Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams

By: Dr. Kirk Adams PhD
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  • Summary

  • Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams is a compelling podcast series that brings listeners into the world of accessibility, leadership, and social change through the lens of one of the most influential voices in blindness advocacy. Dr. Kirk Adams, former President and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind and a lifelong champion for the rights of people with visual impairments, hosts this insightful and inspiring program.
    2024
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Episodes
  • Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: January 8, 2025: Interview with Kathryn Webster, Founder, The TAD Foundation (Together Achieving Dreams)

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: January 8, 2025: Interview with Kathryn Webster, Founder, The TAD Foundation (Together Achieving Dreams)
    Jan 8 2025
    KEYWORDS: disability rights, employment inclusion, blindness skills, guide dog, Deloitte Consulting, Harvard Business School, private equity, mentorship program, technical training, leadership development, corporate partners, family support, employment rate, strategic objectives, financial support TRANSCRIPT: 00:00 Music. 00:09 Welcome to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr Kirk Adams, 00:36 welcome everybody to podcasts with Dr Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And as you may or may not know, I am the managing director of my very own consulting practice, innovative act LLC, where I focus on fun, innovative, high impact projects that will accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. And I say I help companies supercharge their bottom line through Disability Inclusion. I am the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, prior to that, held the same roles at the lighthouse for the blind. Inc, you're in beautiful, rainy Seattle, and today I have a guest that I have the privilege of knowing for quite a number of years. We used to be neighbors in Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia. Now we're 3000 miles apart, but I'd like love to introduce you all to Catherine Webster, who, among other things, is the founder and president of a foundation called together achieving dreams, which is helping young blind people move forward and thrive in life. I had the privilege of having my first call as a mentor to one of the young blind people that the foundation is working with. And Catherine, welcome to my podcast. 02:07 Dr Kirk Adams, it is such a pleasure. I always love chatting to you, with you, and even better than it's on a podcast platform, thanks 02:15 for having me so the whole world can listen in on our conversation, exactly. So I would love to hear about your journey a little bit. When I first met you, you were kind of just beginning in the professional career. You were in a leadership role with the blind students of the National Federation of the Blind. You surprised me in how new you were to blindness and how excellent your blindness skills were. So would love to just get a little bit of your personal story that has brought you from birth to now. 03:00 Yeah, absolutely great question, and always way longer than than I want to share. So I will keep it short and sweet. But like Kirk said, like you said, I long story short, I guess starting from the way beginning, I was born totally blind, which wildly enough, when I was 16 days old, I got vision in one of my eyes. Saw that well, you know, visual impaired, quote, unquote, for years. So I, you know, leaned on large print and didn't know braille. Starting in high school, started learning braille. So all that to say I was in denial in those in those years where, like every teenager is in denial and had having no vision in one eye and having limited in the other I wanted to still do whatever I wanted to do. So I was a cheerleader, I wrote, I did track, I was integrated into, you know, public school systems. And I grew up actually, in Connecticut. My mom moved us here from Florida for the awesome public schools, and grateful for her for that choice forever. But long story short, around high school, had several surgeries, cornea transplant issues, whatever it is, and I started realizing there are some things that I just can't do. And for me, that's a challenge. I want to be able to do anything, and if someone tells me I can't, I want to prove them wrong. So how I approach that is acceptance on some of the pieces. So cheerleading, with with all sighted cheerleaders, and me, once it got to a certain point, there's a safety risk. So I did step back on that, and instead leaned in on, you know, sports where I could do it fully independently, rowing, track and field, etc. So starting college, I got a guide dog, and that was kind of my first step of acceptance. And I still, I mean, I tell high school students who are blind all the time to to, you know, accept yourself, embrace a cane, all that stuff easier said than done when you're in those environments. But I used college as that rebranding moment where no one knows who I. Am or hardly anyone, and I've got a social magnet of a guide dog, use that slightly as a crutch, socially speaking, and all that to say, as I went into my last year of college at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, I ended up losing my vision two weeks before graduating from just a freak accident retinal detachment that went wrong too much filled up whatever. So after that, had no more vision. And ...
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    27 mins
  • Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: January 6, 2025: Interview with Advocate, Author and Sight Loss Coach Donna J. Jodhan

    Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: January 6, 2025: Interview with Advocate, Author and Sight Loss Coach Donna J. Jodhan
    Jan 6 2025
    TRANSCRIPT 00:00 Music. 00:09 Welcome to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr Kirk Adams, 00:37 hello, everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams from innovative impact consulting and welcome to my podcast. And I have I'm returning a favor to Donna jodhan, who graciously interviewed me for her podcast. Welcome Donna. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here, and it is a New Year. Happy New Year to you, to you too. And I'd like to take this one step at a time. What I'm thinking is to ask you to tell us about your journey which has brought you, has brought you to the point in time we're at now, what you're involved in currently, and then where, where you would like to see, where we you would like to take things, and when we, when we talk about where you would like to take things, I'd love to hear about what's working well for you, where, where you're finding successes and any challenges you might be having. So if, if we could just take it away, I'll hand you the talking stick and ask you to talk about your journey from from birth to present. Oh dear. Thank you very much. I'll do the best I can. So I was born eight hours after my twin brother Jeffrey, 02:04 Mom and Dad did not know that I was expected, only after he was born that the midwife told mom and dad, hey, another one is on its way, and mom had to wait eight hours for me to arrive. 02:22 The mom and dad asked the midwife to call a doctor, and she refused. So mom suffered for eight hours, and when I was born, mom realized right away that something was wrong with my eyes, and she said to the midwife, this child has eye problems. And the midwife refused to, you know, listen to mom, but Mom was correct. So I guess this is probably the foundation for how I was brought up and what I felt that I needed to do in order to fulfill my own life and to help others. I felt strongly that I was given an opportunity to do something after being born under these circumstances, and I think from an early age, my desire was to help others, 03:17 you know, to help make a better future for the kids, because I was given the opportunity to have a future. I was very privileged to have parents and a grandmother and two brothers and five dogs all helped me out. So I decided that this is what I wanted to do. I left home at a very early age, I grew up in Montreal, Canada, and 03:45 I don't think I can ever put a date on when I really started to get involved in advocacy, 03:54 but I think you know, throughout my high school and university years, I always did the best I could to help others and help the kids, but I think my whole world changed because let's just go back a little bit. I was born with bit of vision. Got a whole whack of it when I was in my teens due to a cornea transplant. It changed my entire world, and I learned so much, did so much experience, so much. Then I lost it all in year 2004 04:29 due to a terrific retina detachment, detached in three places, and doctors could not save my vision. So it was at that time that I decided that I wanted to apply to the Canadian government for a job, and in doing so, I quickly realized that the websites were not accessible, the attitudes were not very good, because certain. 05:00 Departments did not really want to take the time to ensure that me as a vision impaired person, a highly qualified one with an MBA from McGill University. They did not want to, you know, help me take the exams in order to gain a Public Service Commission job with the Canadian governments. And I think it was at that time that I consciously decided that something needed to be done. So in year 2006 05:36 I consulted a human rights lawyer, and after discussing, you know, matters within she advised me that I had the perfect case for a charter challenge against the Canadian government to challenge them on their inaccessible and unusable websites. And there began my journey, I would say, in a really meaningful manner. And I say meaningful because it was a way for me to not just express myself, but to show others that something should be done and must be done if we as a community, as Canadians with disabilities, wanted to find different career paths, so I assembled a small team 06:33 of advocates and friends, and I think they're about, oh my gosh, at least four of us to start with The lawyer. We filed our papers, and of course, they try to stay our kids, but fail. And so between 2007 06:49 and 2009 06:50 it was a back and forth battle between me and the government and my lawyer 06:57 and the Canadian government hired an expert from the United States who was a...
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    36 mins
  • Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion: November 21, 2024: Patrick Long

    Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion: November 21, 2024: Patrick Long
    Nov 21 2024
    00:00 Music. 00:09 Welcome to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr Kirk Adams, 00:37 hello everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams, welcome to my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through disability inclusion and today we we have a very unique opportunity to learn about a new AI driven solution for blind people such as myself to have an easier time of it. In E commerce, we're going to talk to Patrick long, co founder of inno search, in a few minutes. But Patrick, if you could say hi and give people just the sound of your voice and your title and where are you calling from 01:20 everybody? My name is Patrick. I'm the CEO and co founder of inno search. Ai, a company building accessible solutions for the blind and visually impaired. We're based in San Francisco, and very happy to be on the show today with Dr Kirk, and happy to share about what we're working on Great and Patrick is not we're not those of us who can see not seeing Patrick today. You may have been watching the news this week and about the bomb cyclone and all the storms here on the West Coast. We had our chair of it here in Seattle two nights ago, Patrick's on the San Francisco Bay area, so they're having some weather disruptions. So he's on his phone. Thank you for making it happen, Patrick, 02:12 just briefly before I before I turn, turn, turn it over to you, Patrick, to get your story. For those of you listening viewing who don't know me again. I'm Dr Kirk Adams. I am a blind person. Have been since I was five years old when both of my retinas detached and I became a blind child. 02:36 Basically overnight, I went to the Oregon State School for the Blind, first, second and third grade and learn to read and write Braille very, very fluently, travel with confidence with a white cane and type on a typewriter, so that when my skills were sufficiently strong, I could 02:59 join my brothers and sisters and neighbors in public school. So in fourth grade, I started public school in Silverton, Oregon. 03:08 I was always the only blind student of all of my schooling, from fourth grade through my PhD, 03:16 I 03:18 grew up in small towns in the Pacific Northwest. I was given some gifts as a 678, year old attending the school for the blind, I was given the blindest skills 03:32 that have allowed me to operate efficiently in the world of working and scholarship and life. I was given high expectations from my family and the school. A lot of kids, a lot of young kids with disabilities, 03:49 aren't given that gift of high expectations. And sometimes if we have low expectations, they can become internalized. And I was also given just a strong internal locus of control, which means I really felt in my bones that I could make my way in the world. I could solve problems, I could figure out how to get things done, and 04:12 that's such an important part of being able to thrive as a person with a disability in our society. So I'm grateful for those gifts that were given to me. 04:26 Progressing through the elementary, middle school, high school and small towns, I experienced a lot of social isolation, especially in the middle school and high school years where I grew up, when kids turned 16, they got a driver's license and they got a job of some kind, and that was not happening for me. 04:50 Then college was was a very, very different story. I was fortunate enough to be given a full scholarship to a small. 05:00 All liberal arts school, Whitman College and Walla. Walla through a foundation called the Jesse Ridley foundation that support supports blind students in college. 05:11 And again, a gift was given to me, which I appreciate immensely. Graduated 05:19 cum laude, phi, beta, kappa, four point my major, which was economics, and then face the barriers to employment that so many of us with significant disabilities face, as only 35% of us are in the workforce. So many, many twists and twists and turns later, after 10 years in banking and finance, I entered the nonprofit sector as a fundraising professional development officer. My first nonprofit job was a development officer for the Seattle Public Library Foundation raising money for the state talking book and Braille library. And then from there, moved into the nonprofit sector, 06:05 became the president CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, was recruited to join the board of trustees of the American Foundation for the Blind, which is Helen Keller's station, and was given, given an opportunity to step into that leadership, President, CEO role of ...
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    42 mins

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