In this warm anniversary episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk opens from a smoke-covered Seattle with wishes for friends in eastern Washington, then welcomes Kate Sonka, executive director of Teach Access, and Mindy Kolin, who leads its fundraising, partnerships and communications. Kirk traces his own first encounter with the organization: a visit to Yahoo’s accessibility team early in his AFB tenure, where Darren Burton and Mike Shebanek showed him a whiteboard tally of how many incoming computer science graduates had ever heard of accessibility, a lopsided count that became the case for Teach Access. Kate, who grew up at the Wisconsin School for the Blind where both her parents taught, recounts the April 2016 kickoff at Yahoo with Shebanek, Larry Goldberg and Jeff Wieland; Mindy recalls starting her career at the New York employment agency Eleanor Roosevelt and Orin Lehman founded, and finding Teach Access on Indeed 25 years later.
The heart of the conversation is strategy. Teach Access concentrates on educators rather than students directly, the multiplier being that one trained faculty member reaches 50 to 100 students a semester, and on “small teaching”: folding accessibility into classes people already teach rather than fighting the years-long approval path for a new course. Kate walks through the Fellowship, the four-week Summer Institute, and the openly licensed Curriculum Repository; Mindy reports the headline result, a goal set in 2020 to reach 1 million students by 2030 that passed 1.5 million in 2025, five years early. They close on funding, on contract work with industry partners that keeps educator resources free, and on Teach Access Europe, where enforcement of the European Accessibility Act has made this a promising moment to expand.
TRANSCRIPT:
Podcast Commentator: Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment, and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences, and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you’re passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that Dr. Kirk Adams, talking to you from smoky Seattle, Washington. Our heartfelt wishes for strength and safety go out to our friends east of the mountains in eastern Washington, the Spokane area particularly hit hard. I have spent a lot of time in Spokane, as we established the Inland Northwest Lighthouse for the Blind and [unclear 00:01:07] about 50 blind people in that community. So our thoughts and prayers to folks in eastern Washington. Today on the podcast, we have Kate Sonka and Mindy Kolin, and they are with a forward-thinking, impactful organization that I love called Teach Access. So hello, Kate. Hello, Mindy.
Kate Sonka: Hi, Kirk. Good to be here.
Mindy Kolin: Hi, Kirk. Thanks for having us.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So my little history with Teach Access — which Kate and Mindy will tell you more — but my understanding is that it encourages universities to include accessibility in their core curriculum for computer science programs. And when I first was hired to be president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, when I stepped out of that same role here at the Lighthouse in Seattle to New York City, and after a couple of months getting oriented, turning over all the jigsaw puzzle pieces, took a trip to the Bay Area, because AFB had such great partnerships with the good people at Google and Apple and Genentech and Yahoo. And I went to visit Yahoo, and a former AFB employee, a blind gentleman named Darren Burton, was working there in our accessibility department. And I spent a couple hours with their team. And Mike Shebanek was there at that time. And they told me about a tally board. They had a whiteboard in their conference room. And when Yahoo was hiring new engineers, interviewing with the accessibility team was part of the interview process, and they kept a tally of how many of the young computer science graduates they were sent to interview — how many of them knew about accessibility and how many did not. And I can’t quote the numbers exactly, but it was something like 764 had never heard of accessibility, didn’t know what it was, and 27 at least knew what it was. So that’s when Mike told me about Teach Access, and the long-term systems change model to bring accessibility into the mainstream of computer science curriculums, and to generate a whole new pipeline of people who would be working on technology for the good of all, who understood accessibility and could bake it in from the beginning. Shortly thereafter, I met Kate at one of the many, many blindness-related conferences where we crossed paths. And recently I was very pleased to receive an invitation in the mail to join Kate and some of her team at a dinner here in Seattle with some other leaders in accessibility and disability in the community. So we reconnected. She gave us some very exciting updates, said more people need to know about this. So how about come on the podcast? So here we are, and I am grateful for what Teach Access is doing. I’m very impressed with the intentional, very strategic way you’re going about things. So I’d really love to hand it over to you, Kate, you, Mindy, to hear the story of how you got involved, the steps that have been taken so far, where the organization is at, where do you see things going?
Kate Sonka: Yeah, this is Kate. Thank you so much, Kirk. I really actually really love that whiteboard story. I’ve never heard that specific story, so I’m excited to kind of add that to my repertoire of stories, to kind of talk about our origins, which I’ll share in a moment. But just want to thank you, the team, for having us on the pod today, and being able to share about our work for your audience. So thank you to everyone who’s listening in. So I’ll do a really quick just who I am and where I’ve come from, and then Mindy as well, and then we’ll get into the work that we do. So, my name again, Kate Sonka, I’m the executive director here at Teach Access. You know, I could spend a long time talking about my winding backstory, but I won’t. I want to be able to talk about our organization. But one of the things — you know, sometimes the universe has a good sense of humor, right? And so growing up, my parents were both educators at the Wisconsin School for the Blind. And so as I grew up, that was the family business, right? So my mom was an orientation and mobility instructor, and my dad was a teacher for physical education, and he taught and coached all of the sports there. And I think, Kirk, you maybe crossed paths with some of the folks from that school too over the years. Is that right?
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes, absolutely.
Kate Sonka: Yeah. So, you know, at the time it was wonderful. It gave me great insight into what is inclusive education, what does that look like, and what sorts of learning environments are we creating for students and teachers, and how do we do that? Of course, as a child I wasn’t really thinking about it that way. It was more, yay, it’s my birthday and my dad’s going to let me have my birthday party, you know, in the gym or the swimming pool or something like that. But gave me a really good grounding in that work. And then over time, you know, my background is actually in linguistics and language acquisition, and for a time was really intentional, or thought I would be working with language learners in the classroom at the higher education level. And then through a series of things ended up working at a couple of different universities in the academic technology offices. And so really looking at, what is the tech that faculty are using for teaching? And of course, how is that accessible? Is the technology accessible? And more importantly, are the materials and some of the teaching practices or pedagogy accessible for disabled students in the class, and really thinking about what that looks like. So I didn’t necessarily enter accessibility thinking, yes, this is what my parents did, this is what I’m going to do. It was sort of a windy path, and all of a sudden — I guess it’s been more 12-ish years now — everything kind of came together and it made sense. I’m here for inclusive teaching and learning, whether that is about disability and accessibility, whether that’s about language learners in our classrooms. And what is it that faculty and educators need to be able to create these environments? And so that’s kind of the backstory. But ultimately, through my work at Michigan State University, working in the academic tech office in one of the colleges there, started to hear about Teach Access. And this was ten years ago, where it’s now 2026, which is our 10th anniversary year. And I’ll talk a little bit more about who we are and what that looks like, but I’ll turn it to Mindy so she can introduce herself as well.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Great.
Mindy Kolin: Hi. Yeah. Thanks so much, Kate. This is Mindy speaking. So nice to be here, Kirk. I have been with Teach Access for four years now, and I’ve spent the better part of 30 years in the nonprofit sector. Well, my very first job out of college was working for an employment agency for people with disabilities that was based in New York City, that was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, Orin Lehman, and a bunch of other really cool people. It no longer exists. But as Kate mentioned, the universe — you know, 25 years later, I was looking for a job, and on Indeed I saw this job description for an organization called Teach Access, and thought, this is really still a thing? I can’t believe this is still a thing, that people are still trying to make the world accessible and it’s just not happening. And so, let me get back in. So four years later, yeah, here I am. And so fundraising and development and partnerships and communications and all those fun things are what I handle. And yeah, really glad to be here.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Great. I had mentioned to you, my first ten years out of college I was involved in banking and finance, but then turned 30 and pivoted into the nonprofit sector. My first nonprofit job was a development officer for the Seattle Public Library Foundation, raising money for the statewide Talking Book and Braille Library, which I am a huge user of Braille books from the National Library Service. And then that led me to going back to school and get a master’s in not-for-profit leadership. And then a couple fundraising jobs, and then got a call from the Lighthouse for the Blind here, because they wanted to set up a fundraising program and a foundation and a fundraising board. And they’d heard there was a blind guy in town who knew how to do that. So I was given that opportunity, which, to their credit, my gratitude, they saw leadership capabilities in me and they invested a lot of time and effort in preparing me to be in a leadership role, and to eventually move into the CEO role there, which then led me to AFB, which led me to Yahoo and Mike and you all. And so I concur with the — the universe may take its time, but it does help you in some nice directions.
Kate Sonka: I love hearing people’s stories, because you’re right. It is, you know, in the moment you’re kind of like, is this where I’m going next? But as you look back you’re able to find those sort of through lines and what that looks like. So.
Dr. Kirk Adams: It kind of — it actually looks like you were making sense and planning it all, even though you weren’t very intentional.
Kate Sonka: Yes. Very intentional decisions. Right.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So I heard about Teach Access from Mike in probably September, October of 2016. And so this is the ten-year anniversary. So I guess I heard about it toward the beginning. And then you came on board not long after. Right?
Kate Sonka: Yeah, that’s right. So there was a kickoff meeting that happened in spring of 2016 that Yahoo hosted on their campus. And so Mike was there. Mike, Larry Goldberg, Jeff Wieland, who’s at Meta — so they were all part of the core co-founding group. You know, I’ve heard them say before, or at the time as well, you know, the reason that we’re doing this is because we’re having all these new hires come in, we go and ask them about, what do you know of disability? What do you know of accessibility? And not many raise their hands. Right? So I never knew there was an actual whiteboard, which is very delightful to know. So I love that. But yeah, that’s what it came out of, is they were, you know, kind of sharing with each other and, hey, this seems like it’s a bigger thing than just our individual companies. What do we do about this? And so they called together a group of folks for that kickoff meeting. And there was, I don’t know, about 40 of us there. And it was a very good representation of how we continue to do this work today, where we had industry folks in the room, we had higher ed and education.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So you were out there, you were at the kickoff meeting.
Kate Sonka: I was, yeah, I was really, really fortunate to have gotten in there. They kind of mentioned it at the CSUN ATC conference in that year, which is usually March. March, yeah. And then the kickoff was later in April, I believe. And so I heard about it, was able to make arrangements to get out there, so was able to be at the kickoff. And then there are, of course, some multiple other people that were there. But really it was kind of like everyone got in the room and it was like, well, here’s a thing we’re trying to address. What do we do about it? And so a lot of brainstorming in that initial couple of days — I think it was about a day and a half. There were some initial working groups or task forces that came out of it, trying to address a lot of different aspects that we still are working on today, or, you know, continue to work through. But it was all to address what you mentioned earlier, which is: how do we get more students learning about accessibility, digital accessibility, while they’re still in school? It’s not a required topic. And so initially we were really focused in areas like computer science, HCI, UX. Because — what do you mean, a student could go through a four-year undergraduate program and never hear about this or learn about it? And so, to be fair, there are faculty who had been teaching about it, and they were in the room, and they’re valuable partners in this work. But broadly speaking, it’s not a required topic. And so how do we start to close what we call this accessibility technology skills gap? So the idea that industry is looking for recent graduates who know something about these topics, whether it’s general knowledge or maybe some technical skills, and they just can’t find enough. There just aren’t enough graduating who know at least a little bit. And so that’s really where it was born out of. And then over the years it’s just changed and morphed into a different organization, which is a 501(c)(3). So in 2016 it was purely a bunch of volunteers. We came together and said, what can we do? And worked that way for a few years. And in 2021 we got our 501(c)(3) status, and so we became an official nonprofit organization. And at that point started building, or continued to build out, a staff. So I actually stepped into this role part time starting in 2019. So for two years I was doing this part time while I was still working as a faculty member at Michigan State University. And then in 2021 went full time, and continued to build out the team to have — now we’re at four full-time staff. And the mission has remained the same: how do we get students learning? I would say, you know, a lot has changed over the years; the mission has not. But where we’ve, you know, as we’ve looked at our scale and our ability to scale, where we really see the most and have and continue to concentrate our attention on is the faculty themselves, or the educators. And you’ll hear us use that word ‘educator’ really intentionally at Teach Access, because anyone who’s spent any time around a higher ed institution knows that there’s all types of people teaching on a campus. Not only tenured faculty — we’ve got grad students, librarians, instructional designers, IT folks, etc. So we use that word to be really inclusive, that we are thinking about anyone who’s on a campus who may be teaching and has the ability to share this knowledge with their students. But we really have found that that is our sort of multiplying effect, is working with the educators. Because you can imagine, Kirk, you know, if we were only working with students directly, we reach one student and that’s amazing, but that’s the one student. Whereas if you’re teaching a class every semester of 50 to 100 students every semester, that’s 50 to 100 more students that are learning about it. So over time, our resources, our training, our materials have really become focused on what do faculty need to be trained themselves in these topics, if they don’t know about them or are interested in learning more. So training opportunities of a variety that we offer, as well as resources. So maybe you’re ready to teach and you’re looking for some ideas. We have a Curriculum Repository with a lot of materials that are under — it’s an OER, open educational resource, under a Creative Commons license. You can go take that, adapt it, use it in your class. So we offer a lot of different resources in that way, geared towards faculty. And I will say, I mentioned—
Dr. Kirk Adams: What would you say the key strategies are to educate the educators, or give the educators resource, or build the capacity of educators? I don’t know which language you use, but, you know, what are the key strategies, and how are those implemented tactically? What are your program activities? What do you all do?
Kate Sonka: I love that — practical, tactical. Yeah, our sort of key strategy in working with faculty is meeting them where they are, and then encouraging small teaching, which — there’s a lot of good research out there on small teaching as a practice. But the idea being, we are approaching faculty who are already teaching. They’re already teaching a class where they could be, should be teaching accessibility, and they may not be. How do we help them start to introduce that into their curriculum?
Dr. Kirk Adams: And so I just will pop in. So do you reach those educators who are already teaching by engaging at the institutional level with the educational institution they’re part of? Or do you reach out more from Teach Access to the individual educators? How are you connecting with folks?
Kate Sonka: Kind of always. So, you know, it really depends on who the contact is at a university, if they’re — or a college — if they’re maybe a department head or a dean or something like that, who has the ability to introduce us to a lot of folks. Or if it’s an individual who’s found us through whatever means, or we’ve connected with them at a conference or something, they help open the doors to their colleagues. So it’s really kind of how they found out about us, or we connected with them through something. So it’s pretty organic most of the time, I would say. Yeah, a lot of word of mouth. Although, you know, there are things that we do, like I said, at conferences, or we’ve done some press releases over the year about information that we have or training, so people come to us that way. Or, yeah, are introduced to us by someone else. But yeah, so it’s really dependent on how did we get in touch with that organization or institution. But yeah, because we are looking to work with faculty who are already teaching, and educators, it’s really understanding and, you know, providing information on — you’re teaching this topic, here are some of the things you could be teaching. We have something called our fundamental concepts and skills framework. That is a document, a guideline, a framework for faculty to kind of figure out, what could I fit into my class? You know, what I’m teaching in maybe a technical writing class about accessibility could be different, or is different, than, you know, a capstone-level computer science course. There’s different topics to cover. And so we have information on and ideas on what faculty could teach. And the idea is really, you know, I’m really going in on that piece of what they’re already teaching. Anyone who’s worked in education, higher education, knows that introducing a new class takes a long time. There’s a lot of things, you know, a lot of levels that has to go through of approval. And if you’re going to introduce a class, is it required, is it optional? If it’s required, what does that do to the rest of the curriculum? So our approach has really been, let’s start introducing it in classes you’re already teaching. So that it doesn’t become, you know, an elective where it’s like, sure, a student could still get through a program without having heard of it because they didn’t take the elective. And we want students hearing about it across many classes. So maybe I get a little bit in my writing class, and then I’m over here in my management class and I’m hearing about it here, and then I go, you know, across the street to my graphic design course, and now I’m hearing about it in the graphic design discipline. So, you know, that’s what we’re looking for, is we want students hearing about it in many classes. So it becomes a — yes, there it is again. It cuts across all of these things, and any type of job I might have in the future.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Wonderful. And I noticed, I think one of the people at our dinner — thank you again for dinner — was, I think the title was fellow, like a teaching fellow at the University of Washington. That’s right. Right. Yep. What does that look like?
Kate Sonka: Yeah, great question. So the training opportunities we have for faculty range anywhere from fully asynchronous, meaning they’re doing it on their own. We may never even talk to them other than we see that they signed up to access our materials and they’re off and running, and that’s great. So anywhere from kind of completely hands off to very hands on, very involved. And that’s our Fellowship program. And so this is a year-long, over 12 months, program where we engage with fellows, a cohort of faculty, to really move them from, maybe you’ve never heard of these topics before, so let’s introduce you to them so that you understand them, to, what does it mean in your discipline specifically? So what are you going to teach in the courses that you teach? To developing those materials to introduce into your course, and then teaching them in the fall. So how did it — you know, being able to talk about what’s going on with your students, how are they engaging with the material, what’s working, what’s not? And then the materials that are created are fed into our Curriculum Repository for future educators to use. So we’ve run this program for a few years now. And of course it’s kind of changed over the years. And so those are our fellows. We also this year have a shorter — just completed, or kind of finishing up, a Summer Institute. And this was a shorter, four-week, condensed, I’ll say, version of our year-long, if you can imagine condensing a year into four weeks. But really with this Summer Institute cohort, it was, it’s faculty that either we’ve worked with before, or maybe we haven’t worked with, but they have been teaching accessibility themselves. And it was meant to be, and is, an accelerated option to say, okay, here is a concentrated amount of time and support for you to be able to, you know, maybe enhance something you’re already teaching, or be able to focus on creating something new to teach about this topic. So those faculty are already aware of what is accessibility, why are we doing this work. You know, so we don’t need to spend the time doing that, which is where we’re able to really condense that program. So those are kind of two of our signature programs where we’re engaging with faculty regularly to see what’s going on, support them in their teaching, and so forth.
Dr. Kirk Adams: And so this is a very long-range systems change project. And formally under the 501(c)(3) structure and permanent full-time staff for five years. So what are some of the indicators that the things are working? Are there— I don’t know how you measure outcomes, whether they’re anecdotal or more formal, but we’d love to hear some success stories.
Kate Sonka: Yeah, absolutely. Mindy, do you want to share any? I know I’ve answered a lot so far.
Mindy Kolin: Sure. Well, one of the biggest success stories for us: in 2020, a goal was set for Teach Access to reach 1 million students by 2030. And in 2025 we surpassed 1.5 million students. So, five years early, not only did we meet the goal, but we smashed the goal. And so that’s—
Dr. Kirk Adams: When the board says, new goal.
Mindy Kolin: Yeah. Well, always, right? There’s always a new goal. We know that. But that definitely was a big one for us, and proof of concept right there. So we’re running with that.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Great. And so, since we’re talking here, Mindy, I know the challenges of bringing resources into any organization. How are you finding the environment these days? What are your key strategies as far as making sure that the organization is properly resourced?
Mindy Kolin: Yeah, thank you for asking. Yeah, it’s definitely challenging times for a lot of nonprofits. We are lucky in that we have so many amazing partners. So funding for Teach Access comes in through a variety of ways. We have your typical annual corporate sponsorship, corporate partnership, that ranges from $10,000 to over $100,000. We have specific event sponsorships for our Student Academy, which is a one- to two-day virtual event that typically happens in February. And we have usually a global attendance of students and lifelong learners or practitioners in accessibility coming to learn some new skills. And we’re expanding. So we now have Teach Access Europe underway, and we’ve got a steering committee and working groups furthering the mission across Europe. And so we’re getting ready to launch some new sponsorship opportunities specific to Teach Access Europe. So, yeah, so looking at all the ways. And then, as an organization, we do have the ability to do contract work, which Kate can speak about. But so we’re always looking to diversify our funding. And of course we have individual donors that we greatly appreciate. But the bulk of our funding does come from corporate or private foundation support.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So I’m curious, if enforcement of the European Accessibility Act, is that not been a catalyst for the work in Europe?
Kate Sonka: Yeah, this is Kate. It definitely has. And so we’re in the middle of a three-year strategic plan. And part of that strategic plan when we wrote it was, yeah, we’re going to explore what does it mean to kind of, quote unquote, officially expand our work outside of the US. How do we support what’s happening across the world? Where do we begin? What does that look like? And of course, as things have shifted here in the US in a variety of ways over the last year and a half, it became very clear this is a great time to look at where there might be growth that we could explore outside of the US, in conjunction with the EAA and the enforcement of that. And so we’re still really early stages of establishing what does it look like, the work that we’re doing over there. In the coming month or so, we’ll be putting out a couple surveys that will be trying to capture information around what’s happening around Europe in terms of who’s already teaching accessibility, what would you need to be able to teach it if you aren’t, or even if you are — as well as trying to kind of get at that earlier accessibility technology skills gap I mentioned, of what is industry saying over there? Are they finding enough, especially in light of the EAA and what that looks like? So I think there’s a lot of really interesting conversations that are happening there now, of course, as well as work. And so it’s been a very fun time to kind of try and, you know, meet some folks and say, hey, we have materials, we’d love to share them. We know that some of those materials will work, some of them will need translation, of course, and localization and some of that. So just kind of working through it. But definitely it’s been a good thing for a lot of reasons, including us being able to think about doing this work and supporting this work outside of the US.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. And Mindy mentioned contract work. Is that consulting that Teach Access does, or [unclear 00:31:30]?
Kate Sonka: Yeah.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So, work.
Kate Sonka: Yeah, we’re— it’s still very much sort of case by case, as people approach us or as a specific opportunity seems to align. But some of the things that we have done for our— with our industry partners — and this is really important because, one, of course, bringing our expertise and our work to their work, but also it helps us keep our resources and materials free and open to educators. So when we have the support of industry and these sorts of things, you know, maybe it’s a specific training for an internal group at an organization, the funding there is able to help us keep things free and open. But we’ve been able to do some research-type projects for some environments, sort of learning environments, understanding what could make this environment more, either more accessible, or just, how might we introduce this into these spaces? We’ve also been doing some work with some teams on just sort of general, sort of, how’s the team working together? What are they trying to accomplish? Really framing it though, under it being a learning environment, right? That’s what our expertise and our skills are in, is teaching and learning environments. And so when an organization says, hey, we kind of have this thing, we’re trying to figure out what it looks like, might you want to talk to us about it? We’re happy to do that. So at this point, it’s still very much we’re kind of exploring that, seeing what industry is looking for and where can we maybe help out. And if it’s not us, of course, there’s many other really great disability organizations and accessibility organizations that can help with that work as well. So just working through that, navigating what that looks like.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, the time flew by, as it always does when talking about something people are passionate about. Teach Access is doing great work. I’ve been privileged to be observing for the ten years. And you have made great strides, making great progress, and congratulations on reaching a million and a half students.
Kate Sonka: Incredible. Thank you.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So how can people get involved? How can people be in touch?
Kate Sonka: Yeah, thank you, Kirk. This is Kate again. Of course, you can visit our website, so you can go to https://teachaccess.org and see all the information about all the programs we have. If you’re someone who’s on social media, you can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Those are places where we post about all the things we have going on. Of course, we have a monthly newsletter, which is what it sounds like. So, here’s what we’re up to, or here’s what’s coming down the line. We often throughout the year have various projects where we look for volunteers, and we put those sorts of requests or call out maybe in the newsletter or on our social media channels, because we always want to be informed by what’s actually happening. So there are many ways that we want to engage with industry, with education, with disability and accessibility organizations, on resources and training and so forth. So those are great ways to kind of understand what we’re doing and what we’re up to. Of course, as Mindy mentioned, we really appreciate financial sponsorships and funding where that makes sense. But we’re happy to talk with organizations, present with maybe ERGs or BRGs or any of those sorts of internal teams, to share about what we’re doing, and find ways to partner and connect and support.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Fabulous. So go to https://teachaccess.org, sign up for the monthly newsletter, and get involved in supporting this great initiative that will make the world more accessible for all of us. Thank you for your great work. And you can go to my website, which is https://drkirkadams.com, and sign up for my monthly newsletter. And you can also click on the link for my business book that launched in July on Amazon. It’s called The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion. It’s a playbook for employers to win the war for talent by being inclusive of people with disabilities. So thank you, Kate. Thank you, Mindy. Thanks, everyone, for listening. And we’ll see you next time on the next episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. Thanks.
Kate Sonka: Thanks, Kirk.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Thank you.
Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Don’t forget to subscribe, share, or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.
Dr. Kirk Adams, Ph.D.
Advocate, Leader and Keynote Speaker on Disability Inclusion & Leadership
Leading the Way to Accessible Innovation
” Inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a strategic advantage. “
Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI)
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Strengthening individual and organizational capability for creating diverse, inclusive and equitable workplaces.
Innovative Impact, LLC Consulting
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Impactful Workforce Inclusion Starts Here
American Foundation for the Blind
Immediate Past President & CEO
To create a world of no limits for people who are blind or visually impaired.
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[…] 7.) Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview With Mindy Kolin, Director of Development & Industry P… | DrKirkAdams.com | August 6, 2026 […]