Mission of 412 Ability Tech Ecosystem

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.

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Everyone in the United States and around the world, uh, I so appreciate you being with us. And all of my friends in the Department. And hello to Yoshiko, and, uh, thank you, Highmark, for being the sponsor. And I know that any of you hearing the show, because we've been on 20 years, you are saying, why does Joyce sound like that? Why isn't she her normal joyful, exuberant on the phone thanking everyone? And that's because of what we're going through in the world right now. That's because of what has happened to Israel. That is what is going on. And as you all know, I have put out on social media how my friend, Gahl Imbart, took time to call in and be with us today, which I so appreciate. Gaal, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Joyce Bender.

Our heart goes out to you and everyone from Voice America. Our heart goes out to you. Can you— I am assuming that what we see is probably only a snippet of what you're all going through, but I know you yourself have seen a lot of the horror I guess I would say there's probably no way to describe it. Would you say that's correct?

Yes. And sadly, today with social media, you might come across all kinds of content that the terrorists took and it went online. Be aware, beware exposing yourself to too much of these things, because once you see these things, they cannot be erased and it would scar your soul because of the horror you might see there.

I'm glad you pointed that out to everyone, because I know, I know that's true. I know that Hamas and the other terrorists, involved are putting out information that isn't true. So please, please listen to what you've just heard from a man and his family that is in the midst of this. Uh, it's not, it's not all true what you're saying. You know, the enemy often has plans of what to do, uh, to try to get you to sympathize with what they did, but what they did was barbaric. That's the only word I can use, barbaric. And Gahl, once again, in the midst of all that, you took time to be with us. I can't wait till I see you in person so I can give you a big hug, but thank you so much. And this is a very great show today. Because it is all about opportunity. Um, Gal, since we were talking to you, could you share with our listeners what your background is as the executive director of 412972, the Pittsburgh-Israel Innovation? What is that? What, what is it and what is your role?

So my title is Executive Director for the 412 by 972 Pittsburgh-Israel Innovation, which is an entity focused on connecting and generating business for Israeli businesses and for Pittsburgh businesses. We help companies from both locales find great customers on the other locale and do business with them. And we've been on our journey now for about 4 years. We are currently serving about a little more than 100 companies and we are supporting approximately 120 business conversations between pairs of companies in parallel at every given moment. And we are starting to see things connect in domains such as as space tech, as robotics, healthcare, and recently, and I think we will talk about it more on the show, around ability tech or disability tech, around companies who provide technology that is tailored for people with need. Wow.

Hey, I mean, how did that start? Like, how did this idea come to be?

So the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh has been wanting to build something that would connect both Jews and non-Jews to converse and do things with Israelis because first it's an economic opportunity to impact both Pittsburgh and Israel in a positive manner. And it's also the fact that people are talking and doing business together. They get a sense of each other much better than what you see on regular media. And they were looking to develop something which would be quite different than the regular Chamber of Commerce. And when they reached out to me and asked for my help, we designed this consulting gig that is helping companies do business and benefits from a small chunk of the value that we help create.

Oh, and that is so awesome that we're partnering, uh, with Israel and doing that. I just think that is awesome. And oh my God, we have Dr. Jeffrey Cohen. He is in himself just unbelievably great. I mean, I view him— I know he's a doctor, but I view him I was telling someone the other day, as a civil rights leader. That's how I view him. But Dr. Callan, maybe you could tell everyone about yourself and your background, and then if you don't mind, the genesis of this innovative program at Suburban General.

Well, Joyce, thank you for the kind words. I've never heard myself described as a civil rights leader. I've been described as many things, but that's never been one of them. So, I've had a long career in Pittsburgh as a clinician. I've been involved in startup companies. I was president of Allegheny General. And I had this real interest of the relationship between economic status and how do patients you know, get better and why do hospitals close. And as I finished up what I wanted to accomplish at Allegheny General, I was given the opportunity by AHN and Highmark to take over Suburban General, which was essentially a closed healthcare facility as an inpatient facility. There were still some outpatient things going on, but it wasn't thriving. And the history of the hospital was that it was started in 1870. And it closed as an inpatient facility in 2010. And then there was a skilled nursing facility there for about 8 years, and that closed in 2018. So there's a little bit of outpatient work going on, but it gave us the opportunity to study the problem and try and figure out the causation of how all this works. So we moved into this closed facility, essentially, in January of '20, and we had the time with the pandemic to really do a deep dive into economics and the causation of what's going on in communities. And for anybody that knows anything about Bellevue, Pennsylvania, this was a very wealthy upper middle class community that was supported by the steel industry until the steel industry went through a consolidation process. And the end result of that was that the hospital closed. So the inpatient facilities were abandoned. It's about 220,000 square feet. And for lots of reasons, we didn't want to close it all together because the effect it would have on the community. So I was given the opportunity to restructure it and see what we could do with it. And we started with Alpha Lab Health, which is an incubator to start companies that solve problems in healthcare. And our first class was in 2020. We're now on our fourth cohort. And we built out the old ICU, which is about 10,000 square feet, and made it into a destination for startup companies in the region. And this is very early in the cycle of product development where, you know, they don't even have a minimal viable product. They basically have an idea. That's also where I met Gal. And I was introduced to him through friends and, and asked would I talk to him. And we started talking and we realized that we sort of like each other, I think that's a fair statement, Cal. But we worked very closely together about bringing innovative companies to Pittsburgh. And it also showed us the model of what innovation really means. And it deals with change. And for the most part, it's really hard to get people or institutions to change. So we took the model that we learned in, Alpha Lab Health, and we started to apply it to the social domain of what else are we going to do in this facility to change the arc of the community. And the problem we wanted to solve was essentially the changing economy from the 20th to the 21st century. And we started bringing in tenants that dealt with those things like food insecurity or education, you know, or workforce development. or housing. And we started looking at different groups that could do this and put them together here. And along the way, we realized that we had a concentration of companies that could actually develop product for people with physical barriers to being what they wanted to be. So we came up with the idea of an incubator that was focused on a sustainable business model of creating products. And that's where the story led us to Alex, who created Test to Seat, and he can tell his own story. But that's what we're doing at Suburban is we're essentially giving people of all different walks of life an opportunity for an opportunity. And whether it's on the basis of poverty or education or physical disabilities, whatever it is, How do we help you be productive? And how do we build, how do we rebuild trust that people have lost in institutions they need for a community to be successful? I'll stop there.

Well, what impressed me so much with Dr. Cohen is that he saw what happened with the steel industry. And he saw how all the jobs went away. And he's seen continuing economic situations that lead to poverty. So, this idea of an innovative— I will call it project, but it's really more than a project because it's actually happening right now. Bringing in companies that can create jobs, that's really what it's all about. That's why I always say in the disability community, where the rubber meets the road is employment. You know, without a job, you can't be free in this country or in any country. Can't buy a car, can't live the American or Israeli dream. And by the way, I know from Australia to China, we have listeners around the world, which thank you so much for all of the countries with listeners. But as you're hearing this, you know, this may give you ideas. And any of you would be able to reach, uh, Goll by getting in touch with me through Voice America because I really think that Dr. Cohen has come up with a genius idea from what we went through, you know, in Pittsburgh, and now using technology is just so awesome. So I'm really excited about this, and I have to have a shout out to Karen Emmerich, Bernita Buncher and I were very close friends. And of course I'm talking about the Buncher Foundation. And Bernita was a huge advocate of people with disabilities. It was a great loss when she passed away, but boy, Karen is carrying that flag forward and doing a great job with us. So Dr. Cohen, we have to move on for a minute to 412 Pittsburgh Ability Tech. Can you explain Pittsburgh AbilityTech?

You want me to do it, Joyce Bender? Yes.

Okay.

So we look at populations of people and how we give them an opportunity to take care of themselves. And one of the keys of poverty is that the people that have been left behind by the changes in steel or any industry that's going through, you know, a consumption or renovation process, if you will, is that there's people that win and people that don't. And Bellevue, Pennsylvania was an upper middle class community as long as steel was employing people. And, you know, to your comment about the need for jobs,. And in the capitalistic system, you know, this is an inevitability that you're always going to have innovation and it's going to change things, which is very, very hard. So the people that are disadvantaged now have barriers to reentering into the workforce and so do their children. And then you end up with generational poverty. The other group that has this barrier is people with physical disabilities. And we had 3 companies, you know, in Alpha Lab that made products of different types to help people with disabilities. And they were all physical in nature, but the point was to give them the opportunity to have a normal life and decide what they wanted to do for themselves, how they wanted to be productive to take care of themselves and their families. So the idea struck me one day is that if we have a model of innovation where the questions that, you know, the problems that you're solving are somehow related to healthcare, why can't we solve problems in this space as well and give people who have a physical barrier to employment the ability to overcome that and be productive to take care of themselves and their families. So literally I was walking down the hall one day And I said, you know, this is a really good idea. And like most of my ideas, I come up and I tell my associate, Stephen Hunter, and he sort of looks at me and goes, you want to do what? And I said, yeah, I want to create an environment where we have companies that have a sustainable model that they can produce products to overcome handicaps that people have to gain employment and self-determination. And he said, "Well, how are you going to do that?" I said, "I'm not entirely sure yet, but I got an idea." And one of the beauties of this project is that we can iterate quickly. And Gal and I started talking about it, and he introduced me to something called Tikam Olam Makers out of Israel, which I'm sure Alex or Gal can explain further. But essentially, it is a product development system that people take on as a challenge to overcome physical disabilities that people have throughout the world. And it's open source so that anyone can copy the software where you can 3D print products to overcome physical disabilities from loss of a limb, you know, or hygiene or other products. And we thought this was really cool. So, you know, there's disability incubators, but not quite like this.. And we presented the idea to a couple of people like Joyce Bender and Karen Emmerich, and we came up with the concept of 412 Ability Tech. And the mission is for people that have physical disabilities, how do we create sustainable businesses to help them overcome that and give this population of people the opportunity to be productive and self-determination. So that's the short story of how we did it. I'd love to tell you it was that organized, but there was a lot of talking in between that allowed us to sort of get to where we are today. It's still very early in the cycle.

You know what this reminds me of? I mean, for people with disabilities, in Washington, D.C., there's a national award. It's called the Paul Hearne Award, named after the person that actually helped start the American Association of People with Disabilities. And it's given to a person with a disability that has come up with an idea and started, you know, a company. And no matter how small it is, and if they're selected, they receive $10,000. But, you know, right here in Pittsburgh, If there's someone that has started a small company that needs to meet— technology company— and needs to meet with someone, you know, this is a great opportunity for you to look in also, which brings me to Alex, who is the founder and CEO of Testa Adaptive Seating Systems. And it is such a pleasure, Alex, to have you with us today. So how about if we start by you sharing with our listeners around the world your background and about Testa?

Hey Joyce, great pleasure. Thank you for having me. So I'm industrial designer, and one of the challenges of industrial designers is figuring out how to make products and looking on mass production and seeing that we actually in a good point in life that everyone can go to IKEA or other spaces to buy cheap products with a high quality. But then in my process when I started to work with rehabilitation centers and specifically with pediatric rehabilitation centers, you, you will discover that In these spaces, children with disabilities have nothing. Like, they have all very expensive equipment, or they have very not designed wooden chairs and improvised products that clinicians most of the time produce to them. And this coming from two different issues. And again, I'm speaking from the perspective of the industrial designer. So one is too complicated to manufacture something custom. We used long time ago, 10 years ago, we used to make custom product in the usual basis, but now the labor is expensive and then we are relying on the mass production. If the product is not manufactured in millions, it's not cost effective to manufacturing. And then if you need a custom product, It will be very expensive. But also on the innovation side, most of the industrial designers, engineers, not really interested in the disability accessibility field. It's not passionate about— many people not passionate about it. So when I met Tom, the Tikuna Lawmakers that Jeff already mentioned, I saw So Tom Pikonola makes assistive technology using engineers and designers, students, for people with disabilities on nonprofit basis, volunteering basis, and then working with different people with different disabilities for years. You can see how many challenges they have, how many products we can provide them. But no one in the market is interested to make it because it's small product, small niches, small markets. Then most of the investors, most of the companies will not invest the time and the money to manufacture them. But when I was in, like, in the study process, the 3D printing technologies came to be very relevant. And by using 3D printing, you probably, you can manufacture almost any product without the need to go to the manufacturing stages to make the molds and expensive investment, etc. But you can manufacture the products using 3D printing, and it's also much easier to customize because you customize this file, not the product, and then the 3D printer manufacture it. This is the same method— methodology for Tome that we're developing product that we can upload to the network and then anyone in the global can download them and use them having one digital file and using 3D printers that they are in many spaces. And this is also the same way that the Testa Seat used digital files manufacturing custom seats for children with disabilities using 3D printers. And still we face the same problem that most of the investors, most of the people not really believe and not really want to support the manufacturing development of assistive technology because again it's small market. Yes, the problem exists, and, and, but it's not big enough. But then when we're using 3D printing, we can also adjust our product to many different populations without investing additional money. But we're also much more flexible on different spaces, and the product was developed in Israel already working with the clinicians And we decided to grow and move to the US. And Gal— and I think this is kind of point that all the people here is connected— is Gal was introduced TestAcid to Pittsburgh, and we saw a huge opportunity to relocate TestAcid for Pittsburgh because the environment, because the people, and because of the innovation space that's starting to be huge in Pittsburgh. But also the second reason, it was that Jeff was really one of the persons that know about the problem deeply because he was treating people with spinal bifida and children that need the sitting systems, understanding also that there is a problem, that there is a market, but this is a small market and we need to find the other and different, more social way to solve this kind of products. And then kind of innovation way to manufacture products, making it in a local way, was something that worked together with all the innovation space in Suburban General and the Alpha Lab Health, but also with the 412 Ability Tech, when all people connected and want really want to make a difference in this space. So it's all about, I think, people, innovation, but deeply it's people that want to make a difference and they care about the people, also the profit, because this is something that moves, but first of all, the people.

Well, let me ask you this question. Could you go over with our listeners what some of your products are right now?

So one of them— so there, I will, I will send this the same. Uh, one of the products is the custom seat. So Teta Seat manufactures custom seating systems, and the unique way that we're manufacturing them, that we have platform that any clinician make the measurements in a very simple way without needing some complicated equipment. They're making the measurement of the child, sending us the measurements, and we 3D print the custom fit that most of the time for the clinicians takes 6 weeks, 8 weeks to manufacture it. Children are still growing, and also This is very complicated and expensive process if clinicians or professionals need to manufacture the product by themselves. We can manufacture the seat in the same day by 3D printing and also reducing the prices dramatically. For example, the custom seat usually on the market now, it's between $3,000 and $5,000, and we can manufacture for $700. Making it locally without the need of shipping or something complicated. So this is one, and one of the main products for test assist. But we also have many products from Tom Tikun Olam makers, and let's say it's custom wheelchairs, prosthetic arms, eating and feeding equipment that You can find them online and anybody can download them.

And where did they go to see them online?

So, Tom Tikun Olam Makers, you can find Tom Global, it's tomglobal.org. You can find a library of of products that you can download them. And also you can contact me on alex@tomglobal.org and we will figure it out maybe to make a custom product. So it's community-based development.

Yeah, and they are awesome. What I'm wondering, Alex, if, if a business person is listening to the show, and they're saying, wow, I would love to see these, uh, wheelchairs for toddlers. How do they do that, and what if they want to purchase them?

So it depends on, on, on which community and area they are located. So let's say this is some listener from Pittsburgh. They connected with the Pittsburgh community. They can find us on Tom Pittsburgh on LinkedIn or Tom Pittsburgh on Facebook. Connecting with our community. And then there is a few different ways that we can manufacture them, the wheelchairs. They can make a building party, and then our community will make the building party of the wheelchairs, and then they will able to donate the wheelchairs to the users. So we're looking on different approaches how to make the seats because We have no manufacturing space. We have no specific way to manufacture. As Tom community, we're trying to teach the community how to make the seats. For example, we have fellows in UK University right now. They are practicing and they are learning how to make the wheelchairs. They have all the equipment on the university because most of the universities are right now equipped. And one of their projects during the education process, they need to make some projects. So this is, this will consider it as one of their projects. So the community creating products for the community, making very local community-based circle economics. In this way, I think it's one of the solutions that we see on how we really can deliver the assistive technology because it's expensive. No one really wants to pay for it. The insurance company cannot support all the different products because there's different disabilities, different adjustments, different customizations. And then we see that there's also many community activities Like, we have schools that teaching 3D printing all over. We have 300 districts in the Pittsburgh area only that they have schools that teaching to, to 3D print. Most of their products are keychains and toys. And we think we now at this moment reaching out to the schools and speaking with them. Extent of making toys or keychains, let's make assistive technology. Your students will learn how to make products in the same way that they— you teach them right now, but the outcomes, the products that you make, they can donate them to people that really need. And then no one loses. It's like win-win for everyone. Just reimagine the things and reimagine how we can make it more efficient and beneficial for the people that need the equipment, not just making it to it. So there's many ways to, to get our products, but if someone wants, they can just reach out on tomglobal.org or Tom Pittsburgh, and we will like figure it out how to make it in the best way because it's local.

So, um, how do you see this working Gall, if a hospital in Pittsburgh or some— or company, whatever it is, or rehabilitation center, someone calls and they want to invest in some of these test seats, these, uh, wheelchairs, what do you see happening, Gall, if they say Yeah, we want to order 50 right now. How— what would have to happen? What would we have to do?

So I'm— you addressed me, so I'll try to answer, and Alex, please correct me if I'm wrong, because Alex is the guy who's really the CEO of TestaSeed. But I would say that Testa has the capacity to produce. When you are working with 3D printers, you don't need a lot of space. In order to get into production. And then, Testa Seat has the equipment it needs in order to get products produced. So the easiest thing is to just Google up Testa Seat or type www.testa-seat.com and reach out to Alex, to the company, and place an order. We did see that there are challenges when we started working with Testa and with AHN, and the challenge we realized was that a lot of people are involved with helping the people with disabilities, but most of them don't speak with each other on a regular basis. And this was the trigger for us to start 412AbilityTech. We wanted to create an ecosystem, a space where different stakeholders in the disability or disability tech or the ability tech ecosystem could meet, converse, could dream up projects, and can work on challenges together. And so far we had two events which I think were very successful. I think In total, over 100 professionals from this space, from charities, from startups, from education systems, from healthcare systems, and from foundations have met and worked together on things. By the way, on November 16th, we will have a booth for the 412AbilityTech at the Discovery Day, the Robotics Discovery Day. So we will be hosting a bunch of ability tech companies that are made in Pittsburgh, and you are more than welcome to come and visit the booth. If you register, the entrance is free. You just need to register and you can come over on November 16th. Okay.

Where is that being held? Where is that being held?

It's, it's going to be at the convention center downtown.

Okay. Hey, Alex, did you want to add anything to what we were just discussing?

Yeah, so I want to add for your question, if someone wants a test receipt and how they're reaching. So the usual way, they're going to the website or reaching out and decide if they want one of our size products or they need a custom product that we're working usually with the clinicians. So this is the one way and then seeing what the process and then we will ship it. But we also recently last week we won a prize on the Uprise Challenge here in Pittsburgh and we committed to donate certain amount of seeds. I think it's about 20 or 30 seeds for free for exactly these spaces of rehabilitation centers, community schools, places that need this kind of seating system for children. And if there is one of these places that need the equipment right now, we will make the equipment for them part of the winning the prize and also growing the company here in Pittsburgh. So it will be for free for them. And they just need to reach out to us in the web, on, uh, through the website. Again, as Gao mentioned, www.testa-tit.com.

Okay, thank you so much, Dr. Kown. What are we going to do if someone's listening to the show today and they are not in Pittsburgh but they want to purchase these, uh, seats, these chairs?

I think what they do is, uh, send Gal an email, and, uh, he has intergalactic connections— not just international, but intergalactic, Joyce. And if you send them an email, I'm sure they can work this out. And last I checked, you can ship anywheres in the world right now. Uh, so, uh, his methodology is such that he doesn't need to have the person in front of him to build the seat. And just, you know, a couple points I'll make is that the standard seat that we would use in healthcare costs around $5,000. Alex can make that for a fraction of that and fit it to the person, which the standard seats don't do. Number 2 is we're really proud of Gal. Of Alex. We're proud of Gal too, but for different reasons. But Alex came to Pittsburgh, has been here for a year, and he's been integrated into the community here. And he's entering into our incubator called Alpha Lab Health. And on top of that, he just won a prize at a regional competition. All of this is somebody that's been in the States for about a year. And figuring out how the American healthcare system works, which is exactly what we wanted. So on one hand, he's got a bright future. Uh, he's mission-driven, fixing problems that people have. And, you know, for the local economy, we're attracting people here that can solve problems in multiple regions. So if you have a dream and you'd like to come to Pittsburgh. You may not have realized that it's the City of Oz, but, uh, get in touch with us. We're happy to talk to you.

Best city in America. Get in touch with us. So I guess what I'm saying, because someone asked me this question, uh, if someone is outside of Pittsburgh but they want to purchase this, which of course is in Pittsburgh, is— can they do that?

Yeah, sure. They, they— again, they can go to the website and they can purchase it directly, or if they need a custom product, they just need to connect with us and we will figure it out. Because we need to figure out how to be working with the clinicians. We will teach them, instruct them. Maybe we will come to their place to teach them how to make the measurements. And from this point Any measurements that they're making, they're sending us and we ship the product. It's simple as that.

They don't— yeah, no, I'm meaning, does the purchaser have to be in Pittsburgh? That's what I meant. The person that buys it, the organization that buys it, do they have to be in Pittsburgh?

Short answer is no, Joyce, they don't.

Okay, yeah, that's all I wanted to know. Yeah, that— and you know what, Gull, we keep talking about TOM. How about if you tell everyone what TOM is?

So TOM stands for, uh, three words: Tikkun Olam Makers. Tikkun Olam is a basic concept in Judaism which, uh, literally means fixing the world. And one of the things that every Jew needs to do as a part of everything that he does or she does is to work on fixing the world. You see something that the world is imperfect and you need to give a hand and try to make it a better place. And when Tikun Olam Maker started, it started with a think tank in Israel that identified that on one hand people with disabilities never get the funding that is needed in order to develop innovative technologies, and on the other hand there's a grassroots phenomenon called the Makers Movement. Makers are people who love to build things, like engineers that on their time off are building all kinds of neat robots or better motorcycles and things like that.. And the dream was let's connect the wonderful creative energy of the makers and challenge them instead of building, I don't know, stronger robots that can kick other robots. Let's take that energy and present them with a specific challenge. For example, a young woman who used to surf and got got herself shot in the back and wasn't able to board a surfboard anymore. So a team of makers developed her a specialized surfing board. Or a violinist who were looking for a prosthetic that would enable her to play the violin again. All these kind of very specific things that address a very specific need are things that makers can make. And the Tom community, the Tikuna Lam Maker community, developed methodologies in which they help approach need knowers. Need knowers are people with disabilities with specific asks. And after they work with the need knowers, they connect them to the makers. Makers, and together they develop those very, very unique products that should not only answer the specific challenge but should be very easy, easy to be produced and should be not very costly. And the beauty of it is that it ends up on an online database, and once it's on the database and it's It's free for everyone to use. Then if you, Joyce, designed an innovative gadget that helps people with, I don't know, with the specific challenge in closing their fingers and you developed a piece of hardware that helps them open doorknobs and you upload it into the database Tomorrow someone in Brazil or someone in Russia can see the solution that you developed and go to a makerspace near their home and for dollars in most cases they can ask the makerspace to produce them the product they need.

Wow, that is awesome. Wow, that is really awesome. And you know, everyone, when you're hearing us talk about Pittsburgh, remember many great things started right here in Pittsburgh. And here's another one. And as you all know, I'm headquartered in Pittsburgh and a woman live with epilepsy, hard of hearing. I own Bender Consulting Services and the Bender Leadership Academy. And we have the product iDisability. And guess what? We're starting right here in Pittsburgh. Things start in Pittsburgh, and this is going to be one of them. That's why I want you to tell everyone, and I want you to tell everyone, go on demand to Spotify, VoiceAmerica.com, BenderConsult.com, any social venues. And you can hear this show and share the podcast. Share it, tell everyone about it. And we have to one minute go to break for what's happening at Bender. Sherry Lapaya, are you with us?

Yes, I am, Joyce. Thank you for inviting me to the show today.

Absolutely. So Sherry, what's going on at Bender?

Well, it's been really a wonderful journey this year and seeing some of the things that are happening in the business community. One of the things that's exciting for me to talk about during National Disability Employment Awareness Month is the increase of organizations who are coming to us wanting to have assessments conducted and strategic plans put together on how to be more inclusive and better engage with the disability community.

Wow, that is awesome. Uh, I know I can't believe how many companies, large companies, Fortune 100 companies, are calling this— calling us to be disability friendly. It's awesome. Uh, just for an example, Sherry, have you ever worked like with diversity and inclusion or HR in reference to their process in HR dealing with people with disabilities?

Yes, we've done assessments for enterprise-wide or specific areas, whether it's customer engagement. Frequently, human resources and DE&I will contact us to do assessments related to their interviewing and screening process to identify barriers to bringing individuals with disabilities on board as well as looking at their overall process for their accommodations for their employees with disabilities.

Okay, everyone, you're hearing it, and that is so awesome. Sherry, thank you for calling in. That's S. Lapia, L-A-P-G-L-I-A. And you can reach Sherry there or go to benderconsult.com, contact, and you can get in touch with her if you're listening and you're saying, yes, we're looking for something like that. Sherry, thank you for calling.

You're very welcome, Joyce. Have a great day.

Okay. And listen, uh, before we close the show, one of the things I wanted to talk about are the fellowships, the fellowship programs that we have. So, Goll, could you talk about that?

Sure. So, Tom has a fellowship program. It's an annual program in which candidates apply usually around July. And, or even maybe a little earlier, maybe June, July. And the idea is that they would go to some boot camp. This year I think it was in Orlando, about 4 days. They learned the TOM methodology, they learned about the DNA of the organization, how things are done, what's the spirit of it. And then each one of them is expected to form a small TOM community at her or his university. And along the year there's like a weekly general program in which, in which those students attend. They have like an annual challenge and they work with their group around that, either the full challenge or some chunks of the challenge. In Pittsburgh, we are very lucky because one of the things Alex took upon himself is also to mentor those 6 fellows that we managed to get into the program. And one of the benefits of creating 412AbilityTech is that now the local ecosystem of ability is aware of those 6 heroes, 6 fellows And in coordination with Alex, we can initiate programs and projects and events in which we can invite one of the Fellows or a few of the Fellows to help work on things. Just to give you a sense, last year we had just one Fellow and we worked with her around Purim. Purim is the Jewish Halloween, and we help make costumes of Star Wars things for kids who are on wheelchairs. Think about costume parties on Halloween or on Purim, with which regular kids have regular costumes, but usually kids on wheelchairs do not have customized costumes.

Costumes.

So Tom has a whole set of these things, and together with the fellows, we can make a maker's party and give those kids that opportunity to join their friends wearing the costumes for the holiday.

Hey, listen, we're almost at the end of this show. Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, how does someone reach you— if they want you to speak at a conference, or in fact, a company that wants to meet with you to discuss this further, how do they reach you?

They can email me at Jeffrey.Cohen@ahn.org. They can call you, Joyce, and you can send them over to see me. I'm pretty accessible, happy to talk about what we're doing. As you're aware, it's a very big idea about how to restructure legacy assets and provide opportunities for groups that don't have them right now.

That's why I say you're a civil rights leader. Well, before we go, once again, if you do want to reach Dr. Cohen, Alex, or Gall, you can reach out to me at benderconsult.com. Or Voice America at voiceamerica.com. I'll be sure to get back to you. I'm very invested in this. I believe in it. You should too. Thank you so much, Tom Gall and Dr. Cohen, for being with us.

Thank you, Joyce Bender.

Thank you.

Okay, Gall, we'll be thinking about you. We end every show with a quote, and today that quote is, "Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society," said Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. This is Joyce Bender, America's Voice, where disability matters. At voiceamerica.com. Talk to you all next week. And in Mary Brooker's words, remember, choose joy.

Voice America 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 America Variety Channel. We are the leader in live internet talk radio. VoiceAmerica.com.