Here, Dr. Kirk Adams invites readers to join him at World Trade Center Seattle’s “Can We Talk: Don’t Leave $18T on the Table!” on January 22, 2026, and uses the event as a launch point to argue that disability, neurodivergence, and aging are not niche issues but the world’s largest overlooked economic opportunity, an ecosystem tied to an estimated $18 trillion in purchasing power that investors and business leaders routinely undervalue. He frames accessibility as strategy, not charity or compliance, emphasizing that the real cost isn’t inclusive design; it’s exclusion, lost customers, lost talent, and missed innovation, especially as nearly everyone will experience disability at some point in life.
Leave a CommentYear: 2025
The Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI) announces two major leadership additions: Dr. Kirk Adams has joined as Executive Director, and Dr. Joseph Marth has joined the Board. Framing these appointments as the “spark” for what comes next, ISDI positions this moment as the start of a larger push to protect and expand justice, access, and opportunity across sectors.
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In this deeply moving episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams speaks with Sheldon Guy, Director of Women’s Athletics with Improve Her Game and, by his account, one of the only blind basketball coaches, about the sudden, life-altering loss of his vision and the raw, real-time process of rebuilding a life. Sheldon recounts how quickly his world shifted, the heartbreak of what that meant for his son, and the moment he reached a breaking point, only to find a reason to keep going through messages of love and belief from his son and the players he coached. From there, he made a conscious decision to “pivot,” return to the gym, and keep his commitments, launching a story of resilience that later drew major media attention and led to documentary coverage of his journey.
Leave a CommentIn this insightful episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with Alyssa Dver, Founder and CEO of the ERG Leadership Alliance, to explore how employee resource groups (ERGs) can drive both inclusion and business performance. Alyssa breaks down what ERGs are, why they’re different from social clubs, and how volunteer leaders navigate the paradox of doing “extra” work that still has to align with business goals. She and Dr. Adams discuss the current backlash against DEI, the recent U.S. executive order that both constrains and reinforces the importance of inclusive ERGs, and why organizations that were already committed to DEI are now doubling down on ERGs as engines of belonging, innovation, and retention. Throughout the conversation, they connect ERGs directly to disability inclusion, emphasizing that disability crosses all demographics and that every ERG can and should be disability-ready.
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Here, Dr. Kirk Adams uses the International Day of Persons with Disabilities as a global checkpoint to spotlight the lives, rights, and leadership of 1.3 billion disabled people worldwide. He explains how disability intersects with identity markers like race, gender, class, and geography, showing sharp contrasts between richer countries with more infrastructure and legal protections and the global South, where poverty, stigma, and limited access to education, employment, and assistive technology are common. Yet, he emphasizes that disabled leaders across the global South are driving innovation and change, from education and employment to digital accessibility, strengthening a truly global disability movement.
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Practical Strategies for Workplace Inclusion and Leadership
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In this illuminating episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk shares how a stressful season leading the American Foundation for the Blind and pursuing his PhD led him to the healing work of guest Ssanyu Birigwa. He recalls powerful half-day sessions in New York that began with reflective writing and moved into energy practices like the hara seven-minute meditation, creating “energy bodies” with the hands, and chakra work. Those tools, which he still uses most mornings, helped him re-center, move from heaviness to lightness, and live with greater intention and body awareness.
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Here, Dr. Kirk Adams distills a lively fireside chat and happy hour with Russell Investments’ nine-month-old Disability+ Associate Resource Group into a practical operating model for disability inclusion. Anchored in the social model, and the clarifying distinction between impairment and disability, he translates lived experience into leadership behaviors and introduces seven concrete plays with 30/60/90-day starters, from making disability visible in DEI governance and simplifying accommodations to accessible-by-default tech and manager enablement. The piece also features moderator Stacey Messer’s perspective, noting strong engagement and why the impairment-versus-disability framing resonated.
Leave a CommentPractical Strategies for Workplace Inclusion and Leadership
Leave a CommentIn this candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with speech-language pathologist, author, and ICU survivor Vanessa Abraham to trace her extraordinary arc from clinician to patient and back again. Abraham recounts the rare Guillain-Barré variant that left her paralyzed and voiceless, the disorientation and aftermath of Post-Intensive Care Syndrome, and the painstaking work of reclaiming speech, swallowing, mobility, and identity. She explains why she wrote Speechless, to humanize the critical-care experience, and makes a compelling case that communication access in the ICU is a basic right, not a luxury.
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