Richard: What is it that I could give you that would help you proceed to the next step? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Really looking at those motivations and going, “Okay, I know somebody you might want to talk to or a group you need to join to get this information.” Looking at that intrinsic motivation, really what does get you out of the house? What gets you up in the morning? Let’s start there with those positives and work around that and then get you empowered to think beyond what you’re seeing now.

Welcome to the Heard & Empowered podcast presented by National Industries for the Blind. You’re not just a listener here, you’re a catalyst for change. Whether you’re blind, visually impaired or an ally, this is your ultimate resource for building a fulfilling career and an enriching life. We’re on a mission to shift perceptions, open hearts and minds and unlock unparalleled job opportunities for the BVI community. Ready to be heard and empowered? Let’s welcome our host, Dr. Hoby Wedler.

Hoby: Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the Heard & Empowered podcast. First, I want to thank you so much for listening in to all of our amazing episodes about advocacy and government affairs and just being so present and sharing the podcast with everybody you know.

If I can ask one suggestion, please listen to this podcast and give us a review, a five-star review if you think we deserve it. And all you need to write is one word, but we need that at least one word in your review. And if you can do that for all the episodes you listen to, it’ll help us grow, it’ll help us build the podcast. And also, when you find our post on social, please share that with your friends and family and anyone who you think should hear about it.

We love you for everything you do. Thank you for helping us market this podcast and build the amazing content that we’re discussing.

Now on to today’s episode, which is all about an amazing collaboration. I have the three extraordinarily knowledgeable folks of the collaboration that we’re talking about between the American Printing House for the Blind, Career Connect Center, and NSITE, a program of National Industries for the Blind. I’d like to introduce from APH, Lori Scharff and Richard Rueda, and from NSITE, Marianne Haegeli.

Folks, thank you so much for joining us today.

Richard: Thank you.

Lori: Thanks for having us.

Hoby: Great to be here together. Marianne Haegeli, I’m going to start with you and just ask you to explain to us a little bit about your role at NIB’s NSITE and sort of how you got to the role that you’re in.

Marianne: Yeah, thank you. So I am a 62-year-old white woman with very grayish hair, almost silvery to be more diplomatic than saying white. And that means I’ve had about 25-plus years’ experience in learning and development and leadership development. I’m the director for learning and leadership at NSITE, and in that role I have the ambitious goal to build career skills training that’s based on career tracks that are an excellent fit for our primary clients, which are blind and low vision professionals and job seekers.

So I want to identify not just career tracks that are good fits, but then within each track, build stackable progressive training so we don’t just help our clients get that first paying job, but help them with career growth and career advancement for the rest of their professional careers.

Hoby: That’s brilliant. And what made you choose to come on board working with blind and low vision folks at NSITE?

Marianne: It was my gluttony for punishment, I think. I needed a new challenge. I was almost 60 when I applied for this job and it looked like an amazing opportunity for me to learn so much more about accessible instructional design, making a difference in people’s lives and help them find their career ambitions.

Working for a startup, I mean, NSITE is still in full-blown startup mode. That means challenging hours and assignments, and it’s what I love. Best job ever.

Hoby: I am so appreciative of you for jumping on and joining us today.

Richard Rueda, can I ask you a similar question to tell us about where you’re employed and a little bit of what you do and how you got there?

Richard: All right. Well, thank you again for having us, Hoby. Pleasure to be here on Heard & Empowered. I’ve heard good things about this podcast, so I can’t wait to listen to it.

I’m Richard Rueda. I identify as a middle-aged man who’s 50 years old and I am blind. I work with a seeing eye dog and love it, love traveling. I joined the American Printing House for the Blind, specifically the APH Connect Center in 2020 as a contractor and soon after as an employee.

My current role is the assistant director with the APH Connect Center where I work with our entire team, including Lori, on various projects. The APH Connect Center is the largest collection of resources and information on blindness and low vision housed by the American Printing House for the Blind. The agency is over 165 years old and the APH Connect Center resources, which include Career Connect, Family Connect, VisionAware, those are three websites that provide free curated information for adults and children and families and practitioners on everything from career awareness to aging resources and for families raising children who are blind or low vision.

And on that, we also have an INR line. All of those resources I just briefly mentioned were housed with the American Foundation for the Blind in 2018, going on our sixth year now. APH is the stewards of those resources, and in 2020 we coined it the APH Connect Center. So I’m proud to be a part of this amazing resource, which is free, housed by APH and supported.

My career background essentially was a rehab counselor. I started 24 years ago as a rehab counselor in Menlo Park, California. Later on, worked all over California focusing on transition services, working with high school students, young adults and job seekers of all ages to help them prepare for the world of work.

I think my passion is these resources didn’t exist 30 years ago when I was going through school, so I’m happy to be helping champion and advocate for these resources.

Hoby: So Richard, for your entire career, you’ve been an advocate for workforce development, specifically in the blind and low vision community?

Richard: Yes, absolutely.

Hoby: I love that. And look at what you’re able to do here with the APH Connect Center.

Richard: I agree. It’s brilliant. I think like Marianne, it’s my best job. It’s my best fit.

Hoby: I love it. Biggest challenge and best fit.

Richard: Yes.

Hoby: And Lori Scharff, I want to finish this intro question with you and just get to know you and your role with APH Connect and how you came to be in this program.

Lori: Sure. I spent just over 15 years as a social worker in New York, not working with people who are blind or low vision primarily. And I did some vending for the Commission for the Blind as a work incentive practitioner and also as a social worker, just like on a per diem basis. Enjoyed it thoroughly. And when I moved to Virginia, I decided that I needed to go back to school and I went back and became a vision rehabilitation therapist.

And during my internship for that, I worked with transition age youth. And between the combination of my internship experience and my employment network experience, working with people in the workforce, I also began working with Career Connect on their professional advisory committee. And then one thing led to the other and Richard was looking for a part-time contractor. And here I am.

I started in 2022 and I really, I love the work that I do. And it’s a passion that I have just because I see how when people have supports and when people meet other people who are blind or low vision that are maybe in a career that they did not think they could succeed in, and then they realize so-and-so is doing this.

Hoby: Exactly.

Lori: You know, it just really gives them the roots and wings they need to move on.

Hoby: That’s terrific. And you yourself, I understand, are blind, right?

Lori: Yes, I am. I’m sorry.

Hoby: And that’s sort of what inspired you into this particular division of work.

Lori: Yes, yes. I always say I had to prove to myself that I didn’t need to work with people who are blind or low vision, and inevitably they found their way to me.

Hoby: And it’s funny because I was interviewed by Lori and Richard just a few weeks ago as a blind chemist for part of their webinar series. So this is a lot of fun to be able to talk about similar themes, but in a slightly different way as they connect to this collaboration between APH Connect and NSITE.

Thank you all for introducing yourselves. I really appreciate it. Gives a good context and really lays a foundation for our conversation. The next question I want to ask is open to anyone. Let’s start out by not thinking specifically about those of us who are blind or visually impaired. Let’s think about workforce development in general. What do you see is the importance to developing a strong workforce?

Lori: I would say people having diverse skills. And the more diverse that you have in various skill sets, the more an employer will be looking to hire you.

Hoby: More people getting jobs, paying taxes, and contributing positively to society, and just feeling good about themselves, right?

Lori: Oh, yeah.

Marianne: Yeah, I think that’s one thing. And from the NSITE perspective, we’re working, yes, we’re working with blind job seekers, low vision job seekers, obviously, but we’re also working with employers. And we’ve found, especially coming out of the pandemic, that employers were struggling to find talent to fill their open positions. So our mission is not just to develop the workforce from the job seeker’s point of view, but develop the employers to understand that there’s a whole untapped talent pool out there that you are not even looking at. And how can we help you find that talent?

And then, obviously, help get them prepared for those challenging positions as well.

Hoby: Because if you have a workforce of amazing talent, and no one who knows about that talent or is willing to hire that talent, it’s hard.

Marianne: Exactly.

Hoby: You really have to focus on both sides, both angles. Let’s just talk a little bit, Marianne, about NSITE and how you support more of an adult population, what sort of programs NSITE offers, and how you guys are working tirelessly every day to build the blind and low vision workforce and the set of employers.

Marianne: Yeah. So really, we’re trying to offer a very holistic approach that involves both the job seekers and the employers. And we start with training programs that are getting folks employment ready. And that includes stuff like how to use LinkedIn, how to get proficient in the use of office technology through whatever assistive technology you’re using.

And I need to say right here that whatever training program I describe now, some of them we build ourselves, but I’m a firm believer in forming strategic partnerships with others who already have outstanding learning products rather than building it myself. And frankly, that is one of the reasons why I think we have such a fantastic partnership with the American Printing House. That has just been a red thread that runs through everything we do and I’m very happy that we get to work together the way we do.

So once we have the employment readiness taken care of, then like I said, we look at career tracks. And right now we have career skills training for IT careers, in a partnership with Cisco primarily that leads to actual Cisco industry certifications. That means we adapt those programs for blind and visually impaired learners, which is not always easy, but we’ve had some really good success.

And then we have follow-on partnerships with federal government and private sector and nonprofits to try and find at least apprenticeships, if not full-time engagements for our graduates afterwards. So IT is one of those career tracks. HR and talent acquisition is another. Communications and sales is a third. We have a whole portfolio of leadership development and advancement training. And we have an entrepreneurship track where we actually help blind and low vision entrepreneurs start up their own business.

And for us, it’s always important that it doesn’t end when the course ends. I am not interested in one-off participation in one of my programs and then never find out what happens afterwards. We hand them off to a team member who helps with employment services. We give them personal branding and resume writing support, and the Job Seeker’s Toolkit from APH is a key component in that. We’ll talk about that a little later, I believe. And then we try to make those connections of talented, qualified, certified in many cases, job seekers with our contacts in the private sector and public and nonprofit areas to help and find jobs for them.

Hoby: And keeping with them. A big mainstay of what you said that I heard, Marianne, is keeping with these people and making sure that they’re building in the right way and that you’re able to continue supporting them. And I think there’s a real collaboration also between NSITE and the work that you guys do and the instruction that you provide and the nonprofit agencies supported under the AbilityOne® Program by NIB. They’re not separate, and if a job opportunity is more suited to someone within one of those fantastic nonprofit agencies, by all means, you’re going to help them find that job.

Marianne: Absolutely. We have a curated job board called NSITE Connect. The only jobs that get posted there and the only employers who get to post there have been vetted to make sure that these jobs will be filled by blind or low vision job seekers. And so we encourage every one of our graduates, program participants actually, before they even graduate to create a free profile on NSITE Connect and start perusing. And the associated agencies you just alluded to, many of them post their open positions there.

So that’s the first step. But then we also make personal connections and reach out because this is a fantastic network that we can tap into.

Hoby: Yeah, they’re tremendous.

Marianne: It’s been a wild ride, yeah.

Hoby: A wild but exciting and such a meaningful ride.

Marianne: Yes, indeed.

Hoby: I want to turn it over to Richard Rueda and Lori Scharff just to chat a little bit about your general philosophy of workforce development for younger audiences through APH and through APH Connect. Who wants to jump in?

Richard: Yeah, well, through Career Connect and our entire Connect Center at APH, we are committed to providing as many real, vetted, up-to-date resources as possible and tools for those who are active job seekers, for those who are career curious. That is why we’ve included things like Career Conversations, which you’ve been a part of, and Employment Connections, which serve to provide resources for not only the active job seeker, but for the practitioner, for the supporter, for the teacher.

So that they have these tools that, again, you and I and Lori didn’t have 20, 30 years ago, where you can have an archive of YouTube videos of cool, awesome blind people working in all sorts of jobs; white collar, blue collar, people working on the docks, people working in labs and representing all fields of blindness. And identifying and showing to these kids who may not know any other blind person outside of their cohort in school to find blind adults and low vision adults who are doing these jobs so that they’re empowered, that they’re motivated to go, “Okay, I can do this. Let me reach out to the person, and maybe they can be a mentor or role model to me formally or informally.”

And that’s why I’ve championed Career Conversations from the day I started, because I think it was just a missing link for Career Connect, and I love that. Lori, do you want to speak a little bit more about that and or kick into the Job Seeker’s Toolkit?

Lori: Sure, I believe that Career Conversations, really, it’s more of an in-depth look into what somebody who is blind or low vision may have faced during their career journey. And I think it helps our young adults and even people who may be newer to blindness because of vision changes realize their potential.

Interestingly, we also do blogs on various topics. And a couple of weeks ago, Richard and I were speaking with a group and there was somebody who left a medical profession because of sudden vision loss. Ironically, we will be publishing a blog about a recent graduate from nursing school. So it’s kind of funny how things come full circle. This is not the same person, but maybe she’ll read that blog and say, “You know what? There’s other aspects of nursing. There’s triage. It’s such a broad field now that it’s not just doing patient care.”

Hoby: You know, what I find so impactful about what you both have said about Career Conversations, and we’ll get into the Job Seeker’s Toolkit here in a second, but there’s so much power and so much of a statement is made by hearing someone and being inspired by someone who says quite literally, “I did this. And if I did it, you can do it too.” And it’s not only inspirational for young kids, it’s inspirational for their families, for their teachers.

In my situation in high school, I was able to point my high school chemistry instructor, who was very skeptical about a blind person going into the field of chemistry, to a couple of other blind chemists who had done it. And she said, “Okay, well, gosh, if they can do it, I guess there’s no reason I need to hold you back.”

So learning by example and learning by role models, I think is so important. And at least for me, and I think I speak for pretty much everybody who you guys talk to in Career Conversations, we’re always happy to be advocates for the people we talk to who want to get into a career field similar to what we study or similar to what we do. And I think that’s just such an important part of workforce in a community like ours is mentorship, providing advice, providing insight, not to use a pun on words.

Richard: Right.

Lori: You know, I always say I’m not inspirational. And our goal really with Career Connect and Employment Connections are to connect with people that may feel like they’re a lone ship out in the middle of the ocean. And to have that person say, “I can do this,” or “This is how I can do it.” Not every blind person is going to graduate the top of their class. As a matter of fact, probably many of them won’t.

So really allowing people to understand that everybody has capabilities and potential and we all do things a little different is essential. And we do get quite a few teachers of the visually impaired, orientation and mobility specialists, vision rehab therapists, who all participate in our events that we do through Career Connect. And we really welcome that input because those are the people who are, you know, the boots on the ground and really able to say, “You can do this. This is how to do this.”

Richard: Lori’s hit it right on the nail. We don’t do inspiration, inspiration porn. We stay away from that buzzword, but we do empower, we do motivate and dare I say influence, because those are the words we want to use and frame it in a positive light. We’ve seen enough stories on how things can go the opposite if you frame it wrong.

The other thing to Career Conversations was several episodes back we had a woman on from NASA who was not an astronaut, but she was a programmer and doing a lot with disability and equity and inclusion. And a young nine-year-old I think he was, Lori, came on the chat.

Lori: Yes, he was.

Richard: And you want to tell the story, because you illustrate it pretty well.

Lori: So we don’t take questions verbally during our webinars, we have them typed into the Q&A box or the chat. And it was a nine-year-old with his parents wanting to know like, by the time he’s old enough, will there be blind astronauts? And it was like, oh!

Hoby: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.

Marianne: Outstanding.

Hoby: This is what it’s all about.

Lori: So he had an interest in science, and this is really what it’s all about.

Hoby: That story warms me. That’s why we do the work that we do, the very hard and diligent work that we do.

And with that, I want to pivot a little bit to talk about the APH Job Seeker’s Toolkit, which is really a set of, I’ll let you describe it. You can describe it much better than I can, but a set of job preparedness things. If our young friend who’s nine years old wants to be an astronaut when he is old enough, he needs to know how to present himself well. He needs to build his own personal brand and he needs to have some job seeking tactics. So let’s talk about some of what the Job Seeker’s Toolkit allows folks to do, starting with kind of what’s new about it.

Lori: Sure. Did you want to go, Richard?

Richard: I’ll just kick it off really quick. We go back and forth all the time on who’s doing what. Essentially what the Job Seeker’s Toolkit is, it’s a set of five courses that is all completely online through a learning management system with our friends and colleagues over at NSITE and Marianne and her team. And we have this toolkit, five courses that are free to take. You register, you enroll, and off you go.

And basically there are five courses and hundreds of modules, dozens of modules that you can go from there. And it’s a very powerful tool. What I will say before I hand it off to Lori is that Lori and I spent the past six months up until about this February under the hood and changing a lot of the language. We inherited the toolkit, which was brilliant and great, created by some great folks out there in the community. And when we inherited it, we figured, you know, we need to make it more blindness perspective.

Not that anyone who’s not a job seeker, who’s not blind or disabled can’t apply because it does apply. But there were some references to people, the high school students driving a car and going down to get a job interview. And we’re like, well, most blind people yet aren’t going to drive a car. Driverless cars aren’t in the mainstream media just yet. So Lori and I, we really put kind of our blindness, low vision and disability lens on that and really made it even more powerful.

I think that’s what’s new with the curriculum. We made it more friendly and usable for blind folks. Lori, you want to add to that?

Lori: Sure. And we also really took a look at the employment data that was listed in there about some professions was outdated. So we updated that information and we kind of tailored, you know, resume writing more to the modern approach of resume writing, using things like O*Net to explore your job interests.

And really the five courses focus on self-awareness and career exploration and resources. And then we move into finding employment, looking at things like disclosing your disability. So writing out a disability statement. And then what do you do when it comes to talking about your disability? Practicing what you might say during an interview. And then we move into the actual interview process and focus on that in course four.

And the fifth course is rather short, but it focuses on maintaining a job. And we may down the road, look at exploring that, but there are some key things that people need to be aware of when it comes to maintaining a job. You know, you’re an employee, you’re held to the same standards as everyone else. You don’t get to leave early because your Paratransit bus said, “Oh, we can only pick you up at 3.30,” but you’re supposed to not clock out until four” So what do you do in those situations?

Hoby: What I love about what you’re saying, Lori and Richard, is that this resource is not just for blind people. Sure, you tailored it to blind people, but this is employment readiness for everybody.

Richard: It sure is.

Lori: I will tell you that outside of APH, I’m only with them part-time, but I am part of an employment network and I have referred people to it previously and recently. So it is a great resource and we, I’m going to say this, Richard, and you can tell Hoby to take it out if you want. But it’s not interactive in the sense that you submit the assignments to NSITE. So if there is a professional working with someone on the courses, you can have them submit assignments directly to you.

And we are developing like an outline, I’ll call it, of all the assignments so that you understand as a professional what the assignments are for and what the participant should have received out of that and what material they should submit to you.

Richard: Like a syllabus essentially.

Lori: Yeah, that’s a shorter and better description.

Hoby: If the course has an instructor.

Lori: Yes.

Marianne: Even if the course doesn’t have an instructor, I think what Lori is referring to, we’ve had vocational rehabilitation counselors tell us that they’re using this as an informal vocational eval. So they’re basically telling their clients to sign up for the five courses, monitor them through conversations, monitor their progress, and of course the counselor can take the course as well, know exactly what assignments are coming up and then tell them, send me the completed assignment.

One of the things as an instructional designer that makes me very happy about the Online Job Seeker’s Toolkit is the fact that this is not passive consumption, my friends. Like any good learning, you got to put some blood, sweat and tears into it.

Lori: Oh yeah.

Richard: Yes.

Marianne: And it helps if you have somebody who helps ushering you through the process, right? But so you get out of it exactly what you put in. So if you do these assignments that the American Printing House has painstakingly included in every single module, then you’re going to walk away with an amazing resume that you can then customize to whatever job you’re applying to. You now understand whether, when, and how to disclose your disability. You can make that decision. You have figured out what a good fit might be for you for a career choice and not willy-nilly apply to 500 jobs a week and never get a response because it’s just not a good fit. And help you with the whole networking activities. And the other thing it does is it teaches you how to communicate with potential employers.

Hoby: So important.

Marianne: How do you follow up? When do you follow up? All these things. I have to tell you, just to kind of reiterate what Lori and Richard already said, I have shamelessly told people in my family, including my ex-husband, to sign up for this, go through it, and then come to me if you have questions.

Hoby: I love it.

Richard: It was you that had the ex-husband. I’m like, somebody referred it to one of their family members who was sighted and I couldn’t remember who it was. That’s right.

Hoby: And this is what’s so valuable. If I’m sort of summarizing very briefly what you’ve said, as long as the educational material is good, which the toolkit most certainly is, you get as much out of it as you put in.

Marianne: Yeah. Like everything else in life. Like your job, right? You’re not going to succeed unless you put something in.

Hoby: Well, and just to add my own two cents, it’s so important, these things that we might not even think of, especially as blind and low vision folks, but for everybody, everybody alike, things like dressing for an interview, dressing correctly, not having stains on your clothing that are going to be distracting, holding your head up. I mean, this is something that people in the 20th century who are sighted are so busy looking at their phones. Look someone in the eye when you’re talking to them. Make them feel heard. And boy, for all of us blind folks on this podcast here, we can tell when someone isn’t looking right at us.

Lori: Oh yes.

Hoby: We can tell.

Richard: I might really add, when I was running transition residential programs in the summer, one of the things, the activities, was like everybody, all right, straight up in your chair, good posture, no leaning forward, because especially those low vision guys, like me when I used to do that, you just slouch, you lean forward to look at the screen.

Hoby: You want to see the page.

Richard: I want to see your face, you know, heads up, come on, let’s do it. And it was just part of the daily routine to remind students, you got to have your heads up, even when you’re using your cane, head up. Don’t look at the ground.

Marianne: You know, part of our training programs is that we require people to be on camera. And we tell them in every class, every group session we have, all our training is virtual, right? But we’re going to show you, you have to have your regular setup at the table. You have your camera on. We will help you put yourself right in the center of that screen so that you never have to guess. If you have that job interview that’s virtual, you know exactly that your setup is perfect and you’re spot on and good to go. That is just so important, I can’t stress that enough.

Hoby: So important.

Lori: I will tell you a funny story. When I interviewed with Richard for my position with the Connect Center, it was, I don’t know, I want to say like July or August or something like that. It was August, I think. And I had a nice shirt on with a blazer over it. And I have a specific place that I sit at my kitchen table. And I know that if I put my left foot on the left side and my right foot on the right side of this one pillar on my kitchen table and I put my computer in a certain spot, I’m centered. And I close the shade behind me because we have sliding doors, and that way there’s not too much light.

And right before I was supposed to start my interview, I took my jacket off to carry in a Chewy box, food for my guide dog. And halfway through the interview, I realized I wasn’t wearing my jacket. And I went, “Oh no, they probably think I’m some idiot that doesn’t care what I look like.”

Hoby: And you know what? You got the job anyway.

Lori: Yes. But all of this to say, like things happen and you can’t worry about it because I have to tell you the rest of the interview, all I kept thinking about is, okay, just stay focused. Don’t worry about it. And then I was thinking, do I get up and put my jacket on? No.

Hoby: Right, exactly. No, and Richard probably was fine with it. No problem. He probably wasn’t even thinking about it.

So, I mean, I think it’s pretty abundantly clear that one of my next questions was going to be, who is the toolkit for? And I think it’s pretty well known that it’s for anyone and everyone, including those of us who are blind and low vision looking for work, sighted ex-husbands looking for work, you name it. A whole variety. I just love this.

Marianne: And that’s kind of the idea, right? It needs to be completely accessible for everyone. Obviously, we make sure that NSITE-U, where it is hosted, is accessible for everybody, that the content has been developed in an accessible manner. Accessibility in the broadest possible sense is our goal here.

Hoby: Yeah. And I think to anyone, anyone who’s helping anyone seek a job, definitely in this specific case vocational rehabilitation counselors who their main goal is to work to employ blind and low vision folks if they work in blind field services. But this conversation is way broader than that. And I think we know that practitioners can action this toolkit to, they can take the courses themselves. I actually took some of the courses and did some of the assignments to prepare for today and it’s incredible.

And those skills that we learn, those skills that we acquire, we then know what we’re doing and we can mentor. This is quite literally a tool and we can use it to create abundantly rich and wholesome mentoring opportunities for, I’ll call them our students, our mentees.

Marianne: Absolutely. And did we mention that it’s free?

Hoby: It’s free. It is free. How often these days are things like this, tools that are just gold like this, totally free?

Richard: Lori, I think you were going to chime in and say something.

Lori: Yeah, I was just going to mention that, you know, we really did take care to focus on not just young adults, but really focus on what does everybody need to do to develop their employment skills? And we, in our second course, we really do look at, okay, yes, you’re working with maybe vocational rehabilitation, but there’s lots of other community resources and resources within your own professional field, whatever that may be. Tap into those, develop that network.

Hoby: Absolutely.

Lori: And those are really essential. And I think a lot of times people say, “I want to stay in my little bubble of blind people and figure things out in this area.” But if you don’t expand your horizon and really network within your field, you are not going to succeed long-term. You may succeed short-term, but you’re not going to succeed long-term down the road.

Richard: I think, Lori, that’s a really good point to underscore that. Get out of the voc rehab, circle of things because I think sometimes you fall short. I once went to a workshop when I was a rehab counselor at a residential program I ended up running years later. And the guy did a whole seminar on how do you proceed if your voc rehab counselor says no or if you’re not eligible? In other words, he was trying to get to the students try to work it out without rehab. How are you going to get your resources if rehab tells you you can’t be a scientist?

And I think ultimately the Job Seeker’s Toolkit, as we’ve all said, it’s an investment for you into your future. The more you put into it, the more you’re going to get out of it. And that’s what we want it to be, an investment. It’s a tool, it’s a resource.

Lori: At the Connect Center, we have contact with people who basically say like, “Do you have, you know, jobs to give me because I’m blind?” No, you need to be out there creating, just like a sighted person, a LinkedIn profile, creating your own networks within your field. And those are the essential skills. Local libraries, local career centers, that’s where everybody else goes. Why should you be any different?

Hoby: And in terms of are there jobs available for me, that’s when Marianne comes in.

Marianne: Yeah, and I’ll have to say, I will say this and be unbelievably serious about it. Every program we provide, and it starts with the Job Seeker’s Toolkit but it goes through all of our career skills training, is state-of-the-art industry recognized training for all learners. We happen to make sure that we retrofit what needs to get retrofitted so it’s accessible to blind, low vision and by the way, neurodiverse learners, right?

Hoby: Absolutely.

Marianne: But the content and the demands and the requirements and the certifications at the end, they’re industry state-of-the-art.

Hoby: Industry for everybody.

Marianne: And that’s how it should be.

Hoby: Yes, that’s exactly how it should be. How do we access this amazing tool of the Job Seeker’s Toolkit?

Richard: One of the ways you can do is go to the homepage of the APH Connect Center, which is aphconnectcenter.org, and go down and find the link to Job Seeker’s Toolkit. Off to the races you are.

And Marianne, I believe there’s a link on NSITE?

Marianne: Absolutely. You can also go to nsite.org, that’s N-S-I-T-E .org, and you will find a header training programs, and the very first item underneath that is NSITE-U. That’s our learning management system. You click on that, it’ll show you how to create an account and you’re in.

Hoby: There it is. And you log in and you get started and it’s very simple, but you got to put in the work to get the best results out.

Now let’s talk about the business case briefly for learning organizations like NSITE. So what is the return on investment for all of us, including NSITE for instance, in terms of building professional development skills?

Marianne: That’s one of my pet projects, trying to get the word out there how important it is to turn whatever organization you’re in or running, turn that into a learning organization. And the numbers are out there, I’m going to give you some. Depending on who you’re reading, the numbers may change slightly but the trend is exactly the same. So the research has shown that offering professional development options for your employees gets you a higher return on investments for your business overall.

So if a company offers comprehensive training, they typically have up to 218% higher income per employee and a 24% higher profit margin than companies that don’t provide training. And just to put that in perspective, the average profit margin is 10% and the 20% profit margin is considered high, right? So that is just you and your business doing better from a revenue perspective.

What’s less tangible sometimes, but also incredibly important to remember, is if you’re a learning organization and you show your employees the moment they walk through the door that you’re interested in their career advancement, their professional development, and of course link it to your organizational goals, you’ll have employee retention rates that are through the roof. And your employee turnover will be reduced considerably. And you know that it’s tens of thousands that it costs you every time you have to replace an employee. So there’s cost savings as well.

And the morale will be higher people will feel that you’re invested in them. There is a huge return on investment that I think many organizations don’t recognize because it’s so easy to cut that budget first but that will actually cost you more in the end.

Hoby: And then you lose the people.

Marianne: Yes, and you lose them.

Hoby: I don’t want to put it this simply, but human resources are resources just like technical or mechanical resources. If you don’t put the time and effort and money into upkeep of those resources they’ll go away.

Marianne: Absolutely. Yeah, and that’s actually a really good comparison unfortunately, right? You will not let your equipment go without upgrades regularly or updates or repairs, and I find it astounding that there are so many organizations that don’t have learning development plans for each individual skill level and employee that they have on their staff because we’re moving at the speed of light these days. Things are developing so fast, why would we not realize that if I don’t stay up on what’s happening in learning and development every month of every year, I’m going to be out of business in no time, I’ll be irrelevant.

And that is not just true for people in learning and development, so this needs to be an investment that organizations have to make.

Hoby: And taking the time to really think through what each person needs and what the ladder is for personal growth within the organization. I just have to give a shout out to our non-profit agencies they do such a good job at growing people. Someone can start out working on the manufacturing line and work their way up to CEO.

Marianne: Very true.

Hoby: It’s just so important to call that out, I think, and make that link between employee retention and the amazing work that all you are doing and the non-profit agencies that we support.

Marianne: Absolutely true, yes.

Hoby:  I’ve heard you say in the past small steps and huge outcomes, Marianne. Can you explore that and expound upon that a little bit? That’s something that you say that really grabs me every time.

Marianne: Yeah, it’s surprising how little you need to do to get started in the right direction and you’ll see payouts that you never expected, right? So I’ll link this back to one of my many professional experiences, this one with a for-profit that sometimes get a bad reputation.

I walked into that organization and on my first day at work I was told, “Let us explain to you two really important things. Number one, you’re a single working mom and we know this. Don’t ever miss a performance of your child that you need to go to because of work. We will find a workaround. Unless it’s a life or death client emergency, chances are we can help you have a work-life balance.”

Unbelievable. And by the way that company is consistently rated number one workplace for women and there’s a reason for that. That motivated me to go the extra mile every single time I had to because I knew it was never an issue if I needed something to take care of my kids in one way. So that was the first thing.

The second thing was, “You’re going to sit down with your supervisor today, first day at work, and you will map out your learning and professional development roadmap for year one. And let us warn you, we’ll do a 360 review at the end of year one, like we do every year, and the one thing that is not negotiable is for you to complete that training that you mapped out with your supervisor. Don’t show up a year from now for your assessment without having completed what you said you would complete. That’s going to give you a serious ding on your assessment.”

That is the kind of priority placed on it and I cannot tell you what that did, not only for my understanding of what is required of me on the job, getting the additional knowledge and training that I needed to get constantly better at my job and understanding that this is important for the organization. I couldn’t sign up for training that had no relevance for the organization, of course. But I could steer it into directions that I was interested in also.

Hoby: Because you have to follow your passion. You have to follow things that are interesting to you.

Marianne: It’s part of the organization recognizing, taking the time to figure out what makes me tick and then work with me to map out the plan that helps them achieve their organizational goals and me staying motivated and wanting to continue to learn and bring new ideas back to the organization.

Hoby: Yes.

Marianne: Tiny steps, one meeting and now they have me motivated for a year knowing why I’m doing what I’m doing and continuously working to make not just myself better but the entire organization.

Hoby: And just back to your point number one in that example, I just want to highlight quickly this whole idea of being family first makes you love them much more from the beginning and makes you incredibly more dedicated.

Marianne: Absolutely. They had me anytime day or night, weekends, whenever they needed me because I knew when I needed them to have my back, that was not even in question. And if there’s one positive thing, especially for the BVI community, that came out of the pandemic is this recognition, at least to some degree now, that technology should be used for work-life balance as well as being more productive in general. And remote work is fine. Nothing wrong with it. It can be done, right?

Hoby: 100%.

Marianne: So if you’re setting your whole organization up for success and you build these trust relationships amongst all levels within the organization, then there is nothing in your way. You’ll get to go back to my small step big payout, right?

Hoby: Exactly.

Marianne: You will have productivity from your folks that are unheard of.

Hoby: Because they feel good and they feel cherished.

Marianne: Yeah.

Lori: We actually explore in the Job Seeker’s Toolkit making a list of what’s important to you in the work setting. Sometimes people don’t think of all of those things. Think about commute time. Think about does the employer reimburse for commuting expenses. Is remote work possible?

Hoby: I love that.

Marianne: Yeah I think that’s actually a really important point, Lori, people don’t think about what matters most to them, especially if they’re desperate to get a job. We think we can make compromises that we really should not have to make, right? And I understand that dilemma very well. So the best thing we can do, and the Job Seeker’s Toolkit does a great job of that, making you reflect constantly. What is right for me right now? What do I owe the employer which is fair and right, and what should I deliver to the employer? But not totally sell your soul because down the road you’re going to pay a terrible price for that, both you and your organization.

Hoby: Let’s flip that on its head a little bit and say also it gives the employer a guide of what they should be expecting.

Marianne: Exactly.

Hoby: At any given time.

Lori: We also do a good job, I think, in the Job Seeker’s Toolkit at examining and informing yourself of the culture of somewhere that you may be interested in looking at a job at or interviewing at. Find out beforehand. You know what? Maybe you found out that there were a bunch of people that got hired into this position that you’re going to apply for and they left within six months to a year. Going to someplace like Glassdoor and investigating what you’re able to find.

Hoby: I love this discussion. Before we wrap up I do have one question for all of you that changes every podcast, and I’ve just written yours based on everything we’ve talked about.

Marianne, I just want to know about resources. I think we talked a lot about the APH Toolkit, what are a few resources, you mentioned the job board at the beginning, any other resources people should know about from NSITE?

Marianne: Yeah, I mean the easiest way to explore that is go to nsite.org and look at both the training drop down to see what is available and then go to NSITE Connect, we have free resources advertised on there on a regular basis. There is an almost monthly, I think the next one is at the end of July, free webinar that I’m doing with our partner accessibility officer in Arizona. We do a free webinar on the getting hired playbook. What do you need to know about LinkedIn to actually land that job?

Hoby: To use it, yeah.

Marianne: And that’s a free resource. We do have a training program as well that comes with a tuition cost, but the webinar is free and you’ll get a lot of good tips on what you can do to beef up your presence online.

Hoby: Thank you so much. I’m definitely going to be investigating those webinars and sharing them with my contacts. And, of course, all these links that we’ve been talking about will be in the show notes as well.

I want to finish this with one open-ended question and I’m going to start it with Marianne. You are counseling someone, mentoring someone who comes to you and says, “I’m blind, I really don’t think there’s any opportunities for me. I’ve been told that maybe I can get a job eventually, but I feel scared to do that. What should I do?”

Marianne: Hoby, you’re describing conversations I’m having daily. So the first thing we do is take the time to find out exactly where this person is in their career journey. If they’re somebody who lost their vision later in life, then we’ll tap into education and professional experience they’ve had in the past. And now we have to adapt it somehow to the new world that doesn’t include vision.

And then we do some of that exploration. I certainly refer them to Job Seeker’s Toolkit and say, “Think about your self-awareness. What is it you want to do? I know you’re scared, but we can help you with that and counsel you through that as well.” We have a fantastic colleague who does the employment services piece for us who can help people understand and tap into what they’re interested in and what makes the most sense. And then we work with them and their VR counselor to figure out what the best learning path is.

Then we build that learning roadmap and take it all the way to employment. And then we don’t go away. We keep in touch with our alumni, we keep in touch with people who are now in positions to make sure we are there when they need us again, either for up-skilling or a career change.

Hoby: And you are a collaborator in the truest sense to this person who is growing their skills, yeah.

Marianne: Absolutely.

Hoby: No adversaries here, all collaborators.

Marianne: Yeah, and no hands-off approach. There’s some on-demand learning go and do and then we’re fine. None of that.

Hoby: Wow. Thank you so much, Marianne. Lori, the same question for you.

Lori: Well, I would first encourage the person to think about what do they enjoy doing and what is something that they think they may not be able to do? And then we would talk about ways that those tasks may be accomplished with their current visual status and how that might take some learning new technology, but people do it. You know, mentioning little things like S-I-R-I, so that they can –

Hoby: Good old Siri.

Lori: – really begin to do things that they may have been unable to do recently. And just that simple control back into your life, scheduling appointments effectively, things like that. Baby steps, building from the ground up and then going back and looking at, okay, now you’ve done this, let’s build upon that. And go back to what are your interests? What are your skills?

Hoby: What do you enjoy? Thank you so much.

Lori: And I would also encourage them to check out the YouTube channel that we have with our Career Connect, I’m sorry Career Conversations and Employment Connections.

Hoby: Right, that’s great. Thank you, Lori. Richard, same question for you.

Richard: Everything they said. Really, I think I pride myself on being a good networker, getting you the resources you need to be successful. What is it that I could give you that would help you proceed to the next step? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Really looking at those motivations and going, “Okay I know somebody you might want to talk to or a group you need to join to get this information.”

And again it’s a combination of the YouTube page, our Career Conversations, some of the things Marianne said, and just looking at that intrinsic motivation. Really what does get you out of the house? What gets you up in the morning? Let’s start there with those positives and work around that and then get you empowered to think beyond what you’re seeing now and getting you out there and being successful.

Hoby: You guys are amazing. This has been so moving to me and so motivating, and honestly influential. And I know that so many folks who listen back to this show are going to be motivated, influenced so positively and given the tools that I need to succeed, let alone others themselves. People are going to want to get a hold of you. Of each of you doesn’t mind just letting us know one method that people can reach you that’ll be great. Richard, I’ll start with you.

Richard: Email is really good it’s R-R-U-E-D-A @aph.org. Or you can find me on LinkedIn.

Hoby: There you go, LinkedIn or email. Got to build up our LinkedIn skills if we’re going to find Richard. Lori?

Lori: Okay, so it’s LSCHARFF, that’s S as in Sam, C, H as in Harry, A-R, F as in Frank, F as in Frank @aph.org. And don’t look for me on LinkedIn because I don’t know how to get into my profile.

Hoby: No problem.

Richard: There’s a course you can take.

Lori: I know, I know.

Marianne: I’m enrolling you today, we’re starting next week, Lori.

Hoby: I love it. I love it.

Lori: I have a profile and people look me up. I will someday get to updating it and unlocking it, but I don’t practice what I preach.

Richard: You can edit that out.

Hoby: And all these contacts are going to go in the show notes as well. And finally, Marianne, how can folks reach you?

Marianne: Yeah, definitely LinkedIn. I do practice what I preach. You’ll find me there, I don’t think there’s many Marianne Haegeli’s around. But also email M as in Marianne, H-A-E-G-E-L-I at N-S-I-T-E .org. Love to hear from you.

Hoby: Folks, don’t be strangers. These are amazing mentors, amazing role models when it comes to workforce development and so much more. Guys, it has been a joy speaking with you today. You’ve inspired me, you’ve given me so much excitement about what we can do when we build together and we work together. Thank you for your time and I hope to have you on again soon.

Richard: Thank you.

Marianne: Thank you for having us. Thank you.

Lori: Thank you.

Hoby: Thanks so much, cheers.

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