October - Disability Employment Awareness Month/November 2023 VCF

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, to everyone around the world and in the United States. And first for the United States, Welcome to National Disability Employment Awareness Month in this country.

Wow.

I mean, you know, I started Bender Consulting Services, as you all know, a for-profit company focused on the employment of people with disabilities in 1995. And do you know, I remember ND, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, when it was small. And now here we are today celebrating across the country. How awesome is that? And around the world. Oh my goodness, hello, Richard Roberts. I cannot wait to see you in Brazil. The State Department, which is where Richard is, is one of the reasons that around the world more people are hearing that people with disabilities have dignity and quality of life only when they're employed. That's when they have dignity and quality of life. And that is what we are talking about today. Gangyeon Cho, South Korea, how are you? Cheryl Harris at the State Department. I love all of you. And a special shout out, oh, Yoshiko Dart, how are you, Yoshiko? It is always a thing with me to honor Yoshiko, a great disability rights leader and the widow of the late, great Justin Dart Jr. Our sponsor, Highmark, I just have to say, if it weren't for Highmark, I wouldn't be so joyful about the employment of people with disabilities because there isn't any company like Highmark. Really, where it comes from the top down. And that reminds me to tell you, ah, I'm so excited that Monday, we, Bender Consulting Services, are giving the first-ever Technology Champion Award to the great Mick Malek for the work he has done employing people with disabilities. And I'm gonna have Gerald make some comments about that in a little bit. But we've got that to talk about. We've got Disability Mentoring Day to talk about. But I am all about employment, and who better to be talking to you than Bender Consulting Services? That is what we do, and that is what my life is dedicated to with my great colleague, friend, employee, who is In many ways, like a son, Gerald Homi, our manager of talent programs, is going to kick this show off with me today. After all, talent programs, that's what we're talking about.

Gerald, welcome. Thank you, Joyce. So great to be a guest on the show.

This is a great month, isn't it, Gerald?

Oh, it is. National Disability Employment Month.

That's right. I always tell people, we've had enough awareness. How much awareness do we need for you to start hiring people with disabilities? Gerald, I think everyone knows I'm a woman living with epilepsy. I had an almost fatal accident in 1985 when my disability was misdiagnosed, and I had a fall at a movie theater that resulted in lifesaving brain surgery after I fractured my skull. And here I am today. That's what got me on this road for the employment of people with disabilities and the start of Bender Consulting Services in 1995 as a for-profit company. You know why?

No pity.

You know how I'm about that. People with disabilities need paychecks, not pity.

And that is what That's what it's all about.

That's how we started. So, Gerald, how about if you tell everyone about you, your background, how you met me, and what you do today?

Happy to. Joyce, you paved the road, and then I was born on the road you paved, so—

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

That's right. Because as you know, and for our viewers, my father, Jim, is blind and was the first person with a disability Joyce ever placed into a job back in the late 1980s. She recruited him from a program out of CCAC here in Pittsburgh where he was training to be a COBOL developer, and my dad got a career in IT at Highmark, our sponsor of the show, and ended up becoming the first blind person on the planet to be a certified Lotus Notes developer and working in IT at a time when that was incredibly rare. The ADA wasn't even signed into law yet, and, you know, he became the primary bread earner for my family. And in 1990, I was born 13 days before the ADA was born on Friday the 13th, so 13 is lucky for me. And, you know, I was born into a family where my dad, who was blind, you know, was the one who worked. He went to work like everybody else on the bus into downtown Pittsburgh, working in IT. And I believe that was normal. And it was society who pointed out that that wasn't to me, that that wasn't what other people who are blind did, or that that's not what people expected blind people to do. But it's what my dad did. And so it was normal to me. And I— therefore, I had that perspective that people with disabilities were capable of whatever they wanted to do, and as long as they were skilled at doing it. And I would grow up going to the company picnics that, uh, for Bender, and just fishing with, uh, the— with your husband, with Bill and Kevin Brocker, and seeing Paula, our Chief Technology Officer, grill food for everybody and but seeing people with disabilities working. And that, you know, gave me a perspective on what people with disabilities— what their future could be and the opportunities in the workforce, which was really important to me because in the 4th grade, I would gain my own diagnosis of dysgraphia. And I have dysgraphia, dyslexia, mental health disabilities like PTSD and anxiety, now migraine disorder. So I have a collection of non-apparent disabilities. And with that diagnosis, you know, the school system was telling me very different things about my future and what my rights were and what I should have access to than what I knew from being around Bender. And I think that perspective really shaped my future. It shaped the way I could fight for myself and what I knew I was capable of. And so, you know, I fought back against the trend and fought to get access and continue. I ended up going after music for a while, still play music. And in high school, got the opportunity to be one of two individuals Joyce picked to intern at Bender as a first time ever. She would bring in people with disabilities to intern in high school, and that was the beginning of it all. I started working there and I decided, man, I, I got to do this. And I then started interning for the recruitment team and then got a full-time job on the recruitment team out of college and moved up into the role I am now, leading the work we do placing people with disabilities all across the United States, supporting our high-test work in digital accessibility. And I'm so passionate about this because of that connection back to the beginning of this work and the competitive employment of people with disabilities and what our community deserves. So, just so excited about NDEAM and everything it stands for, Joyce.

And I want you to talk a little bit more about your talent programs group, but First, you know, I wanted to talk for a minute about my wonderful friend, Linda Dickerson, died a few years ago. She was a great disability rights leader, just a brilliant, brilliant woman. And Linda, when she first saw my first slogan, it said, "Jobs mean freedom." I can still remember Linda looking at me saying, "No, you mean competitive jobs." And right that second, I changed it. Right that second. And so, so you all know what I mean by that. A job as a stock person or busser, hey, that's important because every job is important. But if you went to an award ceremony for women and the first woman got up and said, "Oh, I'm a— I clean houses," and the next one say, "Oh, I wash dishes," you would say, "Wait, what about the doctors? What about all the other people?" Well, it's the same thing here. There are jobs for everyone, but that has to include competitive jobs. What does that mean? That means just because you have a disability, that does not mean that you should be relegated to one level of work. You can be in IT, finance, engineering, software engineering, the medical area, area, uh, acting, everything. You can be whatever area you are trained for, from an attorney to, as I said, a doctor. Competitive jobs mean jobs where you can make a living. Because we know there are jobs today that truthfully, you almost be in poverty if you— well, you would be if you had a family and you were working at some retail outlets or fast food restaurants, you know, you would be in poverty with a family. And so, we need opportunities for people to have a life. That's why it's competitive jobs mean freedom. Freedom means I can buy a car, I can get a house, I can live like, guess who? Everyone else. I can live like any able-bodied person. That's competitive jobs mean freedom. That's what it means. And hey, right now we're going to get ready to go to break, and then when we come back, we'll talk to Gerald Homi about @Bender, the Talent Programs Group. For right now, I say happy Disability Employment Month. Hope I don't get in trouble here. This is Joyce Bender, America's Voice, where disability matters, at voiceamerica.com. We'll be right back with Gerald Homme.

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Since 1985, Bender Consulting Services has served as a national leader in advancing employment of people with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities, with private sector companies and federal government agencies. Bender assists customers with achieving their diversity and workforce inclusion initiatives. By tapping into a talent pool of individuals seeking professional positions, including those in the STEM fields. In addition, Bender Services include disability employment consulting, training, and technology accessibility through their HI-TEST line of service. For more information, please visit www.benderconsult.com.

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Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. And it is October, it's National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and I like to drop that awareness because we've had enough awareness. Let's hire people! Hire people with disabilities. But before I have Gerald tell you about his group, guess what? You know that really neat music you just heard? Guess what? Gerald Homi put that together. Gerald, now you get to hear it at the break. How'd you like it, Gerald?

No, it's great. Every time I kind of critique it a little more, though, and kind of want to redo it. That's the struggle of being a musician. Every time you hear yourself, you're like, could change that.

Well, you know what, Gerald, uh, went where Billy Porter went to school because Gerald was at CAPA. Do you want to explain that to everyone, what that is?

Yeah, so CAPA is Creative and Performing Arts High School in downtown Pittsburgh. It is actually a public school that you have to audition to get into within the Pittsburgh Public School System, that you get an extra hour tacked onto your day for whatever your art form is. So I was a music major, majoring in the saxophone, and, uh, got to take an extra hour of music every single day and study from some of the best musicians performing in Pittsburgh., and it was an amazing experience. Also, very great academic school as well. So, great program at CAPA, and shout out to Paul Thompson, who's a great mentor of mine from CAPA, who has MS, is a great musician working in Pittsburgh with a disability.

So awesome. And Gerald, by the way, is a great sax player, just so you know, and his other hobby is he has a group, Sun Champs. He has his, a group, and he has a CD. If you go to Spotify, you'll be able to find that. Uh, but of course, that's not— that's his hobby.

I would—

of course, disability rights is first.

Disability rights is first, is right. Gerald, now for people listening that are looking for a job or that just want to understand the Bender consulting services process, which companies ask me about frequently. Would you explain to everyone how it works, like how large your group is, you know, what their recruiters and what they're comprised of? Just, just how, how does this work? Would you explain that to our listeners?

I'd be happy to. So we have a team about 15 to 20 recruiters that support the work we do placing people with disabilities into competitive jobs. And essentially, what— how we work is companies will come to us, and they'll set aside openings for my team to go find great talent to fill. So, they'll set aside, for example, an accountant role. And they'll say, "We want to hire an accountant with a disability. Bender, go find us some candidates." And my great team will look into our database, which we have a great database of over 30,000 applicants with disabilities, and they'll also advertise that opening out to the public so new candidates can apply. We'll pick up the phone and call our community partners from colleges to veteran organizations to voc rehab and the Ticket to Work providers. To make them aware of the jobs that we currently have. So, new people that are looking for work right now with disabilities can come into our organization and get access to those roles. And then my team does the great job of talking to those candidates and kind of playing matchmaker a little bit where we'll talk to you, talk about your skills, your background and about the role to really see if it's the right fit for you. And if not, what is the right fit for you and what could be the opportunities we could promote you to? And we're really good at, you know, helping you figure out possible career paths with your background. So we might know of positions that could be a good fit for you that you may not even be aware of that are out there because we work with so many different industries from banking to healthcare to defense contracting that we really have a good lay of the land for what opportunities are out there for people with disabilities. And we narrow down that talent pool and for a given role, we're going to send 2 to 3 are the best fit for that job. So, when you're going in against that opportunity and you're talking to that company that has partnered with us, you're not going against the masses of people that have just applied online. You're going in with just a couple and going in with a conversation of Bender, really who understands you as a candidate. Opening the door, talking to that manager, and creating a conversation about you and your background and why they should consider you for that role. So, it's really got that old-school networking approach to getting you that chance to be considered and then supported all the way from accommodation process to understanding gaps in your background, whatever the situation might be, how disability impacts you and your work history. Us there to tell that story and make I'm sure you still get included.

So if someone listening right now is looking for employment or knows someone seeking employment, what is the best way to get in touch with us, the Talent Programs team?

Best way is to go to benderconsult.com/jobs. There you can see our job board. You can see all of our current open roles, or you can just register for job alerts, which will get you and your background and your resume into our system. So that way we know what your background is and can proactively reach out to you about opportunities, and you can learn about new roles as they open up.

And a question I am asked so many times, Gerald, and I know you have been also. What do you say when companies ask you, how do you find these people?

You know, we really do a lot of old-school word-of-mouth recruiting here at Bender. Yeah, we get people that come in through Indeed and LinkedIn, places like that, but more so, you know, our reputation in the industry brings people to us from all the work we've done, from your reputation as a leader in disability, really a pioneer in disability employment, Joyce Bender. From this radio show, people are hearing about this show, applying to us. From those phone calls I mentioned to the community outreach, to the community asking them to who they're working with that they're trying to help. Get jobs and about the roles we have. And then the people we've placed or have referred to— been referred to us telling their friends and their people they know in the community about these roles. That's where the bulk of our candidates come from, is from that network and that word of mouth. And it's been a great, great resource.

And I say to companies, of course, just as Gerald mentioned, radio show, referrals, you know, keep in mind now, we've been doing this since 1995. And my staff are people with disabilities. We get it. When we talk to people, we understand. We get it. But if you've been doing this since 1995, Of course, you've built up a huge network through that time, and those people refer people to us, plus this radio show and my great listeners. But also, we have a good college partnership across the United States. We work with service providers, the state, you know, we, we reach out to every possible avenue. Gerald has someone, a team, resource team working on this constantly, really similar to an executive search firm, which is how I got started. I was in executive search in my own company. So, so that really is a great myriad of sources. It isn't just one thing. But anyway, Back to what I say to companies. I say, you know what, it's not worrying, do I have enough people? It's, where are the openings? This is not the problem, finding the people. The problem is, where are the openings? I mentioned Highmark. The CEO of Highmark the 30th anniversary of the ADA, said, "We're going to hire 30 people from Bender Consulting Services to honor the 30th anniversary of the signing of the ADA." And the next year, '31, it became 31, 32, and now here we are. They're hiring 33 people from Bender to honor the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Now, Wouldn't it be great if we had lots of those in this country?

But we don't have lots of those in this country. But it is people like you, my great listeners, spreading the news, telling people, hey, that's right, why aren't more people with disabilities getting hired? You, you are helping me make that difference. And with that, we're gonna go to break and they'll be right back with the news. This is Joyce Bender, America's Voice, Where Disability Matters, at voiceamerica.com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Gerald.

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At Highmark, we believe what makes us different makes us better. Our differences broaden our perspectives and foster diverse skills which complement each other, creating a stronger and more vibrant workforce. It's this belief that earned us recognition by the USBLN and the American Association of People with Disabilities as a 2014 Disability Equality Index Best Place to Work. So we'll continue to celebrate diverse individuals because inclusion benefits us all. To find out more, visit highmark.com.

Since 1985, Bender Consulting Services has served as a national leader in advancing employment of people with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities, with private sector companies and federal government agencies. Bender assists customers with achieving their diversity and workforce inclusion initiatives by tapping into a talent pool of individuals seeking professional positions, including those in the STEM fields. In addition, Bender services include disability employment consulting, training in technology accessibility through their high test line of service. For more information, please visit www.benderconsult.com.

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You're listening to Disability Matters. If you have a question or comment, call in toll-free at 1-866-472-5788. That's 1-866-472-5788. Now please welcome back the host of Disability Matters. Here's Joyce Bender.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. As we are celebrating formally National Disability Employment Awareness Month, that I call National Disability Employment Month because we need employment, enough of this awareness, let's get things moving, uh, and we are celebrating with talking about Bender Consulting Services. But right now it is time for our news break, and our anchor will be back in a couple weeks. She took some time off, Perijude Radesik, But here with the news, Gerald Helmi. Gerald, what news do you have for everyone?

Oh, I've got exciting news today, and that is new updated guidelines from the W3C, from the World Wide Web Consortium, on accessibility for the web. So there are new rules that have been published officially for what is recommended for accessibility. And, uh, there's a good bit of changes that have been put out there around how websites are navigated with focus on elements as you're navigating through them, with how you're inputting information with different modalities, with target size and dragging movements and with different predictability elements of building website content and input assistance. So lots of big changes have been put out there as of last week, and if you want to be making sure you're up to date with the latest WCAG, make sure you're working with Bender Consulting Services' High Test Team. That's our team that does the work of testing websites, mobile apps, hardware, software for the latest Accessibility standards. We've had our eyes on 2.2 for about a year and a half now on what these changes are going to be, and I've been future-proofing some of our clients as we've been working through it, and, um, excited as we've rolled out our new templates already for 2.2 for any new projects that we're working on. So we're ready to get our clients moving into the future with any new VPAT that need updated, now known as accessibility conformance reports, or just basic updates to websites or mobile, because really a lot of these WCAG audits primarily impact how you interact with the web from a mobile environment, which is so important today. So work with our high-test team, uh, go to benderconsult.com and contact us there to learn more. Or learn about our inclusion assessments, which is our general product with our team member Sherry Lapaya, who leads the efforts to look at your company and just open up those conversations on where you need to think about being more inclusive for people with disabilities and assessing your processes and maybe your web development lifecycle. So, Cara talked to us today about that.

Yeah, and you know, Tony Coelho, author of The Americans with Disabilities Act, is the chair of the Bender Advisory Board, and I'll be seeing him in just a couple days, but actually, wow, tomorrow. Time goes so quickly. But what I want to say is Tony, who is on the board of AudioEye, when you hear him speak, talks about 98% of websites not being accessible. And when people hear that, they say, "That's not true. That can't be possible." But see, what's possible is when you say it's accessible, is it really accessible? That's what you have to remember. Accessibility is across the board in different areas. So, not accessible may mean not accessible because you've done a partial job. That's why high test at Bender Consulting Services can really help you out. Again, people with disabilities, we really get it. We get it. And I'm talking about employment, so I would be absolutely remiss if I, Gerald, did not have you talk about the upcoming job fair.

Thanks, Joyce. Yeah, we are hosting again a Bender Virtual Career Fair in partnership with CareerEco. If you go to benderconsult.com, under our career section, you'll see a virtual career fair dropdown, and you can learn more about it then. There, it's on November 15th. Free to register as a candidate with a disability looking for a job. For organizations to register, it's only $495. Please go ahead and get registered. There's going to be so much opportunity to connect with job seekers with disabilities. We always have at least 1,000 registrants there. A lot of excitement around this event. Our fall event is always our big event. There's going to be— a lot of chance for candidates with disabilities to connect with so many great employers. I know Wells Fargo has been a great sponsor for this event, and these have been really great for us to do for a long time. We started doing these career fairs a long time ago. I attended one of them, and we just saw the potential in hosting a virtual event and making it accessible, and we reached out to CareerEco and talked about partnering, and we thought their platform was very close to being accessible for people with disabilities, and we helped them tweak a couple things and made an accessible platform that would allow people with disabilities to connect with job seekers online and have been hosting virtual career fairs in partnership with them ever since. So, it's a really great opportunity. Make sure you take advantage of it.

Yeah. No charge to people with disabilities and a very low charge to companies. But if you're listening right now and you know of people seeking employment, people with disabilities seeking employment, remember this show is on demand. You can go to Spotify, you can go to benderconsult.com, you can go to voiceamerica.com, you can go to almost all of the social media platforms and hear this show. Just make sure you share this podcast with someone. You may be helping change a life by helping someone gain employment. That's what it's all about. Competitive jobs mean freedom. We want what? Paychecks, not pity. No pity, Gerald. In our company, we have started doing strategic planning, and it has become really a big part of what we do. I mean, I have to be honest, when I started Bender Consulting, you know, this, this wasn't in my mind that this would build out in this fashion. Of course, we're a national company. We do work across the United States. We worked with the National Security Agency for 10 years, and with OPM and with the Department of Defense, we place people in IT, engineering, mathematics, all areas at all levels. And by the way, Chris Griffin, who you know very well if you're in the disability community, Chris was EEOC Commissioner, and then she became the Associate Director of OPM, and she's just brilliant. She is brilliant. I am so honored she joined with us, and she now is handling the part of Bender for me, executive search with not-for-profits at the executive level. So, I'm proud to say Maria Town came through Chris Griffin. We placed Marcy Roth at— we placed Marlene Sallow at National Disability Rights National— NDRM— National Disability Rights. Did I get that right yet, Gerald? I have NDRM on my mind.

National Disability Rights Network.

Okay, thank you.

We placed her as the executive director. Boy, what a powerhouse she is.

And many, many, many, many, many others.

So, you know, if you are listening to the show Maybe you're a service provider, like, such as a lupus organization, or a not-for-profit, like some of the ones I just mentioned in the disability world. Can be an ADA coordinator at a university, just so it's connected to the disability world. Kris placed Kathy Martinez. We place people through—

at all of those.

CEO or executive director level retained search. But what I was alluding to or starting to talk about was our work in management or consulting and strategic planning. Gerald, do you want to talk about that for a minute?

Yeah. Isn't it so exciting, Joyce Bender, that we're in employment and we've started adding on so many other pieces around employers that when they level up these things, like their accessibility, their inclusion, their training, it makes their environments even more set up to employ people with disabilities. And that's one of the things I really like about these other things that we do. Connects back to employment.

Right. And we've done work with Dick's Sporting Goods, Procter Gamble, Allegheny Health Network.

I mean, many.

What we do, we're going into the company, we're either doing a strategic plan or an assessment. Bristol-Myers Squibb doing an assessment maybe of onboarding. But we do an assessment, we do a strategic plan. You know, these are companies that say, you know what, I know we want to do this, but I don't know where to start. If that's you, get in touch with us at Bender Consulting Services. That is really taking off in a very expansive way. And then, of course, Andy Houghton is my partner on iDisability. iDisability is a great software product, 47 modules, 15 minutes in length on how to work with and communicate with people with disabilities from people like me, what do you do if someone has a seizure at work, to how do you accommodate a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, mental health disabilities, autism, What is your emergency preparedness plan? iDisability— little iDisability.org. We have our own web— .com.

We have our own website.

Make sure you go check it out. Once again, you can always get in touch with me if you are trying to find anything we talked about. But one other thing, I myself go to companies and I do this training program called focus on ability. And you can probably tell from hearing me today, I'm very passionate about education that leads to employment. So, you see, we have really, really moved in a lot of areas, but you know why? It all comes back to what does it take to be employed? Training, accessibility, planning, understanding, but it's all about employment. Chris Griffin always says, you know what the first step is?

Hire someone.

And that, folks, is where the rubber meets the road. Hire a person with a disability today. Call Bender Consulting Services. And one thing I wanted to mention, Gerald, that we do that I think is so spectacular is that we follow up with our candidates and with the managers to make sure that everything goes well. But, you know, here we are talking about all these great things that are happening and all these great things we do, but we also involved in disability rights.

Gerald, let's hear about Rev Up.

Oh, yeah. So here at Pennsylvania, the Bender Leadership Academy and Bender Consulting Services partnered together to start the PA RevUp Coalition with a bunch of different organizations across the state representing Central PA, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia with RevUp Philly and Liberty Resources from Philadelphia, Jewish Family Children's Services in Philadelphia, Centers for Independent Living from across the Pennsylvania, with our weekly newscaster, Perute Jude Radisic, of course, joining on from that, and representatives from the state government, all about furthering access to the polls for people with disabilities and encouraging people with disabilities to exercise their right to vote. It's a nonpartisan effort to just make sure the polls are accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities and that people with disabilities are aware of that and have that opportunity to go vote, to get more people with disabilities involved in exercising that right. And it's been really successful. We actually had our meeting this morning about that and had even more members showing up to the state and You know, there's a lot of changes going on and a lot of activity throughout PA with that. It has been really great to get involved. We have so many great people in our community, people like Jeff Eiseman and Perry Jude and the people over at Liberty Resources just are all doing so much great work throughout the state to get the word out there. So, really exciting stuff. And then the other exciting thing we have going on, Joyce, with it being National Disability Employment Awareness Month, next week, of course, is Disability Mentoring Day. You want to talk about— I know you have a little story about that.

Yes, in 1999, I received the President's Award at the White House from President Clinton You know why? I was the only one working in, yes, competitive employment. And that's how I met the person that was representing disability at the White House for President Clinton, Jonathan Young. And we became friends. And in that year that I'm talking about, Jonathan called me and he said, "Hey, I have an idea." You know, we probably won't get a month. We won't get a month, you know, like Women's History Month for disability, but we could get a day. What about Disability Mentoring Day? All of it revolving around employment. Now, let me just mention there, now today, we, of course, we celebrate Disability Pride Month in July. But Jonathan, back then, wanted to have something that he felt would be impactful nationally and would include young people. And so came Disability Mentoring Day. And you know what? It was my customers in Pittsburgh, which is where we're headquartered, by the way, Highmark, and Bayer and my customer in Delaware at that time, Computer Sciences Corporation, with our great leader from CSC helping us getting people hired, Leanne Thomas, who is now my great chief of staff. But this is how it started. Disability Mentoring Day, a day high school students go for a day of job shadowing at a company The whole idea here is if you work with a young person with a disability, you're going to say, "What is wrong with me? Why have I not been hiring people?" For that young person with a disability, it says, "Hey, I can get a job. I can work too. I can have an opportunity. I never thought there were jobs like this." Joyce Bender: We now in Pittsburgh have the largest Disability Mentoring Day. We have an event on Monday night before— I should tell you, Disability Mentoring Day is the third Wednesday of every October. If you're not doing it now, put that on your calendar for next year and feel free to get in touch with us at Bender Consulting Services. Scott Hammenstrom from the Bender Leadership Academy runs the program. He's been on this show many times, but get back in touch with us if you want to know more about Disability Mentoring Day. So, what we started doing is 2 nights before at the Heinz History Center, we have an event where we celebrate, we celebrate Disability Mentoring Day and bring business leaders in, people with disabilities, students with disabilities, educators, companies, and we always bring in a keynote speaker. And this year it is the great I. King Jordan who will be the speaker. I also want to mention on that day, as I already told you, Mr. Mick Malek McMullig is receiving the Bender Consulting Services first-ever Technology Champion Award. Gerald, this gives you that opportunity to talk about Mr. McMullig.

Mr. McMullig is incredible. He is just an amazing leader in technology. That is out there every day standing up for people of every kind to just get access to, to what they deserve in their careers because of their talent. And not only has he walked— talked the talk about people with disabilities and what they should do, he hires. And he just gets down to brass tacks and makes sure that people with disabilities, that when they have the skills, they get the chance to get brought in. And not just in one area, in one program, but across the board in software developer roles, in senior project manager roles. In entry-level business analysts and in jobs on his own personal team supporting the work he does. So he really means it with the work that he, he does, and he truly deserves this, this honor of this award and has He's personally impacted countless lives, and I know him, he'll continue to do that great work. So, just absolutely adore Mick for who he is and the work that he does to support the competitive employment of people with disabilities.

Yeah, Mick doesn't care who you are, what you are. He cares about can you do this job. And as Gerald said, you know, I don't think I've ever had— I haven't. I've never had anyone come to me and say, yeah, we're going to work with you.

Hey, how about 5 project managers?

It's more like, hey, do you think you could put people in customer service with some companies?

This is where he starts.

I mean, he is just, oh, so wonderful. He also has called other executives telling them, you know, to work with Bender. I've got to mention one other person, Christine— Christina Picone. She is so awesome. She works with McMalik, and make no mistake about it, she is a great part of our success. We just love both of them. Mr. Malik, you are a champion, and that's why you're getting the Technology Champion Award. Gerald, I'm telling you, we have so many wonderful things happening at this company. Um, what success story impacted you the most?

You know, the biggest thing that impacted me the most lately was the other day when we were at that inclusion micro conference at Highmark and the procurement team. And we walk in the front door and the person welcoming everybody to the conference was Ed Alexiak who is somebody that I recruited and placed there and had a really hard time finding employment and started at an entry-level role on that procurement team supporting supplier diversity. And he was there in his suit welcoming everybody to there. And then when he got up later and he gave the speech to introduce the keynote speaker for that event, actually brought tears to my eyes. And I was so proud of him and the difference that that made on his life. And it just was a great reminder of why we're doing the work we do and the positive impact we can have because of the work we do. And why we just got to keep fighting because there's a lot of people that need that chance. We still have to make a difference. 70% of people with disabilities still don't have jobs.

And that, Gerald, before we close the show, I had the same feeling. Listen, everyone, please If you know of anyone with a disability seeking employment, benderconsult.com. Gerald, thank you so much for being with us and being with me as we move forward to find freedom for Americans with disabilities. Thank you so much. And you know, I end every show with a quote. So today, I know I will continue quoting her for a long time. Part of the problem is that we tend to think that equality is about treating everyone the same. When it is not. It is about fairness. It is about equity of access, said the late, great Judy Heumann. We miss you so much, Love you so much, but we will lead on. And remember, get in touch with us if you're looking for a job today. Competitive jobs mean freedom. And in the words of Mary Brooker, whatever you do today, choose joy. Talk to you next week.

Voice America would like I'd 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.