This podcast is brought to you by BarrierBreak Solutions Private Limited and Score Foundation.
Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to this episode of Eyeway Conversations. I have with me, my good friend Shilpi Kapoor from BarrierBreak. And our guest today is, you know, it's not a simple introduction. She's a business woman, she is an advocate. She is a speaker, writer, and a mother, among other things. Welcome, Debra.
Thank you, George. Thanks for having me. I always love speaking to Shilpi. So this is a treat. Lovely.
So you've done extensive, you've initiated various companies and organizations working with the disabled, you've also been part of various efforts and enterprises dealing with people with disability, disability inclusion, and so on. The first question that we would like to kind of ask you is how did you get interested in? What triggered this all?
And that's a great question, George. And I think that's a question we ask ourselves a lot in this community. And it's always interesting to hear the story of how we got here. But it's also encouraging to hear more people that don't have a family history or personal history themselves being involved in the field, but I'm not one of those. So when I was 28 years old, I had my first child, and I had a beautiful, perfect baby girl. But the doctors didn't seem to think she was perfect. So they told us that she had Down syndrome. And, it was really sort of sad the way people responded to me because I was a young woman that had had her first child. And people responses were Oh, really, Oh, I'm so sorry. And I really did not think that my daughter's life was a tragedy, I actually thought my daughter was the prettiest, best, most amazing little girl that had ever been born like most parents do. But I just remember that being a real eye opener of just the way people were treating. And the doctors even made comments about, you know, some people institutionalized and I thought, get away from my baby, you're not taking my baby anywhere. This is my girl, and my girl is now 34 years old. And she has been a great teacher to me. But she was the, she was certainly my inspiration for wanting to give back. I was in the banking industry. And I felt like I was contributing, but I didn't feel like I was doing enough. And when my daughter reached middle school, and I started understanding the plight, that people have to walk people with disabilities to get in the workforce. I was just shocked. And I thought with it that we can do better. So that's how it all started for me. We can do better than this.
And Sarah is so beautiful. And she is so amazing.
Thank you, thank you, she has been such a great teacher. And it's been hard sometimes, especially as an adult, because she was so much easier to raise as a little girl. And we have some nice supports in place in the United States. We're not perfect, but when she when she reached transition age, which happens to so many people with disabilities, it's like there's this cliff, you fall off. And it's like, oh, well, you know, you know, hope you don't mind being lonely and isolated and not included for the rest of your life.
You know, in 2013, you started the Ruh Global Communications. And what was the vision behind it? What were your learnings? What were your experiences?
Thank you, George. I will step back and say in 2011, my little technology company Tech Access, we got impacted because of the financial crisis. The bank that we were with in Virginia, failed due to the big banks, well, being gluttonous and greedy. And so the small business bank I was with failed and they called my note and overnight I owed $200,000, and interest in penalties to the bank through no fault of my own, but just because this bank was no longer a bank, the regulators had stepped in. And so it put obviously my company in a major crisis, I had all these talented employees with disabilities. And that was at a time and from a US lens when 7 million Americans had been laid off due to this financial ridiculousness and greed and gluttony. Anyway, but I won't go there. But so another company, the industry now called Level Access, absorbed my company, they did what is called a, you know, where it all the sudden I'm forgetting what the term is, but the bottom line is they get all the upside, and I get to keep all the negative. So debt, whatever it says life of an entrepreneur, but I worked with that organization for about 18 months, because my employees were there. And I was so thankful that I got to keep my employees safe. But one thing that had been bothering me when I was with Tech Access was I had a customer say to me, HP, and and this gentleman, Michael Takamura. Remember him Shilpi? Oh, my God. Yeah, he transitioned a few years ago, but what an amazing leader and what impact he had on our community. And he was one of my first clients. And he had told me one time that one thing that bothered him, even though he had really gotten behind accessibility, he felt like he was running a nonprofit inside of a corporation, because every year his budget was hit a little bit more, a little bit more. And it was seen as, Oh, you're doing good for the people with disabilities, it was still relatively early on in this accessibility journey. But that just stuck with me. And I thought, I think that's happening to all of these corporations, they are having to run their budgets if they have a budget at all, with very little support, and very little support from the top. And we've made some progress since then. But I thought I didn't want to just be a part of a small accessibility company that didn't speak to my heart. So I created Ruh Global Communications, which is now Ruh Global Impact. And we were we decided to be the storytellers. You know, we wanted to be the global storytellers. And so we were focused on who is doing what in the industry that's making a difference, and what core, into almost trying to catch corporations at doing things right. And so that's how Ruh Global Impact was born. And today 90% of the team are people with lived experiences with disabilities, I have an invisible disability, my husband sadly, has aged into a very, very serious disability due to a car accident as a child, he has late stage dementia, bad horrible word dementia, I hate dement, I hate the word, but it's our life. So, um, but that's how Ruh Global Impact is, you know, was birthed, and, now contributing, contributing globally, because we've got to celebrate each other.
So definitely, you know, with Ruh Global, I've seen you tell the stories of so many organizations globally. Right. And I see you connecting the dots, where countries which otherwise are so often forgotten, because accessibility so often is a US or UK conversation. And you took it beyond that. Right? So how did you do that? And how did you engage with the organizations across the globe?
And that's a great question Shilpi, and Ruh was interesting to me as, I was first started, I was first, I've been blessed to travel all over the world. I have not made it to India, even though I'm going to make it to India, I really have to say I want to come to India, but haven't. But I've gone to a lot of countries. And what I noticed was that at the beginning, people were inviting me to speak because I was a woman in the United States. And quite honestly, I believe people were inviting me to speak because they figured the United States had a lot of the answers, because we certainly are very good at promoting, you know what we do. And so, but the I did not really agree with that what I felt was, I'm very proud that and this is going to be a weird thing to say, but I'm very proud that the United States is suing corporations and other organizations when they're not accessible. It's a messy way of doing things. But that is the way we do things. And because we've held the and continue to hold these corporations accountable, I think it benefits the rest of the world. But at the same time, I didn't necessarily see the innovations I wanted to see as an individual with a disability a parent, a wife, a mother with a disability. And I actually saw innovations happening in other countries that I thought would be very beneficial to the States and to the UK. And so and I continue to see that there is a lot of innovation happening in India. India is the hope, you are the hope for our future. You have 1.5 billion people, we have 330 million in the States. And so the innovations were what really intrigued me. And I started thinking, does anybody else see what I'm seeing? Because we need to look what's happening in India, what's happening in Bangladesh, what are they doing in Kenya? What do you mean, they're doing that in Kenya? That's amazing. And so I sort of appointed myself as one of the storytellers, many, many others, including you Shilpi, have joined these global conversations.
You also were involved with a lot of assessment work that happened on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on Rights for Persons with Disability. 104 countries, I think I read somewhere. Tell us a little bit about that. What was your observations? How has the UNCRPD traveled across the world?
I will say that I have only been a little involved in the beginning, I would say I would give more credit to Axel Leblois from G3ict and his team, and I am blessed to have stood with them and Shilp is also, you know, a partner with them. But I celebrate the UNCRPD because when that convention came out, more countries signed it right at the table than we've ever seen before. And we've seen such global innovations and leadership. Like in India, India signed and ratified it very quickly. Unfortunately, my beautiful little country, we did sign it. And that's great, but we have not ratified it. We're one of only two countries in the entire world that have not ratified the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. And I personally think that is a disappointment and a lack of leadership in the States. Because what we heard was, well, we've got our Americans with Disabilities Act, which by the way, is beautiful piece of legislation always lit, it's alive. It's always growing and changing. But our laws do not protect our citizens with disabilities when they leave our borders. And so I think it's short sighted that we do not join the rest of the world in solving these problems. We know the UN says there's 1.3 billion where the World Bank I mean, the World Health Organization says 1.3 billion people with disabilities and I, I'm a little sad that my country is not shown leadership. Now right now, we're a little distracted with the pandemic appropriately. But I am hoping that President Biden that I voted for I did not vote for... any way. I voted for President Biden, I'll just say that I wanted sanity in the office. And so I did not, I hope that he will go ahead and ratify the convention. But right now we are appropriately a little distracted as is everybody else in the world and making sure that people are staying safe. And also what a blessing helping other countries by, you know, sharing the vaccine. So that's the US that I'm proud of. But great question.
Coming to, you know, the work that you've been doing with G3ict, you know, all of us have been so a part of that, right. I'm on the board of G3ict, you have been one of the frontrunners in promoting this. One of the things that we come together very well as you know, is a good global community that supports each other. And an extension of that is something that you do call AXS Chat. Right? And would love to hear a little about that and how you're bringing a global community together.
Yes. And thank you it and Shilpi has been featured. Shilpi is such a leader in our community. She's such a global leader. And I'll tell you, she was one of the first personality faces that joined these conversations. The conversations were in the US and the UK. Whoo, who's this woman from India? Wow, that's a long way. So I'm telling you, she broke down the barrier. She insisted in entry and she has been such an amazing leader. And it is true, Shilpi, you have to admit that is true. So it's just amazing to see what she's accomplished. But G3ict, they you know, they've shown such leadership with their foundation and their work all over the world. But I just think in the first place, we are all stronger together. As we all know, we have to support each other. There is too much work. We don't have enough people to do the work that is out there. We need to come together. We need to support each other. We need to you know, continue to celebrate and empower each other as well. But I think one thing that I had the blessing early on to work with Axel and see. I now will just say I won't go into detail but I said to Axel one time when I first started working with them, and he had invited me to go and speak in Qatar and I was talking to him about one of my competitors and I said, Well, this, they're not going to want to be part of G3ict now because you're working with me and blah, blah, blah. And he's like, Debra, you have to lead. You cannot worry what a competitor is doing. If that competitor doesn't like you go and talk to them, make friends with them collaborate, and I'm like, but they're the one that doesn't want to talk to me. He said, I don't care, be a leader. And I really took that to heart. And I thought he's right. And so I've reached out to everybody and with AXS Chat, I mean it's AXS Chat. I was doing a tweet chat for one of my customers. I didn't really know what I was doing. But you know, I gotta wing it. And Antonio Santos and Neil Milliken, who worked for Atos, one in Europe and one in the UK now. They said, Why don't we get together and do a global chat about accessibility? Because they agreed with what we were seeing that there was innovations happening outside the US and the UK, what can we do to have a global conversation? And so fast forward to now we've had 1.1 billion impressions. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, it's ridiculous. We've been verified by Twitter, which is very hard to do. They don't want to verify anybody these days. But they verified us they've got behind us. And we have been doing it for seven years, every single Tuesday at 8pm UK time, which is very late in India, but Shilpi been featured on that. And it's just about celebrating. It's like what we did with GAAD, Global Accessibility Awareness Day, celebrate, we've got a lot to do, but we're actually making that you know, and so AXS Chat to me is about celebrating the leaders are out there making inroads because there's just so many different moving parts when it comes to truly including people with disabilities. And and I'll just make a comment. I was interviewing this woman that it was born with muscular dystrophy. And she's a psychologist and very, very, very brilliant woman. And she said, I wish the only thing I had to deal with was muscular dystrophy. But what is the biggest issue in my life is how society treats me. Society disables me. MD is a pain, a, you know, unfortunate, and I struggle with it. But society and the way it treats me that's my biggest hardship in my life.
Moving on last week, I read about this Chinese gentleman, blind gentleman called Zhang Hong who climbed Mount Everest. And he's apparently the third blind person to actually scale this tallest peak in the world. And this actually speaks about human potential. And you run something called the Human Potential at Work, right? There's something about that.
Well I, going back to what Shilpi was saying, I wanted to celebrate, really celebrate the leaders. And so I created this show called Human Potential at Work. And it's a Zoom show multimedia, we're all we know how that works these days. And it's six years old. But we've gotten to celebrate once again, the leaders and we're telling powerful stories, Shilpi's been on it again, but I mean, she just has a very powerful story of social impact and social good, that's who I want to feature. I want to feature the souls that are making a difference for the world. And so that's it, but what I also do is, you know, showpiece a global leader, so you know, but I also interview, I've interviewed 14 year olds with disabilities, and all different types and ambassadors and CEOs. And it's just all over the place. And it's all about this human potential at work, which is a play on words. But, you know, I think one of the best things that we can do, and I know we're going to talk a little bit about the nonprofit that I've created, and your joining us, but I think celebrating who we are, and telling the stories of who we are, and being honest and authentic, because the reality is I was interviewed, actually, by Huawei, and they talked about my family, you know, they have a daughter with down syndrome, my son has dementia. And we were talking about how technology supports their desire to remain independent, and me as a caregiver, and things like that. And somebody actually from India, wrote a reply and said, I pray to God, this woman has a healthy, long lived life, so that she is there to take care of her family. And it was a very sweet, sweet comment. And I thought, you know, sometimes maybe people look at my life and see a tragedy, but actually, my life is normal. I have a normal life we all have, especially I know we'll all agree right now during this pandemic, times are intense for all of us. You never know what people are walking, but we still need to be authentic. And we need to tell our stories so that others know they're not alone. So I think that's what human potential at work can do. We can really celebrate the diversity, the contrasts, George, just celebrating the leaders, even the young leaders that are just finding their their voices and celebrating our global leadership, our global visions, our Global Diversity.
Fantastic. I think we will now move on to your favorite topic, it appears. Billion Strong. Yeah. I'm so excited about it. So go for it. Tell us something about it.
I got this email from Debra, saying, I'm starting this team. It is very quiet right now. Are you willing to come on as an advisor? Like, obviously, this is not even a question one is going to say no to, you know. So Debra, over to you.
Yes, and I know. And of course, I'm gonna go right to Shilpi when I need advisors. But it started because of successes we're having in our industry. So it's Shilpi, which, by the way, is a big deal recently, or is about to speak for the disability in which is the United States business to business.
I guess, or a nonprofit that helps corporations understand why they should include people with disabilities. And so it is a very important that, once again, we have voices from around the world talking about these topics. And so I was so they have made a lot of progress. Business Disability Forum has made a lot of progress. A lot of work is being done in India, there's a lot to celebrate. But also we have the Valuable 500 with Dr. Caroline Casey with 500 multinational corporations that have committed at a CEO level to include people with disabilities. And I actually had a major I won't say, who, a major corporation come to me yesterday and say, Okay, we're ready to join the Valuable 500. Well, they already have 500. So I'm not sure what's going to happen if there'll be a phase two, I don't know. But right now, they do have the 500. So, but I started worrying about the supply part of the demand. So the corporations are starting to up their demand. But where's the supply, especially if people, most people with disabilities have invisible or hidden disabilities, they just do the majority on and then there's majority, and then there's people with visible disabilities, like my daughter with down syndrome, you can even now, if you can see, you will be able to tell my husband has a disability just because of the way he interacts with the world. But there's a lot of people that have disabilities, that you don't know that they have a disability. And so when I was talking to one of my customers, I was actually talking to two of our technology customers, because we work with really large global brands. And I was saying, how are you going to prepare, you know, for, you know, what's happening on a global basis? Because one thing I've been saying to the States, the corporations, I think it's great that you're in the States and the UK that you're including people with disabilities, but why are you not doing it throughout your entire geo footprint? If you have offices in India, and you're not hiring people in India, or you have offices in Bangladesh and you are, Why not? Because I would wonder is are you not doing it because they're not suing you? You know, I mean, it could it could be negative for the brand. And so I had reached out to two brands, and I was asking them, you know how they were going to navigate it. And one of them said, somebody needs to create the International Association of Professionals with Disabilities. That's when I went to Shilpi. And I thought it was such a good idea. But as I did my due diligence, I started realizing that name was way too clinical, too easy to misunderstand. And instead, we came up with a name Billion Strong. Billion Strong, because there's 1.3 billion today, people with disabilities in the world, and we think that's underreported. And so and of course, you know, as we age, we're aging societies all over the world. More people are entering and becoming disabled, like my husband. So our numbers are on the rise, but we don't proudly self identify. And so I thought, what we need to identify and be proud of who we are. But what I didn't want to do because we're about about doing this George, in this industry, sometimes we like to step all over each other and it doesn't make sense. There's too much work we don't I don't need to try to be Shilpi. I would not. I wouldn't be good at being Shilpi, she's better at it than me. So instead, why don't I partner with Shilpi like George you and Shilpi partner now then we're gonna partner so I just believe collaborating and partnering, you just get so much farther. So we created Billion Strong and it's billion-strong.org. And you can get billionstrong.org. But they want $4,000. You know, they bought up all those URLs. Yeah, no, I'm just not gonna pay $4,000 for that, yeah, maybe someday I will. But it is all about identity. And so as I was talking to different partners, global partners, like Shilpi, I had a couple people say, Well, don't do it in the States. I was like, what I live in the States. And then I had other say, well only do it in the States. And I was like, I'm not doing that, because I'm tired of that happening. Because what we see in the States is that we say something's global, it's not really global, we're just talking to ourselves. And we're really, really, really bad about that in the States. We say it's global but is it really? So I didn't want to do that. I wanted it to be very global, right out of the gate. And so to date, we have 58 countries. First thing I did was I got two countries that I had to have involved in this conversation. And that was India. And that was China, the two countries in the world that had the largest populations by billion. So it just was very, very important to me that I get the right advisors and partners. And so it's very exciting what's happening because what we're going to do is we're going to talk about identity and our lived experiences, and be really authentic about it, you know, and be transparent and talk about what works and what doesn't work. And like the woman I was mentioning the psychologist, society, stop disabling us, we're not broken. We're humans. And there's such beauty in the diversity of human beings. So I'm very, very, very stoked. I have hundreds of advisors. We're creating so many cool things. We're going to have awards we're going to have, but we're going to celebrate what all the countries are doing. So we want to know what is happening in India and how do we highlight what's happening. I know a lot that's happening in India. But there are a lot of people in India that don't know what's happening in India. And same all over with all countries, right? I'm just using India as an example. But I'm really excited about it because if we could truly come together, if we could really come together in a meaningful way and say I am proud to be a person with a disability, then Shilpi can do her job better. George, you can do your job better. The corporations will find us know where to find us. But it also has some really powerful advocacy. And so just to give you an example, here in the States, as we were rolling out the vaccine, we were not prioritizing many of our states. Each of our states got to decide how they were going to roll this out. But our states, many, most of our states were not prioritizing people with disabilities. So for example, California, our largest state, they weren't going to prioritize people with disabilities. They were prioritizing people like me over certain age, but they were not prioritizing people with disability. So we took to social media, because I'm a market influencer. And I have a lot of followers. So we took to social media to almost sort of shame the governor into including us. It didn't work, sadly. But another example one of our other states, South Carolina, Dr. LaMondre Pough, who is actually the CEO of Billion Strong. He is a person with lived experience with disabilities. He has Muscular Dystrophy also. And the caregivers were being prioritized in his state, but not the people that were being cared for. So he went on television, and he talked about it very nicely. And the governor heard him, and they changed the rules. So then they started prioritizing people with disabilities. And I was just thinking this a little example. But think what we could do if there was hundreds of millions of us talking together, what could we do, we could buy from each other, we could sell, we could market we could be we could support the entrepreneurs with disabilities, we could do hackathons we could do anyway, we could do so much stuff. But first what we do is we celebrate what's already being done. What is Shilpi doing? What is very, you know, BarrierBreak doing? What are you doing, George? Because it's got to be all of us coming together and celebrating who we are, and who's doing what to help us. And by the way, let's stop having our entrepreneurs with disabilities starve to death. Let's take it create an impact fund, where we invest in our entrepreneurs with disabilities, we invest in professional development, we talk for ourselves. Right now we have a fighting, a lot of fighting going on in the US about the language we should use. Should we use disabled people? Or should it be first person language like people with disabilities? Or do we get creative with it and say, people that think differently diverse-ability? Well, I do know this. Our community needs to decide the language for ourselves. I don't want corporations deciding it for us. I don't want the UN, we as a community of people with disabilities should make these decisions. So this is about celebrating, empowering and always taking what I've done with my work, like with Human Potential at Work and AXS Chat, and broadening it so that we can have more impact for leaders like Shilpi, you know, like you, George, because if we took care of ourselves, I mean, we're the biggest minority in the world, they say women are the biggest minority. But what's wrong with that is there are more women in the world than men were actually the majority, but we're treated like the minority, but also focusing on all the different intersections to like women with disabilities, like black and brown people with disabilities, like LGBT, it's Pride Month right now. So we're celebrating, because also, why do we keep saying that people are broken because they love the wrong person? What, anyway, but as you can tell, I'm very, very excited about Billion Strong and with the possibilities.
This Billion Strong truly sounds exciting, Shilpi. And...
It is. And I think, you know, Debra, as usual, has caught it, you know, straight on. Supply is the problem. And I think we have to change the conversation. And George, I think we've seen this in India very often, that we find, you know, corporations who are looking at people with disabilities, hiring two, five, ten people in a corporation, which is as large as 20,000 people. And you wonder, you know, and then sometimes they turn around and say, but where's the supply? You know, show us the people. And there is this disconnect that we see, right, on both sides. On the sides of people with disabilities also, but on the side of the corporate. So I think you got it as usual. you've nailed it, Debra. Yeah, looking forward to seeing what you do,
Yeah, and this Billion Strong is going to be moving us from an invisible minority to a visible...
Well said. Oh, yes. Think of the power that we have. If we did, and I'm not suggesting that we will do this. But if we did nothing else, but just support each other. Yeah. It would be ridiculous, we would accomplish so much by doing this. And so I heard Dr. Caroline Casey, I'm a big fan of hers. I heard her say that they interviewed a lot of CEOs, and they had, you know, in confidence. And I think I heard three out of four have a disability, but they're not going to talk about it. Because if you have a disability, that means you're broken. Which by the way, that's not true. But that's what society keeps treating us like. It's ridiculous, because it means you're human. And we've got it, I think, well, what we've seen during this pandemic, Shilpi and I've been doing this work for so many years, include us, incluse us, include us. Make things accessible, come on, we can do it. But we saw whenever we all had to rush home to stay home to stay safe, many people started understand what we're talking about. if things aren't accessible, you can't work and your kids can't go to school. 40% of the children in the United States, you know, the most developed country in the world, 40% of our children could not go to school. 40% could not learn. There is 330 million Americans, 163 million of us, more than 50%. Well, I don't know, I guess my math is almost 50% we don't have access to high speed, Wi Fi, and internet. And so the haves and have nots really became very, very obvious to a lot of people during this pandemic, and the loneliness that sets in when you can't be included, set in. And a lot of people got to experience what our community has been experiencing, you know, forever. So I think now is the time we take what we've learned and during this pandemic, and we don't forget it. You know, I hope we don't forget it. And we're still learning. I mean, we're still walking this pandemic, it's really horrifying, what we're all walking.
Debra, it's been wonderful talking with you. And I think some of the projects that you talked about are very exciting, and the Billion Strong and the Human Potential at Work. These are two projects, which I'm very excited about. And privileged talking to you. And thank you for your time.
And I want to say one more thing, George representation matters as well. So when I was selecting the CEO, I thought for two minutes about being the CEO, but then I realized you have to have a leader that has a obvious disability, and that is really a smart, you know, good communicator. So Dr. LaMondre Pough is such a perfect example of that he's been leading. He is a person with lived experience with disabilities, lived experiences as an African American in the southern part of the eastern part of the United States, which is a little bit more prejudiced than the rest of our country. So he has some very interesting life experiences. But I think it's just time George, to celebrate what we all do bring to the table instead of deciding what we can't bring to the table. So thank you and Shilpi for all of this. Thank you.
All power to you, Debra.
I think it's time to celebrate you Debra. Thank you for coming on this show with us today.
It's exciting that you're doing this. I'm so excited because we need your voices. We need your voices.
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