Why do many workplaces exclude people with disabilities? To engage and get the maximum out of your community, you have to be inclusive. Melanie Parish’s guest is Tova Sherman, the award-winning CEO of reachAbility. ReachAbility is an organization that provides supportive and accessible programs dedicated to workplace inclusion for anyone facing barriers. In this episode, Melanie and Tova discuss Tova’s new book, Win, Win, Win! The 18 Inclusion-isms You Need to Become a Disability Confident Employer. Join in the conversation and learn how people don’t come with instructions, why it’s not a lack of capacity that keeps persons with disability out of the workplace, and why leadership from the top-down has to acknowledge that bias exists against persons with disability so they can address it. 

—

Listen to the podcast here

Workplace Inclusion: Bringing People With Disabilities To The Workforce With Tova Sherman

I’ve been thinking about leadership and how often my own fears of getting it wrong get in the way of me being a strong and vibrant leader. That holding back that I do when I’m afraid I’ll get a word wrong or I won’t understand something fully. I am struggling to try to teach myself a new way of leaping over that. To be more bold, authentic and willing to take personal risk as a leader. To learn the skills of what I do after I do get it wrong because I’m not scared and I’m not playing small. If I play big, how do I invite people into the conversation when I get it wrong to help me learn and adapt as quickly as I can? 

This feels super hard to me personally because I have this way of being. I want to appear smart. I want to appear like I’m getting it right, but the more I learn, especially about equity, diversity and inclusion, the more I know I’m probably going to get it wrong. The bravest thing I can do is to leap, get it wrong and learn. I feel nervous about stepping into this new place, but I am finding that the more I step, the more I skill up. They’re almost like the faster I leap, the faster I learn. I hope that this is something that you might want to be braver about and think about how you can leap so that you can learn. 

—

I’m here with Tova Sherman. She’s a TEDx speaker and a thought leader with more than 25 years of experience in diversity and inclusion. She’s the award-winning CEO of reachAbility, an organization that provides supportive and accessible programs dedicated to workplace inclusion for anyone facing barriers. She is the author of the new book, Win, Win, Win! The 18 Inclusionisms You Need to Become a Disability Confident Employer. 

—

I’m super excited to be here with you, Tova. I can’t wait to learn all about you. 

I’m excited to be with you as well as we do talk about some experimental ideas around leadership and coaching, specifically in my world, which is that of inclusion of persons with disabilities. 

What are you working on right now in your work in leadership? 

There’s a lot going on but that’s my nature. I’m a person who lives on the ADHD spectrum. I call it a rainbow without all the color because you’ve got your mild, medium and severe. Beyond that rainbow, I tend to be very severe. I come to you now, not only as a person who has been in the field of disability education for many years but also as a person who has been living with disability, and comes from a family where everyone lived uniquely with their own challenges and their own disability. 

It’s so important to think about that familial piece. I’m part of the queer community and so I think of marginalization, but then I think about how that impacts my whole family like how it impacts my kids. It’s like they grapple with things that other people don’t grapple with. They have to find their own way too, and their kids will have to find their way through it all too, talking about their queer grandparents. 

It’s a great point. The only common thread I can come up with at the moment around the LGBTQ community, the BIPOC community. For those who aren’t familiar with the term BIPOC, which we use a lot, that includes our Black, Indigenous, as well as any People Of Color. Newcomers, as we like to call them here in Nova Scotia. More importantly, we are inclusive of everyone. In the continuity pieces, we will all live with a disability. It doesn’t matter what our culture is. In a sense, it’s a culture within a culture. The self-stigmatization combined with our institutional stigmatization of the idea of even saying the word, “I’ve got a disability,” within those subcultures is almost a second strike you’ve got to work with. That’s heartbreaking to me.  

My latest project is the release of this book, which brought together my 25 years of training around the inclusion of persons with disabilities. That’s called Win, Win, Win! I do believe in three wins. It is inclusionism you need to become disability confident. Although the title says employer, because I want employers to hear this, I also want everyone to hear that all of us need to be more disability confident because why would we stigmatize ourselves? 

As people live longer, we have so many people who are struggling with a health issue or a disability. The whole range of that and being cognizant of our impact and being cognizant of separating people from their disability to me is important. My mom had MS from the time she was in high school. My entire life, she had a physical disability that became worse and worse over her lifetime. I grew up quite aware of the impact of that on her life, but also the impact of that on our lives, and how we framed our lives and our interactions with others. 

An important point about our own selves and our families. There isn’t someone who doesn’t have that story because truth be told, we all have our story. That creates me as a first-person voice. Meaning I live with it, I have it, I acknowledge it, I’m working through it. I do not take medication or therapy for my ADHD spectrum disorder, but I do continue to utilize therapy and medication to manage my depression and anxiety. It allows me to be here with you and communicate the passion that I’ve always had but maybe wasn’t quite able to figure out how to get out there. 

I had a kid who was diagnosed with a learning disability and I learned a lot in that process. In that process, they looked at IQ and then they looked at performance and where there was a gap, they saw that as a disability. If it’s a disability, then how do you accommodate to help get him to his highest potential? I can say we were highly successful in that. We always say that he worked so hard. Because of it, he developed this incredible work ethic. He’s going to knock it out of the park in university because he had to work so hard. 

He has the resilience because he’s had to, whereas some kids who maybe don’t face some certain challenges or losses, or unique traumas in their lives don’t have that experience. One of my isms that I want to share with you is people don’t come with instructions. That’s how we are successful in working with our kids. Just because you know Tova with ADHD spectrum disorder does not mean you know ADHD spectrum disorder. 

One of my isms is always to not think about it as, “You’re that group,” but rather, “You’re that person.” We are not IKEA furniture, as I like to say. We don’t come with instructions and I couldn’t put them together even if it was IKEA furniture. More importantly, as people, if we’re individualizing our accommodation of them both as friends, family or coworkers, you’re going to see improvement in productivity. Why? Because of that resilience, creativity, and that unique perspective that they’re going to bring to the table that no one else will have because they had to come from it from a different perspective. 

Win, Win, Win!: The 18 Inclusion-isms You Need to Become a Disability Confident Employer

I want us to shift over to leadership. I’m fascinated by so many things, but I do always try to orient us to that conversation. I am curious about Win, Win, Win! What are the three wins in your book? Tell us about it. 

First of all, the reason I titled the book because it’s something not only I believe in, but I actually live by my personal as well as professional life. We’ve all read some Stephen Covey. He sold over 85 million copies of his thinking, which was the idea of a win-win. He talked about the concept that why can’t a used car salesman sell a car and the guy who’s buying it both get a decent deal? It doesn’t mean that they both got everything they wanted, but it used to be a win-lose. In the ‘80s, Covey came along and went, “No one has to lose in the deal.” If you do it right and you individualize it, which is one of my beliefs, you’re going to create that win-win. The guy who sold the car could have got a little more, but this guy’s going to bring friends. The guy who bought the car could have paid a little less, but he knows he didn’t get a junker. That’s a win-win. 

Let’s take it to our new generation, our new century, and that is the idea needs to be win-win-win if we are going to include the people in our community. If we’re going to expand our talent pool as hirers, and expand our world and understand diverse thinking and engage it because that creativity and diversity are going to move us forward in what is now clearly a brain economy. You talk about leadership. It’s all about leadership. My favorite ism is “The fish stinks from the head.” An artist right here in Nova Scotia, who lives with a disability, took my messaging and created a piece of art representing that statement. 

If the leadership from the top down does not acknowledge that bias exists, whether it is a conscious or unconscious reality, it is settled in. A study in 2020 stated very clearly that it is not a lack of capacity that keeps persons with disabilities out of the workplace. It is the bias, the prejudice because of the misunderstandings and the myths around the inclusion of person with disabilities. No one’s thinking it expands their talent pool, they’re thinking they’re going to get sued if someone falls. It’s completely ridiculous. They think they’re going to have more sick days. It’s completely proven wrong. Part of my job in my life as a leader is to wake other leaders up and let them know that the fish stinks from the head. That means me at reachAbility, where I am the CEO, and that means you at your corporation in business. I believe people want to be inclusive. They just don’t understand how much bias is getting in the way. 

Melanie, the reason is simple. It’s because of where we learned about disability. That’s what got me thinking about what you said. You learned about it because your mother lived with a disability. Therefore, you had a level of built-in understanding and empathy. It’s essentially osmosis, whereas other people who don’t have that experience require some formal or understanding education. We learn about disability in four places, at home, and it’s not always as empathetic as the experience you have. It’s often laughing about the cousin or whispering about the issue. Maybe it’s the schoolyard. For someone like me, that was a very cruel place. I can assure you it’s not where you want to learn about disability and inclusion. 

The third place, movie of the week, a guy loses his whole mind and doesn’t remember anything. That’s very rare. Our short-term memory lives up here. That’s what goes first, but they love the exceptional. That’s what we learn is normal, and finally, my boyfriend, Anderson Cooper might be telling a story about someone who’s bipolar. I can assure you, Melanie, he’s not talking about the fact that he has three kids, holds down two jobs and he’s doing great. He goes to that 1% because that’s his job. My message is, why would we be disability confident? How could we be disability confident if the sources of learning of the leaders out there saying, “I want to be inclusive, I want to show you how,” are quite lost? They haven’t done the basic work, which is the acknowledgment that bias exists and we must work through it but first, we must acknowledge its existence. 

I talk about data collection a lot in my work around leading and what you’re talking about is we don’t have clean data sources for deciding. The same is true with BIPOC hirers, LGBTQ hirers and disability hirers. This is an interesting place to be curious about how do you get clean information? When people know someone, then it does help, but how do we even foster that early on in people’s lives so that they do know people? 

One of my favorite isms, and probably the most important in terms of the depth of need to think about it, is to stay curious. I happen to love the artwork that goes with the stay curious that an artist used. It’s very fun and whimsical. More importantly, stay curious is the step. We have to acknowledge that if we’re like, “What the hell is wrong with you?” That’s not curiosity. I often tell a true story. I was on a New York subway. I was looking across and there was this man and he had his head in his hands the whole time. Next to him was this older woman beautifully dressed. Some of these women in New York are gorgeous.  

More importantly, his kids were running up and down the train. Finally, the woman who got probably her Jimmy Choo’s stepped on one too many times, got right up and went over to the man and goes, “Sir, manage your children.” That’s the “what the hell is wrong with you” curious. At that point, he looks up and his face was white. His eyes were red and she knew something was bad. He goes, “I’m so sorry. I’m trying to figure out how to tell my children their mother just passed.” I always remind myself of that moment. Would I rather go, “Sir, is everything okay?” or, “Sir, what the hell is wrong with you?”  

Staying curious is demanding. It asks us to step out of our comfort zone, just I talked about screening in, not screening out. Most HR people and leaders want to screen out. You talk about BIPOC bias, these computer programs that you learn only at Harvard, and only use the language used in the Hasty Pudding Awards or something. Who the hell could do that? Certainly not me. I advise people, better to screen in than screen out. It’s one of my isms. You can see that by putting them together, I’m trying to tell leaders, “You have steps to take.” 

In my book, The Experimental Leader, I talked about reactive styles. I believe these reactive styles get created when people are faced with a situation that they have fear, uncertainty or chaos. When they’re trying to make sense of those things, then they become reactive because they have to protect themselves in some way. I noticed that reactivity around disability is what you have to protect yourself from like, “We’re not sure. Therefore, we’re going to play it safe.” 

What you’re saying is there’s a big business loss, and I happen to agree with you. Number one, who’s going to write your disability policy if you haven’t invited anyone in? All of a sudden, you’re equipped to deal with a world that wants companies to understand equity, diversity and inclusion. If you haven’t become that organization yet, you are behind right now. You need to change your hiring practices now because you’re going to be even more behind in a few years. You’re in trouble if you don’t have a rich diversity in your workforce. You’ll need to be finding those people to lead because those issues are so pertinent for people right now. 

It almost can be boiled down to if you want to be in business, if you want to engage and get the maximum out of your community both as client or customer, as well as employee and coworker, then you’ve got to be inclusive. You have got to look at the biases that are inherently built into your process. You have got to acknowledge that you probably do need a certain amount of awareness and education for your whole team from the top down. The last thing leaders should do is say, “I’m going to do that. It sounds great, but I’m not attending because I’m too busy.” 

Workplace Inclusion: It’s not a lack of capacity that keeps persons with disabilities out of the workplace. It is, in fact, prejudice because of the misunderstandings around the inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Those leaders are the leaders that are not leading. They’re running and hoping someone else leads for them. The reality is if people in the team from the bottom up do not see it valued at the top down, it’s all check in the box. I see a lot of box-checking going on. Unlike America, where the ADA or Americans with Disabilities Act is 35 or 36 years old now. In Canada, we just passed the ACA, Accessible Canada Act in 2019. There’s an incredible level of catch-up. 

When my mom visited Canada, she was always a bit shocked at public places and the lack of accessibility for her because the ADA in the US is strong and has been fairly effective or at least it has helped. You talked about training and I know the research on EDNI and training. It’s not all positive that you can just train up your folks. You can’t just stick them in a course and then they’re going to magically start implementing those changes. What can you say about that? 

One of the things the ACA is doing very well right now and catching up quickly, as a result, is some things that perhaps because the ADA came in so early, it hadn’t considered some of these better practices that we’re at now. There’s a trade–off going on because we can be a little more progressive in the ACA as a result of now when we’re doing it, versus something that is an older document that isn’t necessarily doing its job now. There’s an interesting study that states that about 23% of persons with disabilities in the United States who can and should be working are working, whereas it’s closer to 70% for those who do not. As much as we love our ADA, I also have to acknowledge those numbers don’t speak well to its success, but they speak truly to the biases that are keeping us out. 

Do we have numbers for that in Canada? 

We don’t because we only just got the ACA. One of the things you will notice about countries without disability acts, especially on a national level, is you don’t get many stats. I don’t think that’s a mistake. We do a lot of work looking at American and other developed European country stats because they tend to be very similar. What I can tell you in Canada right off the gate is that $50 billion a year are going to short and long-term leave at work for mental health illness only. We do a very good job of ignoring it. One of my goals is saying, “Let’s address it,” because we get far too much warning when it comes to mental health illness not to be able to address it before it becomes unmanageable and someone leaves the workplace. This is exactly what is happening in Canada based on those stats. 

I have become more curious about the path from trauma and family trauma, to mental health, to disability, to leaving the workforce. That path is so reliable as I’m watching. It’s also painful to watch, and how I watch people who are trying to break that cycle, and how much they get pulled back in by other family members suffering from mental health issues. It’s really hard. I am watching how hard it is to break that cycle. It’s heartbreaking to me. I have so much compassion for people who are trying to change that cycle for themselves, and how the issues themselves create the spiral back in. 

That’s why on a macro level, I do this traveling, public speaking, writing a book, but on a micro-level, I run an agency in Nova Scotia called reachAbility. I truly believe in many services to the few. It’s part of the “people don’t come with instructions” idea, and reachAbility only works with 500 clients a year. We did a study over a couple of years and we identified that over 95% of them were living with trauma when they arrived. We didn’t just have a disability, we have disability and trauma, which isn’t that surprising when you have a disability and you see how people treat us.  

I had to do the same. I had to find a way to both service that individual need and still get the bigger picture out for people like you and my travels, and my public speaking at different conferences and so on. This is my quote for leaders, “I never let what I can’t do get in the way of what I can do.” I knew it was killing me. I have this little agency but I’m going to give those 500 people a move and a place to go. It’s going to end in work if possible because I believe in financial independence as being a road to independence as a whole and the ability to be a person. It’s just the nature of our society. It doesn’t mean you have to work, and if you cannot, you cannot. I do focus on bringing people from the point where they arrive. 

The number one thing I would ask people when they would arrive, and this is universal, “What are you good at?” These are people who’ve probably been on social assistance. Often the second generation, in my clients’ case. The majority or at least a high percentage have had issues with the law. They’ve had single-parent challenges and so on in addition to all the other issues they’re dealing with around disability. The answer they always gave me and I kept waiting to hear, “I don’t know,” but it was always, “I’m good at nothing.” The first thing I did was create a program called One Step Closer. Now, 500 people a year get to go through that program and the number one issue is, “What are you good at?” You’re going to leave with a contract that tells you. 

At that heart, it gets to the place of privilege. You wake my three kids up from a dead sleep, they can tell you what they’re good at, but they’ve been nurtured and cared for. They’ve overcome, struggled, had support and they know what they’re good at. I know what I’m good at. My husband knows what he is good at. That’s the difference between privilege and marginalization. No one’s helping you discover that as a child. 

Do you know what kills me? People keep talking about accommodation or equalizing. I call it equalizing the playing field. That’s one of my biggies. We’ve got to equalize the playing field, nothing special about it. There’s no special accommodation that would assume that somehow it’s not anything other than basic dignity, equalizing the playing field. With the perspective of equalizing the playing field instead of the perspective that accommodation is somehow a special right like, “Why did she get the lighting?” “She’s low vision.” “Why did he get something?” “Because he’s hearing impaired.” 

Workplace Inclusion: Bias exists, and we must work through it, but first, we must acknowledge its existence.

The idea is that until we acknowledge and understand that there’s nothing special about that equalized playing field, some people like you and I have to keep trying to equalize the playing field. I do it again through speaking, the book and all the big stuff, but then for me, it’s all about individualizing the service. Those 500 people every year for many years are coming out with a sense of self they weren’t given. Equalizing the playing field, that’s all we’re trying to do. 

Having a son with a disability and his disability was in reading. He had been through so much. We sent him to a dyslexia center and did all of their lessons, and then we had him tested. He was decoding in the 95th percentile. You gave him a sound he could decode at the 95th percentile. He was reading in the fifth percentile. Every year, we would meet with teachers who would act as if we had never thought of him before. “You just need to read to him,” they’d say. My husband is a psychologist who studies development in children. It’s pretty nice to have him in those conversations where he would be like, “I don’t think that’s going to be the answer,” because they would defer and they would listen to us. 

That was another incredible privilege we had. We were listened to when we spoke. Each time we would be like, “Pretend that we read to him. Now, what are we going to do?” There was the next step for him and the lights went on when I realized that the goal of reading was not to read the words on the page. The goal of reading was for him to have a channel to take in information so that he could learn about the world. 

As soon as I got that, audiobooks were fine. YouTube was fine. He also tested in the 95th percentile for knowledge about the world. Later when they would say, “We need to accommodate him in social studies.” I would say, “Remember, he’s in the 95th percentile and we’ve already done all these interesting things around social studies in our lives. Are we sure?” They’d be like, “No, he’s fine,” but they have these pathways that they take people down and they forget to orient to the goal. I think that target conditions are important and it is in leadership too. What’s your target condition and who can meet that target condition? It’s not so important how they meet it and that gives that room for flexibility. 

You’re going to hear over and over again from both employers and hirers, “I don’t have time to screen in. I don’t have time to include everybody and figure out that even though they didn’t learn it that way, they learned it this way.” That’s when I say, “Sometimes you’ve got to use your time wisely.” 

As a coach, I will say, “Then make a Loom video. Make a video that they can watch over and over again without you.” Use technology to make it work. You can say it one time, record it and then someone can take as much time as they need to learn it. 

IT is a great equalizer is what I say. 

The other thing is I do some hiring consulting. If you have someone who might take some time to get up to speed, they may also be somebody who’s happy to stay in that role for a very long time. You may train one person who will stay in a job for five years, as opposed to a turnover of multiple people that you spend just a minute training. There are all sorts of trade–offs around all of these things. 

No question about it. Most importantly for me is to make sure that I’m giving the tools. Even those teachers you’re talking about, where did they learn about disability? Right here in my province in Canada, there’s a university that teaches a course about disability and they call it exceptionalities. I took exception to it. I said, “That makes me sound like that guy in the X-Men movie with the big white wings.” I said, “I don’t feel exceptional. I’m just trying to have a life, get a job, enjoy my puppy and see my grandchildren. It isn’t that exceptional at all.” It’s just allowing for the fact that by equalizing the playing field, we all win, win, win. It’s that simple. 

I’ve used the word disability before. I’ve been corrected by someone who didn’t like that word either because it isn’t a disability, it’s differently able. 

I don’t like that term at all and I’ll tell you why. There are a lot of different groups out there who don’t like to give up words, they like to own them. I believe the word disability is a word we own. There’s nothing wrong. It’s in the vernacular. We all know what it means. It’s teaching people what it really stands to. The fact that we will all have a disability, that there’s nothing bad about it, that the brain is an organ just like everything else. Why wouldn’t it age? It’s the perspective that is the challenge, not the verbiage. 

That said, I am not a politically correct person. I always say dignity, plain and simple. If you believe in dignity and you treat people with dignity, I may not always fall on the politically correct side. I believe the word disability says what it says and it’s our job to own it, not give it up. Different abilities and exceptionalities and all those words, for me it means I have to start redefining everything. Let’s own our words. Let’s take it, let’s own it and let’s tell everyone about what it means. Disability is no longer seen under the medical paradigm. The paradigm in which we are considered to be broken until we are fixed. Not people with good ideas and creativity who bring a lot to the table and expand the talent pool.  

The social or what I call human rights paradigm speaks to the fact that we are people to make our own decisions, not for us without us, and win, win, win means we’re in the game too. That social or human rights paradigm is where I’m pushing us along with all the work I do. I know much to the same is what you’re trying to do as well. It’s that paradigm shift around how we view disability, not the word disability. I’m not wasting any time on that one. 

I do want to speak to this idea that as leaders, sometimes when we’re talking about EDNI and we use a wrong word, and somebody has a preference that we meet, we get smacked a little as we’re trying to find our feet to be brave. This happens in the LGBTQ community. 

If I say, “Did you watch Grey’s Anatomy last night?” and the person is visually impaired and you’re like, “Sorry.” I just tell people, “You got to get tougher.” 

That’s wise counsel. I’ve had people I identify as queer, especially people over a certain age who tell me, it’s not okay that I do that. It’s a problem. I do think that this is part of the EDNI world. If we want to be changing the world, we have to be brave enough to get it wrong. It might even be a little bit painful and we might have to take a stand where we might even be wrong later. I can say to that person who said they don’t like the word disabled that I’ve also heard that people like that word. I’m going to pick one, but my heart is in the right place. We need to push back because as leaders, when we feel like we can’t get it right, then we stop and we don’t want to stop on this path. 

That’s the absolute opposite of leadership to me. I just want to say that. I know you’re saying the same thing. I want to bring it home. Here’s the thing. A true leader blazes a trail, not follows it. Do you know who the hardest group for me is to present to? It’s the people in the disability community because they don’t agree with anything I say. I’m up there and I find out that there’s the president of Disability Inc. in the audience and they can’t wait to hear what I’ve got to say about what disability is and what types of disability I recognize, what umbrellas I use to put learning disability under. Is it cognitive? They’re waiting and I take my stand. I say, “Tova, did you treat everyone with dignity?” “Yes, I did. You’re fine.” 

That’s a powerful touchstone. Am I broadening the employment pool, the employee pool? Am I adding more diversity? Did I treat people with dignity on that journey? There’s some real learning around that. When we get scared or we get afraid of being taken advantage of in some way, we become paternalistic in our leadership style. I don’t think that serves anybody. Learning how to say, “We hit a bump,” or “I don’t know how to solve this problem, can you roll up your sleeves with me and let’s see if we can solve it together?” That works for somebody with a disability or someone who doesn’t have a disability. That rolling up your sleeves to solve the problem together, every single employee you ever have is going to have some challenges. 

My argument is, why are you excluding people with disabilities to the point where they’re 40% to 50% less presence in the workplace of those that could be and should be working? Because we have an inherent bias, and we have to start there, but there are lots of work to do. As I said before, the fish stinks from the head is a leadership issue. 

How can people find you, Tova? 

I’m at reachAbility.org. I’m at Tova@reachAbility.org. I love public speaking. I love getting out there and sharing the gospel according to Tova. My book is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. Don’t forget that there are incredible artists represented, not just some incredible information. Whether you’re interested in disability from any perspective, I think that this is a primer, a starter, a reference guide to say, “Let’s talk about it honestly and now we can move on.” 

It’s been amazing talking with you. Thank you so much for being here with me. 

It’s been a pleasure. The very best to you and your entire family. 

Thank you. 

—

I’ve been talking to Tova Sherman. I’m so fascinated by this idea that bringing people with disabilities into the workforce expands our potential employees, but also adds something. It adds a different skillset, view and way of being as an employer. I think it’s interesting to think about this as a leadership challenge, as something that we all need to dive into as leaders to see how we can invite people to add value to their lives and to our own. It’s a circle. We also need to think about how brave it is to deal with things that are new as leaders. Sometimes we just need to get over it and know that we’re going to say the wrong thing or not get it right, and that we can improve our ability by bringing diverse people into our organizations. 

That’s how we skill up. We have the resources. The very thing that scares us because we don’t know how to do it. If we leap over that edge and we start to do it, then we have those skills in our organizations. We’re able to improve. I’ve always said that every organization is a tech organization. Everybody’s in tech because we have to do online marketing and there’s no more bricks and mortar only. By the same token, every organization needs to be paying attention to equity, diversity and inclusion. As leaders, we need to make this a very important part of the work that we do. Go and experiment. 

Important Links: 

• reachAbility 
• Win, Win, Win! The 18 Inclusionisms You Need to Become a Disability Confident Employer 
• Tova Sherman 
• The Experimental Leader 
• One Step Closer 
• Tova@reachAbility.org 
• Amazon.com – Win, Win, Win! book 
• Amazon.ca – Win, Win, Win! book 

About Tova Sherman