Recap: Disability and employment webinar

An Overview of the August 2025 Understanding Ableism Webinar: “How the Workforce can be More Inclusive”

By Colin Wilfrid, AmeriCorps KCDC Coordinator

(Watch the webinar here on our YouTube channel.)

The seventh webinar in the Understanding Ableism series this year tackled people with disabilities’ experiences with employment, as well as how employers can adapt based on feedback from employees with disabilities. This webinar, which took place Tuesday, Aug. 19, featured three panelists, each of whom are experts in how disability and employment intersect. All three of the panelists who were featured in this webinar either have experience in acquiring and maintaining a job as a person with a disability, helping people with disabilities acquire and maintain jobs or both.

Christina Tengelin is the founder of The Memento Mei Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on providing the disability community with tools that help them navigate emergency situations such as wildfires and earthquakes. Christina founded Memento Mei in 2025, after she got laid off by the Washington State Developmental Disabilities Community Services Division (DDCS), formerly the Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA). In founding Memento Mei, Christina is continuing the work she did with DDCS in providing essential services to the disability community herself. As someone who was not diagnosed with ADHD until later in her life, Christina’s experience of the workforce was different before she was diagnosed compared to after she was diagnosed. Before she was diagnosed, Christina did not know how to advocate for her own needs. After she was diagnosed, Christina became empowered to self-advocate and had experience both with higher-ups who had biases against her and higher-ups who were willing to meet her where she was while they onboarded her.

Gene Boes is the President and CEO of The Northwest Center, a Seattle-based nonprofit that focuses on helping people with disabilities thrive in the workforce, in school, and in society, while also empowering employers, educators, and the public to help people with disabilities succeed. Gene became the President and CEO of The Northwest Center because three of his family members are part of the disability community, and he wants to transfer his experience in helping his loved ones navigate an ableist society to do some even broader work in making the world a less-ableist place. To make the workforce more inclusive for people with disabilities, the Northwest Center contracts roughly 1,000 employees, or “inclusion ambassadors,” and they are spread across multiple different professions across different agencies. To pay their employees, Northwest Center either uses funding from DDCS and DVR, or they pay their employees with their own money if they do not qualify for DDCS or DVR services. Gene’s vision for the Northwest Center is for anyone to come to them for help in finding jobs regardless of experience.

Philip Bradford is an Independent Living Specialist here at the Disability Empowerment Center. Philip’s role is part of roughly two decades of experience in helping people with disabilities find jobs. He spent 18 and a half years working at a vendor of DVR services in Pierce County, doing job training, development and frontline coaching. He spent two terms on the Washington State Rehabilitation Council as the labor business liaison representative. He spent 10 years advocating for rights and opportunities for workers in the State of Washington in healthcare and frontline support-related industries. Philip’s rich experience in helping people with disabilities find work comes from his own experience of having autism and experiencing how different employers reacted to his requests for workplace accommodations all throughout his adult life.

One common way in which Christina, Gene and Philip all explained what works and what doesn’t for people with disabilities in the workforce is that they talked about their own experience as employees and how they learned about disability accessibility from those experiences. When she worked for DDCS, Christina became more aware of what ADA Compliance meant by listening to her clients’ conversations with curiosity instead of jumping to conclusions. This eventually made Christina’s clients think of her less as someone who is not willing to help them and more as a safe person who will not judge them when they bring scenarios of conflict to her. Gene talks about how, in the days where he was interviewed for job openings, he had to focus on selling himself, because it was easier for employers to have the final word at the time. However, as Gene spent more years in the workforce, and especially by the time he took over the Northwest Center, he realized that the employer needs to sell itself just as much as the employee candidate needs to sell themself. Gene believes that the more that this occurs in the workforce, the more likely it will be that the employer and employee work collaboratively to make the workplace more accessible instead of at odds with no progress in accessibility. Based on the countless jobs that he worked across his career, Philip learned that mental preparation for work is just as important as physical preparation. Philip prefers to physically prepare for his day-to-day work by picking a job where he can easily get there himself by public transportation taking him where he needs to be easily. To mentally prepare for his day-to-day work, Philip prefers jobs where his higher-ups work with him to make his work more accessible for him, and one where his clients can easily see him as helpful. To find out whether a job opening fit Philip’s preferences, he did further research on what the site stood for and what it was like to work there.

Given the three panelists each had their own unique lived experience, how each panelist learned about the intersection between disability and employment were different. Christina had no idea that she could self-advocate and bring accommodation requests to her higher-ups until she was diagnosed with ADHD. This is why she gave the audience tips on how they could advocate for their needs to their employer, such as preparing and practicing an introduction and a script for 1 on 1 sessions with the higher-ups. In talking about the culture he created in his eight years as Northwest Center’s President and CEO, Gene showed that his learning about the disability community did not end with his family members and instead continued once he took over as the Northwest Center’s leader. Based on how his lived experience as an employee and a disability community ally applies to his work at the Northwest Center, Gene came up with the term, “return on inclusion.” Just like how “return on investment” means that profits are beneficial for businesses’ financial standings, “return on inclusion” means that making tweaks to increase accessibility benefit businesses’ employee satisfaction in the long run. As the one panelist who has known he had his disability his whole life, Philip used his personal experience to make it clear which kind of job he prefers to work in based on his needs, capabilities and interests. When he was younger, Philip worked in traditional jobs where he needed to work entirely within the higher ups’ image. For example, in a sales job that Philip once worked, he had to say whatever he could to sell his products, no matter how off-putting his selling of the products might have been to some customers. Philip describes this as “drinking the Kool-Aid.” He eventually settled on work in disability assistance and advocacy, because he really wants to be useful whenever it is necessary, and the employers are more likely to make seeing employees eye to eye a priority, just like Gene does as Northwest Center’s leader. Philip does not plan to retire yet because he “gets a kick” out of working jobs that appreciate what he is capable of, he gets to help other members of the disability community, and DEC understands that Philip will do what he can every day, even if he does not bring “the best version of himself.”

In addition to talking about either their own experiences, what they witnessed at their work, or both, Christina, Gene and Philip each had some advice for employers on how they could better include people with disabilities in their workplace. Christina points out that when employers deny accommodation requests, they make an excuse about how much money modifications to their building or staffing could cost, when in reality, refusing such accommodations can lead to an even more expensive lawsuit. She also suggests that the employer leads with curiosity, meaning that they ask the employee questions instead of immediately deciding what is best for them. Gene indicates that if an accommodation requested by one employee with a disability becomes granted, then that same accommodation could help all employees. Gene also states that as long as higher-ups keep an open mind about their employees’ capabilities, whether they need accommodations or not, both the employers and the employees will have the best experience possible. Philip notes that the reason why there are still many workplaces that are inaccessible 35 years into the Americans with Disabilities Act’s signage is because the ADA has stipulations that allow businesses to be exempt from some of the ADA’s regulations. As a consequence, those stipulations keep businesses from understanding why the ADA exists in the first place. This is in part because most of our society still believes that people with disabilities are not capable of doing the same things as people without disabilities, as well as why Christina, Gene and Philip propose that employers consult with employees with disabilities before making decisions about them.

I would like to wrap this blog post up by telling you the reason why I decided to make employment the topic of the Understanding Ableism webinar on August 19, in particular. As of Monday, September 1, I will begin my search for a new job, as my AmeriCorps term expires on August 31. Before facilitating this webinar, I knew I wanted my future job to be one with more stable funding, higher pay and more flexible hours. Thanks to the wisdom and experience of Christina, Gene and Philip, I closed the webinar with a better understanding of what my criteria for my upcoming job search should include. Christina informed the audience that there are workplaces that go beyond safe communication styles, meaning that their business practices are designed to adapt to the needs and capabilities of each new employee rather than keeping management practices as is and expecting employees to adhere to them. After hearing Philip talk about how the Disability Empowerment Center accommodated his needs as one of their employees, Christina indicated that DEC is a workplace that went beyond safe communication styles. Since how well DEC communicated with me was one of the highlights of my AmeriCorps service with them, I might search for a job at a workplace with a similar environment.

According to Gene, the way the Northwest Center matches people with disabilities with jobs is that they make sure the ability of the employee and need of the employer are compatible. In using the AmeriCorps KCDC Coordinator job as an example, the Disability Empowerment Center needed someone with experience in developing webinars to revive the King County Disability Consortium’s Understanding Ableism series. Since I had experience in developing webinars about disability rights advocacy beforehand, my ability matched DEC’s need perfectly, so I was selected for the AmeriCorps KCDC Coordinator job.

As a DEC employee who experienced how I developed throughout my term as AmeriCorps KCDC Coordinator, Philip talked about one of the strengths I have shown in this role that he noticed, complete with a recent example. Philip was not originally going to be one of this webinar’s guest speakers. The person that I initially intended to include as a guest speaker alongside Christina and Gene called in sick on the morning of the webinar, so I needed to act fast to find a replacement panelist. After messaging my colleagues at DEC that one of my guest speaker slots was suddenly vacant, Philip jumped on the opportunity and praised my ability to ask for help under pressure on the webinar. Per Philip’s suggestion, I will use the story of when I had to quickly fill a sudden Understanding Ableism panelist vacancy if my interviewers ask for an example of my ability to perform under pressure.

I cannot thank the Disability Empowerment Center enough for helping me broaden my skills as a person with autistic self-advocate who served an AmeriCorps term with them. In making me eager to transfer the skills I developed as AmeriCorps KCDC Coordinator to my future jobs, the Disability Empowerment Center clearly lived up to its name.