Julie Sowash chats with Impact Managing Editor Janet Stewart about her work with employers to hire people with disabilities. Her company, Disability Solutions, has found jobs for more than 8,000 workers to date.

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;43;19

Janet Stewart

Welcome to Impact the Conversation, a podcast of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration. It brings you strategies and stories advancing the inclusion of people with disabilities. Our guests are the authors of impact, our long running magazine, The Bridges the Research to Practice gap with professional and personal reflections on what matters most in disability equity today. I'm your host, Janet Stewart.

00;00;43;22 - 00;00;49;12

Janet Stewart

See? You.

00;00;49;14 - 00;01;18;14

Janet Stewart

What is that thing that gets you out of bed in the morning? For Julie Sowash, it's helping companies do a better job in hiring workers with disabilities. Her company is called Disability Solutions, and she works with them on affirmative action policies and other strategies for getting more people with disabilities in their workforces. As I spoke with Julie about contributing an article to the employment issue, she was happy to share some successes and some continuing barriers.

00;01;18;16 - 00;01;51;21

Julie Sowash

When I graduated from university, I worked for the Medicaid office in state of Indiana, and I managed the Medicaid infrastructure grant. And really there got a few different things. One is I was able to build a five year strategic plan to overcome barriers to employment at the state level. I learned a lot about affirmative action and federal contractor compliance, which becomes kind of critical to how we built and then evolved the business.

00;01;51;23 - 00;02;25;07

Julie Sowash

And I kind of came to accept that I was an Em, a person who lives with disability. So I, I got an ADHD diagnosis at the age of 30. That probably saved, but definitely substantially, impacted my life and my career. Liz lived with depression, anxiety, panic disorder since, since my early 20s and just really had some great leadership at the state that said, hey, like, we know you're working hard, we know you're doing great, you're a player.

00;02;25;07 - 00;02;28;10

Julie Sowash

But like, this isn't what stable looks like with help.

00;02;28;16 - 00;02;32;26

Janet Stewart

Julie got the support she needed to better manage projects and people.

00;02;32;28 - 00;03;03;20

Julie Sowash

Through the Medicaid infrastructure grant. Then I went on to, And do some grant writing, and I also helped some technology, vendors build business models for better formative action compliance that are outreach to people with disabilities, state job boards, all of that kind of stuff. I wrote a grant that funded an autism program, for young adults called roses for autism at our parent company of the beyond and the to serve as a one off.

00;03;03;22 - 00;03;22;19

Julie Sowash

Got a call about a year later from the CEO at the time and said, hey, Pepsi wants to hire people with disabilities. They've been on our board of directors for like 20 years. They say they'll pay us. Will you come build it? And like, do you say no to that? No. It's sort of the opportunity of a lifetime.

00;03;22;22 - 00;03;58;17

Julie Sowash

And so really, through that, the spent sort of the first 5 to 6 years start cutting our teeth, with what I will still say is the best partner in the world. Pepsi was willing to sort of open up the data to us and say, you know, how do we get there? And so I, for the first time, could see all of the barriers to employment that existed within their apply process, and I could build something that worked to scale for them.

00;03;58;20 - 00;04;21;16

Julie Sowash

Instead of what we see, I mean, I would say still, 90% of the time are these one off programs, one location, one great HR manager, one great, you know, DC leader, and those are really important. I'm not not disparaging them, but our goal was always build something that has outcomes and build something that can outlive us and now grow us.

00;04;21;19 - 00;04;43;03

Julie Sowash

Because if it's always dependent on Julie being there to do it, it can't grow bigger than me. And that's not the goal. And that we ultimately would touch more lives than we would ever actually see physically or meet physically in our lives. And that, really our motto for disability solutions is to change minds and change lives.

00;04;43;03 - 00;05;11;23

Julie Sowash

So if I can change the mind of the leader, a CEO, a CFO, a CEO about what we can do, then we can change a dramatic number of lives that we'll never even know about. Hopefully when when we can get that data, we do. And that's really sort of how I got into this work. You know, just took base understanding of what the, the state infrastructure, federal infrastructure looks like.

00;05;11;26 - 00;05;23;12

Julie Sowash

Understood. What some of the barriers are. Understood the regulation around it and then how to make those pieces work to our advantage instead of our disadvantage.

00;05;23;15 - 00;05;25;28

Janet Stewart

I just wondered what what the results were at Pepsi.

00;05;25;28 - 00;05;56;03

Julie Sowash

00;05;56;05 - 00;06;27;10

Julie Sowash

We certainly started where their pain point was, which was in their their distribution centers, their they call them MMW, but their MMW facilities, because that was part of making a business case. Not and they were really great about that. They said, what we want to help you do our project champion said, well, we want to help you do is make us look really good, because what makes us look really good get you to the next guy that gets you to the next guy that gets you to the next guy, because they can keep moving up the chain.

00;06;27;10 - 00;06;45;12

Julie Sowash

Something that has a great ROI, that they also has, that thing that makes you get out of bed in the morning and says this. This is something that makes me feel good about what I'm doing. So we really kind of took the industry, took me a long time to kind of figure out, but we had to have a good balance between a head and a heart approach.

00;06;45;15 - 00;07;08;22

Julie Sowash

We buy with our hearts. But as business leaders, we need to act and grow programs with our heads. And so that's really the approach. We've also expanded into Frito Lay, which is owned by Pepsi Global. So we've added, additional hires there. We're working with their team for the second year now on national roll out.

00;07;08;23 - 00;07;16;18

Janet Stewart

So it's mostly focused on hiring procedures, getting the numbers up of people with disabilities in workplaces. Right.

00;07;16;20 - 00;07;38;07

Julie Sowash

Yeah. So that's kind of the way that we look at it is like if we're looking at a process from how do I learn about a job to how do I get a job? There sometimes are like 10 to 15 different vendors that may look like Pepsi or American Express or whoever that you're going through is a job seeker that you have no idea how they function.

00;07;38;07 - 00;07;58;29

Julie Sowash

You have no idea how to kind of manage those processes. And also the back end of those processes are built to create efficiencies and minimize risks for the employers. And so what we really think about is how do we help create a response to remove each one of those barriers. And so the companies that we work with sort of fit in the gamut of that.

00;07;58;29 - 00;08;20;12

Julie Sowash

Some of them are just doing advertising. Some of them are doing outreach, some are doing what Pepsi and Frito do, which is sort of the end to end, like help us monitor every aspect and make sure that we're running parallel paths within our applicant tracking systems or our systems of records that we're getting people with disabilities through in an equitable way.

00;08;20;14 - 00;08;27;09

Janet Stewart

So can you give me just 1 or 2 examples of what they're doing differently now in the process?

00;08;27;11 - 00;08;52;12

Julie Sowash

Yeah. So one thing that we realized early on, and this is a super simple thing, is because, for example, high volume higher, especially with a brand like Pepsi or Frito, when a job opens, because they're such in-demand jobs, they will limit the applicant pool to, let's say, 25 or 30 applicants and then that requisition will close and go away.

00;08;52;15 - 00;09;15;16

Julie Sowash

And so what we found is that we had these two sort of ready to go partners who had job seekers ready to apply, were ready to work. And by the time we could get the information out to them, the jobs were already closed. And so we we created alternate pools. So that when you go through, it's called Pepsi Act when you go through a Pepsi Act requisition.

00;09;15;19 - 00;09;39;08

Julie Sowash

We don't have those same limitations on the applicant pool. And so what that does under the law is it it maintains a minimized risk for for the employer, but it also then creates that extra step of showing that they're going sort of that next level to make sure that people with disabilities are getting equitable transition through their apply process.

00;09;39;10 - 00;10;06;28

Janet Stewart

This is something that's, I think resonates beyond disability. Oh, yeah. About older workers who are just getting shut out of that application process immediately or, you know, just people who, you know, are not part of a certain, you know, they're not talking the exact same language that, an employer is, you know, today. Do you think there are some implications for this work, even beyond disability?

00;10;07;00 - 00;10;32;04

Julie Sowash

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So one thing that we do and again, so we work with about 80 companies now, but we only get about 20% of them reporting back hiring data. That's actually kind of one of the things that we're trying to figure out how to integrate some technology to help make that easier for them. But we know that there's a lot of intersectionality within those pieces and parts.

00;10;32;04 - 00;11;07;07

Julie Sowash

So, not just hires but applies. Right? So we know that black women, at least in America, are more likely to, you know, have a disability than white women. Hispanic men are more likely to have a physical disability than white men. And so if you're thinking about how do I attract the full kind of pie and make sure that the pie or the whole population of underrepresented communities and make sure that we're creating as much opportunity as possible, right.

00;11;07;09 - 00;11;36;13

Julie Sowash

Then you have to include people with disabilities within within the way that you look at those programs to create the maximum amount of, of opportunity. The the slight difference, I would say, under the law is that there is when you think about affirmative action or discrimination, there's no non-disabled class under the law. So there is a there's always an opposing class for everything else.

00;11;36;13 - 00;12;13;10

Julie Sowash

Right? There's women, there's men. There's black, there's white, you know, that kind of thing. And so because we under the law as a, as an employment population don't have that opposing class, it does allow employers a little bit more latitude in the things that they're able to proactively do. But overall, that's still going to drive more people of color, more women, more veterans, more LGBTQ people into the system than if it were not.

00;12;13;17 - 00;12;23;09

Janet Stewart

Do you think we're getting close at all to kind of breaking into more meaningful work for people with IDD?

00;12;23;11 - 00;12;51;00

Julie Sowash

So I think there's a couple of different things that are continuing to create barriers for this community. And the first one is our community itself. We set dramatically low expectations for young adults as they're aging out of the system. And I think that, again, is traditionally because the voices that have been heard in our community are caregivers and allies and not us.

00;12;51;03 - 00;13;24;01

Julie Sowash

And so when and I'm a parent, so I kind of think of it as a sway, as I am a very protective helicopter mom, like a lot of us are. And so when I'm the voice for my children, that voice is more cautious. That voice is more protective. And my children don't have disabilities. And so to think about the majority of how legislation, regulation, and sort of the culture of disability has been built over the last 60 years.

00;13;24;03 - 00;13;50;22

Julie Sowash

It's been the voices of parents too often, and it's been the parents, the voices of caregivers. And so that that low bar of expectation and that low bar of not having a voice, continues to be a critical issue that we have to deal with as a community. I do feel like since kind of two thousand sixteen, we've started to see a much larger presence of people with disabilities.

00;13;50;22 - 00;14;20;20

Julie Sowash

Speaking for themselves and feeling kind of generating pride and engagement with their identity and who they are. I think since two thousand eleven, two thousand twelve, when the regulations were revised around section five hundred and three, putting some more teeth, not enough teeth, but some more teeth, to hiring people with disabilities throughout organizations and throughout job classifications and locations. I think that is making a dramatic improvement.

00;14;20;23 - 00;14;51;29

Julie Sowash

As well as with the pandemic, we saw 2 million new people with disabilities enter the workforce or reenter the workforce that had not been participating, that were not participating over the pandemic. So I think it's becoming more common, to see people with disabilities in the workforce. I live in Europe, and I'm very surprised and how often I see people with disabilities out in public and out doing jobs and doing things here than we do in the States.

00;14;52;01 - 00;15;02;29

Julie Sowash

It's a an in a much less physically accessible environment. People with disabilities are much more visible here than they are. Yeah, I think.

00;15;03;01 - 00;15;07;06

Janet Stewart

I didn't know you lived, abroad. Where where are you?

00;15;07;08 - 00;15;42;20

Julie Sowash

So I live in Portugal. I live on the southern coast of Portugal, about 20 minutes or so from the Spanish border. But because of, our work and my husband's work, we travel pretty extensively throughout Europe. And it is not uncommon. And just as an example, like a one that sat with me, a couple Christmases ago, I was near Paris for, or I was in Paris for an event, and I was sitting at a cafe, and I saw literally in an hour and a half, I probably saw seven blank people walk by who were not in a group.

00;15;42;27 - 00;16;06;01

Julie Sowash

They were, you know, completely just with friends or they were on their own or whatever. And I like, never see that in America. And it's very common to see people with wheelchair users here out in Portugal. So very common to see children with disabilities out and about and being a part of things. So it's culturally, I think, a thing that we, need to focus on.

00;16;06;02 - 00;16;31;09

Janet Stewart

What hurdle now is most keeping you up at night? What are you, most trying to get across with employers or, or with job seekers? You know, either side. Do you see both sides? You see the disability community trying to, you know, get competitive, integrated employment off the ground and getting people ready. You see, the employer world and you know what?

00;16;31;09 - 00;16;36;08

Janet Stewart

Some barriers are there. What's the critical one you're really working on right now.

00;16;36;10 - 00;16;53;09

Julie Sowash

So I think it's you know, for for our community, I think it is low expectations and, and setting a higher bar for ourselves. And taking off some of those training wheels, so to speak. On, on a young adults. On the employer side, I think there.

00;16;53;09 - 00;16;54;10

Janet Stewart

Are.

00;16;54;13 - 00;16;59;20

Julie Sowash

A couple of things that I would, I would look at. One is we are still very performative.

00;16;59;27 - 00;17;08;06

Janet Stewart

Too often Julie says companies are setting up systems that look promising, but really don't result in people with disabilities getting hired.

00;17;08;08 - 00;17;32;15

Julie Sowash

There's a young man that I interviewed, from a university in Colorado who speaks to, like, the the lie of hope. You think as a person with a disability that these companies want to hire you when they're really not doing the work. My other point is that we want to make sure that when employers who are incredibly well intentioned, they're not building programs that actually create more barriers to employment.

00;17;32;20 - 00;17;59;11

Julie Sowash

If you've got someone who is incredibly high functioning, has the skills to do jobs but needs an accommodation, the likelihood is that they are not the likelihood, but we're seeing sometimes that they're being rerouted through programs that are not necessary. They're actually creating barriers to their full integration into a company and allowing them to grow. If you can apply for a job, you can kind of get through that step.

00;17;59;13 - 00;18;19;08

Julie Sowash

And there's other coaching pieces that you need. You've got the education, you've got those we can find direct paths in. And that's the smart way to do it. We have to look at it both from a quality and a quantity of applicants that need to get through the the existing systems of record. Instead of saying if you are on the spectrum, don't apply this way, apply this way.

00;18;19;10 - 00;18;53;00

Julie Sowash

Because this way is for people who have more significant disabilities, who need a more significant support. Not for every, you know, Tom, Dick and Harry who don't need that support. So let's not take those biases and apply them generally to every group or every person who's on the on the spectrum, that kind of thing. One other thing that I'm seeing employers do, and this is not new, but when we when they get hyperfocus on one disability type that is damaging to their brand.

00;18;53;06 - 00;19;26;04

Julie Sowash

And so one of the things that, you know, I work for employers, my job is to help you minimize your risk and help you build positive, credible brand in our community. When you're doing the work and when you talk about your neurodiversity hiring, or you talk about your program for X, y, Z, not saying that those aren't important because they are important, but they should be part of a holistic strategy that doesn't, isolate or doesn't disengage the vast majority of the population.

00;19;26;07 - 00;20;05;26

Julie Sowash

People with mental illness, people like me, are going to be the the vast majority of people with disabilities, and we're likely going to be the vast majority entering your workforce and choosing you when we do have choices because you're good at hiring into a community that we're engaged with. And I think employee employers do themselves a huge disservice when they don't understand a proactive strategy that is that is wholly community focused in its in its purpose and then can get granular to help get people into work where additional supports are needed or additional passions, from the company or their leadership are applicable.

00;20;06;01 - 00;20;23;04

Janet Stewart

Julie's been so great talking with you about this. I really appreciate both you writing the article for impact and sharing a little bit more detail here with us today. Thank you so much.

00;20;23;06 - 00;20;33;17

Janet Stewart

Thanks for joining the conversation. If you'd like to reproduce all or part of this podcast, please email AISI pub at ended Edu.

00;20;33;19 - 00;21;11;24

Pete McCauley

Our show is co-produced at the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration by Impact Managing editor Janet Stewart, and ICI media producer Pete McCauley. Skyler Mihajlov is our editor. Graphic designers are Connie Burkhart and Sarah Curtner. For more information on the Institute and all of our products and projects, please visit ICI. N.edu.