Interview transcript:
Soraya Correa The National Industries for the Blind is a non-profit organization that was established in 1938 through the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act, and its focus is primarily helping individuals who are blind or visually impaired find employment. That’s basically the core mission of what we do. And we do this through multiple ways. First of all, we work with the AbilityOne Commission, that’s the federal side of the program, where we obtain federal contracts, we produce products, services, and these are products and services that are produced by individuals who are blind or visually impaired. So like any other manufacturing operation — think Walmart, Amazon — we’re the same thing, except that we hire folks who are blind. And what’s interesting is we have to maintain a ratio, about 75% have to be blind individuals to work. But they work with sighted individuals and they work in these factories. And I’ve got to tell you, Terry, it’s the most amazing thing you’ll ever see.
Terry Gerton I bet there’s got to be a huge sense of accomplishment just to see these people achieve their goals.
Soraya Correa It is. I joined the organization in March of 2024. And one of the things that I’ve done over the last, what, 18 months is go out and visit a lot of our nonprofit agencies. We have about 100 nonprofit agencies that are affiliated with our nonprofit organization. So those are the folks that actually do the work. We work directly with the AbilityOne Commission and federal customers to obtain contracts, and then these organizations go out and do the work. And I’ve gone out and visited these organizations and seen people do the work, from manufacturing products to assembling products to making uniforms, whatever it is, watching these people do their work and they rely on technology. But what’s amazing is the skill that they have, the ability they have to overcome the challenges that would be affiliated with being visually impaired to get these things done.
Terry Gerton How does NIB fit in with the current administration’s focus on Made in America, inclusive growth? I mean, you’re talking about providing services to individuals, but those individuals may be able to provide services back.
Soraya Correa We’re pretty excited about the focus on Made in America because we are. We are made in America. We make our products here. We are employing Americans with disabilities to come and make these products. In fact, we employ about 5,000 on the AbilityOne program side; nearly 40,000 people across the companies that we’re supporting are people who are blind or visually impaired. But about 5,000 of them are through the AbilityOne program, of which a little over 450 are veterans. We bring them the capability to work here and build products here for our troops, for our government. This is a source of pride for these individuals, because otherwise they might not be able to serve the government. So they’re excited about doing it, and they are Americans. And here’s the thing: When they’re working for us, they’re earning at least minimum wage or better, depending on the position that they’re in. They have promotion opportunity. They can go on to build their careers, take care of their families, they become tax-paying citizens, and they’re not relying on government for financial support. And all of our products, we label our products, we identify our products, in fact our brand is SKILCRAFT; that is a brand that is owned and controlled by us. All of our products are made here in the United States. There may be products that we may have to import from TAA-compliant countries, but we follow the same supply chains that are out there for other industries, for other companies. So, it’s not unique, what we do in the sense that, you know, we’re building commercial products and commercial resources and we rely on the same supply chains, the same wholesale and distributor chains that are out there. We do some distribution services ourselves. One of the services that we provide is logistic services. We actually do logistic service and warehousing for some of our customers.
Terry Gerton How you take this workforce that’s distributed across a hundred some-odd subcontractors and really offer them career potential? Tell us how that works.
Soraya Correa So first, it’s even beyond the people that are working for the nonprofit agencies. At the National Industries for the Blind, we’re interested in all employment, for everybody who’s out there who’s blind or visually impaired, finding that employment opportunity. So we’ve stood up a variety of programs, those that support our nonprofit agencies, but those that even go beyond that. We have a program called NSITE, that’s spelled N-S-I-T-E. NSITE was born out of our employee development program that we had within NIB. We established it in 2021 and the goal there was to find opportunities to train, to enhance training and provide opportunities for folks who are looking for jobs, individuals who are blind or visually impaired, looking for jobs, to connect with companies that are looking for employees. So through our NSITE program, we have what’s called a job board. It’s free for our nonprofit agencies. Companies can sign up for this job board for a fee. Job seekers, it’s free, and they can post their resumes, and it gives them an opportunity to interact with companies who are looking, for them to see job opportunities, whether with our nonprofit agencies or with other organizations. So many major corporations are on our job board. We have probably about 60 to 70 companies that are out there using it. We work closely with a lot of companies. We also provide training for individuals. People can sign up for training with us. From teaching them the technologies, the adaptive technologies that are out there, to teaching them services. In fact, recently we started something that we call the Better Behaviors Program to help people develop as a total individual, to understand how to act and interact, how to network, how to find mentors, to do those soft-skill type activities that often aren’t taught in many training classes out there.
Terry Gerton So I can imagine your first contact with an individual who’s visually impaired might be their first entree into the job market.
Soraya Correa It could be, or it could be their return to the job market after they became blind, and sometimes there’s a little bit of a loss of confidence there, a little, you know, discomfort. And so we try to help them adapt not only to their situation, but also to what the work environment would be like, and help them connect and think about what they want to do, how they want to develop their careers, what are the kinds of services or what kind of learning they need, how they’re going to adapt. Through this Better Behaviors Program, which I’m very excited about, it helps develop the person completely, helps them think about the interview process and how they engage with an employer and what a work environment looks like today, because we are in a very different work environment than we’ve been in before.
Terry Gerton You and your partner organizations have incredible experience in helping people really achieve their potential. What have you learned or what are some of the workforce strategies that NIB employs that others in the federal space could learn from?
Soraya Correa I think basically what I said once before is that an individual’s disability doesn’t mean that they’re incapable of doing something. With proper training, with the proper tools, and proper understanding, pretty much they can do the jobs that others do. There might be elements of jobs that they might not be able to do, but generally speaking they can pretty much do anything anybody else can do, especially when we’re thinking of professional services. When we think of services and even some of the manufacturing, there’s not much that they can’t do.
Terry Gerton There’s often, though, resistance to providing that kind of accessibility assistance. How can we get leaders to overcome that?
Soraya Correa So first of all, we’ve got to dispel the rumor that it’s expensive to do. It really isn’t. There have been studies done that maybe it’s a $300-per-person investment because really what you’re buying is technology, software — and again, I’m talking for blind or visually impaired. People seem to think that it is expensive to accommodate. No, it’s not. It’s not, in some cases it costs nothing to accommodate, especially if you already have an accessible workplace and accessible products, like accessible websites, accessible software, etc. But generally speaking, I think the average number was about $300 a person. If you think about that, that’s nothing. That is nothing. It’s not even a rounding error. So I think dispelling some of the rumors that are out there that it’s expensive to hire individuals with disabilities — no, it just means that you might have to adapt your work environment a little bit, but not major significant changes. That’s not what I’ve seen. We run a regular office environment.
Terry Gerton What are the ways to raise awareness about accessibility, assistance, more inclusivity, and culture to bring these folks into the work environment?
Soraya Correa So one of the things is take advantage of programs that are out there that enable us to go out and speak. October is National Disability Awareness Month. That’s sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor. We obviously are going to run some programs to help educate folks. But I think it’s doing exactly what I’m doing right here, getting out and talking about what we do. Our non-profit agencies are constantly out there talking about they do. We run public policy advocacy, months of awareness and campaigns to go out and talk to legislators so that they understand what we do, because they certainly can influence a lot of these companies out there and through legislation they can create opportunities for our folks. So we’re constantly out there trying to make folks aware, talking to employers and making sure that we remind folks that it’s just a disability, it’s just a different way of doing things.
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