There’s some of this duality, right? So our expectation of you is high, but you also have to realize that explicit bias exists in the world and that part of our job is communicating, hey, this person can do anything. But you need to then prove that in your job.

Welcome to the Heard and 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.

Hello, and welcome to episode two. As you know by now, this podcast is presented by National Industries for the Blind, or NIB. And if you already know about NIB, great. But if you don’t, let me give you an audio tour of the services offered and the wonderful work they do as an organization. National Industries for the Blind, or NIB is a non-profit agency whose mission is to enhance the personal and economic independence of the blind by creating, sustaining, and improving employment.

You see, back in 1938 members of the blindness community successfully urged Congress and ultimately President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to pass the Wagner-O’Day Act, which secured a certain portion of the US government’s market to products produced and manufactured by blind people. Today, that program is known as the AbilityOne Program, and you’ll hear it mentioned throughout several episodes as this show progresses.

A federal agency runs the AbilityOne Program and they’re called the AbilityOne Commission. But 85 years ago, when President Roosevelt signed the Wagner-O’Day Act into law, there were agencies, about 30 of them, who employed blind people to manufacture products, but they were scattered all over the country and they needed a central agency to organize them.

National Industries for the Blind was created as that centralized non-profit agency. They worked on allocating government orders and many other things to make sure that the workforce was unified. So NIB started with 36 non-profit agencies, employing about 150 blind individuals around the country. They made products like mops, mail bags and pillowcases to be used in World War Two.

Fast forward to today, NIB works with a network of nearly 100 agencies employing over 5,000 folks who are blind and visually impaired. These employees make thousands of different products and deliver a huge range of professional services, not just to the federal government, but to commercial as well.

Throughout the interviews in this podcast you’ll hear from people who work at these agencies about all the amazing things these agencies do. In terms of products, it is a gigantic range of products from office and cleaning supplies under NIB’s own name called Skilcraft®, to highly specialized military gear built specifically to meet the standards and the strict rigors that our military demands.

You will be hearing, for example, from Jeff Mittman who was deployed in the military. The helmet, which he was wearing, made by an employee at an NIB agency saved his life. But I don’t want to give it all away here. Please subscribe and tune into that and many other stories coming to you week after week.

But back to the products. All these products are sold to the federal government and to commercial customers alike. These are all huge contracts for NIB’s associated agencies, meaning that there’s a constant stream of work and, of course, income. Folks who are blind work for NIB agencies making a good living and making their dreams come true.

They’re able to buy homes, pay for their children’s education, become productive members of their communities and work in places where they’re not just accommodated, but celebrated. And that is possible for you too. Oh, and if you were wondering if NIB’s agencies provide jobs in service fields that have nothing to do with manufacturing, the answer is a resounding yes.

There are tons of opportunities to manage contracts, make technology accessible or do mystery shopping, recruitment, administrative work, transcriptions, customer service, cybersecurity, whew, the list goes on. You will hear, for example, in my interview with Rebekah Grieb, how she works managing contracts and returning unused or unallocated funds back to her clients. Talk about some happy clients there.

And just like that there are plenty of opportunities for remote work too because we all know that for some BVI folks transportation can be an issue. So stay tuned for that show and many others too.

But NIB doesn’t stop at employment. They do important advocacy work, too. They meet regularly with government officials and legislators to advocate for employment for us BVI folks. This is such important work because it helps break down the legal and societal barriers of what we can and can’t do. And it ultimately helps to lower the unemployment rate of the blind community.

NIB also offers training and development programs. These are geared to help BVI folks develop professional skills that are in demand in the job market. So they range from manufacturing, to technology, to professional services and anything in between. NIB wants to ensure that being blind or having a lack of usable skills is not an impediment for you to work. They help you every step of the way. So if you don’t have the skills, you simply learn them and then go to work.

Just take that first step in starting to work with NIB. Bottom line, NIB allows BVI people to find meaningful and challenging work in manufacturing and service positions, in workplaces that are high-energy and high-quality. Check them out at nib.org.

Now, what few people know is that NIB has a sister organization called NSITE, spelled N-S-I-T-E. NSITE works with the AbilityOne Program and Fortune 500 companies and other private employers to place BVI employees in a variety of positions, including many senior leadership roles. Oh, and NSITE works with veterans too.

NSITE ensures that folks have access to a broad range of job opportunities. They even have a job board called NSITE Connect that anyone, someone who’s blind looking for work or someone who’s employing blind people, can look and see what jobs are available at any given time. You can check it out at nsite.org, that’s N-S-I-T-E dot O-R-G.

I got a chance to chat briefly with Dr. Jonathan Lucus, Executive Director of NSITE at the recent 2023 NIB Conference in Washington, DC. I want to share that interview today, so you hear first-hand what NSITE is all about. Please excuse any audio quirks as we capture these conversations, but we guarantee the wisdom is pure gold. Cheers and enjoy.

Hoby: Today. I’m beyond honored to be chatting with Dr. Jonathan Lucus. Jonathan, welcome.

Jonathan: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Hoby: Well, it’s a real honor to be speaking with you. We both have those two letters in front of our name, the D-R, which I feel like those two letters and about $3 will buy me a coke at 711. My degree is in chemistry, what’s your degree in?

Jonathan: Not that, my degree is in education.

Hoby: Oh, phenomenal, I love that. Tell me about your current role with NIB.

Jonathan: Thank you. I’m the Executive Director of NSITE, and our organization spun off two years ago with the mission to get as many people trained and employed as possible who are blind and visually impaired.

Hoby: I love that. And you’re, I think, a really awesome candidate to just help us really figure out and understand the landscape of NIB. So NIB was founded, as we know, in 1938 to promote job opportunities for folks who are blind and visually impaired selling into the federal government, put together by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

But now NIB does so much more than simply offering employment through manufacturing and service provision agencies around the country who employ blind people. And NSITE is one of those programs, right? Tell us a little bit about your past, first of all, and what got you to where you are with NIB and now in this role with NSITE.

Jonathan: Certainly. So I’ve had about, I’d say, almost 20 years of workforce development experience. I started out helping the federal government resettle refugees from around the world and developed very unique programs to get people trained and into jobs with a lot of fortune 500 companies and really build back careers they had maybe when they were in Afghanistan, Iraq, other places around the world. And I got recognized by the United Nations for my work because the international best practice –

Hoby: Congratulations.

Jonathan: Thanks. But really what that led to was me doing some more international work with countries in Europe and eventually doing some state department work in Egypt. But I was traveling all over the world and I loved it, but when you start to have a family that’s not conducive. So I took a job in DC working for the Arc of the United States, it serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Hoby: Okay.

Jonathan: And I helped create a program that placed maybe 2,000 people into jobs or my five years there.

Hoby: Wow.

Jonathan: And that was just a really great experience introduction into working specifically with people with significant disabilities. And then in 2019, right before the pandemic, I was offered a position at NIB to take some of their legacy training programs and then develop a comprehensive organization serving people through training and job placement.

Hoby: I love that. And that’s sort of what led you to start NSITE, is that correct?

Jonathan: Yeah, that’s correct. We wanted to have a different brand and we wanted, as you mentioned, NIB had 85 years of successfully getting people employed through government contracts.

Hoby: Right.

Jonathan: We wanted to be outward-facing. We wanted to move outside of that realm and work with employers around the country. And also just work with individuals and understand what their career passions were and help them connect to the opportunities.

Hoby: I love that. And just to be clear, your work that was recognized by the United Nations on workforce development was not specific to blind people at all, right?

Jonathan: No, although we did have people who were, people with significant disabilities. It was for the refugee and immigrant populations coming into the United States who were displaced. But I did work with one gentleman from Afghanistan who was blind, and believe it or not, he became a mechanic at a car shop.

Hoby: I love it. These are the success stories that I love so much. And one of my good friends, actually, is a totally blind guy and he’s a better mechanic than most sighted people I know just by listening.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Hoby: Just by listening and using a stethoscope around the engine and really understanding exactly what’s happening where. It’s pretty phenomenal.

So, Jonathan, we both understand, you and I, that to get a job, to be gainfully employed, you have to have a certain level of training and a certain number of skills. And those skills, of course, are different for any job you might apply for. So I guess my next question is, what is NSITE’s main sort of mission and vision and goal? And what does your day-to-day work look like? It seems like probably to place as many blind people in the workforce as possible, a big part of what you do must be training, is that right?

Jonathan: That’s a huge portion of that because, obviously, we’re in a very complex world in 2023. Technology plays a huge role in all of our jobs, no matter what they are. And so our goal at NSITE is to train people, both in proficiency to use a computer to go into a career, whether that’s in IT or sourcing or contract management, or sales, to be able to use that functionality. Whether you’re a JAWS user, a screen reader, we work with companies to make sure that their software is accessible to those folks.

It’s also executive skill coaching. So how you communicate, how you lead people, that’s very important to us, too. And then also how you communicate yourself as a professional. So we have a lot of training around utilizing LinkedIn and promoting your skills and your background to potential employers.

Hoby: And, for me anyway, one of the big parts of getting any job, I’ve worked for myself, I’ve got a couple of companies and I typically work as a contractor. And anytime I’m meeting a new client or a potential client, I consider it a job interview. And one of the things that I think is so important to acquiring work, are those soft skills in the interview process. Do you teach those as well?

Jonathan: Absolutely, that’s intertwined in all of our curriculum. So no matter what course you go into, those are skills that you’re developing through that course. We actually work with universities like Wharton Business School at UPenn and others to develop entrepreneurial mindset and also how to increase those soft skills.

Hoby: I just love that. And things that people might not think about, but checking with someone and making sure that your clothes don’t have spots on them. Making sure that your shirt is ironed. Making sure that you look professional because whether we like it or not, right, we live in a sighted society and people judge all the time, as I say, books by their cover, right?

They take one look at you, okay, the cane or the dog maybe doesn’t work for you in the first place because they have all their inaccurate but socially driven low expectations of people who are blind or low vision, visually impaired. And then if you’ve got a big spot that you didn’t you had right in the center of your shirt, it’s a bad combination.

So how do you guys like to teach those? And to me, the technical skills are super important, but if we’re going to win and we’re going to earn gainful employment in a sighted world, and let’s be honest, we live in a sighted world, we need to look better and be more punctual and really compete at an equal or above equal level.

Jonathan: That’s so, so true. And so part of our mantra is have high expectations. So whether you’re coming into our training program, or our job placement programs, whatever you’re doing with NSITE, our expectations of you are not any different than somebody who is sighted, right?

Hoby: Yes.

Jonathan: And that’s part of it. And then there’s sort of this duality, right? So our expectation of you is high, but you also have to realize implicit bias exists in the world and that part of our job is communicating, hey, this person can do anything. But you need to then prove that in your job.

Hoby: I love that. And being able to step up to the table and step up to the plate and really prove that you have the skills that it takes to get something done in the most correct, efficient, and best way possible. And that’s one of the elements of this whole conference that’s really inspired me. So we’re at the 2023 National Industries for the Blind Conference and Expo and we’re honoring 73 employees of the year from agencies around the country.

And one of the topics of conversation with a lot of the employees of the year, and also presidents and CEOs of agencies, that I’ve had just casually around the water cooler has been we’re not handing out favors here. These people have to earn their upward mobility and earn the positions they have, which I think is something that NSITE teaches so well.

Jonathan: I love what you’re saying, I think that’s so true. And when you earn something, then it’s authentic, right? And it becomes part of who you are. And I think that’s so important, right? You want to feel like you deserve to be there. And part of that is your work ethic getting you there. And part of that is making sure that doors open for you no matter what your background is.

Hoby: And making sure that those opportunities do exist so we can provide the foundation. But the people who are working through the program and applying for these jobs and entering these jobs are using the ladder that we built to climb on.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Hoby: I’m really curious about the NSITE and job board. Maybe you can tell listeners who might not know necessarily what a job board is, how that works in particular with NSITE.

Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely. I think we’ve all heard of Career Builder, Monster, those kinds of job boards.

Hoby: Sure.

Jonathan: Ours is in the same vein, meaning it’s set up very similar. It’s cloud-based, you go in, you create a profile, you upload your resume. We help with that, we make sure any additional skills or experience are continually added to it. And we have employers who are paying to find and access talent on that job board of people who are blind and visually impaired.

Hoby: That’s incredible.

Jonathan: I think the difference is ours is curated, right? We didn’t want to just have a job board where somebody, an employer could go and say, yeah, we put our job up there for people who are blind or visually impaired to say we’ve connected with that community. These are authentic relationships we have with the employers. So if there’s a job on there, they are willing to hire. And our job is to make sure everybody, we have 400 candidates on there, make sure their profiles are just beautiful. So when an employer reads it they’re like, that’s the person for me.

Hoby: Interesting. And you hand curate those relationships with employers?

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Hoby: And are some of these employers fortune 500s from your previous work?

Jonathan: They are. So we have numerous fortune 500 companies. Blue Cross Blue Shield, Bristol Myers Squibb. Actually, next week, I’m having a meeting with Freddie Mac. And it’s also some midsize employers as well and nonprofits.

Hoby: Sure.

Jonathan: So in government we’ve had the Library of Congress post jobs on our site. So we want to make sure there’s a really diverse array of opportunities for people.

Hoby: I think an interesting concept for these companies that are curated by you and putting their jobs up on the job board. That’s a marketing strategy for them. I can’t turn off the marketing part of my brain, but helping them tell that story of we’re actively recruiting folks who are blind and visually impaired through NSITE, I think, is a really fun tidbit for them to say and share.

Jonathan: Yeah, I think it’s a huge marketing scheme. And for me, you have marketing on your brain, I have business. So my thing is about the bottom line. And so what we’re telling companies and helping them in, is this is not a social outcome we’re looking for. We’re looking for a business outcome from you.

Hoby: Totally.

Jonathan: And through that we create this shared value where it’s a win/win for everyone. Many, many research articles that have been done in the last five years said, hey, if your workforce is diverse, especially as you move up the ladder, the greater the outcomes are going to be for your business.

Hoby: And that’s what we’re after, right, is the bottom line? Because after all, we run businesses, and we need to make sure that the services we’re providing are as high quality as possible, so people keep coming back.

Jonathan: Right.

Hoby: Yeah. We’re, unfortunately, almost out of time, Jonathan. But I have totally enjoyed this interview. I’ve got one more question for you, a couple more questions, but one more main one here which I’ll ask. Which is, if you were giving advice to someone who is thinking very seriously about taking that leap, but they’re concerned about their skills, they’re concerned about what’s going to happen when they lose their benefits. And we know that state and federal benefits are great when needed, and there’s no lack of dignity in taking them when needed, but I think there’s something so fulfilling about work.

What would you tell those people is sort of a good first step on their way to employment? Maybe it’s getting in touch with NSITE?

Jonathan: Yeah, I think getting in touch with us or somebody like us and exploring options cost nothing to you, right? So explore your options, but realize no risk, no reward kind of thing. And the benefits is always a sticky wicket.

Hoby: Right.

Jonathan: But imagine having a career that you wanted for a long time with benefits as well. And so, for us, it’s like come explore, look at our course load, look at our options and then build up from there. You don’t have to make a decision today. Educating yourself is always a good thing to do.

Hoby: I love that. Education, exploring options and it’s free. Jonathan, you’re an extremely valuable resource and will be for a lot of our listeners, I’m sure. Do you mind if we include just an email contact in the show notes for your episode?

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Hoby: Thank you so much.

This is heardandempowered.org and we’ve been chatting with Dr. Jonathan Lucus. Thank you, Johnathan.

Jonathan: Thank you

Thanks for being a part of today’s conversation.

Please subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode, give us a five-star rating if we deserve it and leave a review. Even just one word will help others discover the game-changing content of our show.

For more information and free downloadable resources, visit heardandempowered.org. That’s H-E-A-R-D A-N-D E-M-P-O-W-E-R-E-D dot O-R-G. Until next week.