👉 Take the Our Ability, Inc. Disability Owned Business Opportunity Platform Survey here.
🎙️ Listen to my talk (Dr. Kirk Adams) with John Robinson on July 14, 2025.
The Rope Team
I first met John Robinson nine years ago, wedged between rush-hour elbows on New York’s F-train while he was fresh off an Amtrak run from Albany. Two entrepreneurs, one blind, one a three-foot-eight quadruple-amputee, trading travel war-stories, quickly discovered a shared love of high places. In mountaineering, the rope team moves only as fast as its slowest climber; in business, disability-owned enterprises move only as far as the market can see them. So John and I clipped into the same line and set our sights on a bigger cliff: transforming access to corporate supply chains.
Disability-owned businesses already prove daily that inclusion is a strategic advantage, yet too many contracts still dangle out of reach. Our next summit is a data-driven B2B marketplace, an AI-powered matchmaker between Fortune-500 buyers and disability-owned suppliers, that can only be built with your insight. In the paragraphs ahead I will spotlight John’s track record, expose the procurement gap stalling our progress, and invite every disability-owned firm to complete his six-question survey. Because when the rope is tight and every voice is counted, we all climb higher, together.
The Trail So Far: John Robinson & Our Ability
John’s career arc is a study in converting lived adversity into market advantage. After a decade of selling prime-time spots for NBC affiliates, where he learned that every second of airtime must prove its value, he moved to public television, steering corporate support at WMHT. That front-row seat to shifting media economics convinced him technology could do more than sell commercials; it could level playing fields. In 2010 he launched Our Ability, Inc. and, with the bravado only a former ad-man can summon, promised corporate America a new way to see “ability, not disability.”
Fifteen years on, the proof is in the data. Jobs Ability, the AI engine John built first on IBM Watson and now on Microsoft Azure, has guided more than ten thousand job-seekers toward meaningful work, draws roughly fifteen thousand unique visitors each month, and feeds talent pipelines for partners ranging from CVS to Pfizer. Two consecutive “AI for Good” grants have sharpened its matching algorithms and fortified its cloud backbone. In short, John’s tech has already moved mountains for employment; adapting it to supplier diversity isn’t a leap of faith, it’s the next logical pitch of the climb.
Mapping the Opportunity Gap
Every procurement director I meet proudly touts billion-dollar diversity commitments, yet when I ask for the disability-owned segment, the room goes quiet. The demand is real, but the supply remains stubbornly thin: barely six percent of working-age people with significant disabilities run their own businesses, half the entrepreneurship rate of the general population. The result is a yawning chasm where inclusive dollars languish on ledgers instead of flowing into our community.
Why the shortfall? Too many disability-owned firms operate as cottage industries, capable, inventive, but scaled for neighborhood orders rather than nationwide RFPs. Disability:IN certification opens doors, yet its complexity and cost favor enterprises already large enough to navigate the maze, leaving smaller, tech-savvy startups invisible. In this mismatch of eager buyers and undersized suppliers lies both the frustration and the opportunity: if we can surface and strengthen these hidden players, everyone’s bottom line, and our collective economic influence, will climb.
Flipping the Engine: An AI Marketplace for Contracts
The idea sparked during a routine client review when a Fortune-500 partner, already impressed by how Jobs Ability pairs résumés with openings in seconds, wondered aloud, “Could the algorithm do the same for suppliers?” John’s answer was classic Robinson: “Yes, if the community wants it.” The concept is elegantly simple. Keep the generative-AI core, but instead of cross-walking skills to job descriptions, feed it NAICS codes, capability statements, and purchase histories. The engine then pushes curated RFPs and the right procurement officer’s email straight to a Disability-Owned Business Enterprise (DOBE) dashboard, while Our Ability’s servers shoulder the data wrangling behind the scenes.
We know the tech is up to the task because it’s already guiding thousands of job-seekers every month; swapping résumés for capability profiles is a tweak, not a moonshot. Think of it as rerouting a proven climbing rope to a new face of the mountain, the knots hold, the anchors are tested, and all that’s required now is more climbers on the line.
The Six-Question Survey: Your Voice, Minimal Effort
Here’s where the rope passes to you. Before John writes a single line of new code, he’s asking disability-owned businesses to guide his route with a six-question Microsoft Forms survey. No spreadsheets to upload, no ten-page capability statement, just a few clicks that reveal what features matter, what pain points hurt most, and whether an AI matchmaker would truly move your revenue needle. We learned from the early days of Jobs Ability that “build it and they will come” is wishful thinking; data first, design second is how you summit without wasting resources or goodwill.
Participation could not be easier. Our Ability crunches the analytics; you spend five minutes and keep climbing. Take the survey here, or email john.robinson@ourability.com and the form, or a Calendly invite, will land in your inbox. Every response tightens the rope team and tells investors, coders, and corporate buyers alike that a robust, inclusive marketplace is not just desirable, it’s demanded.
From Data to Summit: What Happens After You Click “Submit”
Once your answers hit the server, they join a growing data field-map, individual pings that, when aggregated, chart the clearest ascent. First the team will sift for common pain points and desired features; those insights will dictate what gets engineered and in what order. With a community-vetted blueprint in hand, Our Ability approaches investors and corporate allies who already trust the Jobs Ability engine, then funds a beta marketplace where DOBEs can test-drive RFP matching in real time. Each survey thus sets a piton that secures the next stage of the climb.
The ripple effects reach far beyond a single contract. Budding entrepreneurs will see a path that once felt invisible; seasoned DOBEs will discover ceilings they can now punch through. And procurement chiefs hungry for authentic diversity will finally tap a reservoir of talent their spreadsheets have overlooked. That is the shared victory: supply chains grow more profitable and more equitable in tandem, proving once again that inclusion is not charity, it is competitive strategy writ large on the face of our collective mountain.
Join the Rope Team Today
John Robinson’s record shows what reliable gear looks like: an AI engine already matching thousands of job-seekers, now poised to guide disability-owned suppliers into Fortune-500 pipelines. The gap we face is clear; so is the bridge, a six-question survey that will tell us exactly how to build a marketplace worthy of our ambitions.
If you own, lead, or even dream about launching a disability-owned business, clip in now. Complete the survey, pass the link through your networks, and listen for our podcast episode when it drops. In six months I’ll return with John to report how far the data has carried us and what new pitches lie ahead. Until then, keep the rope tight, your vision high, and let’s summit this next cliff together.
” 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
Connect With Me:
Website: https://drkirkadams.com
Dissertation: https://drkirkadams.com/dissertation
Email: kirkadams@drkirkadams.com
Phone: +1 (206) 660-1363
Subscribe: https://drkirkadams.com/subscribe
Facebook: https://drkirkadams.com/facebook
LinkedIn (Individual): https://drkirkadams.com/linkedin
LinkedIn (Company): https://drkirkadams.com/linkedinpage
Mastodon: https://drkirkadams.com/mastodon
Medium: https://drkirkadams.com/medium
RSS: https://drkirkadams.com/feed
X (Formerly Twitter): https://drkirkadams.com/x
YouTube: https://drkirkadams.com/youtube
Address: 140 Lakeside Avenue, Suite A, Seattle, Washington 98122-6538