The FISSEA Forums
The FISSEA Forums are quarterly meetings to provide opportunities for policy and programmatic updates, the exchange of best practices, and discussion and engagement among members of the Federal Information Security Educators (FISSEA) community. This forum took place on February 11, 2025.
Annual Theme
Collaborative Cybersecurity: Building a Community of Awareness and Action
AGENDA
1:40pm – 2:15pm
Supercharging the Cybersecurity Industry Through Disability Inclusion
Kirk Adams, PhD — The Apex Program
This presentation explores how disability inclusion, particularly of blind individuals, can address the critical talent shortage in cybersecurity while creating meaningful career opportunities. Drawing from personal experience as a blind professional and former CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, Dr. Kirk Adams will showcase The APEX Program, an innovative virtual training initiative launching blind people into cybersecurity careers.
Transcript:
Speaker 1 00:00
Today, we are honored to welcome Dr KIRK ADAMS. Dr Adams is a renowned advocate, leader and keynote speaker specializing in disability inclusion and leadership. He serves as the managing director of innovative impact LLC, where he champions impactful workforce inclusion and accessible innovations. With decades of experience, Dr Adams has transformed workplaces and influenced corporate strategies ensuring accessibility and inclusivity are prioritized. His leadership continues to pave the way toward a more equitable and innovative future. Dr Adams, thank you so much for joining us today. We are excited to hear about your topic, supercharging the cybersecurity industry through Disability Inclusion.
Speaker 2 00:52
Well, I am thrilled to be here to talk about this, and let’s just do one visual check. Am I okay? On screen, centered and all good things look amazing. Yes, okay, awesome. So I’ll tell you a little bit more about the speaker. I’m talking to you from my home office in Seattle. I am a blind, totally blind person. My retinas both detached when I was in kindergarten. So I was a sighted kid one day, and a blind kid a couple days later, and I went to a school for blind children for first, second and third grade, the Oregon State School for the Blind and I was really given three gifts there that, now, as a researcher, I know, are strong predictors of of thriving as an adult in employment. And we want all of our blind kids to get these three gifts. One, one is blind, the skills. There are specialized skills and tools and techniques that we need in order to be efficient and effective and thrive in the built, digital and social environments that we live in. I was also given high expectations. The school expected there were 110 120 blind kids, k8 we were expected to be at grade level unless we had a another developmental disability. My parents, they were very young. They were in their mid-20s when I became blind. They were both teachers. My dad was a high school basketball coach. They didn’t want to see anything less than an A on a report card, and expected their kids to be involved in school activities and sports, etc. And then the last thing was this strong internal locus of control, which just means that I was taught as a 678, year old in my bones, that I could do what I wanted to do with my life. I could overcome problems, I could figure things out. And they did that through a lot of experiences, taking us backpacking in the Three Sisters wilderness area and horseback riding and building snow forts on Mount Hood, and being down in the tide pools and on the Oregon coast. So those three things were gifted to me, and I did very well in school. I received a full scholarship to Whitman College and Walla. Walla, I graduated Phi Beta, kappa cum laude, and then I faced the reality that so many of us with significant disabilities face of not being able to find employment. So I had, you know, applied to some grad schools, gotten in. I decided I wanted to marry my college sweetheart and buy a house and have kids, which I’ve done. So married 39 years now, and our two grandchildren are here today, so that that all happened, but there was a long road, long road to follow. I was applying for jobs, getting a phone interview, having a go, great. I would walk into the in person interview with my long white cane and my slate and stylist to take notes in Braille. And you know, the confusion would set in across the desk with the employer who, right, not, not surprisingly, had probably never worked with a blind person before, did not know the tools and training and techniques we used, so could not conceptualize how, how could this blind kid do this financial analyst job he’s applying For? So I had that experience of dozens and dozens of interviews. Finally was offered a securities sales position, selling tax free municipal bonds over the phone, which I did for 10 years, 50 cold calls a day, every day, and then when I turned 30, I decided to reevaluate and decide what I wanted to do the rest of my life. So I pivoted to the nonprofit sector. I got Ashley used the What color is your parachute book out of the Braille library, followed all the exercises and got clear that I should be in the nonprofit sector. To be involved in organizations that create opportunities for people who are blind. So that’s what I’ve devoted the last 30 plus years to, is creating opportunities for other people with disabilities, blind people, in particular, to thrive. I did earn a PhD in leadership and change fairly recently. Finished it six years ago, and I did an ethnographic study of blind adults employed in large American corporations, and got a deep understanding of the factors that led to their success and also the challenge that they faced. The next slide is called the challenge. I should have called it the opportunity. You know, we know there’s 700,000 plus unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the US. We also know that about 70% of people who are blind and all people with significant disabilities, about 70% of us are not in the workforce. So there’s an overlooked and underutilized talent pool, and this starts with our first jobs. Less than 23% of us have any paid work by the time we’re 23 years old, and over 70% of the general population are brothers and sisters and neighbors and classmates. Over 70% have some sort of paid work by the by the time they’re 23 and k 12 is where it all happened, where it all starts. And I talked about the gifts I was given as a first, second and third grader. At some point in your life, as a blind student, you get this wonderful news that there’s this thing called Expanded Core Curriculum, that means young blind kid, you need to learn everything the sighted kids learn, and nine more things. So you need to learn how to travel independently using a white cane. You need to learn how to use assistive technology. You need to learn braille. You need to learn how to add you need to learn self-advocacy and you need career exploration. As we find that data shows, research shows that our blind high school graduates have a much less complete understanding of the possible careers, career pathways and various occupations compared to their sighted classmates. So we are focused here on the cybersecurity careers and the program I’m going to talk about, the apex program prepares blind people for careers in cyber security and prepares people to earn the CompTIA network plus and Security Plus certification. So just wanted to note here that people can earn those certifications as young as age 13, and we’ll talk about the vocational rehabilitation system in a bit, but young people with disabilities are eligible to receive vocational rehabilitation services from their state at age 14, so we can begin working with kids before they’re ready for employment in the pre employment transition services, Pre ETS phase and in the school court transition phase, and why are only 30% of us working? Research shows that the battling for number one and number two reason are employer perceptions of transportation also low also low expectations the inaccessibility of the productivity tools used in the workplace, the lack of training and the skills and abilities that are demanded by the workplace. So the next slide the apex program, prior to starting my consulting practice two and a half years ago, I was privileged to be the president, CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, which is the oldest, most iconic blindness organization. It was Helen Keller’s organization, and I moved into that role. Moved to New York City from Seattle in 2016 into that role, and in 2017 through 2019 we undertook very rigorous research to identify industries and careers that we could focus on to really move the needle. Of that only 30% of us working, and we identified three areas. One was digital health, one was contract management, the third was cybersecurity. And when I when I left AFB and moved back to Seattle, started my consulting practice. I was connected with a privately held, very entrepreneurial cyber security company called Nova coast, N, O, V, A, C, O, A, S, T, novacos.com global. I. Work a lot with global financial institutions. They have Sox security operations centers in the US and UK. They’re standing on up in Shannon, Ireland right now. Super interesting company, very forward thinking. They have a federal practice. They have a conference business. They host two conferences where they bring 110 120 chief information security officers, CSOs, together. They have a staffing business, and they have a training business, and they had found trying to stand up a socket in Michigan. They could not find enough entry level qualified people to hire, so they developed a training program. They saw a business opportunity. They understood other employers would also have challenges in finding enough qualified applicants, so they created this training business online to prepare people to enter the industry. And then the question was asked, Have you ever considered training blind people to enter the cyber security industry? And the people at Novica said, No, we have never considered that. But they them being who they are. They did consider it. They partnered with a blindness agency in Wichita, Kansas, where they have a SOC called Envision, to make the 200 hours of training accessible for blind people like myself who use screen reading software, worked with CompTIA, worked with Pearson VUE to make sure the tests were accessible, and set up a model whereby the training and testing is paid for by state vocational rehabilitation agencies were set up as vendors in 23 states. Now and then, when people complete the training and earn the certifications, there’s assistance and job placement through the Novacoast staffing activity, third their staffing department. So working on this stuff for over 30 years, if I were going to draw something up from scratch, it would look a lot like this, the apex program. It’s preparing people for high demand careers, the training, the testing and the productivity. Tools are very accessible for those of us using screen readers, the certifications are more valuable in the industry than the traditional two and four year degrees. A lot of the jobs are remote, so eliminate some of those transportation barriers, and there’s just a myriad of career pathways and opportunities for upward mobility once people get the foot on the ladder. So the next slide talks about multi sector alignment, and there, there’s a book that’s a little bit of a heavy read, but it’s called forces for good. And researchers studied 12 social movements that had true impact, and they concluded that in order for anything really transformational, transformational to happen in our society that four sectors need to be aligned, the community, the corporate, the government, the nonprofit, and the first organization they studied was Habitat for Humanity, and how it started out volunteers, building some houses for some people, and Now it is a global force for equity, how housing justice and economic engine. The next thing I want to touch on is disability is strength. And again, I’m a researcher, so a book called The Talent Code, I recommend it talks about, how do people develop strengths? How do world class athletes become world class athletes? Chess champions become chess champions, Premier musicians. And it’s through overcoming challenges and increasingly difficult challenges, and sometimes those challenges are created intentionally, as I studied piano and learned the stales and the basics, and then some pieces, and then harder pieces into the more complex classical pieces. That was intentional. There was a program living with a disability every day in our world, which is not constructed to accommodate this. We are faced with challenges constantly, and we have the opportunity to develop strengths that are really unique in areas like resilience and perseverance and grit and creative problem solving and the ability to analyze and manage risk and how to work in diverse teams, and how to listen and how to communicate, and those are all characteristics that employers say they need and want in employees. I was meeting with a group of blind high school students here in Seattle last summer, and one young man, very sharp, very sharp. Young cat, you. Who was entering a senior year. He wanted to work. His brothers and sisters and friends were all getting jobs, and he was applying for some entry level jobs and not, not surprisingly, having similar experience to mine, and not getting hired. And I said, I don’t I don’t know you. Well. We’ve only talked here for half an hour, but I guarantee you have done things that the other kids applying for these jobs haven’t done because you are a blind kid and you’ve lived your life and you are successful in school, and so what I don’t know what it is. Maybe you worked on your family farm. Maybe you took care of your younger brothers and sisters. Maybe you did a really cool, amazing science project as a blind person, so shine a spotlight on that you have strengths and characteristics that your peers don’t because you’ve had to develop those The next slide is success through partnerships. And we talked about the sectors the community Nova coast and the apex program were very tied into the blindness community. There are two national organizations, the National Federation of the Blind, the American Council of the Blind. They all have state chapters and local chapters, and members who are very active, interested in supporting each other and thriving. So when we become connected with the state, so that the state vocational rehabilitation agency can pay for the training and certifications, we reach out to the state and local presidents of the Federation and council and set of times to talk to their members, and we want to create that awareness of the cybersecurity industry as a fertile career field for people who are blind and that there are pathways, and that we have created them, and they’re here. The next is corporate leadership. There is an organization called Disability in disability I in.org It’s 470 corporations who have committed to hiring people with disabilities. Two that I know very well, Microsoft, which is across the lake here, and Walgreens, have really intentionally included people with disabilities, and they’ve tracked their return on investment, as has DuPont and some others, but
17:30
they have found that if
Speaker 2 17:33
a work group, a department, a company division, hire significant numbers of people with significant disabilities, if they reach about a 20% of the workforce being people with disclosed disabilities, a lot of really great things happen to the culture. The turnover is lower, absenteeism is lower, safety is better. Employee satisfaction is higher, customer perception is better, and there are companies doing it, and I’m happy to introduce you to those companies. It’s great to visit if, if you’re within striking distance of Anderson, South Carolina, go to the Walgreens distribution center. Of their 550 employees, 40% are people with severe developmental disabilities, it is their most productive warehouse and distribution center, again, with the lowest absenteeism, lowest turnover, best employee satisfaction, best safety record. It’s a great place to visit. And then the vocational rehabilitation model, the next slide is the government piece, as we talked about the four sectors. So every state has vocational rehabilitation agencies. Some of them have one to serve all people with disabilities. 30 of them have two, one for people who are blind, one for everyone else. Helen Keller was a great organizer, so she went state by state in the 30s and 40s, and worked with state legislatures to set up commissions for the blind. So here’s some things the vocational rehabilitation in your state can do, and they can start doing these things for people as young as age 14. If you’re an employer, they can bring you can understand your needs and bring you qualified applicants. They can assess a workplace for accessibility. They can pay for specialized hardware and software needed for a disabled employee. They can provide your disabled employee with the necessary training to effectively use that hardware and software. They can cover costs for paid internships and summer work experiences for young people. They can pay for salaries during on the job training. And our research at AFB showed that less than 10% of companies who said they wanted to hire people with disabilities or can. Connected with the vocational rehabilitation system. The next piece is the nonprofit network. So in any community of any size, there are one or more community based nonprofits that are focused on supporting employment of people with disabilities. And they have philanthropic dollars. They have trained staff. They have networks.
20:25
They can they can provide a lot of support
Speaker 2 20:29
for schools, training programs, employers, families, Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, lighthouse for blind in Chicago, in San Francisco. Vibrant works in San Antonio, beyond vision of Milwaukee, alpha point in Kansas City. There’s 150 of them. I know them all. So if you would like to be connected to a community based nonprofit in your community, please do let me know. And then finally, I just know I’d love to have Q and A just a call to action. You know, we have a website. It’s the apex program.com, and if you’re interested, at any level, in helping accelerate inclusion to people with disabilities, cybersecurity industry, we would love to talk to you. I have a I have a bunch of email addresses, but for this purpose, probably the K adams@novacos.com would be a great way to get in touch, and I will talk about employment and thriving and careers of people with disabilities all day long. So please do feel free to reach out to me and back to you. Broca,
Speaker 1 21:42
thank you. Dr Adams, thank you for sharing your experiences and the important work you do. You know, I had a chance to see some of these screen readers in action at a conference not that long ago, and I got to meet some of the Cyber students who are graduating from some of the programs you had mentioned. It is just incredible the work that they and you are doing. So thank you for using your words to as you put it, shine a spotlight on this topic, and for sharing information on how we can get involved. We will now field a couple of questions as a reminder to our attendees, please type your questions into the chat or Q and A section at the bottom right hand of your screen. We will answer as many questions as possible. All right, so let’s start off. Do you so this person said that they applaud Nova coast, and do you think that the ski could go worldwide? You’d mentioned that it actually is in a couple of countries, and they have pilots in Shannon and other places. Yeah.
Speaker 2 22:51
So it’s interesting, because we’ve there’s a organization called Vision Ireland, and it is a nonprofit that basically provides a comprehensive suite of services for blind people in Ireland. And when Novacoast planned to open a sock in Shannon, we contacted them right away. Novacoast staff visited the leadership of vision Ireland, where we have several Irish students in the program. Now I’m talking with Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Toronto, Vision Australia, and the New Zealand Foundation for the Blind. So really US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand at this point.
Speaker 1 23:39
Thank you so much. You had mentioned some of the degrees that students as young as 13 can get. Now I know that the CompTIA Security Plus, you need to renew it every three years. So essentially, they’d need to, if they got the certification at 13, they’d still need to renew it at 16. But that aside, what level degree does one need to qualify as an entry level cybersecurity worker? And is there any specific thing that we’re looking for with someone who is blind, visually impaired or disabled?
24:16
Yeah,
24:19
as I mentioned,
Speaker 2 24:22
students with disabilities are eligible in the US for vocational rehabilitation services at age 14, and if you have a disabled young person in your life, you should march them right on down to the vocational rehabilitation agency, and the first step is to create an individual employment, employment plan, and the network plus and security plus certifications if earned during school, yes, they need to be renewed, but that can be built into the plan, and so the continuing education can be built in and planned for and paid for. So there again, there’s just so many untapped resources available through the state vocational rehabilitation agencies. We we’re telling folks that you know, a two year degree, a four year degree, great computer science, it technology, but really the certifications for the entry level, getting the foot on the ladder. We asked CISOs, as I mentioned, Nova Coast has a conference business. They have a conference called innovate, and I had a chance to talk to 70 or 80 chief information security officers as we evolve the program, and ask them, you know, what are you looking for in entry level? Because this program is, it’s designed to prepare people for entry level, get the foot in the door and the and the answer was clearly network plus and security plus. So that’s what we’re focused on. We certainly intend to add additional certification as time goes on, but we really want to be pretty laser focused. As I mentioned, only 30% of us are in the workforce, and young people, especially under the age of 23 are underrepresented in the workforce. So we’re pretty we’re pretty focused on getting people started as far as technology skills. Now we say that if you can navigate effectively and efficiently around a website, you can use it, use a search engine, those are the basic skills that you really need to take the training and the certifications and start the entry level work. Now there are personal characteristics around attention to detail and curiosity and those types of things. And this program was started and designed by a gentleman, a nova Coast employee named David main and David has a very interesting story. He was severely injured in an automobile accident. He’s a double amputee, and lost an eye and a lot of mobility in his hands, and he was a on a disability check for eight years, a small government check, and he, one of his sons enrolled in community college. David enrolled, he somehow was in a cyber security class, discovered, discovered the world in the industry, and progressed and got a degree. And he, he became a SOC manager and a hiring manager. So he, he’s hired many of hundreds of people into the cyber security industry. So for those people with disabilities who are interested, if they fill out the form at the apex program.com they’re going to get an interview with David who will help them determine whether or not this is a path they would like to pursue or not.
27:58
Great advice,
Speaker 1 28:01
how? How would you encourage people with limit, side or disabilities to get into cyber you? You talked about some of the programs, but I’m guessing that from what it sounds like you’re talking about, there is a point where they may not yet believe all of the all that they’re capable of yet, right, right? Yes. How do you get them from point A to point B?
Speaker 2 28:27
I am such a believer in the informational interview I didn’t have. I didn’t know any blind people when I was growing up. So I didn’t have any successful blind adult role models. I really was in that category of needing career exploration. My parents were teachers. Everyone we knew were teachers. So I had no I had no concept of the business world. So as I mentioned, the National Federation of the Blind and American Council the blind, nfb.org, acb.org, to contact a local chapter, get connected with some blind adults who are successfully employed any occupation you can think of. There’s a blind person doing it. I was told as a senior in high school I couldn’t take chemistry because it was too dangerous, and I didn’t take chemistry. But now I’ve met blind people with PhDs in chemistry, people who started their own businesses and sold them for multi millions of dollars as chemists, blind people who teach chemistry at the university level. So you can contact me directly. I’d happily give you some guidance. But I think connecting with people who’ve done it, who are in the IT industry as blind people, who are acting efficient, efficiently, effectively in the cyber security environment as blind people. We’re out here.
Speaker 1 29:57
What would you say to um. Um industry or employers who are looking at employing entry level, but they’re not yet sure if this is something that would work for them. How do you convince them that this is something that they could do?
Speaker 2 30:19
Well, I think the first thing is back what I said, connect, connect with the structures and resources that are available to help them. The vocational rehabilitation agency in their state, community based community, community based nonprofits in their community, other employers who have already taken some of these steps, the community based organizations. So, so really, really, exposure and demonstration I take. I’ve taken clients on field trips to Walgreens distribution center in Anderson, South Carolina, and had them transformed after a day looking at a workforce where 40% of the people have disabilities and the culture is of active mutual support caring.
31:04
So I think, I think
Speaker 2 31:07
proof is in the pudding. Going to see it, talking to people who are doing it.
Speaker 1 31:13
This is great advice. Thank you so much for talking to us today, taking time. You provided so many amazing resources that I think are very useful. We can take those back, we can look at our communities and see how we can get involved. So definitely appreciate that.
Speaker 2 31:33
Thank you so much. Yeah, wonderful to be here, and you know, I love to talk with anyone who is working on being more inclusive of underrepresented populations in the cybersecurity industry. Talk about how I can be helpful in expanding that thinking to people with disabilities.
31:51
Absolutely,
Speaker 1 31:53
there may be more questions coming in through the chat, but I believe that we have provided some additional resources in the chat, if you are interested in finding out more, and I believe that you had just provided contacts as well.
Speaker 2 32:09
I’m here. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone. Bye.
” Inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a strategic advantage. “
Dr. Kirk Adams, Ph.D.
Advocate, Leader and Keynote Speaker on Disability Inclusion & Leadership
Leading the Way to Accessible Innovation
Innovative Impact, LLC Consulting
Managing Director
Impactful Workforce Inclusion Starts Here
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