Transforming the Workplace for People with Disabilities

BRIAN KENNY: In April of 1945 while stationed in Italy, a 21-year-old American soldier was struck by enemy fire and left with debilitating wounds to his right arm and hand. That life-changing moment that could have sent him spiraling would instead motivate him in ways he never could have imagined. A life devoted to public service, 30 years in Congress, earning his party’s nomination for president and championing a key piece of legislation that would impact the lives of millions of Americans with disabilities. Senator Robert Dole said it was the single most gratifying achievement of his career because he knew from his own lived experience that everyone deserves an opportunity to contribute to their greatest capacity.

Today on Cold Call, we welcome Lakshmi Ramarajan, Hannah Riley Bowles, and Nadine Vogel to discuss the case, “Nadine Vogel: Transforming the Marketplace, Workplace, and Workforce for People with Disabilities.” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Podcast Network. Professor Lakshmi Ramarajan’s research examines how people can work fruitfully across social divides with a particular emphasis on identities and group boundaries. Lakshmi, welcome back to Cold Call. We haven’t had you on in a while, so it’s great to have you back on the show.

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: Thank you.

BRIAN KENNY: Hannah Riley Bowles is a senior lecturer in public policy and management at the Harvard Kennedy School whose research focuses on women’s leadership advancement and the role of negotiation and educational and career advancement, including the management of work family conflict. Hannah, great to have you on the show.

HANNAH BOWLES: Thank you for having me.

BRIAN KENNY: And we are really pleased today to be joined by NADINE VOGEL, the protagonist in today’s case. She is the founder and CEO of Springboard Global Enterprises, working with corporations around the world to mainstream people with disabilities. Nadine, great to have you with us.

NADINE VOGEL: It is so exciting to be here. Thank you.

BRIAN KENNY: I thought this case was really powerful. And just to hear about your journey, Nadine, really I think people are going to be interested to hear the path that you’ve taken and the turning points in your life. And clearly we’re featuring this as part of Disabilities Awareness Month. So, this seems like a perfectly appropriate case for us to help make people aware particularly of employment issues as it relates to people with disabilities. So, why don’t we just dive right in. Lakshmi, I’m going to start with you and ask you if you can describe the central issue in the case and what your cold call is to start the discussion in the classroom.

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: There are many central issues in the case, and one of the reasons Hannah and I collaborated, and one of the reasons Nadine is such a great protagonist as well as leader in her own organization and other organizations is because there are so many different facets to what we’re trying to do in the case. So, I teach it differently than Hannah does, and I teach it in a course called “Power and Influence”, and I teach this for executives, for MBA students. And so, for me, the central issue is really around how can you create change and what do you need? What tactics do you need as a change agent, as somebody who’s trying to influence change? And especially around, so the very specific question is, of course, how do we actually create more inclusive organizations and workplaces for people with disabilities? That’s a very specific version of it, which Nadine is doing. And then if you zoom out from that, the more generalizable version is for all of us who are engaged in some kind of counter normative or sort of broader issue that we want to bring to the table that our organizations aren’t necessarily structurally built for or automatically conducive to. How do we actually create change in those environments?

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And how do you kick off the discussion?

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: So, my cold call is, “What motivates Nadine?” And so, I ask them to list as they’ve read the case-

BRIAN KENNY: We might ask that today in the discussion. So, that’s good.

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: And then I ask them to rank order them, and then we sort of go through her motivations and how they think about them together. And then I ask them to turn themselves, “What motivates you in your career, in your organizations and what you’re trying to accomplish?”

BRIAN KENNY: Love it. Hannah, I’m going to come back to you with a similar question a little bit later in the conversation. But I want to turn to Nadine for a second. Nadine, let me ask you about disabilities in the US. I know you think globally and you deal with this on a global level. But just if we look at the US, how many people are living with disabilities? And what’s the impact that that has generally on their employability and their experience on the job?

NADINE VOGEL: So, in the US, approximately 20% of the population is living with some form of disability.

BRIAN KENNY: Wow.

NADINE VOGEL: Whether visible or invisible. Interestingly enough, many years ago, it was noticed that the disability community actually surpassed the Hispanic population in the United States because disability doesn’t discriminate. It hits every race, religion, etc. The way it impacts employment in so many facets is because we are very judgmental as a society, and we’re very quick when we meet someone in a matter of seconds to judge and assume we know everything about them, their abilities, etc. So, for folks with visible disabilities in particular or known invisible disabilities, it is very difficult when it comes to employment because the assumption is that that person will not be able to do the job.

BRIAN KENNY: You have some personal experience with this as a caregiver to someone with disabilities. What’s the impact like on caregivers?

NADINE VOGEL: The impact on caregivers is unbelievably high in that it depends on the age of the child. So, when the child is first born, you’re in grief. You may be in denial, you’re trying to figure out diagnoses and help. As any parent understands, we all want our children to be the most independent, happy, healthy adult as possible. And when we watch our children get discriminated against in a variety of ways, but especially when it comes to employment, it greatly impacts the parent because you think, “Well, what’s their future going to be if we’re not here? If we’re not here to support them or to help them, then how can they be that independent functioning adult?” It’s really a social justice issue that parents are facing.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. What are some of the common misperceptions that employers have about people with disabilities?

NADINE VOGEL: Wow, how long do we have? So, the first is that if someone has a disability, it is going to impact their ability to perform the job, whatever the job may be. Two, it is a misunderstanding of what the disability actually impacts. So, someone might be deaf, and for some reason that company will determine that they’re not an appropriate candidate for an accounting position. What does hearing have to do with crunching numbers, right? So, there’s all these misperceptions and myths. When we talk about inclusion, I call it the illusion of inclusion, right? Companies saying, “Oh yeah, we hire people with disabilities, we this, we that, or we want to,” but it’s really all an illusion if you look at the actual numbers.

BRIAN KENNY: The case does a great job of tracing your journey, your professional journey, your personal journey, and I think that’s a core theme throughout the case. I’m wondering if you can describe some of the critical turning points in your life and the things that led you to start MetDESK at MetLife and then ultimately to start Springboard?

NADINE VOGEL: To start MetDESK, it was really about searching for meaning. I was running a sales agency and dealing with supposed adults that acted like children. And to be honest with you, I had no patience. People would give me excuses about why they didn’t perform or this didn’t happen or that. And I thought, “I’m living with life and death of a child. I have no time or patience for this nonsense.” And that was combined with trying to find resources for my older daughter and learning about the federal laws that existed in terms of planning and just starting to get an understanding that there was a lot out there that I wasn’t the only new special needs parent that didn’t know about.

So, there was a lot of information. I gathered, I developed a filing cabinet of information and started sharing it, and realized that this was something that was so needed, and, “Oh my gosh, I’m in the perfect industry to do this, right? This is what this industry is about.” So, that was really the turning point. And I think what switched it and lit it on fire was that someone whispered to me that our CFO at the time had an adult daughter with disabilities, and I used that to my advantage. He was not happy, but I used that to my advantage to kind of illustrate the point, and then it went from there. It was truly amazing.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, and I think you’re underselling yourself a little bit. You say you were leading a sales organization within MetLife. You’re leading a hugely successful organization within MetLife. And the case describes a situation that made you make a really difficult decision, I’m sure, to ultimately sue MetLife while you were still there and your husband was there. That was kind of mind blowing for me. Can you talk a little bit about that?

NADINE VOGEL: Yes. So, at the time, MetLife had self-insured, meaning that there wasn’t an outside insurance company. So, if you needed health benefits it was directly funded by the company itself. And they had determined… My daughter was receiving all kinds of nursing and other services, and at one point, the company decided that it wasn’t worth it anymore, and they determined that it was convalescent care. My daughter was probably not going to live, certainly not get better, and they were no longer going to provide services. And the mama bear in me came out and we went to the company, went to the insurance, tried to reason with them, got them doctor’s letters. They just wouldn’t listen.

And so, in our parent support group at the time, a friend of mine was working for Gloria Allred and said, “You really should talk to her. I’m going to arrange for a meeting.” And so, she got a court order that they couldn’t stop anything, and we sued them.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Okay. Hannah, let me turn to you for a second. This might be a self-evident question now that we’ve heard a little bit about Nadine’s background and her story, but how did you learn about her? What drew you to the story and why did you think it was important to write the case?

HANNAH BOWLES: So, how I originally met Nadine was doing a study of women who had achieved counter stereotypical levels of success. So, women who are running high growth entrepreneurial ventures or holding very senior corporate positions that defied the stereotypes of the glass ceiling roles in which women get stuck. And so, this was initially an exploratory story to understand their paths. And then I just fell in love with Nadine hearing about her story. And the story that I wanted to tell was at its core about how to create value through more inclusive workplaces. So, you have to go back to the time when Nadine was doing this, just the fact that she’s a female executive stepping forward to say, “You’re missing a business line. There’s a whole market out there that you’re not seeing,” that alone was pretty path breaking.

And then for a mom with a child with disabilities to say, “Wait a minute, I have stuff going on. I am seeing things that you just cannot see because you don’t have my lived experience,” the fact that she was able to sell that and transform it into a highly successful business line was just a beautiful story. And it’s a beautiful story in itself to tell and re-tell, but it is also a brilliant example of this higher level idea that if we are not serious about including people from backgrounds that are not typical from the ones that dominate our workplaces, we’re losing out on opportunities. I mean, that’s in effect keeping on blinders to market opportunities, growth opportunities within your organization. So, I think that’s also part of the larger story that Nadine is telling now about inclusion within workplaces.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Now, one of the things that you research are these kinds of negotiations or decision points for people that cross over between their personal lives and their professional lives. What are some of the things that Nadine did that sort of exemplify the things that you’re looking at?

HANNAH BOWLES: So, I can give you two examples, and one, I’d love to highlight that while Nadine did sue, she really kept that on a parallel track. She wasn’t using that suit for leverage.

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: This comes up in the class discussion quite a bit because it is a startling example, and students gravitate towards this, and, “What are you telling me?” And I think from a power and influence perspective or career negotiations perspective, thinking about why does it actually work? Why doesn’t it backfire on her? What we’re trying to say is there are tools that you use in order to create the kinds of workplaces and relationships that you want, but a lot of what makes it effective is the trust that she had with the people that she was working with on the day-to-day basis. So, understanding the conditions under which it doesn’t backfire, I think becomes an important part of the discussion.

HANNAH BOWLES: I just wanted to highlight that because it wasn’t like Nadine was suing the organization for leverage. That was really in parallel. And then I’ll give you two examples. So, from research and, again, researching what do executives negotiate and how do they negotiate, we talk about three different types of negotiation. One is asking, which are like these standard negotiations. One is bending where you’re asking for exceptions, and the third is what we call shaping, where you’re actually changing the organization.

And two examples that I love to highlight from Nadine’s story. One is a small bending example where she wanted to start bringing in clients with children with disabilities. And what she said is, this is just early on, she just wanted to start open the market pilot, she said, “I need a private space to meet with these people. I need a separate door. They need to be able to walk in, have a private space to talk with me, not walk through just some open office space.” And she was able to negotiate that, which I thought was really a way, again, of opening people’s eyes to the sensitivity of a new client while saying, “Listen, this is a trial. Let me see if I can do this. Let me see if I can build this business.” And so, she’s integrating numerous interests.

The story that’s even more fun to tell is her shaping negotiation where she goes in and she says, “I have this vision. How are we going to make this work?” And she already told the story of going to the CFO and saying, “Listen, I think you see this need to support families with children with disabilities, and there aren’t mechanisms out there.” And so, she negotiates support from her boss to explore something differently. She negotiates an opportunity to come up with a business plan and then run a trial in a market in which she didn’t already know people. And then she goes from there to pitch the whole organization on this new business line and ultimately to run it herself.

And then as in many shaping negotiations, they’re multi party, there are numerous stakeholders, and it doesn’t end where you make the deal. I mean, then in order to make it work, there’s so many people within the organization that you have to get bought in. And so, that’s where we spend a lot of the class session. And again, there are so many people who are forward leaning with regard to change, and then particularly people who are coming in with different perspectives than have been traditionally held in their organization, who really identify and take inspiration from this story.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, yeah. Now, Lakshmi, you mentioned earlier that you and Hannah teach the case differently. What does that mean?

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: Well, so Hannah and I collaborate a lot. And when Hannah introduced me to Nadine, I was like, “This is wonderful. Can I please be part of this party?” And so, they were very generous, and I got to tag along and be part of this team. I also should give a huge shout out to Mike Norris who helped us write the case. And he’s a phenomenal writer and partner. But I think part of the goal for me in teaching the case, and especially in a class like “Power and Influence” or when we’re talking, is this idea that influence with or without formal authority. There are so many examples in the case where, I mean, from the very get go… Just to use examples again, like Nadine walking in and saying, “Okay, well, I can’t do sales through these cold calls. I’m just not going to do it. I’m going to find a different way to do this job.” And then inventing a whole different, again, community set of clients, and that was multiple sets of, “How do I enroll my partner? How do I enroll the army base head? How do I enroll the people who are going to eventually become my clients?” And so, a lot of this thinking very broadly about influencing others towards common goals or shared goals that would benefit many people but aren’t obvious, and then how do you use those different kinds of influence tactics? Because you don’t have a lot of formal authority to do that. In fact, you have pretty much no formal to authority to do that.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, you have to convince people. Yeah.

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: And so, a lot of that comes up. And then I think in the second half when she starts Springboard, even though she has formal authority inside the organization, a lot of her tactics, I ask the students, I’m like, “What’s similar and what’s different? What sources of power is she drawing on? What kinds of tactics is she using?” Because what you see is that the formal authority doesn’t automatically mean that that’s what she ends up relying on. And in fact, a lot of the people that she has to influence are these corporations where she has no formal authority again. And so, her ability to do that and her ability to sort of mobilize people behind that common shared goal and vision is a lot of what we talk about.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, yeah. And Hannah, how do you approach teaching it?

HANNAH BOWLES: I start at a very similar place to Lakshmi, except I say, “What are Nadine’s goals?” And then a little bit different maybe than what Lakshmi does is I also bring in her husband into the storyline and thinking about the negotiation from a whole person perspective. And her husband plays actually a really important role because you need a partner. You need a partner, particularly when you’ve got a child with disabilities at home. I mean, that’s an enormous amount of work. And she has this beautiful life partnership that we actually profile in the Kennedy School version of the case, and they negotiate about how she’s going to go back to work, they negotiate, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to move and I’m going to move to this new market, and I’m going to try the pilot.” And then they have this whole conversation about, “I’m ready to go back to New York and be a corporate executive. Are you coming with me?” And then there’s the, Okay, I have a vision and I’m going to start an entrepreneurial venture, sweetheart, I’m leaving my executive role and are you with me? And those are really important life conversations. And whether you have a partner through that journey, a partner who’s willing to create value together and figure out how are you going to achieve your collective goals and your individual goals and live up to your ideals, I mean, that’s very meaningful. And I love bringing that perspective into the conversation because I think that people with experience recognize that that is their lived experience. And for people earlier in their careers, I’m not sure we talk about that enough because it’s actually really going to be a really important part of their journey. I think another really important thing about this case and the Springboard case in particular is that it’s a beautiful illustration, Lakshmi, of your research about how people bring multiple identities. They bring their multiple identities to bear in ways that enable them to flourish. And I think that’s another thing that this case exemplifies that students find inspiring.

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: Yes, absolutely. I think one of the things that we tend to discount is the extent to which our personal lives can be sources of fuel, innovation, change, creativity, all of these pieces. And so, that transformation, thinking about it as this positive influence that we can then have both for ourselves and for the people that we’re trying to work for is a really big part of it. And that personal, professional, constant mingling that you see, it’s what makes her effective negotiating at home, what makes her effective as a leader. And so…

BRIAN KENNY: We’ve talked a lot about Springboard, Nadine, but we haven’t actually described what it is or what you do. Can you describe Springboard and what you’re hoping to achieve with it?

NADINE VOGEL: Absolutely. So, Springboard’s mission today, almost 20 years in, is the same as it was day one, which is to mainstream individuals with disabilities in the corporate workplace, workforce, and marketplace. Looking at people with disabilities as candidates, as employees, and as customers, and understanding how do we seamlessly integrate that?

BRIAN KENNY: So, can you just give us a couple of examples of the ways that you advise some of these corporations? These are big enterprises that you’re working with. These are not small or mid-sized companies, right?

NADINE VOGEL: Correct. I would say, our clients on average have 30, 40,000 employees or more.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, yeah. So, what do you tell them? What do they need to hear from you?

NADINE VOGEL: Oh, it depends. Sometimes it’s tough love.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Yeah.

NADINE VOGEL: So, how we look at the work is very strategic. So, companies will come to us for a variety of reasons. One, the EEOC came a calling, or the equivalent in whatever country, and they need help. They have a leader, a new leader, a CEO perhaps, who has a family member with a disability and understands what inclusivity means and wants to go there. And then other times it’s just more about, “You know, we need to check a box,” kind of thing. And I will just say that for Hannah and Lakshmi, what you need to know is that I made a big announcement about, I guess, it was about 18 months ago to our clients at our big event and said, “If we do not believe that you as a company are doing this for the right reasons, that it’s more of an illusion of inclusion, a check the box, we will no longer work with you.”

BRIAN KENNY: Wow.

NADINE VOGEL: And that was interesting-

BRIAN KENNY: That’s powerful, that’s great.

NADINE VOGEL: … how that was received. So, to answer your question more specifically, the work really is strategic, it’s tactical depending on the nature and needs of an organization. So, we have a division that does assessments, organizational assessments and gap analysis, physical accessibility audits, digital accessibility usability, employee benefit, and communication audits. We have an area that focuses on learning and development. That is everything from disability etiquette and awareness to legislative, understanding the practices relative to the laws that may exist, to very specific training around mental health, neurodiversity, intersectionality, things like that. We help talent acquisition teams learn how and where to source people with disabilities and to do so effectively. We work with the compliance teams on reasonable accommodation processes, disclosures, self-ID, anything that is tied to some kind of legal requirement. And then we also work with these organizations sometimes and we’ll be on set for a TV commercial and they want to use someone with a disability, and how do we do that appropriately? Or how do we market to potential customers? So, it really runs the gamut. We have also served as the chief accessibility officer when they can’t afford or are not ready for a full-time headcount, we’re serving in that capacity and building their strategy and getting them to the point where they’ll be ready to hire someone.

BRIAN KENNY: Lakshmi, you mentioned that you teach this to executives in the classroom, and I’m guessing a lot of them come into the room with having some of their own personal experience with employees with disabilities. How does that unfold in the classroom?

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: Yeah, it’s a great question. I’m not a disability expert, but one of the things that was so apparent if you look at our curriculum development offerings and things like that, given how important it is, we don’t have a lot of opportunity for discussion. Again, because of what Nadine was saying in the beginning, people not necessarily having disabilities that are visible. And so, it provides opportunities sometimes for people to share personal experiences of their own or in their families that they’ve been exposed to. And then I think as managers, it’s interesting the way you ask the question, they must be thinking about it makes them think about their own experience as managers or leaders employing people with disabilities. And that has actually come up less. Most people, the immediate story is either me or somebody that I’m close to in my own life, and that’s what it provokes. But I don’t know if Hannah’s had a different experience with that.

HANNAH BOWLES: Well, I think one of the things that’s really important is this is a for-profit venture. I think that’s really worth highlighting and the fact that it’s a for-profit venture, and you’re willing to come out and say, “I’m not taking you as a client if you’re just engaged in the illusion of inclusion,” is really quite powerful. I mean, I think that Nadine also not only works with corporations, she’s also working across sectors. I mean, she’s worked with policymakers and international institutions. One of the very powerful aspects of this is that this holding herself to the market pressures means that she’s got to be offering services that are making sense to these organizations and not just superficially making sense. She’s got to be offering for them solutions that work, that help them do better.

Nadine holds a very high goal with regard to how do you integrate differentially abled talent into your organization to help your organization and your talent thrive. So, I think that’s also another important dimension of this work. I mean, another theme that Lakshmi’s colleagues will teach about organizations with hybrid goals, where you have a social goal and you have a for-profit goal. And how do you kind of integrate those two with integrity?

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, so many layers to this case. It’s been a great conversation as I knew it would be. I have one question for each of you left. I’m going to start with you, Nadine. What does success look like for Springboard for you five years from now?

NADINE VOGEL: Success for me, I think has always been and continues to be that when I talk to a company, they don’t look at me like it’s a deer in the headlights like they don’t understand what I’m talking about, one. Two, that disability inclusion is not an afterthought, or if there’s budget left, right? That it’s truly seamlessly integrated, almost to the point the same way I can’t imagine a company or an organization today saying, “Well, we’re not going to hire women,” or, “We’ll just hire the one or two women.” That’s what I want to see. That to me would be a success. Will that happen in my lifetime? Not sure. But hopefully we’re creating a legacy that others, when I’m gone, will kind of keep going with it and make that happen.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s great. Add that to your vision board. The case talks a lot about your vision board, which I thought it was awesome. I’m going to make one of my own. Okay, so now I’m going to turn to Hannah and I’m going to ask, actually, Lakshmi and Hannah the same question so you get an opportunity to think about it, Lakshmi. Hannah, your cold call right now is if you would like our listeners to remember one thing about the Nadine Vogel case, what would it be?

HANNAH BOWLES: That organizations can grow, grow their markets, be more innovative by enabling their talent to bring their full selves, listening to their ideas and finding ways that make sense for talent and for the organization to thrive and grow and do things differently.

BRIAN KENNY: Awesome. Lakshmi, you get the last word.

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: So, I’d say the big lesson for me from the Nadine Vogel case and her experience in life that we get to see is really lean into the things about you that are important to you. It ends with the same thing that you cold called with, “What motivates you?” And that can change over time, and that develops over time. And you learn and grow as a person. It sort of echoes a lot of what Hannah was just saying, how do you bring all of that as a source of fuel, creativity, innovation? And then I think a certain kind of willingness and courage and fearlessness to go and find ways to change the environment around you so that it’s no longer counter normative, to Nadine’s point.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, I love that. Lakshmi, Hannah, Nadine, thank you so much for joining me on Cold Call.

LAKSHMI RAMARAJAN: Thank You.

HANNAH BOWLES: Thank you.

NADINE VOGEL: Thank you.

BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like our other podcasts, After Hours, Climate Rising, Deep Purpose, IdeaCast, Managing the Future of Work, Skydeck, and Women at Work, find them on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And if you could take a minute to rate and review us, we’d be grateful. If you have any suggestions or just want to say hello, we want to hear from you, email us at coldcall@hbs.edu. Thanks again for joining us, I’m your host Brian Kenny and you’ve been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School and part of the HBR Podcast Network.