's used a lot in healthcare and pharmaceutical, just as you're mentioning. And my only fear about this is what will that do to jobs that are purely entry-level. You know, someone said the other day, don't be afraid of AI, be afraid of someone that's learning it and you're not. Yeah. Yes. But I'm talking about like working in retail, things like that. Recruiter. I mean, a lot of these jobs are going to be gone. And what worries me, a lot of those entry-level jobs call center, customer service, people with disabilities because of discrimination. You know, these are the jobs. So what my big thing is, Jennifer, is educating the disability community now, or everyone will wake up one day and, oh my God, what happened? Because it's moving.

100%. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, we're trying to be thoughtful about that in our fields and You know, we're actually part of some of the committees that are coming up with the curricula to teach medical writers, which is, you know, the job title that would be associated with what I do, how to, how to do all this, right? And not only that, but at the entry level, how can companies set up apprenticeships that actually include AI as part of their curricula as well? So our professional organization and I was, I was part of the, the group that led this effort. Our professional organization actually put out a whole framework for apprenticeships, and I think it's a really good model to say, you know, how are we going to proactively address some of these issues and also use some of these platforms to make the people who are working on the drugs in my field specifically, you know, actually representative of the folks who are going to get the drugs. You know, I think there has to be some intentionality around that. And that's the way that we've approached things at, at CentraX and tried to participate in certain other internship challenges. Like there's one called Project OnRamp for anybody who may not be familiar in the life sciences area, and they're connecting with folks in the cities all across the US, I believe at this point, but in Boston in my case, and giving folks access to the types of jobs and opportunities that maybe organically they wouldn't have access to in the inner city. So I think there has to be some intentionality around this in all verticals, including in the life sciences.

I agree. Well, with that, it is time for Mathis on the Mic with Jennifer Mathis. Our news anchor and superstar. There she is, Jennifer. Jennifer, this is like we're on CNN. What I love about this TV land is that you get to know people. You really can't get to know people just by, you know, hearing their voice. But Jennifer is known, I would say, not just nationally but internationally for the work she has done in mental health. And, you know, she's an attorney. A lot of the— almost everyone that works there is an attorney. And Bazelon is in Washington, D.C., and we are just thrilled to have you. So, Jennifer, What news do you have for us today?

So I just wanted to highlight today a series of changes that the administration announced in mid-July to what counts as federal public benefits for purposes of a law from 1996 that we used to call the, like, ending welfare as we know it law. It's called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. And that law did a lot of things, but one of the things that it did was it restricted eligibility for a lot of benefits, um, to people with different immigration statuses. And so, um, in particular relevant to this thing I'm talking about today, it said that certain categories of immigrants, mainly people who were quote-unquote "not qualified aliens," so people who were undocumented, not refugees, not people granted asylum, not lawful permanent residents, but primarily other folks, who were undocumented would not be able to, or otherwise, there's a lot of different categories, I'm oversimplifying, but they would not be eligible for quote unquote federal public benefits. And that has been defined and understood for many, many years. HHS in particular had issued a notice back in 1998, so decades ago, saying essentially having a sort of definition of federal public benefits that exempted benefits that were things that were sort of available to everybody, like crisis services, emergency services, And so for many years, we've operated with this understanding that those things are, are not unavailable to this group of, of immigrants. And you wouldn't want emergency services to not be available to people regardless of their status. That was, I think, the point. And so after all of these decades, we now saw in July a series of notices from from different federal agencies, from the Justice Department, from HHS, from the Department of Education, from the Department of Labor, from the Department of Agriculture. And I think the most significant one is HHS's. It really dramatically changes the— what counts as federal public benefits for the first time in many, many decades. And they specify a long list of things that they say now count that did not count for all of these decades before. And counting means they— you can't get them if you are in one of these immigrant categories that is excluded from coverage or excluded from eligibility under the law. And what they now add to this list of benefits that people are not eligible for are things like Head Start, the Mental Health Block Grant, the Substance Use Block Grant, Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers, and a whole bunch of other health and particularly with big focus on mental health programs that people have been able to access for many, many years. That really in most of these cases are supposed to be widely available to everybody and exactly the sort of benefits that the agencies had always said were exempted from being federal public benefits that are unavailable to unqualified immigrants. And so this is a big deal. It's a big change. There isn't anything I think that is an action item right now for people to do. There was a notice in the Federal Register. They took comment on it. The comment period was over in August, but the notice went into effect immediately even though there was a comment period. So it is already in effect. There is litigation over this. There's 21 states and the District of Columbia, I think led by New York, have sued over this, claiming it's unlawful for a variety of reasons and procedurally that it was— it wasn't done right and substantively it's wrong. And so that litigation is ongoing and the government agreed to to temporarily not enforce this for a period of time that ends tomorrow. It was for a short period of time with the hopes that the court would issue a decision in that time. They may ask for an extension of that stay of enforcement. The plaintiffs may seek to see if the government will extend it. But in any event, we will see what the courts say about this. But I think these are significant disability services, so I wanted to highlight this. I'm not an expert in the immigration law. I'm not an expert in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act, but it's an important issue for people with disabilities because these are services. The CCBHCs, certified behavioral health clinics, provide a lot of key services, including, like, for example, mobile crisis services and other services that are really important for people on an emergency basis. The mental health block grants similarly do that. The substance use block grants do that, in part so that people delivering those services aren't busy checking everybody's IDs and eligibility for them. And so it is going to be, I think, an alarming time when they have to start doing that, if they have to start doing that. We will see what the court does, but it is significant. And so I wanted to highlight it on the show this week.

And how, how can people follow that?— to see if that extension happens or what happens.

I will give an update next week.

Okay, good.

Because hopefully we will know something given that that stay of enforcement is supposed to be through tomorrow. We'll know something next week and maybe we'll have a court decision at that point. But I will keep people updated on the show. And I mean, sometimes I find things by Googling them, but You know, beyond that, I will just try to keep folks updated here.

Okay, good, good. That's great. Well, thank you, Jennifer. Thank you for the news and have a great day and we'll look forward to that update.

Thank you so much.

Take care. All right. All right. You know what, Jennifer, we are the only place in the world where you can go and hear the news every week on what's happening in the disability community. And boy, are we lucky with who we have, having Jennifer. So what did you believe— first, before I tell about your award, what do you believe are the benefits for a disability-owned business enterprise, as I said, known as Adobe, from disability Honestly, I think that the community—

I always tell everybody, you know, who's not really familiar with the community that those are my people. It's the favorite group of people I get together with every year, and I always learn something new from them. One of the things I found too, coming back to what I said earlier in the show about being able to tell my own story, once I got really comfortable doing that and started doing it and practicing on people, I found really something amazing. I started getting stories back, so it wouldn't be, you know, the exact same thing, but it would prompt somebody to say, you know, I've run into, you know, this other thing that I've been struggling with. And, you know, really what I ended up with at the end of the day was a tapestry, as it were, of stories of people overcoming barriers to not only create jobs but also contribute ultimately billions of dollars into the economy. And to go from, you know, the adversity that they're coming from to that outcome is pretty amazing to me. So that's both a benefit and an honor of being a Delby.

Yeah, I always tell people that disability is a gift. To Dobies. And what I mean by that is if tomorrow I would say to anyone, hey, why don't you go to the head of procurement at Merck or Southwest Airlines or, uh, PNC or Microsoft and do this all in 2 days? Impossible. I mean, even in 1 day to get through to all these people. But you go to Disability:IN and there they are. There they are. So to me, I do feel it's a gift for Adobe. But I know how thrilled I was when you were named Disability:IN's Disability-Owned Business Enterprise, DOBE, of the Year in 2024. What a great thing to see. As you said, from not being able to talk that much on the master mentor video session I did, to here you are, Debbie of the Year.

Somehow. I mean, honestly, and I couldn't tell anybody at first. So I knew for like 3 months and I wanted to tell you, I wanted to tell, you know, all the folks who had helped me. Me get there, but I couldn't say anything until I was up on stage accepting the award. But, you know, if I look at what they say that award means, so it recognizes a certified DO-BE for its outstanding commitment to the mission of disability and accelerating economic opportunity for the disability community and promoting disability inclusion practices. So, I mean, honestly, what an honor to receive that, right? And have it be a subject of commentary what I— any small thing I've contributed in that realm. For me, you know, I mentioned earlier that my mom has a medical disability, but a key point there is that it actually took her out of the workplace when she was, you know, not much less than my age right now. And at that time, this was the early '90s. There wasn't work from home. There wasn't, you know, really too many entrepreneurial opportunities for, for women, especially women that had, you know, multiple young kids at the time. And, you know, she, she never went back to the workplace. So to be able to affect anything in that realm and be able to create jobs for people especially, I think is amazing. And I think CenterX continues to be a destination for people who have something going on and it doesn't even have to be a disability. I think it just means that we know how to think outside the box a little bit and get people what they need to be successful in their job. And I'll give a brief shout out too to my spouse who's our Chief Technology Officer. So we're a mom and pop shop, but he's also a huge neurodiversity and tech advocate. So he's often speaking at events about what it means to work with ADHD in that space. And we have of two neurodiverse children as well. So overall, you know, I think the ability to just be able to have that all be part of the conversation is another gift. There's really no other way to put it.

Well, you're a gift.

Thank you, Joyce Bender.

I'm so proud of you.

I really appreciate that. That means— it just means the world to me, honestly.

Well, I am. And once again, what is your website?

So it's centerex.com. That's S-Y-N-T-E-R-E-X dot com.

Now, is that the best way to reach out to you? For example, someone's listening to the show and they say, oh, I want her to speak at a small business forum. Is that the best way to reach you?

Absolutely. It is. You can reach out to us either on the company page or on my page personally.

Okay, you've got it. Centrex.com. And, you know, why wouldn't you? One other thing about Disability:IN is the other Dobies. You know, it's like a family. As a matter of fact, Caption First, who is doing the captioning right now on this show, Pat Graves, the owner, is my customer. Awesome. I've been using them to do the captioning for those 22 years. Can you believe that? And they still are doing a great job. And if you are looking for a captioning firm, Caption First. Go to Caption First. They are are wonderful. But to my point, getting to know the other Dobies is so great. You know, it's so invigorating, and we can all exchange, you know, ideas and things we're going through. So once again, disability.org is in July is the next conference. If you can go, just go to their website and you can read all about it, and it is in Dallas, Texas. So if you're listening now and if you're there, make sure you come up and say hi, uh, when I get there. So Jeanette, obviously you're such a kind person and just such an authentic person. So my question for you is, who is your role model?

Yeah, I thought a lot about this one. When I think of role model, I think of like who inspires me at the end of the day. So I alluded to my mom and dad earlier. They absolutely have had a huge influence on me. And with everything that they face, they continue to not only support me in my journey, but also give back to their community. My dad is a— him and his friends actually started a nonprofit on Cape Cod in Massachusetts called called Cape Cod Veterans, and they help local veterans with all sorts of needs from building wheelchair ramps to, you know, inserting an air conditioner if they need that done, or financial assistance. So him and his friends and their group, Cape Cod Veterans, continue to inspire me every day. And then I'll give you another interesting answer there too. So I don't know if this qualifies as role model, but my daughter is amazing. She's 12 years old, and it amazed me. A couple of years ago, she came to me and she's like, well, you know, Mom, I want to start a business. And I was like, oh, really? Okay, let's talk about it. And frankly, I don't remember having those discussions when I was 12, so I thought it was amazing to start with. And she wanted to start a lemonade stand. And so I asked her, well, how are you going to get the capital to start it? And she's like, well, Mom, what's capital? So it just started this amazing dialogue and an opportunity where we can watch like Shark Tank and stuff together. And I talked to her about some of the competitions and things that I'm doing. So she came back to me after she thought about what I said about capital, and she said, well, you know, I have the materials here to make these crafts. And so I already have that. So I could use those, sell, sell the crafts and then use that capital to start my other business. So I was like, I was like, okay, interesting. Not only do I have an entrepreneur on my hands, but I have a serial entrepreneur on my hands at the age of 12. So she inspires me every day. You know, she's hugely interested in STEM and technology. Wow.

Oh, that's great.

I just— I think about that at that age, and it's just incredible to me. And she's just a wonderful human being too.

Well, that's wonderful. Oh, I wonder who she gets that from. I'd say she has a pretty awesome mother.

She has an awesome—

and I'm sure your husband also.

Absolutely.

Well, Jeanette, thank you so much for being with us on the show today. It was delightful to have you, uh, as our guest, and, um, hope to have you back again anytime.

This is truly an honor, and I'm gonna, you know, make sure I'm listening to the next episode so that I can get the trivia questions if I come back.

That's good. Okay. And listen, you can hear Janet. If you heard Janet and you're thinking, oh, I wish I could have given this to my husband, wife, child, sister, brother, friend, whatever. Spotify, of course, YouTube, but Spotify, Amazon, Apple. Voice America. All the shows are on demand, but go to YouTube to see this show. Thanks again, everyone. I can't wait to talk to you all next week. Gotta hear about that trivia. This is Joyce Bender, America's Voice, where disability matters, at voiceamerica.com. Every show we end with a quote, "So today it is, hold your head high, look the world straight in the eye," said the great Helen Keller. And in the words of Mary Brooker, when you go out today, remember, choose joy. Thank you, thank you. See you all next week.

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