Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: January 8, 2025: Interview with Kathryn Webster, Founder, The TAD Foundation (Together Achieving Dreams)

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams

KEYWORDS:

disability rights, employment inclusion, blindness skills, guide dog, Deloitte Consulting, Harvard Business School, private equity, mentorship program, technical training, leadership development, corporate partners, family support, employment rate, strategic objectives, financial support

TRANSCRIPT:

00:00

Music.

00:09

Welcome to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr Kirk Adams,

00:36

welcome everybody to podcasts with Dr Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And as you may or may not know, I am the managing director of my very own consulting practice, innovative act LLC, where I focus on fun, innovative, high impact projects that will accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. And I say I help companies supercharge their bottom line through Disability Inclusion. I am the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, prior to that, held the same roles at the lighthouse for the blind. Inc, you're in beautiful, rainy Seattle, and today I have a guest that I have the privilege of knowing for quite a number of years. We used to be neighbors in Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia. Now we're 3000 miles apart, but I'd like love to introduce you all to Catherine Webster, who, among other things, is the founder and president of a foundation called together achieving dreams, which is helping young blind people move forward and thrive in life. I had the privilege of having my first call as a mentor to one of the young blind people that the foundation is working with. And Catherine, welcome to my podcast.

02:07

Dr Kirk Adams, it is such a pleasure. I always love chatting to you, with you, and even better than it's on a podcast platform, thanks

02:15

for having me so the whole world can listen in on our conversation, exactly. So I would love to hear about your journey a little bit. When I first met you, you were kind of just beginning in the professional career. You were in a leadership role with the blind students of the National Federation of the Blind. You surprised me in how new you were to blindness and how excellent your blindness skills were. So would love to just get a little bit of your personal story that has brought you from birth to now.

03:00

Yeah, absolutely great question, and always way longer than than I want to share. So I will keep it short and sweet. But like Kirk said, like you said, I long story short, I guess starting from the way beginning, I was born totally blind, which wildly enough, when I was 16 days old, I got vision in one of my eyes. Saw that well, you know, visual impaired, quote, unquote, for years. So I, you know, leaned on large print and didn't know braille. Starting in high school, started learning braille. So all that to say I was in denial in those in those years where, like every teenager is in denial and had having no vision in one eye and having limited in the other I wanted to still do whatever I wanted to do. So I was a cheerleader, I wrote, I did track, I was integrated into, you know, public school systems. And I grew up actually, in Connecticut. My mom moved us here from Florida for the awesome public schools, and grateful for her for that choice forever. But long story short, around high school, had several surgeries, cornea transplant issues, whatever it is, and I started realizing there are some things that I just can't do. And for me, that's a challenge. I want to be able to do anything, and if someone tells me I can't, I want to prove them wrong. So how I approach that is acceptance on some of the pieces. So cheerleading, with with all sighted cheerleaders, and me, once it got to a certain point, there's a safety risk. So I did step back on that, and instead leaned in on, you know, sports where I could do it fully independently, rowing, track and field, etc. So starting college, I got a guide dog, and that was kind of my first step of acceptance. And I still, I mean, I tell high school students who are blind all the time to to, you know, accept yourself, embrace a cane, all that stuff easier said than done when you're in those environments. But I used college as that rebranding moment where no one knows who I. Am or hardly anyone, and I've got a social magnet of a guide dog, use that slightly as a crutch, socially speaking, and all that to say, as I went into my last year of college at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, I ended up losing my vision two weeks before graduating from just a freak accident retinal detachment that went wrong too much filled up whatever. So after that, had no more vision. And at that point, I had already signed with Deloitte Consulting. I was terrified, and didn't really know how to take it, but I'll also understood fake it till you make it is kind of the mantra for any young professional. So leaned on that a little bit. And during my college years, while I didn't heavily lean on Braille or anything like that, I started to need to as a decrease. So it almost gave me those training wheels before losing the rest of my vision to be successful. And I appreciate your compliment on having good blindness skills. But it definitely, in the beginning, was a fake it till you make it, until I gain that confidence. And like, you know, use JAWS the screen reading software. And you

06:15

were, you were in a STEM field in school, right? I

06:19

was, I studied statistics in computer science, and it's funny. I'm sure you How did

06:25

you do that? As a very low vision person,

06:31

were using assistive technology? Were you

06:33

I was I was actually using Mac initially, with Zoom, and then as my vision decreased, I switched over to Jaws, a different screen reader, yeah, and on Windows, and that was much better. But I got the pushback that many students get, as I'm sure you hear all the time, like, why don't you do English or history, which is great if someone wants to, but I wanted to do daft and Comp Sci. So. So then started at Deloitte, and like you mentioned, I wanted to give back in a lot of different ways, because so many people, sighted or blind mentor me tremendously. You being one of them, and I wanted to, it was kind of that time of my life where I wanted to also give back. So started doing different leadership roles within the National Federation of blind and also, as we'll get into it. Started the town Todd foundation a couple years ago now, but pivot after Deloitte, I was there for almost four years, and then went to Harvard business school to get my MBA. And now I work in private equity at KKR in New York City. So I can't believe it's been 10 years since I graduated high school, but lots, lots has happened.

07:42

Yeah. So just curious. So you said something along the lines of, I'm paraphrasing. If someone says I can't do it, I'm doing it. Where does that come from?

07:55

That's a good question. I think it comes from two things. It comes from my mom's personality, she's always taught my brother and me, he cited, obviously I'm not she's always said, shoot for the stars. My dad also has instilled that in me. So I think part of it's that, and growing up with a single mom, she made everything happen, and I never knew when we were struggling, even when we were I think the other part of it is when you're frustrated of things you know you can't inherently do, it makes you want to do things even better. And I love shattering misconceptions. That's probably because I'm stubborn, as you know, but part of it's also just, I you've got to have tenacity to, like, make it in the world. And it's frustrating as a blind person, having to educate every day. But if you don't do it, who's going to do it? So I think it's, you know, built up frustration and and admiration. Okay,

08:53

two sides of the coin, frustration and, yes,

09:03

so the foundation,

09:07

the name, has a lot of significance, I know, and what, what sparked you to take your volunteerism and your leadership with the National Association of Blind students and formalize it, and put it into a structure, and really do it

09:25

that that took a lot of years of thinking, and you may agree or disagree here, but there's a lot of nonprofits in the world. Most are doing awesome things. Not all are the most efficient in the world. And me being a business person by trade, I only wanted to start a nonprofit if I thought that it would do something meaningful and actually change something in a grander way. Um, so when I was at when I was in business school in Boston. I was kind of struggling with back and forth with, do I go the entrepreneurial route and start a nonprofit from scratch, or do I escalate a different one? And what it came down to for me was representation matters, and I have such a niche focus in my mind of what I'm passionate about, which is increasing employment for the blind and low vision community in like high paying gainful employment jobs, and that doesn't exist. So the our approach is very unique. And to your point

10:36

on, have you read my dissertation? No, but now I want to it's called journeys through country, an ethnographic study of blind adults successfully employed in large American corporations. So I interviewed a bunch of 100% too. I'll send you a link. So I interviewed a bunch of people who were working in name brand corporations, whose names you would know and found out the factors that led to their success. And I won't digress too far, but two, there were nine themes and two, two main ones. One was everyone had a great sense of agency, that they could forge their own path. They had a strong internal locus of control. Felt they could create their destiny. All of them could trace that back to something, an experience, a relationship, family. A lot of them were. You were a cheerleader, a rower, a runner, a swimmer, all those things. So a lot of the lot of people attribute it to some outdoor experience, some athletic experience, and then the other one was disappointment. Everyone was disappointed. Like, why am I the only blind person who's made it this far in this company? Why aren't there any people with disabilities in the C suite? Why do I constantly have to fight for accommodations? Why do I keep having to educate people? Why are people hired after me getting promoted beyond me. So

12:03

yep, yep. And the hard problem is I would love that, because the disappointments so real, and like my dream one day is to run the Todd foundation. Of course, I sit in a corporate America seat that I'm very, very happy in. But that's also the internal struggle, because you want awesome blind people running awesome blindness organizations too. So there's a lot of pieces there, but I would, I would love to read that. So when I decided on Tad, it really came down to my father had passed away in 2017 right after I lost my vision. His name was Tad, so of course, named after him, and that loss paled in compare. Or my losing my vision paled in comparison to losing my father. So that put a whole new perspective on blindness for me, where I was like, This literally doesn't matter. It's one part of me. It doesn't matter. And yes, of course, during grieving, you go, you grow like, empathetic, etc, and I think that was a big part of it. But I decided finally, when I was sitting in a class at Harvard Business School and entrepreneurship that I wanted, I wanted to take that step, and I wanted to bring a team of sighted people and blind people together to really make magic happen around effectively changing the employment rate,

13:21

and how are you doing that? What? What are the program activities currently?

13:28

So chat is structured with three under, under, kind of pinned pillars that go toward our mission of increasing employment for the blind and low vision community. The first is our fellowship program. So think I want to say mentors on steroids. So each of our students, college, whether undergrad or grad school, blind students, are paired up with a sighted mentor and a blind mentor in their career interest area. At the same time as that, we have immersive in person, weekend programming throughout the academic year, where we're all together shoulder to shoulder, doing very intense technical skill training, leadership development, networking, soft skills, that's in person, yeah. Okay, cool. So those are four weekends, and then in between all of our weekends, we have virtual on demand trainings where students are able to hone in on the skills that they need to work on more at the individual level, and then in person, we're bringing it all together and getting them the every every session, they're presenting on new topics they've never heard of. They're assessing company 10 Ks, they're writing, they're doing financial modeling, they're building PowerPoints. They're doing things that any person going into the workforce should be able to do, but we're giving them the head start. We're vetting their materials. We're working with them on making it excellent, and we're making sure that they're comfortable as a blind person, kind of leveraging their those alternative techniques and approaching them. So I always say, if you start. Go with blindness skills, go get blindness skills training, and then come to us. We don't focus on that, but we certainly compliment, you know, using the assistive tech to make magic happen in the in the workplace. So that's the first pillar. The second piece is working with companies and community partners on different access points of bringing blind and low vision folks to work. So whether a company wants to hire people, we're kind of vetting those students, providing the resumes, making sure they're a good fit prior to the interviews even happening, whether it's an internship, a full time job, an experience, whatever it is. But then we're also working with companies on just understanding disability and blindness, as I'm sure you do a lot of too, if just there's still the stigma and there's still a lot of conversations to be had and questions and uncertainty that companies sort through as they work on this, and I think part of that's leaning on Diversity and Equity and Inclusion goals with companies Of like, what does that really mean in practice? But then it's also putting light on you may have never met a blind person, like, here is capable blind people doing things in the world that are that are certainly qualified and talented for your company. So that's the second piece. And then the third is working with families of little blind kids, so think zero to five years old, making sure the parents are setting up their young, young kids for success as early as possible. And I think that's the biggest gap, because it's great that we're hitting college students, but there are so many blind people not getting to college because they're not taught from a young age that they have what it takes.

16:39

Yeah, that I wasn't aware of that piece of that pillar that's that's really exciting and super important. Yes,

16:49

yes, huge. So that one we're launching this year. It's always been one of our core pillars, but it's been on, I don't want to say, the back burner, but it hasn't been the highest priority. As we launched the fellowship program and we, our organization started in formally speaking, two years ago, so January 2023, and we've had now two iterations of the cohort program. We're in our second year right now, so things are going awesome, and we're really loving what we're doing with the students.

17:18

So you said ultimately you would like to be the person running tad together, achieving dreams foundation. So tell, tell, tell me the vision five years from now. What? What is the scope

17:39

five years from now? For Tad,

17:41

yeah, I've got happy achieve

17:45

that dream. The dream, the dream,

17:49

exactly, so I think right now we've got a just to clarify, we've got an awesome, full time director, and I'm going nowhere anytime soon, understood, but dreaming huge. I think so. If I were to take it step by step, we have 15 students right now in our program. I think we'll have 50 next year, and I think we'll have 500 in the next five years. Wow. And I truly feel that way, because we had nearly 100 applicants last year when we didn't even put out a flyer, we didn't market it at all, and every student we had the first year wants to come back for more and wants to learn more. So in that front I think we'll have 500 qualified blind students in five years ready to be employed in high paying positions where they deserve to sit. I think from a company standpoint, today, we've got 11 corporate sponsors and corporate partners we're working with. I think we'll have 100 and again. Now that we have the infrastructure of a full time person as of two months ago, I feel sky is the limit, and now that we can really put the dedicated time in terms of families being a bit more realistic, I think will hit 100 families in terms of impact of them having a strong network as they raise their little blind kids. So that's my dream. Five years from now, if I were to say it more intangibly speaking, I want companies to know who we are. I want them to trust our process of making sure the students we work with are qualified and capable. And I also want this shift to happen where the unemployment rate isn't at 70 or 75% it's much lower, and there's actually representation where you step foot in a building and it doesn't feel like you're the only person that's educating everyone around you. Let's do that. So that's my dream. Let's make it happen. Kirk, that's a good treat.

19:47

So if you were going to point out kind of the two or three biggest wins so far over the past two years, what would you say?

19:58

I think the biggest win. On the first year? Well, the whole board always tells me that I have, like, extremely high expectations for people, and that that I am a tough cookie. So leaning on that, I think our baby goal was that we executed an amazing program. The ambitious piece that we met the metrics on is we had 100% placement for our first year. So 13 students came through our first year program. 13 had experiences over the summer that, to me, before we scale, largely speaking, is exactly what I want every

20:35

single year. And summer is actually a work experience with a company, yes,

20:40

with a company roughly 10 weeks, yep. Okay, cool, in person on the job. So I think that was one of our biggest goals. I think the second is how much we are branding ourselves, the amount of and it just baffles me, because we do little pieces of marketing, whether they there's a magazine article about us or whatever it is, but where companies are reaching out to us, cold calling us, you know, on LinkedIn and social media, saying, Hey, what's this all about? We want to help. To me, that's when I know the word is getting out there. And when that happens, it makes like we're not doing the cold calls. It's the other way. And I love that, and that's how I know that we're being successful and we're kind of getting in the right pockets of space,

21:26

absolutely. So to get to get from here to the dream, I could call them challenges, but I'll call them strategic objectives. So what are the two three key strategic objectives you're going to accomplish to get to where you want to go.

21:43

The two that come to mind, just from a key performance indicator perspective, is every nonprofit, of course, needs financial support, and we continue to push that. As we get more money, we hire more staff, and we need staff to really run the infrastructure of our programs, coordinating the mentorship program, in and of itself, is a big lift. So strategically speaking, as we continue building our corporate partners, it's making that happen. I think the second goal is to use our students as success stories every single year to expand how many students were reaching, and we're doing that. But as we get more students in the program, and they're graduating, building out that alumni network of now, they're all mentors of the incoming students, and that being kind of a cyclical process, I think, will allow us to reach every single goal that we've set and we've we've put together just year over year, how that growth is going to look like. So I think increased staff and students being those storytellers, to bring more folks in and to get companies more comfortable. The more spaces we're in, the more the more times you know, people want to reach out and be intentional.

22:58

The research shows a company that hires a person a disability is more likely to hire another a company that hasn't done it yet. So proxy and that just

23:12

shows that that we're just like anyone else, right? I mean, I think our strategic thinking is a bit stronger, but besides that, we're equally as capable, if not more capable.

23:22

So the folks listening to the scintillating conversation we're having, how can they help you to achieve those objectives?

23:34

I'll keep it to a couple, though the sky is the limit on how we can get folks connected to tad first and foremost, of course, check us out on tad foundation.org, T, A, D, foundation.org, or reach out to us over email. [e-mail] we are looking for blind people, whether they are working they're college students. We need mentors and mentees. We're looking for sighted folks who care about this type of work to lean in as mentors, volunteers, whatever it is. If you know a blind person, we want to know them, and we want to know you beyond that, though, I always tell everyone to ask questions, because I think the biggest disadvantage is when people are curious about something, and they don't ask, and then they don't know, and then the stigma continues. So if you're listening and you know nothing about blindness, love that we would love to hear from you, I get asked silly questions all the time, and I absolutely love it, because it's a moment for us to educate people, and it's a moment for you to know that there are other people in the world doing things just the way you are, maybe a little differently. So I would say, engage in any way possible. Know that that we are out here doing awesome work, and would love to connect with you.

24:55

Fabulous and By that same token, I am available my. Mission in life is to create opportunities for people who are blind and have other disabilities to thrive, whatever way that means for them. And my particular interest that I share so strongly with Catherine is around employment, a good, meaningful job, cures a lot of other deals. So very interested in working with companies who want to create a competitive advantage by hiring a super workforce, people with disabilities who have developed wonderful, unique strengths through the lived experience of disability. You can reach me Kirk, Adams at Dr Kirk. Adams.com Kirk Adams at Dr, Kirk adams.com I'm also on LinkedIn every day, and what I would like to do Catherine is have you back in about one year. I know we'll be talking many times between now and then, but have you back on this podcast about 12 months talk about how far the Tad Foundation has come over that 12 month period, because I know it's going to be a long way down that dream highway. And we can talk about your upcoming wedding 2026, when we talk next,

26:15

I love it. That sounds awesome. Thank you so much again. Kirk, for having

26:18

all right, always a pleasure to talk with you. Katherine, thanks so much, and thanks everyone for listening. Take good care.

26:26

Thank you for listening to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a [e-mail] together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You.