Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jack Walters, Founder & CEO, Hapware

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Robert Annis, Co-Founder, NEURO

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Robert Annis, Co-Founder, NEURO https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-16-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-16-2026/] In this candid episode of Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams welcomes Robert Annis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/robannis/], a London-based coach and organizational psychologist, and founder of NEURO [neurocharity.org], an inclusive charity built to make neuroinclusion a competitive advantage rather than a matter of ethics alone. Annis speaks openly about his own "late diagnosis" at 45 (he's now 47) as profoundly autistic, with co-occurring ADHD, prosopagnosia (face blindness), aphantasia, alexithymia, an absence of interoception, and severely deficient autobiographical memory, a lifetime of "masking" that finally had names. He explains why he founded NEURO after growing frustrated with charities focused on awareness alone: he wanted real social change, so he deliberately built NEURO to look and operate like a business consultancy, meeting leaders in the language of innovation, adaptability, and talent rather than moral obligation. It's a thesis Dr. Adams shares in his forthcoming book, The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion, that the resilience and cognitive diversity forged by overcoming barriers are exactly what organizations need to thrive. The conversation then turns to how NEURO actually drives change: the NEURO Standard, an accreditation spanning five organizational pillars and three tiers that lets employers and universities prove they are continuously investing in inclusion, and, in turn, attract the roughly one in six people who are neurodivergent, plus everyone who loves them. Annis shares early wins, a Great Britain Olympic rugby player who rebuilt her youth-coaching approach for neurodivergent kids, and final-year students in London and Manchester who used the NEURO Standard to audit their own universities as their capstone project, alongside fast traction for a charity registered only about two months earlier: three university partners (two UK, one Australian), local-council ties reaching some 26 high schools, a charity-of-the-year award, volunteers across three continents, and a first major client in a large energy provider. He closes with a borderless five-year vision, licensing the model to "commercial delivery partners" worldwide, growing a free NEURO Library of practical resources, and recruiting volunteers in a way that deliberately advances each volunteer's own career. TRANSCRIPT: Announcer: Welcome to Podcasts by Doctor 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, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington — one of the sites for the World Cup. We had Egypt and Belgium yesterday, down the street from me, and on Friday it's the US and Australia, so football has taken over our city. And, coincidentally, I'm speaking today with someone from the United Kingdom: Robert Annis, who's based in London. Robert is the founder of NEURO, an inclusive charity seeking to make inclusion a competitive benefit to society — which aligns very closely with the work I do. Good morning to me, and good afternoon to you, Robert. Robert Annis: Thank you, Kirk — it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm glad you're here. I met Robert fairly recently through my good friend LinkedIn. As I said, Robert is the founder of NEURO, really focusing on working with organizations — companies, NGOs, governmental agencies — to help them understand that being inclusive of people with neurodiversity is a competitive advantage. I have a forthcoming business book that should be out soon; it's going into formatting right now, and it's called The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion. So Robert and I have very similar views on the impacts of being truly inclusive of people with impairments — whether sight, hearing, neurological, or physical — and I'm really pleased to have Robert here today. We'll turn the microphone over to you; I'd love to hear the story. What's the journey that's brought you to where you are today with NEURO, and where are you going to take things? Robert Annis: Well, thank you, Kirk — that's a lovely introduction; I really appreciate it. It's really nice to be here. Getting to do something like a podcast is always a real pleasure, and it's always fascinating — you never know who's going to reach out afterwards and where it might lead, so I'm excited to see where this takes us. I think it's a really interesting topic you mentioned, around your book, my experience, and what we're doing with NEURO. The concept of being disabled is often seen as a negative, and I would never be the one to say it's a superpower — that's for sure. But there is an interesting point of view to be had: if someone can overcome the difficulties that society, and their own abilities, may put in front of them, then they develop a level of resilience and ability that can be very useful in organizations. It can create people who have exactly the sorts of skills organizations really need. However, we tend to have a bit of a lens over our view of people, so, quite traditionally, leaders will not look for people who are different — they look for people who are the same. Dr. Kirk Adams: Can we dig into the comment about the skills that employers need? Because that's certainly a conversation I— Robert Annis: I thought it might. Dr. Kirk Adams: I have a lot — and rather than lead with what I say about it, I'd love to hear what you say. You're talking to organizations about those skills. Robert Annis: I always try to think of it as a real-world example for them. A good one would be Covid, or artificial intelligence — massive, changing things that occur. Organizations, whether a school, a business, or an NGO, need to learn to survive through that, adapt, and ideally thrive. When you're going through those times, organizations need to be adaptable and flexible, and to do that, they need to be able to innovate and problem-solve. That is really fed by having multiple different mindsets and experiences — which can come from people of different age groups, different races, or different backgrounds of social mobility, but also different abilities, such as neurodivergence. So what we're helping organizations see is not to fear difference but to actually value it — to see that it brings things into your organization that can make you more successful. Critically, this means we're not going to organizations and leading with an ethical or moral argument; we're leading with a competitive one: that these people, like anybody, may have certain areas where they need help, but they also bring something rather special to the table, and that could be a huge differentiator for the organization. Dr. Kirk Adams: And what brought you to this work — your focus on neuro-difference? Robert Annis: Unsurprisingly, I was diagnosed as very neurodivergent indeed. I'm autistic — somewhere close to the edge of how autistic you can be. They were quite shocked when they did the tests; I think they said they hadn't seen a number that high, which I'm not sure is a compliment or not, but nonetheless. Dr. Kirk Adams: What age were you? Robert Annis: Yeah, I mean— Dr. Kirk Adams: How old were you? Robert Annis: It was about two years ago, so I'd have been 45. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, so recently. Robert Annis: Oh, yeah — very recently. 'Late diagnosis' is the correct term here, and that takes you on a certain journey. A lot of people who have differences, particularly in the brain — mainly because it's so complex that if there are differences, they have large-scale impacts — have comorbidity, meaning they have other things going on. So I have autism and ADHD, as I said, but also prosopagnosia, which is face blindness, so I don't remember faces or recognize people most of the time. I have aphantasia, so I don't have a mind's eye — I can't picture things, and I don't really dream. I have alexithymia, which means I struggle to comprehend emotions, both in myself and in others. I lack interoception, which is the ability to understand what's happening in your body, so I don't get hungry — I get ravenous: I'm fine, I'm fine, and then all of a sudden I'm eating the table, so that's entertaining. And I also have severely deficient autobiographical memory, or SDAM, which means I don't remember the past much. So all of these things come together, and they do make life quite tricky. Dr. Kirk Adams: Being diagnosed — given names for these things — when you're 45: does that explain a lot of your life experience before then? Robert Annis: Of course it does. I think the most fascinating thing about that, Kirk, is this: if you're unable to walk and so you need a wheelchair, it's very apparent — you're not surprised by it. But when it's something in your head, you're not aware of it, because as humans, growing up from children into adulthood, we're always just making sure we fit in and trying to understand the world around us and how we operate within it. So I knew I struggled with my memory and couldn't remember people, but that's not the kind of thing you vocalize and tell people, so I just put it to one side and tried to carry on. I became very good at what we call masking — using skills to effectively hide where I'm struggling. I would always let other people lead the conversation, and I'd try to avoid any topics about previous interactions. And I didn't always know I was doing it, to be honest with you. So the diagnosis was very helpful, but at the same time a bit of a shock, because even after 45 years I hadn't fully got my head around just how different I was. Dr. Kirk Adams: But did you know that other people had capabilities you did not — remembering faces being the first example that pops into my mind? That, hey, other people can recognize people by face, but you couldn't? Robert Annis: Yeah, I was aware of it — I just didn't put a lot of focus on it, which is an ironic sentence to say, isn't it? Dr. Kirk Adams: It's just such a different experience from me. My retinas detached when I was five; I became totally blind within a few days, and it was just, 'This is a blind kid. He needs to learn Braille. He needs to learn how to travel safely with a white cane. He needs to learn how to type on a typewriter so he can go to school — a public school.' But anyway, I digress. I'm asking these questions because — for 45 years you were living with these neurodiverse characteristics, and then two years ago being diagnosed and given names for these things. Where were you at that point? Were you mid-career? Were you involved in a particular field? I'm just curious about your life trajectory up until then. Robert Annis: It had been mixed. I think it's safe to say employment had never worked out for me. I now feel like I know why; I didn't really know then — I'd just found life very difficult, for the reasons I explained. Having relationships and friends has been very tricky, if possible at all, and having employment has been hard. So most of my career I've been self-employed, because that was really the only option open to me. I'd gone through several roles, from project and programme management in business, through to coaching, and then finally to organisational psychology. That was about the time I found all this out. So it all came together, and I started thinking: how do I take that focus in my career — coaching, organisational design, leadership coaching — and combine it with this newfound understanding of my brain and its neurodivergence? And that directly led to the wish to make some pretty significant changes, obviously within myself, but also within wider society. Dr. Kirk Adams: And you studied organizational psychology or development academically as well, correct? Robert Annis: Yes — I got a master's in organizational psychology. Dr. Kirk Adams: So what was the genesis, or the catalyst, for creating NEURO? Robert Annis: It was quite simple, really. I'd started volunteering with another charity in the space, focused on neurodiversity support, and I was over the moon to be involved and threw myself wholeheartedly into it. But I ended up very disappointed, because the focus was mildly on raising awareness and more on a 'join us, get a newsletter, and we'll give you a badge on your website' kind of thing, rather than any actual social change or changing things for individuals who may be struggling. So it wasn't quite the positive light I'd been hoping for — and no doubt that's my naivete to some degree, assuming that because it's a charity, it's doing great things. But most of the charities I talked to or looked at are really focused on awareness-raising. There's nothing wrong with that — of course it's good, and it needs to be done — but awareness-raising doesn't help any of the people who are struggling, and it doesn't do much to change the societal situation. So NEURO was created for exactly that reason. There was a big gap where people weren't trying to change society so much as just raise awareness — which, again, is fine, but not what we wanted to do. So NEURO's focus is simple: it's to change the world. It's a social-change model. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Robert Annis: Exactly. Look, I'm 47 — I'm not a spring chicken. There's no point in me taking my time and going slowly with this. There are times to lean into your difference, and this is one of them: my autism means I can work a 20-hour day, no problem at all. I can just focus and work seven days a week and not really notice it. So in the last year we've built NEURO, and because we don't want to just focus on awareness, it's designed to look like a business consultancy — so that when we go in and talk to organisations, whoever they may be, we look like a serious group that can actually come in, help, and make a difference. We've built everything, from accreditation to training to actual tools that help people learn where the friction is in the workplace, where individuals are struggling, so they can actually receive help. And I don't mean counseling — I mean actually finding the areas where they're struggling so they can grow and do better things with their careers. So what we've built, and are continuing to grow, is significant, and we're very proud of it. We finally went fully live about two months ago, when the charity was actually registered, but we started about a year ago on the journey of building everything. We're at the point now where we've got three university partners — two in the UK, one in Australia. We're partnered with several local councils, one of which reaches about 26 high schools. We've received a charity-of-the-year award. Things are starting to come together nicely. We've got volunteers on three continents. So it's still very early days, obviously — we're a startup — but we are starting to make a difference. Dr. Kirk Adams: We'd say nonprofit here — I guess NGO or charity is your term. So, as a fledgling registered charity in the UK, what are your strategic imperatives, say, for the next 12 months? What do you really need to accomplish to take things toward your vision? Robert Annis: Absolutely — it's a very clear strategic vision. With my background in organizational psychology and coaching organizations, specifically leaders in strategy, I'd be really embarrassed if I hadn't thought this one through. The focus of the strategy is very clear: we've built an accreditation designed to help organizations once they've invested and made internal changes to be more inclusive. Once they've done that, the accreditation they can then achieve allows them to signal to the wider world that they truly are being inclusive and supporting individuals in that way. The whole point is to shift the conversation around what inclusion means. If an organization invests, makes changes, makes the effort, then it's showing that it really does care — and that's the kind of thing people external to the organization would want to know about. If someone is looking for work and they're an absolute genius at analysis but struggle with some social situations, they could be amazing in some companies — but that company needs to attract that person. Robert Annis: Currently, that's not really done in any way. Our accreditation makes very clear which organizations are going down that path, so they'll be able to attract the best talent, and the customers and suppliers they want — because neurodivergence, as an example, impacts around 1 in 6 people. That means if you're talking to a customer, a supplier, or somebody you want to hire, you can pretty much guarantee that someone in their family, or someone very close to them whom they care about, is neurodivergent. And when an organization can actually show that it's invested and made changes, you're going to pull on some pretty important heartstrings with a lot of people. So, to put it in one sentence, Kirk: we want to make inclusion a competitive advantage — not something done for ethical and moral reasons, because that's not a good sell to a CEO, but because it will make you more successful. That should be a good pitch. And, obviously, the benefit is that we get the ethical and moral improvements along for the ride. Dr. Kirk Adams: What tends to motivate or engage the people you're talking to? You're sitting across the desk from a CEO or executive director, having this conversation — are there certain light-bulb moments? Robert Annis: Oh, gosh. Dr. Kirk Adams: —certain things that tend to animate the people you're talking to? Robert Annis: Yes, absolutely. And I realize I didn't fully answer your last question, so I'll finish that quickly: the strategy we're aiming for with NEURO is that that level of inclusion, and our accreditation, becomes recognized and sought after as organizations seek to get the very best talent. That's what the accreditation is designed to do, and that's the strategy we want to get to. As for when I'm talking to leaders, and the things that really help them recognize the value of this and why they want to do it — I think it's mostly because we've made the effort to look like a business consultancy and to speak in their language: to come in and say, this is about making you more competitive, helping you be more successful, being a more adaptable, more flexible organization that can lead in innovation and problem-solving because you value cognitive diversity. That really starts to resonate, because leaders have no problem with inclusion. What they have a problem with is the idea that a company that must make a profit and please shareholders should focus primarily on ethical and moral grounds. Those are important, but it's a lot easier for a leader to get behind it when they can say, 'This will actually help us make money.' There's no reason we need to exclude the concept of profit from doing good things — we just need to make sure we explain them in the right way. Dr. Kirk Adams: I know you're a fledgling organization, but you mentioned working with some university partners. Can you give us a success story? Robert Annis: Yeah, absolutely — I'll give you a couple. We're obviously not huge yet, but one of my favorites, because it was sort of the first one we did: there's a lady, a rugby player here in the UK. She's played for Great Britain in the Olympics — an extremely good rugby player — and she still plays for Great Britain; she's actually in the US at the moment, I think playing for Great Britain. As a side job, she also coaches young girls in rugby, sort of six- to fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds, and she recognized that some of the girls she was seeing, and their parents, were neurodivergent. So we sat down and helped her build out lesson plans and how to actually run coaching sessions with neurodivergent kids, and it completely revolutionized her approach. That was just a truly heartwarming and wonderful thing to get to do. Allied to that, the universities we're working with in London and Manchester, here in England — I hope they won't mind me saying this — their final-year degree students' end-of-year project was a little basic, shall we say. Robert Annis: I was at the university mentoring as an entrepreneur, and I said, 'Well, we can help with this. We can use our NEURO accreditation, which is effectively a way to assess an organisation, and the students can use it to assess the university — they can interview faculty, survey students, review the policies for how the organisation does its performance management, hiring practices, and so on.' So the students got to do that, and then finished with a report that said, 'Hey, University, this is what I found; these are the areas you can improve in.' So those students now get to leave university, having graduated, and go to a job interview, and when they get asked, 'What can you bring to the table?' they can say, 'Well, I changed my university — so just think what I could do here.' That just puts a smile on your face, because you think, we're doing all the good things here. So those are two really good stories. Dr. Kirk Adams: That's systems change right there. So — accreditation. Is that something NEURO has created? Robert Annis: Yes, exactly. Dr. Kirk Adams: Tell us a little about what it is and who has access to it — who can use it. Robert Annis: Of course. I should say all of this is on the website — we've intentionally made everything open to everyone; everyone can access it. We wanted— Dr. Kirk Adams: Why don't you tell us the web address now, and then I'll ask again later? Robert Annis: Okay, yes — it's https://neurocharity.org. If you go on there and look for the NEURO Standard, that's the accreditation. Dr. Kirk Adams: And tell us a little about the accreditation. Robert Annis: It's intended to assess an organisation across five pillars, covering the entire organisation — from leadership to governance to policies and procedures to HR — and to help that organisation understand where it's being inclusive and should be happy, but also where there are areas it needs to improve, so you can see the actual areas where that investment can take place. With that, the organisation can make changes: there could be training they need to do, or policies and procedures they need to update — lots of things. But once they do those things, that evidence of change is what they submit to NEURO, and that's the evidence that earns the accreditation. So it's not about 'how inclusive are you?' It's about proving that you're continuously investing, that you're changing — because we want to see organisations going on that journey. And within the qualification there are three tiers, so organizations can join, and then as they advance and become more inclusive, they can move up and really show the levels of change they're making. That's hugely valuable if you're looking to gain talent, or to get students to look at your organization. The example I usually think of is a young lady who has ADHD and is looking to go to university. As she's looking at universities, there's not much information about how supportive they'll be. Robert Annis: She's been supported at school, at her high school, to some degree, but now she's looking at university, and she's quite nervous about what's out there and how much support there'll be. The reality is, for a lot of people in that situation — who have some sort of disability, or are struggling with something — the focus becomes less about 'what is the job?' or 'what is the degree?' and more about 'will I be able to survive it? Is this something I can do?' So if that young lady is looking at three universities, it becomes a lot less about 'which degree shall I do?' and more about 'which university is going to support me?' At that moment, the NEURO accreditation — the Standard — becomes absolutely crucial, because that young lady will look at those three universities, see the one with the accreditation, and very likely think, 'That's where I'm most likely to succeed.' So the dream here, the win here, is that we take inclusion and shift it from being a thing we have to ask for, beg for, and try to find money for in organisations, to something that attracts the best talent — so it becomes a competitive advantage for organizations. And that, we think and hope and believe, is a game changer. Dr. Kirk Adams: Fabulous. So let's fast-forward — say, five years from now. What does NEURO look like? What is NEURO doing? What kind of impacts and outcomes have you had? Robert Annis: Absolutely. The vision is very clear to me, and it's been designed that way from the very beginning. NEURO has no borders — there's no concept of country or anything like that; this is about humans. So we need to be able to spread this around the world, and we know we can't do that alone. When I say 'we,' that's my wife and I — we're both neurodivergent, and we created the organization — but we want to spread it around the world, and we can't do that alone. So, while spreading it around the world, we also want to help other people who are perhaps like me, for whom employment isn't an option, so they become self-employed as a coach, a consultant, a trainer, or something like that. We want to help them as well, and it's kind of a win-win for both. The concept is: we've built NEURO, we've got the accreditation, and we've built so much training — I've built about 35 training courses now, I think, with a plan for about another 50 — plus all the marketing, all the proposal templates, everything. So we want to license what we've built, so that organizations and individuals can go out around the world, make money, and have an income — anyone who wants to should be able to earn an income and actually go out there and help change the world. So my hope is that, five years from now, these 'commercial delivery partners,' as we call them — the people we're licensing NEURO to — will be all over the world, and organizations everywhere will be able to find a local commercial delivery partner to help them with their NEURO accreditation. That way we can build this into the working culture in all societies and languages. That's very much the hope, and where I see it five years from now. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, hear, hear — cheers to that. So, for those of you listening who want to get in touch, you've already mentioned the website, https://neurocharity.org. As we end our time — which flew by — what would you like people to know? Robert Annis: Thank you, Kirk — you're not wrong, it has flown by. I apologize for sort of talking your ear off. Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, that's what we're here for. Robert Annis: Yes — obviously the website, https://neurocharity.org. We're on all the social media at this point, I think, but LinkedIn is definitely the primary one. There are multiple ways to engage. If you're an individual — let's say you're a parent with a neurodivergent child, or a manager with neurodivergent employees — on our website we have a resource called the NEURO Library, and it's an ever-growing resource with things you can't find anywhere else: the answers to questions people don't seem to be sharing, like 'What is neurodivergence? How do I help my child? How do I work with people in that situation?' There are practical guides, downloadable tools and templates for managers, lots of things — and it's all free, obviously. So please go and look at the NEURO Library; it's growing, and our volunteers are building it up. Which leads me, very succinctly, to volunteers: we've got volunteers now in North America, Asia, and Europe, which is very exciting, but we definitely need a lot more. It's still very early days, so please, if you'd like to be involved, reach out. We're very keen to help people come on board in a way that actually helps their career. For example, we've got one young man in — well, not Pennsylvania — I think it's Colorado, in the US, whose focus is graphic art and videos, and his dream is to work in that space. So he's building things for us, but I've told him explicitly: only build things for us that you can put in your portfolio and that will help your career. That's very much how we want to do volunteering — obviously we need help, we need volunteers, but we want it to also help you on your journey, as it should be. And then there's the commercial delivery partner program, which, as I said, is a licensing of what we've built, so that people who— Dr. Kirk Adams: Can you repeat the name of the program? Robert Annis: Sure — the commercial delivery partners. Dr. Kirk Adams: Commercial delivery partners. Okay. Robert Annis: Exactly. And that works whether you're brand new and just starting out — we've built all the training, we've built everything, and we'll train you up — or if you've already got all your own stuff that you've built yourself and you're very proud of it, no problem at all: you can still come and work with us. You've got our training if you want to use it, and if you don't, that's fine — use your own. But you can use the brand and the marketing to go out there and get clients. At the end of the day, we want to help these individuals and small companies go out there and be successful. So if you're interested in that, it's all on the website, including pricing — but reach out with questions. And then, finally, if you're interested in getting certified yourself — if you want your organization to gain the accreditation and be one of those first ones out there to really get on that path — do reach out via the website or to me on LinkedIn. I'm very proud that just last week we signed our first big client; it's a big energy provider, and they're going the whole hog — they want to do everything. It's thrilling. It's really validation, you know. Nothing— Dr. Kirk Adams: —succeeds like success, Robert. Robert Annis: Well, I certainly hope so. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, it's been a pleasure. I'm looking forward to talking to you a little down the road to see where NEURO has gone, so we'll schedule another time to talk later in the year or early next year. Really a pleasure. Please go to https://neurocharity.org. If you'd like to get in touch with me, my website is https://DrKirkAdams.com — I have a newsletter sign-up and a contact form there — and I'm also on LinkedIn every day; it's @KirkAdamsPhD. Please reach out to Robert, reach out to me, and we'll talk to you next time on Podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. Thanks, Robert. Robert Annis: Thank you. Announcer: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share, or leave a review at https://DrKirkAdams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jack Walters, Founder & CEO, Hapware

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Jack Walters, Founder & CEO, Hapware https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-15-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-15-2026/] In this illuminating episode of Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with Jack Walters [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-walters-990744227/], co-founder and CEO of HapWare [https://www.hapware.com/], to explore ALEYE, a haptic wristband built to give blind and low-vision people access to the visual, nonverbal layer of communication that makes up the majority of human interaction. Walters explains how the system pairs with Meta smart glasses to capture a live video stream, classifies gestures, facial expressions, and body language through the company's custom algorithms, and translates them into intuitive vibrations on the wrist, a handshake, a smile, a wave, someone walking away across the room, all in under a quarter of a second. He traces HapWare's journey from a research project at the Colorado School of Mines, where he met his blind co-founder Bryan Duarte (one of roughly twenty blind people worldwide with a PhD in computer science), through candid lessons about early prototypes that delivered real value but were bulky and uncomfortable, to a ground-up redesign led by industrial designers recruited from Hydro Flask, Tesla, and Rivian, the goal being a wearable people are genuinely proud to wear, not another device that lands on a shelf after a year. Dr. Adams and Walters then turn to the road ahead: HapWare plans to ship its first units at the end of 2026 and roughly a thousand through 2027, with a waitlist, pre-orders, and regional demonstration centers already taking shape. Walters describes a striking resonance with the deaf-blind community, the company's independently developed haptics map closely to pro-tactile communication, and HapWare is now working with the Helen Keller National Center and the FCC on the iCanConnect program, and lays out a roadmap toward emotional-intelligence cues and a broader vision of ALEYE as a "universal communication device." Drawing on his own experience with pro-tactile interpreting during his years leading the Seattle Lighthouse, Dr. Adams reflects on how haptics can deliver this information without crowding the audio channel that blind travelers rely on, and the two close with HapWare's current funding round (backed by Adaptation Ventures, where Dr. Adams is a limited partner) and the company's open, equity-bearing roles for people eager to help bring the technology to market. TRANSCRIPT: Announcer: Welcome to Podcasts by Doctor 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, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams, talking to you from my office in sunny Seattle at the beginning of World Cup week here in Seattle — Belgium and Egypt are playing right down the street from me right now. My guest today is someone I met in person for the first time at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: Jack Walters, the founder of HapWare, an exciting new technology that will make the lives of blind people such as myself richer, deeper, and more vibrant. Say hey, Jack. Jack Walters: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, absolutely. I first heard of HapWare from Thomas Panek, the CEO of the Lighthouse Guild in New York. He and I have been colleagues and friends for many years, going back to our National Industries for the Blind days, and he was very excited telling me about it. We touched on the fact that a large majority of communication, when people are talking, is nonverbal — it's visual, it's body language and facial cues and those types of things. And blind people have to contend with the fact that, traditionally, we haven't been able to incorporate that visual information into our communications. Thomas was very excited about it. Then I was at the Consumer Electronics Show, and my wife and I were wandering ballroom G, where most of the assistive technology companies were clustered, and we came across HapWare — a wearable that gives us information about the person we're talking to. I met Jack and some of the team. Later on — I'm a limited partner in an angel investing group called Adaptation Ventures, which specifically does early-stage investing in disability tech, and we have sessions where startups come and pitch their company to us — there was Jack, making the case for the Adaptation Ventures angel group to invest in HapWare, which we did. So there are quite a few roads leading me to Jack. I'm really just grateful for your time and for the opportunity to learn even more about the company. Could you tell us a little about the journey — your background, how you got involved, where things are now, and where you see them going? Jack Walters: Definitely — and I appreciate the introduction. This is a tight-knit community, so it's always great when you have all these serendipitous moments, whether it's meeting colleagues or meeting at a random trade show in person and then ending up pitching a couple of weeks later. One of the most enjoyable parts of working in this community is just how tight-knit it is, how fast things travel, and how everyone is a quick introduction away. People are very willing to have conversations and introduce us to other folks in the industry, and that's been extremely valuable when it comes to the learnings. As for a little background on how HapWare started: it began when my co-founder, Bryan — who is part of the blind and low-vision community — and I met on a research project at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. We met because we were both really interested in haptics and in building technology that creates capability and impact, and Bryan had a lot of lived experience with a variety of things that could be useful. Dr. Kirk Adams: And you were both formally affiliated with the Colorado School of Mines? Jack Walters: That's where I got my undergrad and master's degrees — my undergrad in mechanical engineering and my master's in engineering and technology management. Bryan was affiliated mainly through his work sponsoring research projects; he would sponsor these projects for students like myself to be on, and he would help mentor them. He's got his PhD in computer science and technology, so that was his affiliation. Mine was that I was a student. Dr. Kirk Adams: Not a lot of blind guys with PhDs in computer science — so hats off to you in absentia, Bryan. Jack Walters: Yes. The unofficial-official stat we've heard from some people in the community is that there are about 20 people in the world who are blind and hold a PhD in computer science — so it's a handful, but a PhD in computer science specifically, and Bryan fits that criteria. We met through a research project — building haptics, building wearables, wanting to create impact, bringing a lot of lived experience, and wanting to do something for the blind and low-vision community, but also the greater disability community, since there's so much lagging technology. The classic stat is that over 70% of assistive technology ends up on the shelf after a year — although there's a really high ROI when it does work — and there isn't a lot of evolution in the assistive technology realm: it tends to be low-tech at high price points. So we really wanted to bend that mold and build technology that evolves with you, so you don't have the problem of most of it landing on the shelf after a year, and that's both high-tech and affordable. Instead of high-tech and extremely expensive, or low-tech and extremely expensive — which is often the case — we wanted the best of both worlds: evolution, financial accessibility, and continuous value. Jack Walters: That was really our thesis for how we wanted to build. From there, it was just talking to people, and one of the common things we heard from the community was — like you mentioned — that visual communication, which is the majority of communication, is inaccessible for people who are blind or low-vision. With those insights in mind, we started to develop wearables that would communicate that visual information: someone reaching out to shake your hand, smiling, walking away from you, or waving across the room. We built different haptic sensations into what is essentially a wristband, about the size of a watch, that would tell you those things. From our early prototypes, we got incredible feedback, with people highlighting how valuable this information is, how it restores communication, and how in-depth it is in the ways you want it to be. We never stopped iterating, which is why we're at an exciting point now: we're planning to ship our first batch of units at the end of this year and then fulfill the rest of our orders over the next 12 to 24 months, into early 2027. Dr. Kirk Adams: I experienced the output of the wristband — the haptic sensations that indicate, like you say, gestures and facial expressions. Talk to us about the whole system, including the input. Jack Walters: It's a multi-system device. The main piece is the haptic output on your wrist — the ALEYE wristband, as we call it, which has haptic actuators, or motors, around it. It's just like when your phone vibrates and a certain vibration tells you it's a phone call. For the different gestures, body language, and expressions, the sensations are meant to be intuitive. The way you get the visual information right now is by integrating with the Meta glasses: the Meta glasses pick up the video stream — they're the camera — and that's sent to our companion mobile app on the phone, which determines what the different cues are. We do some classification there, and we've built a lot of custom algorithms for it: this person is reaching out to shake your hand, this person is waving, this person is smiling, this person has their arms crossed. Once those classifications are made, they're sent to the wristband, which plays the corresponding intuitive haptic feedback and replicates the visual scene. Jack Walters: And all this happens — Dr. Kirk Adams: — and Meta glasses, right now, are the partner? Jack Walters: That's right. We have a formal partnership with them — an SDK Alpha program, I think is what they're calling it — so we meet with them, request features, and tell them what would make the experience better for the specific accessibility needs of our users and community. But we've also built the platform to be camera-agnostic, meaning that if you have other smart glasses or other camera-based systems you want to use, we're able to integrate with them in theory. All we need is access to the API that lets you send the video stream. I know there are other smart glasses out there, especially in the blind and low-vision world; if one of those glasses wants to integrate with ALEYE, all we'd ask for is access to their camera, and then we can run the same protocols. The important thing to note is that this all happens in real time: from the moment someone reaches out to shake your hand to the moment you get the haptic feedback — in the Meta glasses specifically — is less than a quarter of a second. Dr. Kirk Adams: Wow. Just thinking of how many times I've had interesting social interactions around shaking hands, especially in big groups like networking receptions — I'm imagining how helpful this could be. So I'm really interested: you said you got a lot of feedback from blind and low-vision people in the community. Could you talk a little more about that process? How did you get that feedback, and what were some of the things you heard — some of the data you collected that led to innovations or quality improvements in the system? Jack Walters: In our previous iterations, one of the things that was always challenging was the form factor and aesthetics — how does it feel when it's on your wrist? Because, at the end of the day, it's something you put on. I'll start with the negative feedback, because I think it's important to be transparent when you're building this type of technology and to tell the story of what went wrong and what we learned. Our first couple of iterations were really bulky and not that comfortable; the feedback was mainly that it was heavy. It wasn't a daily wear — it felt like a piece of assistive technology. I think we've all seen or tried different assistive technologies, especially in the blind community, that almost look like a welder's hat — bulky and over-the-top, and they already draw a bunch of attention to you. For lack of a better word, I think those things are ridiculous; no one is actually going to wear them, and if they do, they're not going to wear them in public — maybe only at home while watching TV. Jack Walters: They're horrible in terms of what they look like. We were there too — we had something that was uncomfortable — but the feedback was that the function was good; the function was there, and the value was there. We'd tell people, 'Okay, forget about the form factor,' and they'd feel it and get immense value out of it. It also took them only a couple of minutes to learn — people could learn these cues in just five minutes — and we got really powerful testimonials. What that taught us was that form, especially, needed to be a much higher priority. So, to invest in form, we quite literally recruited some of the world's best industrial designers to join our team. We recruited folks from Hydro Flask, Tesla, and Rivian — brands that are world-renowned for their design — and we told them, 'This is what we have. We have really good function, but for the form, we want it to look like something people love to wear and aren't self-conscious about. We don't want to give this community that welder's-hat experience that other assistive technologies do.' Jack Walters: We wanted it to be almost a staple — something that gives you a great amount of value but also looks and feels good. The result was that when you hire incredible talent and give them the means to be creative within a box around the function you need, you can deliver something that's very pretty — something people like and enjoy wearing. Now it's just about continuing to refine that experience in every way we can. We invest heavily in form so the wearable feels good, and heavily in function so it delivers the value we know is life-changing, based on the users we've worked with. The way we found to do that is by always showing up — whether at conferences and trade shows or at organizations themselves. We've been to a handful of the different Lighthouses, Easter Seals, the Colorado School for the Blind, and vocational rehab departments. We've been everywhere with that in mind: showing them what we have, having them put it on, taking notes, and then going back to the drawing board for the sake of improvement. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I applaud you for that. You mentioned you have scheduled dates for shipping the first units. Jack Walters: We have tentative dates, yes — at the very end of this year. So December, right before the end of the year, is when we're shipping our first batch of units. Dr. Kirk Adams: And how many are you going to put out into the world, do you think? Jack Walters: For December, it'll be a maximum of 100 and a minimum of 20. Then we plan on shipping the rest in 2027 — landing right around a thousand for the initial launch. Dr. Kirk Adams: And do you have a waiting list of people already reserving their spot? Jack Walters: Yes, we have a waitlist, and we have pre-orders. We also have some organizations that have committed, and some that have already purchased pre-orders. So it's a combination: a lot of direct-to-consumer orders from individuals — pre-orders are still open today for people who want it — but also organizations, specifically regional ones. Not the big national ones, but more regional organizations like the different Lighthouses, brain institutes, and societies — those types of organizations that have communities. Dr. Kirk Adams: Geographic communities. Jack Walters: Yeah, exactly — so that people can come in and demo it. We're doing that as well, so we'll have a handful of different demonstration centers. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, tell me about the company. There's supply chain, distribution, manufacturing, R&D, engineering, employees — tell me about the company. Jack Walters: We already talked about Bryan, who's our CTO and has his PhD in computer science. Gabriella is our chief scientist; she has her PhD in facial recognition, so she really powers the models and algorithms we use to do all that detection on the Meta glasses. As I mentioned, we have industrial designers and a handful of other engineers — but we're also hiring. This is another exciting opportunity for any listeners: if you're in go-to-market or customer success, if you like working with people in the disability community, if you want to train technology and gather feedback, we have a role for you; and if you do digital marketing — email, social media, all that — we have a role for you too. Our real vision for the future is to be a universal communication device. Right now we're focused on gestures, body language, and facial expressions, but we view this as something that can be useful to a wide variety of people and is always meant to provide new value depending on what you want. For instance, if you're part of the blind and low-vision community and there's a cue you're missing that we don't have yet, you can just request it. If there are enough requests for a certain cue, our engineering team will build it and push it in an update the following month, so you always have new cues added to your experience and new ways to use ALEYE. Jack Walters: The other thing we're working on is focusing more on the emotional-intelligence side. What I mean is there have been a lot of interesting conversations around how you detect whether someone is happy, sad, agitated, interested, or upset. This is valuable for people of all abilities — blind, low-vision, but also maybe neurodivergent — and even for none of the above: say you're in sales and you want to know when to ask a question, or when someone seems excited about something you said. So that's the other direction we see this going: having some mainstream applications, but also different disability applications. It all starts with a strong foundation, which is what we're building now — a foundation of doing things in real time, with the communities involved at every single aspect, and really focusing on the value and the experience. That's what we believe is going to take it to the next level. Dr. Kirk Adams: That brings something to mind. When I had the honor of being president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, we had a very robust deaf-blind program with 40-plus deaf-blind employees, mostly people with Usher syndrome. There's quite a deaf-blind community here — there's the Deaf-Blind Service Center, Washington State Deaf-Blind Citizens, the Lighthouse, and a corps of interpreters trained in tactile sign language. A couple of leaders in the deaf-blind community — Jelica Nuccio and aj granda in particular — started promoting a concept called pro-tactile, in which the interpreter would give information not only about the words being communicated but also about the visual environment. I had a chance to experience it when I was making a presentation from stage: I had an interpreter doing pro-tactile with me, giving me information on my back — people are leaning forward, they look interested, or three people just came in and sat down. So I was able to say, 'Welcome to those of you who just arrived,' which I wouldn't have known without that environmental information. What you're doing has strong, resonating echoes for me of the concepts and intent of pro-tactile interpreting for people who are deaf-blind. So I'm curious whether you've had any intersections with that philosophy. Jack Walters: We have. A couple of weeks ago, we were at the Helen Keller National Center, our national center. There are a few things we're doing in that arena. The first was working with an interpreter to give us feedback on our haptics and see how they mapped to the tactile language. We didn't base this on the tactile language when we built it, because we did our own empirical studying and testing of how to make the haptics — and the result was that they were very similar. The way they communicate different gestures, body language, and other nonverbals was very similar, which was a good signal, because it meant we'd both done our own due diligence, research, and testing with people and arrived at a very common way of doing it. The only difference, obviously, is that where a tactile interpreter performs it in person, we package it up in a piece of technology. So there are a lot of good similarities there. The other part is that, at a higher frequency, we've worked with a lot of the deaf-blind community. When you look at the statistics, I think there are about 50,000 deaf-blind people in the US, and — depending on the studies you look at — maybe 7 to 8 million people who are blind or low-vision in the US. So it's a fraction of a fraction: significantly less than 1%. Jack Walters: But we've seen a much higher rate in the community we've worked with: in our waitlist and pre-orders, nearly a double-digit percentage is actually deaf-blind, which indicates that the positive effects the haptics have on someone who is deaf-blind are really high, because it's such an accessible way to receive information. That's very exciting for us to see. The last thing we're doing — nothing's official, but it's worth noting — is working with the Helen Keller National Center and the FCC to figure out how to get onto their iCanConnect program. iCanConnect is essentially a way to get government-funded assistive technology: if you're a deaf-blind individual who makes under a certain amount of money — there are a few caveats — you can get the technology fully procured for you. So there are a few ways we see ourselves working with the deaf-blind community: first as a distribution pathway, but also in a way that brings a lot of good benefits to the community. The last thing I'll note, in the realm of deaf-blind communication but also the bigger picture, is that every single time we go to these trade shows or conferences — and we'll be at all the big ones in July — Jack Walters: — we're always asked about future functionality. We hear things like, 'Can this help direct me to a door? Can it give me notifications of a text message? Can I build my own haptic patterns?' All of those things are on our roadmap. They may not exist right now, but all the different things people ask for are on the roadmap. Pretty much anything that's visual-based, or even notification-based — say you want a certain notification — we're constantly feeding that information in. We have to stay focused, but we definitely want to hear all those ideas, because you can create a haptic output for almost anything you want: something in front of you, something you see, something you'd expect to hear — you can associate a haptic with it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Gosh — eight or nine years ago; time is a bit of a blur. Before the pandemic, I moderated a panel at the American Printing House for the Blind. It was really about indoor navigation. Mike May was on it, Chieko Asakawa was on it, and we started talking about haptics. We spent quite a bit of time on the fact that the last generation of assistive technologies for the blind primarily gave audio output — you had things talking to you, telling you information. But if you're trying to do indoor navigation, for instance — and we're trained as cane travelers to listen to the environment: the echoing of the taps of the cane, street sounds, escalators, all those things — to do a good job of safe mobility, at least with a cane, you need to be listening. If you have one, two, three things talking to you, there's a diminishing marginal utility, and at some point it becomes counterproductive. So we were excitedly talking about haptics and what they could add to the mix. I'm just very excited about what you're doing. Jack Walters: Totally — I appreciate that. When you look at the haptics: you said this was pre-pandemic, and it's not as if haptics weren't invented then. People were definitely building haptic vests, belts — you name it — for a wide variety of use cases. One of the exciting things now, and why timing is so important, is the input sensors that allow you to use those haptics. At the end of the day, haptics is an output — like audio output, not input. Because there's a lot more hardware out there, there are a lot more inputs people can tap into, and that makes the haptics much more valuable: whether it's the things on your phone, which are so good now — the speaker, the microphone, the camera — or smart glasses, or maybe your computer. So timing plays a huge role in this, and the timing has never been better for this kind of application to exist, because you have all these ecosystems you can plug into and build on. Getting back to your point: you have to keep your auditory channel open when you're traveling. The last thing people want — and this goes for conversations too — is something talking to you. I'm sure you experience this all the time, going to conferences, networking, and doing a lot of virtual calls. Jack Walters: I'm constantly on virtual calls nowadays, and the last thing you want is something talking to you when you're trying to listen or communicate. Like in this conversation right now: when I was listening, or you were listening, or either of us was talking, if we had something else talking in our ear — saying, 'Oh, Doctor Adams is showing this,' even though we don't have our screens on — well, you fill in the blank. In an in-person conversation or a networking event, if something were talking in your ear over and over, it'd be impossible to focus. It really would. So we try to make that haptic feedback an autonomous layer of information — a passive interpretation with low cognitive load that you can just receive. From our testing, we learned — and this was with our old prototype, the one that was quite a bit bigger and clunkier — that people were able to receive about 80% of the cues while multitasking. Meaning that while we were having a conversation, the person wearing the device could read the other person's cues while talking or listening — really able to receive both types of information at the same time. Dr. Kirk Adams: Cool. So you're shipping your first units at the end of the year, then more in 2027. I'm assuming that, since it's app-based, updates and improvements will be reflected in the app as things evolve. Is there a next generation of the hardware? Or do you think what you're going to ship in December or January will be the standard for a while? What are you thinking along those lines? Jack Walters: We believe this hardware will definitely last for a while, but we absolutely want to make new generations and improvements to the hardware as we grow — similar to how smartwatches, metal bands, whatever, get their gen one, two, three. We want to do something really similar: making things smaller, faster, more battery-efficient, all of that. We have a lot of ideas, and we get a lot of feedback, so creating the next thing — or at least having ideas for it — has never been a challenge for us. It's just a question of which one is the highest leverage for what we're trying to do, and then executing on that. But we absolutely want to make a lot of different versions — newer, updated versions every couple of years — so people can experience it. Dr. Kirk Adams: I want to be mindful of not contravening any securities regulations, but I know Adaptation Ventures is an early-stage investor, and, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a limited partner there — so I'm an investor in HapWare. But is there still room for others who might want to talk about investing? Jack Walters: There is a little bit of room. We're really close — it's going to be out soon anyway — and we'll probably oversubscribe a little. We went out to raise $1.5 million; we're almost at that $1.5 million, but we have a handful of interested investors. So if people are interested, they can reach out. Dr. Kirk Adams: And how do they get in — Jack Walters: — touch. They can get in touch, yep: https://hapware.com. We're super focused on people like yourself and Adaptation as investors — people who believe in the mission but also in the long-term opportunity. There's a lot at stake here, a lot to capture, and a lot of value to give overall. We have some really strong investors in this round; it's going to be great for the overall market. Dr. Kirk Adams: Back to the employment opportunities — you mentioned some roles you'll be filling at some point. Are those jobs posted, or are they still coming? Jack Walters: Yes — one of the jobs is already posted on LinkedIn; you can find it on our LinkedIn page. It's a go-to-market role, really around marketing and sales content: helping with the different Facebook groups, doing newsletters, social media. Dr. Kirk Adams: Great role. I know someone — I'm going to share this. Jack Walters: Oh, your referral goes a long way. If you know someone, please share — I want to get this filled as quickly as possible. Dr. Kirk Adams: I will. And what other points do you want to make sure our listeners walk away with? Jack Walters: I'll say one more time: if you're someone who wants to work with the community — the blind and low-vision community — and you want to receive their input and help with retention, growth, and overall customer experience, there's a role for you as well. I think it's going to be a really exciting role, because you'll almost be on the front lines of the deployment of this technology as it begins to ship. And everyone we hire in these first couple of roles gets not only a salary but also equity, so it's a really exciting opportunity. I just want to hone in on those last points for individuals looking for a job — for something more hands-on, with much more responsibility, but also really exciting. These opportunities exist at HapWare, and we're eager to get them filled in the next couple of months. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay — HapWare, at https://hapware.com, or the HapWare LinkedIn page. Jack Walters: Yes, you got it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, this has been great. I'm really excited about how much progress you've made in such a short period of time. It might not have seemed short to you, but for me — from first hearing about HapWare sometime last year, to your shipping units to people at the end of this year — that seems like great forward movement. So congratulations to you and your team. As for me, I'm Doctor Kirk Adams. If you want to get in touch, it's https://DrKirkAdams.com — I have a newsletter sign-up and a contact form there. I'm also on LinkedIn every day; it's @KirkAdamsPhD. So reach out to Jack, reach out to me, and we'll talk to you next time on the next episode of Podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. Announcer: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share, or leave a review at https://DrKirkAdams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with James Dykstra, Founder, Code Stack Systems

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with James Dykstra, Founder, Code Stack Systems https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-09-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-09-2026/] In this forward-looking episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, host Dr. Kirk Adams sits down with James Dykstra, founder of Code Stack Systems, to unpack why so many businesses are watching their AI initiatives stall, and what it actually takes to fix that. Dykstra traces his path from a childhood spent tinkering with DOS to finance and strategy roles at Amazon and Microsoft, then to co-founding a services firm built on the conviction that technology should improve lives. The central insight: companies rush to buy powerful AI tools, but those tools only magnify the gaps in fragmented, poorly tracked data. Using the analogy of a high-performance engine that is useless until it is connected to the rest of the vehicle, and of data as crude oil that must be extracted, refined, and piped before it can power anything, Dykstra explains Code Stack's "work backwards" methodology: start with a client's three-year vision, identify the tools and data required to reach it, and consolidate that data into a single platform rather than ripping out and replacing existing systems. The conversation closes on the future, where Dykstra is candidly optimistic. He anticipates a convergence of robotics, language models, new sensors, and cheaper energy driving steep cost declines, alongside real disruption and the rise of agentic AI, in which people task teams of AI "direct reports" much like human staff. Adams connects this to the accessibility frontier he knows firsthand, noting how rapidly AI-powered access to visual information has gone from novelty to expectation in the blindness and low-vision community, with agentic AI now emerging as the next horizon. Dykstra leaves listeners with a message of hope tempered by realism: the road will be hard, but the foundational investments made now, in the right data behind the right tools, will determine who thrives. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor 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, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office a blustery Seattle Washington. Today. You might hear some rain whipping against the windows in June Seattle that's that's that's the way we like it. Today I have a really interesting guest from a very interesting company. James Dykstra, the founder of Code Stack Systems, is with us today. Hi, James. James Dykstra: Hello, doctor. Kirk Adams, thank you very much for having me on the show. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, absolutely. So encountered code stack. I attended and, and gave a keynote presentation to a two day, two day gathering here in Seattle in March of start up companies and entrepreneurs and incubators and people interested in innovative technologies. And afterwards, one of the attendees, a gentleman named Ruben, came up to me and he said, I was really struck by your keynote presentation and in particular, your differentiation between impairment and disability. And it really resonated with me and I think it would resonate with my team. So would you. Would you be interested in getting on a call and talking more about it, and learning about what we do, and telling us more about what you do, and see if we could work together in some form or fashion. And I of course said, of course. I'm, I'm very prone to say, yes, let's, let's let's get to know one another and let's find where we share common ground and how we can help each other move forward. And so did that. Got on a call with, with the team. And we're continuing dialogue as I am an advisor to in a shareholder in another, a number of disability tech startups and always wanting to understand how innovation can create a more inclusive world and a world that's more accessible to everybody. And in my case, particularly people with disabilities. And so I will take just one minute 90s to talk about that differentiation between impairment and disability that that Rubin was struck by. Dr. Kirk Adams: So myself. Yeah. So myself, I'm totally blind, have been since age five. And I live in a world of work and play and scholarship and family. And many of the environments I operated in are not constructed specifically with me in mind. My impairment, visual impairment, my inability to see. And so we think about living in three different environments that we as human beings have created. One is built, which is the physical, one is social and one is digital. And as a person with an impairment, I only am in disabling situations when certain aspects of those three built environments don't allow me to interact the way I want to with the environment. And a super simple example I always use. If you've listened to the podcast before, you can go get a cup of coffee because I'm going to say it again. But one example is if I'm leading a board meeting, which I've done many, many times, and I'm at the head of the boardroom conference table and I have my my agenda, my minutes, my committee reports in Braille since I am a Braille reader although I have a visual impairment, I'm not in a disabling situation because I can interact effectively with the built environment because of the Braille. If you have brought, if you've if you brought me a a stack of print materials and handed it to me and asked me to run the meeting, then my impairment, my visual impairment, my lack of being able to see puts me in a disabling situation because I am not able to interact with the environment the way I want, because the piece of the built environment I'm trying to interact with this print, I cannot access that because of my impairment. Dr. Kirk Adams: So now another little example is if I'm in a large meeting room and I come to this point in my talk and I say, is there anyone in the room who's five foot two or shorter? I clap your hands. It's always a couple people. And I say, you have a characteristic of your height. If you walk into a room and there's a package that you need and it's on a shelf eight feet off the floor your characteristic of height does not allow you to interact effectively with the built environment of the high shelf. So you can, you can get a tool like a stepladder or stool to reach the package. You can create a team with a taller person with characteristic of higher, taller height and ask them to help you get the package down. You can make a modification to your environment, build a lower shelf. So next time you don't face that situation. So those are just some simple examples of what I meant. And sometime during the day, Ruben from, from code stack systems did approach me and, and said, you know, that, that really struck me. Dr. Kirk Adams: I just kept keep thinking about it, thinking about how my company can create better fits for people and environments and how we can reduce the number of disabling situations for people with various characteristics. And again, he asked if I would like to talk to the team. So long winded path to tell you how I met James. James and I have had a couple conversations and are planning to have many more, but really, really interested in what code stack does with their really I'd say guru guru level, enlightened level of understanding of systems including AI and how AI can, can work to serve us as human beings and can work to help companies move forward and just ask James if he would come on the podcast talk about his journey a little bit about your past experience. James, how you got your life before code stack the company journey so far where you're at the types of projects that you're involved in that you're interested in that, that fire the team up. And then maybe a little bit about the, what you're seeing for the future. So I'm going, I'm going to hand you the talking stick and I'll pop in with questions from time to time as as they as they occur to me. So thanks again for being here. Looking, looking forward to learning. James Dykstra: Well, thank you very much for having me, Doctor Adams. It's an honor to be here with you. The it's a long story, but I'll make it short. I would always go to soup kitchens and go to church with my mom and dad growing up. And so I was taught from a young age to, to work at things that really help, help improve people's lives and create opportunities for others. And, you know, at the same time I discovered computers my earliest memories of my, of me sitting on the floor and my mom fuddling with computer manuals, trying to set up a computer that was probably in 93 or 94, and I, I wrote my first line of code, which was doom dot exe from, from from DOS, you know, the command prompt access. You know, when I was at the age of six just trying to hide the fact that I was playing inappropriate games from my parents. And so I carried on that passion for technology and that interest for helping other people as I, as I went into the corporate world and I began working on financial consolidations and pricing, and it wasn't as rewarding as I wanted it to be. I didn't feel fulfilled. That said, I'm extremely grateful for the experiences I've had, helping with the, the pricing teams and Amazon and Microsoft and the finance teams and Amazon and the strategy teams at Amazon and Microsoft. James Dykstra: And I really wanted to make a bigger and distinct impact of my own. And so when I met Rubin at Amazon, he was working in business intelligence engineering, and I was working in financial consolidations. And so we were both trying to paint a picture of the business reality. And we both loved consulting. We loved understanding what makes a business profitable and how to position a business and optimize operations to create durable profitability. And so we said, well, we'd love to have a software company one day. And yet at that time, building software was pretty expensive and we didn't want to sell our restricted stock that had recently vested. And so we created a services firm where we sought to improve lives with technology by Improving the availability and observability of intelligence in a business. Dr. Kirk Adams: Then roughly, when was this? James Dykstra: Oh gosh, I think this was let's see, 2019, 2018, 2019. Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh seven, seven, seven, seven years ago. Okay. James Dykstra: Yeah. And so we said, well, okay, which businesses can we serve that will make a meaningful difference in the world? And so we sought out ag tech. We sought out nonprofits to serve in helping them improve the profitability of their business and to advance their mission through, through service. And, you know, it's not exactly really glamorous data consolidations and improving the general operational observability of a business, but it lays the foundation for these businesses to track their KPIs and to improve their overall performance, which keeps them in business. And so we're really, really passionate about increasing access to information and the ability to make a positive change in the world. And we've always done that through deeply understanding what data is available, identifying areas where we can insert additional tracking to give better visibility to a business operation. And then with that intelligence, empower the broader team to take action on those insights, no matter where they are in their skill journey. You know, most of these business owners that we were contracting with, they didn't have the technical prowess to, to access the data. And oftentimes they weren't tracking the right insights. And so they didn't have operational visibility to really improve their business and to hold themselves and their teams accountable to their goals. And so that's, that's been our, our path over the last seven years has been really helping businesses that we believe were improving the quality of life of people by creating that observability and enabling all people to action business intelligence. And right now, we're at the best time of my lifetime to be able to make that positive impact. Because right now, when a business is able to consolidate its data, to create accessibility in its data and have the ability to really observe the operation, whether it's with machine vision or better tracking of operations through sensors. Everyone is empowered then to potentially in the future, task agents as as directors. And so it's very, very exciting time. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. If you could walk through a hypothetical, maybe you said something that struck me, and I'm not going to be able to quote you verbatim, but that the, the, the teams of the companies you're working with may not have the May not have the data they need, or they might be looking at the wrong data or they might not be asking the right questions or they, they might be tracking elements that aren't optimal. And I don't exactly remember how you said it, but the gist was they may be looking at the wrong things. So yeah, you know, how, how would you, how do you work with a company or perhaps a either a real life story of a company you've worked with or a hypothetical, but what's the methodology? How do you how do you dig in and help, help these companies understand what they should be looking at and how to look at it, how how to gather the data, and then what does the data consolidation? How does that manifest for them? James Dykstra: Yeah. True to our background, we focus on working backwards, which is an Amazonian principle. James Dykstra: We sit down with the business owner and we talk with them. We say, hey, what are your three year goals? Where do you want to take this? What is your vision for the future? And most businesses say, well, we want to increase revenue by 50% or two X boost. They typically say, we want to keep our operation lean and see our margins expand as we scale And so, for example, if the manufacturer. We we often find that they have limited visibility in terms of as the inventory or the, the raw materials come in, how effectively those are processed and then oftentimes installed post post manufacture. And so very often we're seeing opportunities right now, especially with the advances in AI, to install sensors that are able to capture a control tower view of the manufacturing operation, overseeing the floor where everyone is working, and you can see the performance of each contributor to the process. You can see how much material is being produced. You can more readily gauge defect rates, and we're really able to help businesses get a better sense of how do I create value efficiently, and how do I keep my costs low and hold my team accountable to the standards we have, especially around quality control and a manufacturing operation? And so that's an example, a more recent example of a very exciting opportunity where we are able to track new information to improve the business results. James Dykstra: That said, we're still doing the traditional where we look at each of the tools the business is currently using in that early conversation, typically with the general manager or CTO and COO Or the owner of the business. And we'll ask, well, given your three year goal, which tools do you need to achieve that vision? And we list out all the tools they're currently using. And we, we seek an understanding of where do data silos exist? Because very often one tool doesn't connect to another. And then critical insight is lost because it's living in a separate place. And so for example, you might have a difficulty understanding your, your accounts receivable or producing a price quote in an automated fashion. If part of the data is living in six different systems. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right? James Dykstra: So after we have that conversation about the tools to get them where they need to go, we have a conversation regarding will, which data App is required to power those tools. Right now, more than ever, we are seeing enormous enthusiasm about AI, and it's warranted. It's incredible. The technology is wonderful. The number of lives that are going to be positively impacted. I'm hugely optimistic about the future. It's very, very exciting. And understandably, when a business owner and their staff see a really exciting new product, they say, well, let's, let's buy it. Let's try it. Very understandable. Well, they buy it and they try it. And it only magnifies the current defects in their data capture process. And so they're buying the new tool, but they don't have the data to power that tool and to get the results that they expect out of it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: So we find ourselves in this situation right now where so many business owners are seeing their AI pilots fail. I read a. Dr. Kirk Adams: Gartner and I read. Dr. Kirk Adams: I read very recently, and I can't quote the statistics, but I can quote the, the, the gist of the, the research was that AI seems to be increasing, enhancing the productivity of individuals and a large percentage of individuals using AI find it helpful. And correspondingly, organizations, structures, companies are having a, the reverse experience. You know, far fewer organizations are finding AI, making them more productive and effective. So I think. Dr. Kirk Adams: That's. Dr. Kirk Adams: That that's along the lines of what you've been learning as people as you say, understandably want to always embrace the, the latest technology and innovation and be, be on that cutting edge. They, they, they employ AI and what, what I just heard you say is that it, it oftentimes reveals the structural structural problems that they have in the organization. It magnifies them or amplifies them. Is that what I'm hearing? James Dykstra: Absolutely. And Ruben showed me recently a Gartner survey, I believe it was early 2026 survey could be mistaken on the the date. It stated that the estimated Gartner estimates that 60% of enterprise AI pilots will fail by the end of 2026. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: 60%. That's that's unheard of. Perhaps in the history of business pilots. And the reason they're failing is because they've, they've bought the new tool. It's an incredibly powerful tool and they've fed it the data that they have. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. James Dykstra: And oftentimes that data is incomplete. They're it may live in the ERP and the CRM in order to paint the whole picture, for example, or their database. And without bringing that data together in a consolidated view. James Dykstra: A single consolidated data platform, which is part of our expertise code stack systems. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. James Dykstra: They aren't able to paint a complete view of the business. And so there's something critical missing when those models give outputs and recommendations to these businesses. Dr. Kirk Adams: I think you gave me the analogy of a an engine. You buy this powerful engine and put it in a vehicle, but it doesn't do any good unless it's connected to all of the other systems in the vehicle. James Dykstra: Exactly. Exactly. And what I like to say to many business owners and, and other founders is that. Just like an engine or as a machine might be powered by gasoline, your data is, is an asset like, like crude oil that needs to be extracted from the systems in which it lives. It also needs to be identified and potentially new wells drilled tracking new data that you haven't currently had a reason to to track in the past, for example. And so first you have to identify where that data is. Extract it, refine it, really clean the data, and then you have to store it effectively. And so after it's extracted and refined and then stored safely and compliantly, then you have an opportunity to build a pipeline like a data pipeline and connect it to that machine. And unless those things happen, the machine does not run as expected. Dr. Kirk Adams: And so if I'm a client of code stack systems, and since I know manufacturing, I'm a manufacturer and I've engaged you and you come in and, and lead lead through the process. What's our vision for three years? What tools do we need? What data do we need to support those tools? Then when when you when you finish the product project, the initiative, the work, what what what are you leaving me? What are you leaving me with? Is it an ERP system? Is it a dashboard? Is it a set of tools? What, what I guess what is the, the manifestation of your work that, that you're, you're giving to me as the owner of the manufacturing enterprise? James Dykstra: Yeah. So when we think about what are the tools that power the change in the business, we recognize that the tool is simply a leverage point. And what we're really looking for is to deeply understand what are the business processes happening in the business and how do we essentially optimize those business processes? We can improve the reliability of manufacturing, for example. And through implementing new sensors and automations. And so at the end of the day, what we're leaving behind are optimized business processes that are supported with automation. Oftentimes AI automation and the underlying data platform that can feed all of your future AI tools. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: So it's a very big unlock. Being able to consolidate the data in an automated and effective way from all the systems that a business has. So at the end of the day, when we walk away, a business then has the foundation to Use the AI tools of the future needed to hit their three year goal, and they have as a top priority the business processes and functioning tools needed to grow sales or to optimize productivity in the manufacturing operation. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I, I've been, I've been moving down my path. I have a manufacturing company, I have a ERP system, a Oracle based or whatever it is. And I'm managing my business not as optimally as I can. And you're going to come help me. Are you replacing my systems? Are you enhancing my systems? Are you adding stuff, taking stuff out? What does that look like? James Dykstra: We try to avoid ripping and replacing systems and meeting the business where they are. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: We've found that most businesses cannot stomach the huge change management challenge and systems implementation challenge of ripping and replacing systems, right? At times, we will work with the business to determine when a new additional system is appropriate. For example, perhaps they want to move to SAP and they are using QuickBooks with some really advanced tooling that they've built, oftentimes a custom tooling. And they want to have a CRM. They want to have these systems throughout the business to be able to track the health and performance of each organization. And so what we're really focused on is understanding what tool, which tools are currently in play, which tools need to be added, and then how do we reliably access the data that's being stored and captured by each of these tools? And then we can even refine and improve the data living in those tools. So Ruben likes to say that oftentimes we're building a semantic layer in, in the data that is living outside of these tools. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: So how do we want to define units shipped, for example, in Amazon? There are multiple definitions of units shipped and of sales. Some include for example like sales with or without credits. And so what we're able to do is clearly define Codify what are the business rules and how do we want to interpret the data. And we can build that into the data outside of the systems. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: That are kind of like the initial source. And so we're improving and enriching this data in this consolidated data platform that will then power all the newest and best tools. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I want, I want to ask you about, about future vision and future state and AI and and how, where you see things going and there's always information and opinion swirling and you know, again, I see research reports, I see surveys of recent college graduates and the huge percentage who, you know, for their future employment because they believe AI will be supplanting human beings and the types of jobs that recent college graduates are, are typically hired for. In the accessibility world, there's lots of excitement about how AI can make the world more accessible. And from my standpoint, as a blind person, there are, you know, functions that we in the past needed to rely on sighted assistance that now AI can can provide to increase our independence and create more frequent, better fits between our cells with our impairments and the environment. And we, we see information about productivity and we see people protesting the thoughts of data centers being built in their neighborhoods. And you know, it's very very fluid very much at a, I guess, a Creative frontier. So just with with your long experience and and vastly more sophisticated experience than I have what's top of mind for you? What are what are you seeing? What are you thinking about? What are, what are you imagining? James Dykstra: I'm very, very excited about the future. We've never been in a situation where the cost of, you know, dollars per or whichever denomination, you know, ex currency per mile traveled you know, per kilowatt hour per unit input to a manufacturing process is going to decline so precipitously. And that's going to create utopian abundance. Dr. Kirk Adams: Is that through efficiency? James Dykstra: Yeah, absolutely. Through efficiency, through the application of robotics, reasoning, material science breakthroughs, manufacturing breakthroughs, and of course, energy production. We are making significant advances in all of these areas and the what we like to call downstream impact or like positive lift downstream from all of these advances is extremely cheap transportation in the future. James Dykstra: Extremely cheap manufactured goods, very likely extremely cheap services. With the advent of humanoid mass produced robotics. And the reason why we're seeing this really shocking, shocking Price decrease and it's anticipated over the next really the next three years, we're going to see a huge, huge transformation is because novel technologies have matured and converged in a very, very timely way. So robotics, which is which can be construed as unlimited physical labor and language models, coupled with well organized comprehensive data sets which can be construed as unlimited reasoning. New sensor types and new model types for gathering information. And so it's extremely exciting to see all of these factors come together. That said, every job in the future will be very likely performed differently than it is today. Many new jobs will exist, and at the same time, there will be great disruption and great frustration with the magnitude and sheer acceleration of this change. And so it's not going to be an easy road. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: But the end of the road is very, very bright where work will potentially, for many people, be optional. The baseline quality of living will be dramatically higher than it's ever been in the past. And with the significant enhancements in AI assisted health care, the quality of life will be equally better. We're talking about longevity, escape velocity where we're going to be adding a year and a half for every year that passes within 5 to 10 years. And so the future is very, very bright. And the technology will be a great equalizer amongst people because the ability to sense and gather data from the environment is more incredible right now than ever before. And all of that data can be processed in ways it could never be processed before and made available to us to consume. However, we'd like to consume it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I'm just thinking about access to visual information and AI. And it's all there very, very much sweeping the blindness and low vision communities, the smart glasses, for instance, where you can ask AI to describe what's in front of you or even describe a video with with really good accuracy. Of course, there are hallucinations. And if it's if it's if it's a matter of safety or privacy, you know, the need to verify. But I went to the sea Sun conference, the California State University, Northridge, large accessibility assistive technology conference. And the last one I went to most people were talking about access to visual information. And that was in 2025. And now in 2026, it, the focus shifted within 12 months. The image, the access to visual information seem to be an accepted new asset for us, and the next frontier seemed to be agentic AI. And I know when you were first describing Code Stack, you talked about agents or directors, AI directing various functions within companies. Can you talk a little bit about that, about the emergence of AI and whether or not I'm using the right, right terminology? James Dykstra: The the terminology is changing every day. And so you'll see an executive from Microsoft describing the same technology, different from differently from an executive from Nvidia. And so we're, we're still maturing and finding a common nomenclature for these wonderful technologies. My background in AI started with recommendation models and you know, in a pricing context. And then when I moved over to Microsoft, I helped initially lead business planning for the Microsoft Cloud for retail before expanding to include all of the other industries in my purview. And when just focused on retail, we were launching products such as Microsoft's Intelligent Recommendation service that could find visual matches and other predictive matching. And then, of course, over time, AI emerged in new modalities, new models such as small and large language models. And it was very exciting to be in that industry. Business planning capacity explore for each industry. What are the applications for a language model and new types of AI inference and compute heavy workloads to really improve lives with this technology. Because industry is a very, very beautiful thing because it gives us all of our modern products and services and conveniences that underpin our quality of life. James Dykstra: And so after rolling out a number of different models that were that pertained to specific industry applications, we then moved further toward, well, how do I couple this model with knowledge, tools, governance, and the ability to orchestrate across different tools to effectively create what's called an AI agent? By most these days, AI, as we're currently Describing it is really a collection of a number of foundational technologies where the model is only one piece, and without all the other pieces, it is defunct or unsafe. And so as we look to the future and we think about these language models that are equipped with knowledge and tools and governance and the ability to organize which tool should be called for, which purpose, and which data is acceptable to access for which purpose. We have a huge opportunity for us to task these, let's call them tool composites. And for all of us to have a team of direct reports that are the agents that we task to achieve our business outcomes or our creative pursuits. Dr. Kirk Adams: Amazing. Dr. Kirk Adams: So the time has flown. The time has flown by. I've took I've taken a lot of notes. I look forward to working more closely with you and team and learning more and getting a deeper understanding of the nuances of, of what you do. I know more now than I did before we started this conversation today. What, what would you like to leave people listening with? How can people get in touch? How can people connect with you? James Dykstra: Absolutely. I'd like to especially leave behind a message of hope. All of this change will be really challenging. And if we're able to work through these challenges together, we can create an incredibly beautiful future where we have options and where everyone is empowered to lead a fulfilling and gratifying life. So I want everyone, especially those who are involved in, in running businesses and creating some of that value that's going to positively impact the lives of others to consider beyond just the tool. The tool is very exciting. What foundational investments need to be made and what is the priority of those investments? Working backward from that priority business outcome. And so with code stack systems, we want to team up to support businesses that are going to improve lives with technology. And we want to do that by empowering them with the right tools that are powered by the right data. And so to reach out to me and the team, you can reach out to me via LinkedIn and anyone can schedule a meeting with me. Happy to have a one on one and talk and learn from others, and they are happy and welcome to visit the website Code Stack systems.com where they can sign up for a free consultation, where we sit down with business leaders and we learn about their priorities, and we work backward from those objectives. To help define a technology standpoint, what steps need to be taken for them to thrive in the future? Dr. Kirk Adams: Fabulous. Well I'm excited. My my my feelings about AI vacillate between concern and enthusiasm. You've tipped me toward you've tipped me a little bit toward the enthusiasm into the scale today, which I appreciate. And thanks, everyone for listening to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. To connect with me, my website is https://DrKirkAdams.com. You can sign up for my newsletter. You can fill out a contact form. I'm also on LinkedIn every day. Crossed paths with James on LinkedIn from time to time. And again, thanks for listening. And we'll we'll talk to you next time. Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Laura Bratton, Keynote Speaker, Author of Harnessing Courage, and Coach on Navigating Change with Grit and Gratitude

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Laura Bratton, Keynote Speaker, Author of Harnessing Courage, and Coach on Navigating Change with Grit and Gratitude https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-05-05-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-05-05-2026/] In this reflective episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with Laura Bratton [https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-bratton-speaking/], a professional speaker, author, and coach [https://www.laurabratton.com/] who lost her sight to an unnamed rod and cone dystrophy diagnosed at age nine and was totally blind by the end of high school. Bratton walks through her academic path from an undergraduate degree in psychology at Arizona State to a Master of Divinity at Princeton, where she was the program's first blind student and had to build her own self-advocacy playbook around accessible textbooks, testing accommodations, and screen reader workflows. Now an ordained United Methodist pastor, she frames her work around change management and the twin resources she calls grit and gratitude, the subject of her book Harnessing Courage: Overcoming Adversity Through Grit and Gratitude. The conversation digs into how those two resources function in practice. Bratton defines grit not as Southern "suck it up" stoicism but as acknowledging hard feelings and choosing to move forward anyway, and she defines gratitude as a daily mindset practice, naming three specific things from the day, that reframes perspective without papering over pain. She and Adams trade notes on the intertwined nature of psychological, spiritual, and physical healing, the role of mindfulness, breath work, and body scans in managing anxiety, and the everyday gratitude blind professionals feel for accessible technology, screen readers, and Braille materials. Bratton speaks primarily to associations and corporations navigating organizational change, recently to a real estate association and an athletic directors' group, and points listeners to LauraBratton.com for her book, speaking, and coaching work. TRANSCRIPT: Advertisement: This podcast brought to you by Pneuma Solutions. Advertisement: I can't see it. Advertisement: ADA Title II has a real compliance deadline. April 2026. Public entities are required to make their digital content accessible, including websites, PDFs, reports, applications, and public records. If a document cannot be read with a screen reader, it is not compliant and if it is not compliant, blind people are still being denied equal access. For a clear explanation of what the rule requires, visit www.title2.info. It's one of the leading resources explaining what agencies must do and when. This message is brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, we have remediated hundreds of thousands of pages in days, not months or years, aligned with WCAG 2 AA guidelines at a fraction of traditional costs. Accessibility isn't a privilege, it's a right. Now that you know, ask your agencies a simple question, are your documents actually accessible? Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor 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, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everyone to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. And I am that Doctor Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a super interesting guest, Laura Bratton. Laura is a professional speaker and author, and we met, of course, via LinkedIn, but I will, I will not steal her thunder. I will let her tell you about her fascinating journey through life in a few moments. If you could just say, hi, Laura. Laura Bratton: Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm excited to be here. Dr. Kirk Adams: Absolutely. So for those of you who don't know me, I am a blind person. Have been since age five when my retinas detached. I went to the Oregon State School for the blind. First, second, third grade, learned my Braille, my cane travel, my typing, my independence, my sense of agency and internal locus of control, and all those things that set me up for successfully sinking and swimming through public school, starting in fourth grade, and then on through college and graduate school and getting my doctorate in leadership and change and all those things. I do live in Seattle, married for 40 years to my lovely college sweetheart. Two grown children, two amazing grandchildren. And I am the Executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion here in Seattle. And also managing director of my consulting practice, Innovative Impact, LLC. And I go through life pursuing fun, innovative, high impact projects that I think will accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of living and thriving. And I like to, I like to do projects with people I like and admire. And Laura, Laura is one of those. So I would just love to hand you the talking stick, Laura, and ask you to talk about where have you been and where are you now and where are you going? And I as host, I'll reserve the right to pop in with random questions as they occur to me. So the floor is yours. Laura Bratton: Absolutely. So I want to talk about what I do professionally, because that connects both the professional and the personal experience. So professionally, I'm a speaker, author, coach. And when I speak on is change management, how do we as companies, as organizations? And then even more so as individuals, how do we navigate through change? And what I wrote my book on, what I coach on, and then specifically what I speak on within that realm of change management, navigating through change is how do we use the resources of grit and how do we use the resources of gratitude to navigate through change so that we don't just experience change or shut down with fear or just shut down being overwhelmed. But we are able to experience that change and keep going and reach our goals, reach our potentials, use our gifts, have the purpose that we are in the world. And the reason that I speak on that and wrote my book on that and coach on that topic is because of my life experience. So at the age of nine, I was diagnosed with extremely rare eye condition, like continue pretty much normal, about the same until teenage years. Dr. Kirk Adams: And then and name that condition. Laura Bratton: It does not have a name. Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, wow. Okay. That's rare. Laura Bratton: I'm in my 40s now and we're still doing gene therapy. Gene therapy, gene testing. So it does not have a name. Dr. Kirk Adams: So how how did it manifest? I mean, lots of people listen to this podcast are blind or visually impaired or, or are interested in dynamics around visual impairment. So how. Laura Bratton: Does it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Manifest? Manifest. Laura Bratton: It manifested by my parents. It was just a slight change. So slight. So much so that as in me as a nine year old, I wasn't aware of the changes. My parents noticed very minor changes like holding the book a little bit closer to my face, or I would sit to the in the chair closest to the TV, rather than just anywhere in the den. Again, they weren't major drought drastic changes. So my parents just figured, okay, we'll go to the doctor, get her eyes checked. You know, maybe she's near-sighted. Far side needs a cute pair of pink glasses and we'll be on our merry way. That's what my parents assumed. That wasn't the reality at that visit. My. My eyes were dilated. Laura Bratton: The doctor took one look at me and said, there's something major going on with her retinas. We've got to figure out what's going on. So that led to a summer of doctor's appointments. I ended up at Emory University in Atlanta with a pediatric retina specialist. And that's where she didn't give me a formal diagnosis because they're still not a formal diagnosis. But she could confirm, yes, the cells of your retina are dying. So it's a rod and cone dystrophy. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Okay. Laura Bratton: So I lost my central first and then still had my peripheral. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. And where are you at now? Laura Bratton: Totally blind. Just very limited light perception. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Well, I spent my share. Share. I spent a good share of my childhood with pediatric retinal specialists as well. Laura Bratton: So you understand. Dr. Kirk Adams: We have that in common. My year was at Emory. Mine was at the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland. Laura Bratton: Okay. Okay, so you understand lots of blood work, right? Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And lots of lots of students looking into your eyes. Laura Bratton: Oh my God. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Oh, that is so true. That is 100% true. Dr. Kirk Adams: Another story for another day, but okay. Laura Bratton: No, that's a whole nother podcast. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I just wanted to establish. So basically, you're a totally blind person at this point in your life. Laura Bratton: Oh, yeah. Not basically I am. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Well, I, I I digressed you off of your your path, but well, no. Laura Bratton: It was perfect. Perfectly fits because I through the high school, I didn't just wake up one day and have no vision. It was a gradual process. Yet it was quick because by the end of high school, I was totally blind. So I would lose a lot of vision and there were plateaued for about a year, and then I'll lose a lot more vision and then plateau for a while. So again, by the end of high school, I was totally blind and have what I have now just light perception. So during that transition of obviously going from fully sighted in a sighted world to now being blind in a sighted world, I had to figure out how to adapt. I had to figure out how to adjust, how do I move forward and not be shut down with anxiety, not be overwhelmed by the both the present and the future. So that's where over time, clearly it wasn't overnight, but over time, I learned the balance of grit and the balance of gratitude. And so that's why I speak on and wrote my book on and coach on. How do we navigate through change? Because I, I lived through it and still, as you can relate, lives as a person without sight in the sight of the world. Yes. I'm adapted. Yes, I'm adjusted. And yet there's still those daily frustrations aggravations where we need those resources. So that's the reason I speak and do what I do professionally is because of my personal life experience. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, tell us about your book. Laura Bratton: So Harnessing Courage. First, I want to talk about the title. The title just makes me smile. And I absolutely love the title. And I worked with a publisher very closely on naming specifically that. So in between those few months in between high school and college, I got my first guide dog. So my first guide dog through college, grad school, first few years of profession. And then I got my second guide dog. I had her for also about 11 or 12 years, and then she died about two years ago. So in respect and just with gratitude for those two guide dogs and the gift that they were to me, that's why I named it harness. And so the harness, obviously, I know, you know, but just for anyone listening, the harness is the leather strap that goes around the dog that then the blind person holds the handle. So it took a lot of courage for me to hold that harness and move forward. And also for that dog, they had to trust me, depend on me to take care of them as they were my eyes. So just out of respect for the gift they were to me, I named it Harness and Courage because throughout the book I talk about every day, we have to harness that courage as we navigate through change. Laura Bratton: So that's why I wrote it. So the titles Harness and Courage. The subtitle is Overcoming Adversity Through Grit and Gratitude. And the purpose of the book is not to be a one, two, three felt. Read this and in 30 days you will be happy. Or the 30 days you know you will have a joyful life forevermore. The point of the book is to be a resource, to be a resource, to say, this was my personal experience of going through and becoming blind. Here are the resources I found to navigate through. How can you also apply the grit and also apply the gratitude as you go through your adversity? So it's not just for people who are blind, it's for any of us going through adversity, going through loss. On how do we navigate through? And so again, it's not a self-help. It's a resource on how can you apply these. So like I wrote a chapter on accepting our new normal. I wrote a chapter on becoming comfortable in our own skin. So again, that applies to any of us going through loss, going through trauma, going through adversity. So that's, that's the point and the goal of the book. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I, I do want to ask you about your academic career because it is also really unique. I learned about when we had our first conversation. Laura Bratton: So I went to undergrad at Arizona State and I majored in psychology. And then I went to grad school at Princeton and got a divinity. Oh, I said that backwards. A master's in divinity. And the reason, the purpose for that. And now I'm an ordained pastor in the ordained clergy in the United Methodist Church. And the reason for that is, as I went through my own personal journey of adapting and adjusting while continuing to move forward, it was evident through me, to me, through my lived experience. Healing was not just psychological. Healing was not just spiritual healing was that mind, body, spirit, connection all intertwined. So getting my undergrad in psychology was great and wonderful, yet I knew I wanted to look at it holistically. How does the spiritual theological play in with our physical healing, with the emotional healing, with the psychological healing? So that was. Dr. Kirk Adams: Could you could you talk a little bit about that? How do you how do you how do you see that? What is the shape? Laura Bratton: So what I mean by that is, again, from my personal experience, I did just not Adapt and heal. And what I mean by healing is regaining my confidence, regaining that, okay, I'm comfortable in my own skin. I'm comfortable who I am as a person who's blind in a sighted world. My healing was not just psychological. I didn't just go to a therapist and meet with a therapist once a week and say, ta da, I'm healed. Life is good. I'm adapting, I'm adjusted. But yet it wasn't just all spiritual. It wasn't just, okay, I have a spiritual practice. I have a spiritual faith. That's my anchor. I move on or it wasn't just, okay, let me focus on exercising. Let me focus on mindfulness. Let me focus on eating healthy. And that's how I heal. It was all of those connected. It was learning mindfulness practices. It was having that workout routine. It was having those learning those healthy sleep patterns. It was having that gratitude practice, leaning on those spiritual mentors and guides. It was connecting and meeting with a therapist. So that's what I mean. It wasn't just one resource. It was multiple resources connecting all intertwined that you really can't separate them. So that's what I found in my own experience. And then working with so many other people in different types of loss. Dr. Kirk Adams: Curious about how do you practice gratitude? Just like the, the actual tactics, the mechanics of what, what do you do personally? Laura Bratton: So I have to share how gratitude originally started for me. And then that'll make it clear why I practice what I practice today. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, okay. Laura Bratton: So I want to make it clear I did not wake up one day and say, oh geez, this life is great. I love being a teenager who all of a sudden different, you know, like no longer normal. This is wonderful. I'm so thankful to have to learn Braille. So I didn't just wake up and instantly become grateful. The way that gratitude came to me was towards the end of high school, I had a mentor say to me, Laura, I want you to start developing a mindset of gratitude. Well, let me put it in context. I grew up in the Deep South, in the southeast of the United States. So what do you do? You smile and nod and say thank you. Right? Like you don't challenge. And this is like late 90s. So you don't challenge you don't you just smile and nod and act happy all the time and say, yes, ma'am. So I did that in my head. I'm thinking, oh, wow, you are a terrible mentor. Like, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm grieving. I don't have anything to be grateful for. So only in my stubbornness did I say, okay, I'm going to prove to her I have nothing to be grateful for. I'm going to try this, but it's only out of stubbornness that I can say to her, by the way, lady who doesn't need to be mentoring teenagers, I have nothing to be grateful for. So part of what or mainly what she said to me was to start this practice. I want you to think about every day. At the end of the day, three people, places, situations from the day that you're grateful for. Laura Bratton: So it's not just your general family food shelter. It's very specific from that day. Yeah. So again, that's why I'm the whole thing. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. This is crazy. I'm anxious, depressed. Absolutely not. The one day became a week. The week became a month. And what I slowly realized over time was she was not saying. Be grateful for the blindness. Be grateful in everything. For everything. All the time. Walk around being happy, smiley, joyful, blah blah. She was teaching me to develop a mindset that allows me to be grateful for what I have in the midst of life, in the good, in the bad, in the mundane, in it all. That's what she meant by a practice of gratitude. So it started for me by saying, no, I'm not grateful for having these challenges and difficulties and adversity in life, but I am grateful for is technology that makes the computer accessible so I can learn and use jaws, and now use VoiceOver so that the computer is accessible. No, I'm not grateful for this life, but what I am grateful for is that older brother who just continue to treat me like that annoying little sister. Vision or no vision, right? Like, yeah, I'm. I'm in. God, you know, he's in college. I'm in high school. He still thinks I'm annoying. He was always in my sight, right? I'm still that sister that drives me crazy. I was so grateful for that normalcy. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Laura Bratton: So that was how I reframed and changed that perspective. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. Laura Bratton: On being grateful. Dr. Kirk Adams: And I'm guessing that you talked about how everything's intertwined and you can't pull these threads separately out of, out of your, your healing, which talked about regaining your confidence. But I'm guessing the gratitude practice and mindfulness practice must be closely intertwined. Laura Bratton: Absolutely. Dr. Kirk Adams: Pay as you pay attention to the present, the present, now moment, as the Dao says. Laura Bratton: Right? So mindfulness told me thoughts or thoughts, they come and go. Thoughts are not absolute facts. So before I learned about mindfulness and before I took a class in mindfulness, I thought, you know, when I have an anxious thought, oh gosh, I'm going to be anxious for now forever, I'm going down this deep dark hole. What mindfulness and the practice of mindfulness taught me was, okay, I have that thought that I'm anxious. That's just a thought. I get to decide what do I do with that thought? And the other major gift that mindfulness gave me was focusing on my breath. I realized that as I became anxious, my breath was shallow, and that gave me the opportunity to realize, oh, there goes my shallow breath. I need to turn towards my breath and think about breathing from my diaphragm, not the short, shallow breaths and what mindfulness also told me. Was the gift of the body scan. Noticing. Where am I holding tension in my body? Because again, when I was anxious, I didn't realize I was tensing, my shoulders tensing, my stomach tensing my feet. I didn't realize that. But once I became aware of how my body is reacting, I could relax my shoulders, release my feet, release my hands, you know? So my body was relaxed. So yeah, you said it perfectly. They're so intertwined, you can't pull out those threads. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Laura Bratton: So the, the gift I want to give to everyone on gratitude is start your gratitude practice by thinking, at the end of the day, what you're grateful for. Even if you're like me and listening and saying, you are weird, I have nothing right before in my life. I'm not going to do it. Be stubborn. Right? Like do what I was doing, prove me wrong, and try to think of things you're grateful for. Three is just a number that our. Our. It's easy for our brain to connect with. It could be one. It could be ten. If it's two or if it's seven, that's okay. The point is not the number. The point is just that you start to get in the habit of thinking about what you're grateful for. Dr. Kirk Adams: So so this morning, the three things I wrote down, three things I am especially grateful for today. Rachel coming home. Our daughter has a ten hour layover in Seattle. She's trying to LA from LA to Miami through Seattle to land at ten tonight and leave at eight tomorrow morning. She'll be here. And she she requested split pea soup, so my wife's making split pea soup. So I wrote Rachel Coming home, Braille books because I got some Braille books on the porch yesterday from library and our tax return. Amy. So those are my three from yesterday. Laura. Laura Bratton: That is awesome. That is great. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So do you. You do you use terms like breath work and body work. Can you talk about the body scan and breathing? Laura Bratton: Are those absolutely 100% 100%. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I was thinking about grit, grit and gratitude and how they work together and reinforce each other. And it reminded me of a, I honestly can't say which of the zillion books I read during my, my, my PhD in Leadership and Change program. But I was talking about transformational change and the analogy was concrete and rainbows. You know, you need, you need rainbows to maintain the vision and the bigger picture and the spiritual and the light. But then you need the concrete because you need to really build, build. Yes, some something tangible. So. Oh, I. Laura Bratton: Love that image. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. When you said grit and gratitude, it made me think of concrete. Laura Bratton: Oh, I love rainbows. Dr. Kirk Adams: As, you know, two, two dynamics that work together. So would love to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on how grit gratitude worked together. Laura Bratton: And then can I use that image? I'll give you credit. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, well, I took it from someone else and I can't attribute it, but I should look it up anyway. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how grit and gratitude reinforce one another and work together. Laura Bratton: Yeah, that's a perfect analogy because we need them both and sometimes one more than the other. And yet. But it can't be all one or the other. So let me explain how I define grit. So growing up in the well, my context was growing up in the South. So I'm just speaking from my context. Grit was suck it up, get over it. Don't acknowledge your pain. Certainly don't show others your pain and just move on. How I've learned to define grit is Acknowledging and validating our feelings and still choosing to move forward. So when we have those sadness, anger, grief, tears, it's not jumping over it and saying, stop, stop, get over it. It's saying, feel that. Acknowledge that as your real lived experience. Then choose to have the chassis, the shrink to move forward. So again, a real world example for me, it's not okay when I'm feeling anxious, stopping, or running my anxiety for the rest of the day. It's okay. I'm feeling anxious. Let me acknowledge that and still choose to send that email, make that phone call, even though it makes us right? Like you, you still just do the hard thing. So it takes tenacity and determination and courage to do that. Yet as the concrete. Yet with that, the gift of gratitude is that balance because it acknowledges, okay, in my anxiety, I'm feeling really, really anxious about the situation, and I'm thankful I can get through this because blah, blah, blah. So let me give you a real. That sounds good and great, but let me give you a real tangible example. When I'm feeling anxious about a situation, or let's just say specifically an email I have to send, I grit looks like acknowledging that anxiety. Laura Bratton: Gratitude looks like saying, okay, I'm still anxious, even though I'm not acknowledging my anxiety yet. I'm grateful I have the technology that allows me to send this email. And so I'm going to choose in the email even though I'm still anxious. So the gratitude does not cover up. Needing the strength, needing the courage, needing the tenacity. What it does is gives us perspective. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. That's great. And that's you, you elaborate on that in your book? Laura Bratton: Yes, absolutely. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, let's let's talk about speaking. I know you're a speaker and you you enjoy speaking and you are a high impact speaker. So would would love to just get a little taste of the types of things you talk about and who, who are your ideal audiences, who you most resonate with? Laura Bratton: So who I speak to are most is associations. I also speak a lot to corporations. And specifically I work with each organization on what is the change that they're going through. From two perspectives. And then I'll give you a real world example of just recently. So Sometimes I speak to organizations and I'm empowering the leaders to be the grit and gratitude. For example, I recently spoke to a real estate association, and so I was empowering those brokers, those real estate agents to be the grit and gratitude as they work with their clients. And then other times, like a few weeks ago, I was speaking to an association of athletic directors, and I was also empowering them to have grit and gratitude as they go and work with their coaches, work with their athletes. So specifically with this association of athletic directors, the challenge they're experiencing and facing is, is clearly as their athletes are social, you know, the pressures of social media and all the pressures of if you play baseball, you know, it's assumed you're going to the NBA or if you play baseball, you're on the MLB, you know? Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah. Laura Bratton: The intense pressure that our youth are under. These athletic directors have to be equipped with the resources to help them help their youth navigate through these new challenges, the changes that they're constantly experiencing. Yeah. So it was my they were bringing me in. It was my goal to speak on how do you navigate through on a day to day basis? How do you apply grit and how do you apply gratitude to empower your youth? Yeah. So that's, that's just one specific example of how I tailor it to the individual needs of the organization. So the foundation is always the same. Navigating through change with the grit, with the gratitude. And yet it looks different for each organization on what their specific change is that they're going through. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. And I'm, I'm guessing the master's in divinity program at Princeton had not had a lot of totally blind students in their program. So I, I'm very, very interested in hearing about your experience of in graduate school as a blind person. And I assume you got to practice a lot of grit and gratitude in, in that process. Laura Bratton: So I was the first blind person to go through the program. So you're right, they had not had many. They had not zero. Right. So yeah. Okay. So I want to talk about how the grit and gratitude applied there. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Laura Bratton: Being the first, they didn't know what resources I needed. They didn't know how to adapt. They didn't know how to adjust. They didn't know how to make this program accessible. What does she need? So what it taught me. And the gift that it gave me being the first, is it taught me how to advocate for myself. So it took deep grit to advocate and to learn. Hey professors, I need my textbooks in PDF document. This is why. Because I use the software on my computer to read all the documents. And also, I work. Once I have my textbooks in PDF, I would work with the professors on, you know, I need double time on my testing, right? Like I need my testing either in Braille or then most of the time I did, they would just email because again, there was no testing center because I was the first one. But, you know, to send to have my test in accessible word doc format. And here's why I need double time, not so that I can use my notes and look up the notes and all that, but because of the time it takes using a screen reader. So again, just recently going blind, I didn't know how to advocate for myself. So that Princeton gave me the opportunity to learn how to advocate for myself. How do I clearly communicate my needs and state? These are my needs. These are why my needs. And here's how we'll work together to do it, to accomplish this successfully. So that was a deep gift of learning that advocacy because I'd never had to do it before. I didn't know, I didn't know what I needed, right? Because I was sighted, so I didn't know it. Right, right. But that it was extremely hard being the first, but yet it was a deep, deep gift because it taught me how to advocate. Dr. Kirk Adams: That's great. Laura Bratton: And the other the other gift was they didn't give me any like, oh, sweetie, we'll grade you less. Not as hard. Less rigorous on this paper. This exam. Because you're blind. Sweet girl. You know, like you'll just pass. They still, you know, grading my papers and tests just as hard. Dr. Kirk Adams: Which expectations? Laura Bratton: Exactly. Which was also a deep gift. Yes, because it taught me. You're still you. You are. Can I use this blindness as a crutch or as a victim card or as a path card? Yeah. Like you're still the same standards as every other student. So it, it was a great gift to me being the first on so many levels. Yeah, that could be a whole nother episode. Dr. Kirk Adams: And then I can remember, I remember being very grateful when I was, I started my PhD program in 2010 when I could actually find the article in electronic format. Oh yeah. Gateway. And I just read it with jaws without having to go through a bunch of steps. I always experienced immense gratitude. Laura Bratton: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, Laura, I'd love to just give you an opportunity to let people know how they can get in touch with you how they can find your book. How can people reach out if they would like to talk to you about coming to speak to their organization. You mentioned associations are particularly interesting to you. So how can people get in touch? Laura Bratton: The best place is my website. https://LauraBratton.com has all the resources on the speaking the book, the coaching, connecting on LinkedIn, emailing me. It's all it's all there. That's the best place to go. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, well, I will say the same. You can find me at my website, which is https://DrKirkAdams.com, and sign up for my newsletter and follow me on social and reach out if you want to talk to me about any aspect of accelerating, accelerating inclusion of people with disabilities in our society, in any aspect of society, and working together to create conditions for people with various impairments to thrive in this world. So thank you, Laura, for being part of the podcast today, and look forward to the next episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.DrKirkAdams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Cheryl Mitchell, Co-Founder and CEO, Access Forge

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Cheryl Mitchell, Co-Founder and CEO, Access Forge https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-04-28-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-04-28-2026/] In this heartfelt episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Cheryl Mitchell [https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylamitchell/], co-founder and CEO of Access Forge [https://accessforge.com/], to discuss Belonging by Design [https://belongingbydesign.com/], a new initiative aimed at helping faith-based communities and places of worship become genuinely accessible to people with disabilities. Cheryl traces her journey from volunteering as a reader for the late DC accessibility leader Don Galloway in the mid-1990s, through two decades managing federal disability initiatives in government contracting, to becoming a caregiver for her aging mother, an experience that surfaced everyday accessibility gaps in churches, hotels, and airports. Out of those observations, she and longtime collaborator Mark Bartlett (formerly of AbleGamers) launched Access Forge in 2025 to focus on the cultural, hospitality, and faith sectors she saw lagging furthest behind. The bulk of the conversation centers on Belonging by Design itself, a faith-agnostic training course built to help senior leaders, staff, and volunteer committees operationalize accessibility rather than treat it as a Section 508 checkbox. Cheryl walks through the framework, forming an accessibility committee that includes disabled members, setting SMART goals, and stacking short-term wins (a more accessible website, captioned sermons, accessible parking, emergency planning for disabled congregants) before tackling longer-term capital fixes. Kirk and Cheryl reflect candidly on why faith communities often lag on inclusion despite their stewardship ethos, touching on hidden disabilities, aging congregants, veterans with PTSD, and the sobering reality that a single bad experience can keep a person with a disability from ever coming back. Kirk closes with a memorable personal story of reading the entire 26-volume Braille Bible as an eight-year-old at his United Methodist Sunday school in Silverton, Oregon, anchoring the episode's larger point that in troubled times, community matters more than ever, and faith-based spaces should be among the most welcoming places anyone can find. Learn more from Cheryl and AccessForge Cheryl and her colleagues at AccessForge have built Belonging By Design™ [https://accessible.faith/dradams], an online leadership training that helps faith community leaders turn accessibility into a retention and trust strategy. The program includes more than four hours of structured video content, downloadable tools, and a peer learning community, all designed for executive decision-makers at congregations, ministries, and denominational organizations. Preview the first two lessons free [https://accessible.faith/dradams], or explore the full program here: https://accessible.faith/dradams [https://accessible.faith/dradams]. Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. If you enroll through it, I receive a commission at no additional cost to you. I only partner with organizations whose work I believe advances meaningful inclusion. TRANSCRIPT: Advertisement: This podcast brought to you by Pneuma Solutions. Advertisement: I can't see it. Advertisement: ADA Title II has a real compliance deadline. April 2026. Public entities are required to make their digital content accessible, including websites, PDFs, reports, applications, and public records. If a document cannot be read with a screen reader, it is not compliant and if it is not compliant, blind people are still being denied equal access. For a clear explanation of what the rule requires, visit www.title2.info. It's one of the leading resources explaining what agencies must do and when. This message is brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, we have remediated hundreds of thousands of pages in days, not months or years, aligned with WCAG 2 AA guidelines at a fraction of traditional costs. Accessibility isn't a privilege, it's a right. Now that you know, ask your agencies a simple question, are your documents actually accessible? Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor 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, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody to another episode of podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams in my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I am talking to a new friend and colleague, Cheryl Mitchell. Cheryl is co-founder and CEO of Access Forge and Access forge has a new initiative called Belonging by Design that is in the world to make faith based communities and places of worship more accessible for people with disabilities. Say say hi, Cheryl. Cheryl Mitchell: Hi, Kirk. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here, and it's great to reach your community and talk about this wonderful initiative that we're this project that we're working on. Dr. Kirk Adams: I was introduced to Cheryl by Mark Bartlett, who was formerly the leader at Able Gamers, and he and I had several conversations and and one of them, he said, you really need to get to know Cheryl. So we had one phone conversation, and then we were both at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and sat my wife, Roz was with us and we sat and talked for an hour or so. Learned a lot about belonging by design. And I started to kind of peel back those layers of all that Sheryl's done in this space and all she's doing now. So she she is a real champion and leader and pleased to have you here today. And as we as we talked before we started recording, just would really love to hand you the microphone and find out what your journey has been like so far and what's motivated you to get involved the way you have. Tell us about Access Forge. Tell us about Belonging by Design. And I'll I'll reserve the right as the host to pop in with questions as they occur to me. Hopefully they won't be too random, but looking forward to talking for the next half hour or so. The floor is yours. Cheryl Mitchell: Sure. Well, how it all started was I was a volunteer through Columbia Lighthouse for the blind in the mid 90s. And so the person who I was assigned to was Don Galloway. So Don had introduced me to this whole world of accessibility. I'm sure you know him because many people knew Don Galloway. Dr. Kirk Adams: I do, but others might not. So do you want to give us just a little. Cheryl Mitchell: Don Don was very active. Don Galloway was very active in the DC community. He was the accessibility coordinator for the DC government responsible for, you know, a lot of the accessibility issues that were happening back then. And I was assigned to him to read to him. I used to volunteer and I would read to him in the evenings. And I worked in marketing and social research. I was working at, I believe, the Institute of Medicine back then over at the National Academy of Sciences. And then I transitioned over to, you know, some.com companies and unfortunately got laid off. And Don would tease me and he'd say, I really could use your experience as a as a consultant and helping me do some work with like the statewide Independent Living Council and all this different stuff in addition to volunteering. But I could actually pay you while you're looking for work. And so we would joke about it. And then that's how he introduced me to the world and introduced me to a lot of people. And I ended up I still volunteered for him, but I ended up taking a job in government contracting for an organization that managed a lot of federal contracts that supported people with disabilities. Cheryl Mitchell: And so I spent the, the next like 20 years managing those federal initiatives from supported employment to some small projects to ticket to work to some of the work at nighter all the heavy hitters, office of disability employment policy employment for stuff like that. So I spent a lot of years advocating for people with disabilities, building partnerships with a lot of the disability organizations and nonprofit organizations that support people and quite really enjoyed it. And then my parents became ill and I was a caregiver, as well as working full time and supporting my family. But I discovered things as they were aging. I was trying to support them as a caregiver, and I was discovering how the systems were failing. And so I definitely wanted to make make a difference and try to improve those systems. So fast forward back in 2025, I really wanted to have my own consulting firm. And I had talked with Mark and we had, we were talking about some ideas. Dr. Kirk Adams: And how did you and Mark. Cheryl Mitchell: Mark. Mark and I met many years ago probably in the early 2000 through a former colleague that I used to work with when I was in marketing they worked together and she had mentioned to Mark. Mark was getting ready to start Ablegamers. And she said that he was doing this on the side and he was trying to, when he started the organization, he really was trying to help a family member get access to more resources. And she was like, you two need to meet because Sheryl's in the disability space and knows everyone from the federal contractors on. So we ended up going to lunch one day in Tysons because we both worked in Tysons Corner, because we both were government contractors. His background is was QA testing and stuff like that. So we ended up meeting and having lunch, and then I started rattling off like all these resources and people he should talk to and, you know, and he was just like, oh my gosh, you're a wealth. You're a wealth of knowledge. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah. Cheryl Mitchell: I've worked I've worked for all these government contractors. And I, I'm in all these meetings and I, and I manage it just so happened that I was managing this contract called the Interagency Committee on Disability Research. So it was all the agencies that fund or conduct research for people with disabilities. So, you know, that covered everybody. So all these meetings you'd be in, you'd hear of people. And so I started to tell them like, well, there's stuff here at NSF, there's opportunities. You really need to connect with these people. So that's how Mark and I met. So we met over 20 years ago. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. 20 years later, you're still working together. Cheryl Mitchell: I know we're yeah, we're still we're still in the field, still advocating just different in a different space now. Dr. Kirk Adams: So you, you brought us up to 2025 when I interrupted you. Is that when Access Forge started? Cheryl Mitchell: Yeah, we started Access Forge in 2025. And and it was the reason why I wanted to start was because I knew that there was work that I really wanted to do, that I wanted to specialize in. And since I was older, I really wanted to focus on the work that really had meaning for me. In my experiences, especially as a caregiver for my mom. So I wanted to work more in the cultural institutions, the hospitality side airports as well as faith based organizations, because I saw firsthand the struggles, the struggles of me as a caregiver for my mother, as well as seeing other people with disabilities struggle in those areas. And I really wanted to make some improvements, work with organizations to improve the systems so that they understood how to address people with disabilities because sometimes you're not, you know, they're not seen. And so I was just based on experience that I had with my mother. I remember I had an issue at a hotel chain. I'm not going to bring up the name and working through that through corporate office. And I'm thinking to myself, they need training, they need training, but they need training from a holistic level from the front desk to everyone. So that they understand, they understand this and and so based on those experiences, based on experience at the airport, etc., I wanted to make, I wanted to make a difference. Dr. Kirk Adams: So, so then as we talked about in January at CES, belonging by design is a specific focus in the faith, faith space, space. Cheryl Mitchell: Right? Access Forge. Yet one of the areas that we focus on at Access Forge is the faith based sector. Because we noticed that faith organizations are probably one of the last groups that really aren't addressing accessibility. They have the best intentions in terms of belonging and inclusion, but a lot of them don't really understand the friction points between like their digital front door or their physical, physical access of the buildings. And so as I was a caregiver for my mother, my mother was a former minister before she transitioned. And we used to talk and I used to bring her to church and I would notice issues at her church and I would bring them up and I would we would talk about them. And I wanted to really have the church understand how there's just small changes they could make that were low cost, that didn't cost a lot, but they just more of a training that they were more embracive and empathetic and understanding to everyone. And so based on the conversations, observations that I had, I had other friends that mentioned to me in passing that had disabilities, that they were having issues in their church. And they'd asked me, since I had an accessibility background, would I talk to their church? I ended up talking to a church, you know, a couple of different churches and explaining how they could, you know, their senior leadership. I go, these are changes that can happen. It's not looking at the individual. There's probably more people in your church that have visual impairments or different issues. Cheryl Mitchell: They have hidden disabilities, not just physical disabilities. And there's better ways of addressing and making sure that you're being truly inclusive. So we kind of went through a lot of this information and I realized I'm like, I need to package this in a way where it can be training. So that I can actually package it and be able to share it with as many faith based organizations. So Mark and I were talking. We developed this framework with all the different modules, and we wanted to make it in a way where there were resources and tools. We talked about, you know, funding opportunities in the event that churches wanted to do long term fixes. We wanted to provide them with short term wins so that if they were, you know, if they couldn't afford to do anything right now, they could look at their website, make some changes, reach out to their congregation, ask some questions, ask how they can better support them. You know, talk to young parents with children with disabilities. Talk to the aging, the aging worshippers, because there are things that can be done. And we wanted to make sure that we kind of packaged in a way that made sense. So we created this course called Belonging by Design, which helps faith leaders operationalize accessibility, because a lot of them think that accessibility is like section 508 compliance. It's very technical, and we're looking at this from the whole list of are you treating people? Is everybody experiencing the same thing, regardless of their disability. Cheryl Mitchell: So when they're at church, are they able to follow along? Are your, you know, sermons caption is there. You know what I mean? So there's little things that we are trying to talk about or is everything has captions or if they have if they're just being inclusive in their whole training, holistic training from the greeters, people meeting you from the front door or parking, is there accessible parking? How much parking is there? Visitor parking, etc.. What happens if there's an emergency? How would you how would you handle that? If there are people with disabilities that aren't familiar with your setup or your organization? So we really kind of went through some topics and came up with a very robust, robust framework and training. And we wanted to make sure that it was faith agnostic because we recognize that people with disabilities belong to all faiths all over the world, and we knew that we were not trying to interfere with the ministry of the church. We were giving them the foundation for them to do the training, to be able to train volunteers, to be able to identify a project plan and how they can work through tackling some of these issues. And so we didn't want any faith to be offended because it's like, you can still continue with your teaching, teachings and doctrine, but this is just a holistic approach of how you can operationalize faith. Accessibility within your organization. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So, so I was thinking, of course, prior to getting into this conversation with you about a couple of things. You know, I know during the civil rights era, there were statements made talking about black Americans and white Americans at the most segregated hour of the week is 11 to noon on Sundays, because that's when people were at church. It was not a great, great segregation voluntary at churches. But then you know, I was at a Seattle Cultural access consortium all day deep dive into access of the arts. And one of the speakers was indigenous, Native American from a tribe in this area here in the Seattle area. And they were talking about at our powwows, you see people in wheelchairs and you see walkers. And it's because we we don't leave auntie at home. When the family goes, everybody goes. And then I was thinking about that and then I was thinking about, you know, we we know something like 70% of disabilities are non-apparent. But if you if you look at disabilities, depending on as you know, you used to work for the government. Dr. Kirk Adams: But there's different statistics that tell different stories. But you know, something around 20%, you would think of the population as some sort of a disability. So that would mean something like 20% of the people attending a worship service or a faith, faith based place of worship, you would think something like 15, 20% of the people in that room would be people with disabilities. But I'm guessing we're not seeing that demographic representation in most congregations. So I just wondered what your reflections would be on any of that, on the intersectionality of disability and, and other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.. Right. And I guess, I guess my cynical self would, I don't, yeah, I guess cynical self would say, well, the church should be the most inclusive place. You should see the greatest percentage of people with disabilities. You know, at, at, at a worship service. So just, just your thoughts, any of that, any of this cultural, any of this rooted in other social psychosocial dynamics. What do you think about that? What do you think about this stuff? Cheryl Mitchell: Yeah, it's interesting because I was at a church and disability conference that was held in, in the DC area last week. So I was interested to hear their conversations of churches, some organizations, some ministries that are wanting churches wanting to do better. But what I found interesting was that with the church, it's in the church. And if and if it's a Christian based church, they are using the Bible as reference. So there's stories of people with disabilities all throughout the Bible. Just saying. And what I find interesting is like you said, There are people that are attending services, and I think a lot of churches aren't asking the question of, you know, who's who's in the congregation, how best they can support. And you would think that a church where they're based on stewardship wanting to serve the community that they would be already pro, you know, pro reactive in making sure that our doors are welcoming, they're open, they're inclusive, we understand or we're making attempts to understand how best to serve our community. And like you said, Kirk many churches, they think they're doing something, but they don't realize that they are until somebody actually brings it up. And what I heard at the conference, some parents that have children with disabilities that have more of the hidden disabilities, they're not comfortable talking with senior leadership. But there were pastors and senior leadership people at the conference. And even through the research that we did before we created the course that there are, there are many that are interested. Cheryl Mitchell: And let's face it, at this point in 2026, you know, somebody who has a disability, who's aged into a disability or has a temporary disability due to having surgery, having, you know, knee replacement, hip replacement, or, you know, like my mother having she acquired some disabilities later on in life. There's, there's dementia, there's Alzheimer's, there's all of these things, there's all different types of people who are walking through veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. A lot of, a lot of trauma has happened in people's lives and they go to church for comfort. But what's ironic is a lot of times people with disabilities, they may go, but if they have a bad experience, They don't. They no longer attend. They won't attend again to that church and they may just stay home. And this is a form of community involvement. And you would think the church would be really behind this, which many like I said, some are changing, but as a whole, a lot of faith based organizations are behind. And that's why this was something kind of, of since I was a caregiver for my mother, I worked in the field. I wanted something, a product where any faith based organization could use. We didn't want to interfere with their ministry. Right. You know, but you need you need to address, you need to address these concerns. Dr. Kirk Adams: So the Belonging by design course that you've created that will help senior leaders, administrators to understand better how to create an environment where people would be Encouraged would be comfortable and self disclosing that, you know, this is the impairment, whether it's visual hearing, cognitive mobility. And I would have a better, better experience. If you knew about this, if you took this into account, if you made this small change. So as part of it, just to open the listening you know, I would, I would think a lot of people in leadership positions and faith based communities are volunteers. They may not have experience in, in these spaces like, like you and I do. So just really curious about the content of the course and the learning outcomes and who's, who's the, who's the intended audience, what, what are, what are the changes you hope to be making by offering? Well. Cheryl Mitchell: The goal, like we, we broke it into different modules. So module one the goal is that either a faith based leader or a faith delegate staff, or even if they delegate some volunteers because, as you know, most churches operate on volunteers. That's why we when we were setting this up, we wanted to make sure that there were resources and tools because we noticed that there was a lot of a lot of, or like the work that we saw. They were talking about the why, but they weren't talking about how like how to implement what to do. And we wanted them to have a strong foundation of building spaces where access leads to belonging and belonging leads to engagement and engagement fuels growth. So we wanted to make sure that, like the first two lessons that they can unlock for free, anybody who goes to our website, it's accessibility dot faith, where they can see the belonging by design, all the different chapters of the training. We talk about the learning objectives, things like that for each section and how long it is. And then of course, how many resource tools and handouts are associated with each section. So for example, if a if a pastor is not, say he doesn't have a accessibility volunteer committee and has no idea what to do we wrote out like step by step in terms of what to do, like how to make a request, you know, over, you know, over your weekend service or through your newsletter or whatever, and then how you would motivate and empower the volunteers. Cheryl Mitchell: We talked about the roles, why it's important that they see your support from the very beginning, and they see how you're going to be supporting this, even if you're delegating it to a small group of committee, you'll identify a leader, and then there will be additional people that will be a part of that, and how you need to have people make sure there's representative people that have disabilities within the within that group so that you get that feedback. And then of course, how they would check in, how they would check in with the pastor because the pastor is always busy. You know, the senior pastor is busy, so he can't be involved in everything, but he still has a responsibility to check in to make sure that things are moving forward. And we're teaching the, the staff, the volunteer staff how to stay focused. What are Smart goals? You know, focus on the project. Don't get out of scope. And we teach them basic project management tools within the resources so that they can have successful wins and actually have little wins and be able to work on work on projects, smart goals that can be done in 30 days. So the short term goals versus long term goals. Dr. Kirk Adams: So you mentioned you mentioned the website where people can go. I'm going to put a link in the show notes of this podcast that people can use, and please do. So I'm guessing if someone is listening who is part of a faith based community or has a family member who has a disability, who would like to be more involved, they can take this information to the leadership of their congregation and urge them to click on that link and download those first free two lessons and hopefully take it all the way through as. Cheryl Mitchell: They can listen. They can unlock the first two lessons with their email address so they can listen. And then of course, we encourage, we encourage, you know, family members, you know, if you belong to a faith based organization. Yeah, there are eight minutes a piece, the two lessons that you can unlock. Okay. But at least this way you're hearing this and there's a lot of information, and then you can bring this to your faith based organization and share it with them because they're able to purchase it or, or anyone can purchase this training. They can purchase it and and get all the resources and tools. And the other benefit is that when someone, when someone does sign up, there's access to the online community for a year. So we also, in addition to all of this, we have special guests that speak. So there might be somebody that speaks on Alzheimer's or whatever. It's all based on we, we, we provide different programming, but we also want to hear from, from everyone who's part of this part of the community because we want to make sure that we're serving the community. Dr. Kirk Adams: I just had a flashback. I was probably eight years old, and my parents would take us and drop us off at Sunday school. They didn't attend church, but I think they appreciated the. Some time away from their children on a Sunday mid-morning. But it was the United Methodist Church in Silverton, Oregon. Okay. I later became the part of United Methodist Youth and was part of the Bell Choir to middle school, which was awesome. But the, the, the congregation gifted me a Braille copy of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, 26 Braille volumes. Cheryl, which took up a whole shelf in our entryway of our home. And being, being a blind kid, living out in the country with often not a lot to do and a little access to all the Braille I wanted. I read that, I read the I read it old testament, new testament. And I know sometimes I had mentioned people would mention, do you read the Bible? And I'd say, well, I read it. They say the whole thing. I said, yeah, I guess the whole thing when I was eight years old, I think. But how long did it take? Do you. Cheryl Mitchell: Remember how long it took. Dr. Kirk Adams: You? A whole summer, for sure. Probably longer than that. I remember yeah. Dug. Dug. Right in. But this is tremendous. I think not to get political, but in these troubled times, we need community more than ever. People need to be able to find places of support and solace and hope and faith based communities provide all that and more. So what you're doing is, is really important. And again, let people know one more time how they can get involved with belonging by design. Cheryl Mitchell: Sure. They can go to our website. They can either go to https://accessforge.com. That's the name of the company. But we normally use access access access https://accessible.faith [https://accessible.faith] you can go directly to. Yeah https://accessible.faith [https://accessible.faith]. You can go directly to https://belongingbydesign.com [https://belongingbydesign.com]. And we have we have videos. We have we have a lot of information about the framework. And like I said, you can view the whole course outline and it talks about the learning objectives for each one. Dr. Kirk Adams: And we're making it easy, easy for you. There's a link in the show notes of this podcast. So go. Go for it. Check it out. Refer people to it. Bring it to your faith based community. Encourage people to get involved with making your communities more accessible for everybody. And with that, thank you so much, Cheryl. If anyone wants to get in touch with me, my website is https://DrKirkAdams.com [https://DrKirkAdams.com], and you can sign up for my email newsletter there. You can reach out to me the contact form. I'm happy. I'm happy to talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere without making the world a more accessible place for people with disabilities and more inclusive place for everybody. So thank you, Cheryl. So let's talk again and we'll check on your progress. A few months down the road. Cheryl Mitchell: Yes. Thank you so much. Dr. Kirk Adams: Thanks, everyone. Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.DrKirkAdams.com [https://www.DrKirkAdams.com]. Together we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.