Year: 2026

In this thoughtful episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Kirk Adams talks with Zhou Fang, an intersectionality practitioner and abundance mindset teacher whose podcast he discovered when it popped up in his iCatcher app. Zhou explains that her intersectionality work begins with her own experience as a Chinese immigrant who is not a citizen, from graduate school in Manhattan, Kansas, to her life in Portland, Oregon, and she compares Midwest hospitality with Pacific Northwest politeness, which she says can cost people the honest conversations that build real relationships. Kirk shares his own culture shift from “Seattle nice” to New York City, and Zhou describes how she uses intersectionality and the “yes, and” approach to help leaders become better, more thoughtful communicators.

In this warm episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Stephanie D. Sanders, a transformational motivational speaker and performer from Lakeland, Florida, who first wrote to him years ago when he was president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, and who later met him in person at the National Federation of the Blind convention in Orlando. Stephanie tells her story from the beginning: legally blind in one eye since birth but undiagnosed until kindergarten, treated through the University of Florida, and raised as the youngest of three by a mother who did not yet know why her daughter kept giving the wrong answer. She describes refusing to let her vision define her, the sports and cheerleading years, the basketball injury that ended her track-and-field and Olympic hopes, and the pivot that followed into sports announcing, a mass communications degree in radio, television and film production, and a career in entertainment.

In this warm and candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Jeff Wissel, Vice President, Accessibility at Aira, a friend he first met in a Washington, D.C. hotel hallway when the Secret Service cleared a banquet room for Secretary Elaine Chao. Kirk opens with his own decade as an Aira subscriber: a demonstration at AFB’s New York offices from founder Suman Kanuganti, and the airport navigation that became his most valuable use case. Jeff then traces his own arc, retinitis pigmentosa noticed around age seven, a 28-year career at Fidelity Investments that began before the internet, giving up driving at 34, and years spent covering a non-apparent disability because he had no blind role model and believed he was the only one.

In this warm and wide-ranging episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Rachel Antoine, Senior Director of International Operations at Braille Institute, for a conversation about Braille literacy and the programs that sustain it. Kirk opens with his own Braille history, losing his sight at five, learning to read and write Braille from Mrs. Summers at the Oregon State School for the Blind, and depending on Braille books through long hospital stays, then traces his three encounters with Braille Challenge: a regional in Tampa, a 2019 keynote at the Braille Challenge gala, and a return visit in 2026 where he met Rachel. Rachel explains that Braille Challenge has grown from one Southern California regional in 2000 to over 80 regionals worldwide, reaching around 2,200 students a year and over 26,000 since it began, with the competition as the vehicle and Braille literacy as the mission.