Organizer’s Forum: Topic – Disability Equality Index
TUESDAY, November 18th
TUESDAY, December 18th, 1-2 pm Eastern time, 12-1 Central time, 11-12 Mountain time, 10-11 am Pacific time
The American Association of People with Disabilities has teamed up with the United States Business Leadership Network to develop a first-of-its-kind survey tool for businesses to assess their disability inclusion efforts. The Disability Equality Index (DEI) was developed by leaders in the disability community and business community and offers companies the chance to receive a rating from Zero to 100.
Join the Organizer’s Forum to learn more about the DEI and ways that advocates can help get more companies on board to take the survey.
Speakers
- Mark Perriello, President & CEO of AAPD
- Jill Houghton, Executive Director, USBLN
You can view the survey prior to the call here: https://www.disabilityequalityindex.org/DEI_survey_intro.aspx
- Call in number: 1-213-342-3000
- Code: 193134#
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CART: The call will have real-time captioning (CART)! The website where you will be able to view the captioning is https://2020captioning.1capapp.com. Username: forum. Password: forum. Thank you to the National Disability Leadership Alliance for sponsoring the captioning of this call.
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MARK YOUR CALENDARS! The Organizer’s Forum has a call on the 3rd Tuesday of each month, 1-2 pm EST (10-11 am PST).
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Background
The Organizing Workgroup of the National Disability Leadership Alliance hosts these calls the third Tuesday of every month as a resource for disability organizers, in an effort toward building the organizing capacity of the disability community across the country. They generally follow the format of a Welcome followed by 2-3 experts in a given area speaking for a few minutes on their experiences, advice and challenges. The calls include a 20-30 minute question and answer period.
To ask questions via CART: Sign-in to the Chat function on the right side of the transcript and type your question. One of the call facilitators will read out any questions posted there.
Because we want to maximize the generously donated CART services, we will begin the call promptly at 1pm and end the call promptly at 2pm (eastern time). A few other reminders about call etiquette:
- Say your name before each time you speak
- Speak one at a time
- Speak slowly and as clearly as possible
So you can mark your calendars now, Organizer’s Forums are held on the 3rd Tuesday of every month. If you have suggestions for call topics or presenters for upcoming topics, please email them to jlehman7@gmail.com or dcoleman@cdrnys.org.
Looking forward to talking with you all!
Jessica Lehman and Diane Coleman
Co-Chairs, National Organizing Workgroup
RC2014 1118 Jessica’s Organizer Forum
**THIS TEXT IS BEING PROVIDED IN A ROUGH DRAFT FORMAT. COMMUNICATION ACCESS REALTIME TRANSLATION IS PROVIDED IN ORDER TO FACILITATE COMMUNICATION ACCESSIBILITY AND MAY NOT BE TOTALLY VERBATIM. PLEASE CHECK WITH THE SPEAKER(s) FOR ANY CLARIFICATION.**
>>CART PROVIDER: Calling 1-860-970-0300 now and entering code 193134.
>>CART PROVIDER: On standby.
>>CART PROVIDER: On standby.
>>Male: Greg Wiles, Independent Resource Services.
>>Male: Hello this is Mark. (beeping sounds)
>>Female: Hi this is Jessica.
>>Maria: Hi Jessica, it is Mark Perriello. How are you?
>>Female: I’m great, how are you? Is Jill on too?
>>Maria: Not to my knowledge yet.
>>I didn’t hear how many people are on let me check. Seems like we have just a handful on now. Maybe we will give folks a couple minutes to join. Mark, were you able to get the notice out through your network?
>>Mark: Yes, we were. And is Diane on?
>>Jessica: I’m going to step away for one minute, I’ll be right back.
>>Mark: No problem.
>>Mark: Hello Jill this is Mark.
>>Hi this is Mark.
>>Jill: sorry I was a little late signing on.
>>Jessica: No problem we figured we would give people a couple minutes. We are still a little small but it is 1:03 do you want to go ahead or give people a couple more minutes?
>>Mark: Why don’t we get started and join in as we go.
>>Jill: That sounds great. I’ll start by welcoming everyone, my name is Jessica, I work as Executive Director, a Non-Profit in San Francisco, I co-chair Organizers Forum with Diane, Organizer’s Forum a product of National Disability Leadership Alliance, cross-disability organizations. Diane, are you on?
>>Diane: Yes, I am sorry I was late signing on. I’m having trouble getting into the captioning by the way.
>>Jessica: Let’s see if it comes up. I will try to follow-up with them. Anybody who needs captioning, if you could send a quick e-mail the link we have been using doesn’t seem to be working. Okay you know what I cut and pasted from the wrong one. I remember we had this problem it says icapapp and it is supposed to be 1capapp —
>>Diane: You mean numeral 1?
>>Jessica: Thank you CART provider.
>>Diane: Yeah there we go, I’m in.
>>Jessica: Can you go ahead Diane and introduce yourself, if you want to say what the Organizer’s Forum is that would be great.
>>I’m Diane, with the organization and co-chair of this um organizers forum effort. And what NDLA is I think the thing that I like to highlight is that it is um governed or run by a scary committee of 14 national disability rights organizations that are run by people with disabilities ourselves. So it is disability led and most significant sense of that word. And um we feel that organizing efforts across the country can benefit from exchanging ideas the way we have been doing both with respect to organizing tools and um with respect to subsequent issues we need to deal with. So we alternate between causes about different organizing strategies every other month and then every other month we have an issue education unit that’s put on by one of the committee member groups. And this time will be um learning about something that you’ve been doing at APD.
>>Jessica: Thank you Diane so just a couple more things in our intro before we turn it over to our speakers today. We do have a list-serve for the organizers forum to have some on-going dialogue and to be sure everyone knows about our organizers forum, it is organizersforum, all one word at Yahoo groups .com, you do a search for organizersforum, all together and click join. It’s really easy. So we hope some of you will get on there. There is not a lot of traffic so don’t worry your in-box will be full of e-mails. As Diane mentioned we have a different topic each month, we are always looking for ideas, the call is captioned now that it is working, thank you to our CART provider for being here and thank you to NDLA for funding that. So you can log on and take questions there if you would like and Diane will read those on the call and of course you can just say them when we get to the open dialogue part as well. If you want to remind everyone to speak slowly and clearly and say your name before you speak and please don’t put us on hold if you need to step away from your phone just hang up and you can call back any time. And if you can try to mute your phone if you are not speaking so we can keep down the static and you can hit star 6 to mute your phone and star 6 again to unmute it. In addition to the list-serve I should let people know we are on FaceBook and that is um just like it sounds or you have seen it in the e-mail organizer forum as two separate words and we have a spot on the NDLA website which is disability leadership .org, you can always go there to find out about the next call. We also on there keep recordings of the calls and transcripts of the calls. So if you missed it or want to share it with somebody else you can go there to get all of that information. And I think that covers it. Actually I should check on the recording, Kristin, are you on the call?
>>Kristin: Yes I’m on recording.
>>Jessica: Wonderful, thank you so much. So our call today is about the disability equality index and this is about a survey tool that has been created by the United States business leadership network along with the American association of people with disabilities and it’s a tool for businesses to assess their efforts on disability inclusion. And it was developed by leaders if a disability community and business community um and there’s a bunch of different parts to the disability equality index. There is a link to the survey in the e-mail that went out. So some people may have looked at that. But we have Mark [Name?] the President of CEO of AAPD, American association of people with disabilities and Jill, I’m forgetting how to say her last name, is it Houghton?
>>Jill: You got it.
>>Jessica: okay director of leadership network and you can introduce yourself a little more if you would like and tell us about the disability equality index and particularly for community organizers on the call, what’s our role in using the disability quality index in our community. So go ahead.
>>Mark: First, thank you Jessica um for organizing this on a monthly basis. It’s an important opportunity I think for a lot of activists and leaders if disability space to get together once a month and talk about really important things and so I’m just really grateful for your working, thank you Diane Coleman for making it all happen too. And so the disability, well I guess first a little bit about um, my name is mark Perriello, President and CEO American disability of people with disabilities. Believe it or not I have been in this role for about three-and-a-half years, will be three-and-a-half years in December and one of the things that I was really and am really passionate about, bringing different tools various civil rights communities use in their efforts to the work of the disability space. And one of the things that I’m excited to see come to fruition is this disability equality index. It was inspired by work um that I was a part of at the human rights campaign, which is nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization where they have a tool called the Corporate Equality Index. They rate companies on various aspects of LGBT inclusion and we looked around in the disability space and didn’t see that there was a similar tool um for companies to assess how they were doing on disability. And so believe it or not Jill started, I’ll let you introduce yourself Jill. Her time at the USBLN about the same time I started at APD and we both had um sort of a tipping point experience where we were both considering some sort of tool like this and decided to collaborate rather than compete. And it has been a wonderful partnership. I couldn’t ask for better or stronger or more trusted partners in USBLN and I think that really speaks to how groups in the disability space can work together in a really positive way. But before we dive into sort of what that collaboration has been like and what the tool um looks like, Jill do you want to introduce yourself and USBLN?
>>Jill: Sure, thanks. Some of the people on the phone know me, but for those of you who don’t, I have worked in um our advocacy community for about 25 years. I have a learning disability and am married to somebody with a spinal cord injury. And have always worked on the advocacy side um and yet have done a lot of work with business over the years. So when the opportunity presented itself to lead the US Business Leadership Network I was excited because for those of you not familiar with our organization, we are the National Organization that brings business together to learn from each other on how to, how to leverage disability inclusion in the workplace, in the supply chain, and in the marketplace. We have 46 affiliates, actually four in development. So soon to be 50 affiliates across the country and truly we are, we bring business together and we were so excited about working together with AAPD because AAPD being a cross-facility organization and the national go-to organization on disability, it just made a really, really strong partnership since we wanted to join forces to create a tool that could not only advance um opportunities for people with disabilities, but at the same time help business. Help business get better at being inclusive across their business enterprises. We are really excited about this partnership because it is meaningful and we are going to, together work to help move this. So mark?
>>Mark: Great, thank you Jill. So one of the first things that we decided to do is put together an advisory committee to help us formulate what this survey tool looked like. We felt like rather than just rely on the teams between AAPD and USBLN we wanted people with disabilities, people from the business community, to come together and craft the tool. And I’m going to read um some of the names of the possession on that advisory committee because I think that you’ll recognize many of them and while I’m going to associate them with their business title many of these folks are us right, they are folks who are blind, folks who are deaf, folks who have learning disabilities, folks who have various disabilities from across the spectrum. And I think that’s really, really important because um one thing that I really want to underscore this wasn’t a tool built by business for business, it was really a tool built by people with disabilities and that’s an important factor. So really quickly Jeanie with Walt Disney, Julie with Autistic Self Advocacy, Lina Berger, former CEO here at AAPD, Sarah Bolin with Starbucks, Kelly, Mary Broker with Consulting, Deb Dagget University, Andy, Executive Director of AAPD and former Executive Director here at AAPD, Sherry, Todro with Ernst and Young, Griffin Executive Director of disability law center. Denelay, Microsoft. Randy Lewis, formally with Walgreens, Janie is with Comcast, Susan with AT&T, American Airlines, Neil Romano with Romano group, Rick Schroeder, Lisa Taylor with Cox Communications, Keith, formally with American AMC theaters and Bow Witeck with Witeck Communications and also had former members. Jonathan Young and Korean Dehl as well. They really all came together and they built the survey. And that is a truly remarkable thing to get that many people agreeing um on the right questions and how to formulate the questions and how to come up with scoring matrixes and in the end we came up with a tool that I think is really, really powerful and before we dive into what the tool is and how you can all get involved. Jill, do you have anything you want to add about the advisory committee?
>>Jill: No I think you covered it well.
>>Mark: All right, great. So the next thing I wanted to talk about a little bit is why this tool is important to business. You know, one of the things that Jill and I realized early on was there wasn’t a benchmarking tool for businesses um to use when it came to their inclusion practices. And so we really see this as an opportunity for businesses to learn about where they are um and how they can get from that point to an even better point in the future. And so um, you know, a lot of this is going to be carrot and not stick, as our coach here Keith Windenkeller [Name?] likes to say, it is really an educational tool for businesses. The exciting thing to report we have over 80 businesses at this point signed up to participate in the first annual survey. I think we might be close to 85 um, they are all Forth 1000 or similar scoped companies that we have invited to participate. We would love to expand that out at a certain point to include more corporations. Even though we are talking about some of the largest employers in the country the fact remains that small businesses are among the largest employers, not the largest employer of people, eventually we would like to expand out to include small business and right now the capacity issue and so we have decided strategically to start with Forth 100 to take the survey. Jill, do you have anything you would like to add about why it is important to business?
>>Jill: Well, you know, I just think it’s important for people to know that for a whole lot of reasons, you know, whether it’s, whether it’s things like the new regulation from department of labor that section 503, company federal contractor, or if it’s the AB work force, wounded warriors coming back, their quest or talent um, you know, identifying people with disabilities is an important market. There’s just, there’s a perfect storm right now. There’s a tipping point this’ a lot of things that are going on that are causing business to pay attention. And um this tool allows them a way and they care about this, to benchmark with their peers. It allows them something they can utilize internally to make business case for why they need to do something better or differently or, you know, it goes Mark is going to get foo the actual survey itself. But really takes them on a journey where they got to bring different stakeholders to the table. So it’s not just HR that’s filling out a survey. But they got to go and they got to hunt within their company and bring procurement people and IT people and maintenance and real estate people. There’s got to get out there and got to be talking across the business enterprise and that’s, that’s — so this tool is causing the conversation to expand and grow within each of these companies. Which is a real important thing. Mark?
>>Mark: Thank you Jill. And so the next thing that I’m requesting going to dive into, Jessica are we, can we take questions or should we just take questions at the end?
>>Jessica: Sorry I muted myself. Um, it’s up to you, if you want to go ahead and take questions starting now that’s fine.
>>Mark: All right well why don’t we see if there is any questions. Just so you know the next thing I’m going to be talking about, in case you want to wait, is why it’s important to the disability community and then actually talking about um the survey itself and the various components of the survey. And then ways that folks can get involved. But if folks have questions at when this point about the reason why it is important to business or anything about the advisory committee I’m happy to take some questions. I’m going to keep going. But feel free to interrupt with questions at any time. So why is this important to the communities? Um, so from my perspective, you know, the unemployment numbers are, they are just staggering, right. They are numbers that everyone knows and you know 25 years almost after the American with Disabilities act really unfulfilled promise of ADA is employment. We need to change that, the only way we are going to change that is by working with business to help them see that people with disabilities are an important resource for their companies and part of the DEI deals with employment. But more importantly I think what it does is it helps create a culture within these companies where they are thinking about disability on the front end. They are thinking about it holistically from soup to nuts and building a climate and a culture where it is something that hiring managers start to think about more and do more of. And so while there are specific questions on employment, I think more than that um it really creates a culture in which disability is something that the entire company is thinking about and um trying to help advance. And so one of the things as well is, you know, if you keep doing the same thing and getting the same results um it’s time to start doing something different and so from my perspective this is a different tool, it’s a new strategy to engage with business that hasn’t been done before. At least not in such a big fashion as this is coming together to be. And that I think will be a really powerful thing as well. And so what we will be doing specifically um, so it does make a big difference in the business side and hopefully in the unemployment side. The other thing that it makes a big difference on is for us as a people, and our ability to know where to spend our money. And so um at the end of the survey everyone who gets an 80 or above will be published. So people will know the companies that are doing well and doing right by people with disabilities and hopefully one of the things that they will start to do is frequent those companies and spend their money in places that are doing well versus places that are not. One of the real sort of tricks I think of LGBT community with their tools is that over time they kept raising the bar. And highways something we will do as well. This isn’t just, you know, about where the disability community is now. It’s about where the disability community can be in the future. And so as time goes on the survey questions will usually change. Because right, if you get 100 first time out and we move everyone towards 100 and right eventually, right, we want to get those 100’s to be even better and so we are going to ask even tougher questions as the years go on. But for now I do think that we have a pretty comprehensive tool um that will help enable people with disabilities to know where to spend their hard earned dollars and will also um enable folks um to help increase sort of the Corporate culture around disability. So Jill do you have anything you would want to add here?
>>Jill: Um are you going to start talking about the actual survey?
>>Mark: Yeah.
>>Jill: Why don’t you do that and then I will weigh in there.
>>Mark: All right that’s a tool. So the survey tool likes at pour main four main cattle goers, cultural and leadership, worth 30 points, enterprise wide access, worth ten points, employment practices which is worth 40 points and community engagement and support services which is worth 20 points. And so that adds up to 100 for folks in order to score or earn the points you actually need to answer a series of yes or no questions. But then also provides a supporting documentation um to, you know, basically show your work and so it will be all reviewed by the team at SBLN to make sure information we are getting is correct. There is a self-reporting requirement that people will have to go through. As Jill mentioned it’s going to require people to work with all aspects of the company in order to come up with these um, these answers. And so let me give you just a few examples of some of the questions rather than read through the whole entire survey. But for example under leadership, of course hold on a second I’m having some technical difficulties. Under culture and leadership, let’s just look at one of those questions. You know, hold on just a second, sorry my computer is not cooperating.
>>Jill: You want me to jump in and give an example?
>>Mark: Yeah, thank you Jill.
>>Jill: So an example that we like to talk about is for example um first of all let me just say this. If you go to disability equality index .org you can actually access the survey. So what we are referring to right now is out in the public domain. The survey itself has 150 questions, so within the category of culture and leadership, for example, there is a question um related to um if diversity is measured in performance evaluations for executives that report to this. So executives that report. Then it goes a step further and basically says well it is diversity is a component within performance evaluations, um, you know, does it specifically call out disability. And I’m just talking at a high level. So continues to drill down and in order to get the point for the quote ”weighted question” they have to be able to answer yes. Solve it’s an all or nothing. The answer is either yes or no. Even if no plan here within the next year, don’t give you any points. Only give points you can answer yes. Then they have to be able to substantiate their answers. So with the examples we just gave you we are already seeing some companies who worked with us in the pilot, who had to answer no to that question. But they are competitive. So they want to use this as a tool to continue to evolve their practices. So when they have to answer no to this question and take a 0 for that question, they then came back to us and said we know that, you know, the companies that participated in the pilot, we promised them anonymity, we wanted to them to take a test on drive with us. So we couldn’t tell them who participated but we could tell them X person has answered the question yes and X percentage answered the question no, et cetera. Basically they were able to take this and then very, very large in fact probably Fortune 100 Company, they got a meeting with their CEO and had time between pilot and when we just gone live to change that practice. Because it was something that wasn’t even on their radar screen and so they took DEI pilot. So we are already start to go see examples of how it’s changing behavior. Mark?
>>Mark: That is great example. You know, you know one of the questions that I think is really interesting as well as right, during that time period a member of senior executive team within first two layers of CEO show external support for disability inclusion through participation on director or working group um and so right not only is it a yes or no question, but then approximate you say yes you actually need to provide the name of the executive, the organization that they were involved with, and to me that’s we make people show the work um which is really, really important. And so rather than go through question by question, I think now might be a good time to see if folks have questions about the survey tool itself and then we can talk about ways you can get involved and help get more companies to sign up to take this survey.
>>Jill: Before you open it one additional thing that I would just call out to people is, we have weighted questions, in other words it’s how, it’s how they get scored to get a score. But there are also unweighted questions on there, you’ll note, there are unweighted questions and there are best practices questions. And it’s just important to note that the unweighted questions create an opportunity for us to gather data. So for example, there is a benefit section and there’s a question related to um personal care assistance. So you know, related to their insurance and does it cover that service. Now it’s not a weighted question, so it’s not counted against their score or for their score, but you can almost view it as um kind of like a sign on the highway. It could be a sign of what’s to come in the future, not necessarily. I mean the advisory committee may decide otherwise but it’s a data point and we are already having people that are participating starting to ask about some of those unweighted questions, because again even though it’s not something that they are being scored on, they are curious. They are like, hmm — well wow that’s a really good question, you know, we never thought about that. And then the other thing to call your attention to with best practices question, so it’s just, it’s an opportunity for them to share best practices and when we, when we release the scores um and as Mark said, we will only release those that score 80 or above, we will also be released best practices reports. And trying to create um ways to help business get better so that at the end of the day they are demonstrating through their policies and their practices inclusive behavior so now I’ll shut up.
>>Mark: Are there any questions about the survey tool itself? Or about anything that we’ve talked about so par today.
>>Greg: yeah this is Greg, I think I made a goof, I got the production printed it off and deleted it. So I can’t get into the PDF. Is there a way to get another copy?
>>Jill: If you go to disabilityequalityindex.org there is an accessible PDF.
>>Greg: okay, perfect.
>>Jill: On that website.
>>Thank you very much.
>>Mark: After the call we can resend it out as well.
>>Greg: Okay.
>>Mark: Are there other questions? So um I guess I’ll jump into how you can get involved. We can use your help to get companies signed up. And I think one of the things that we are really good at is getting public pressure on to our issues um especially folks on this call and so I would say there’s a number of things that you can do. Everything from penning a letter which takes the most effort, to a company asking them to get involved, to talking to your friends and folks who might work at various companies that could be interested in taking the survey. You could tweet, right. Hey star Bucks, have you signed up to take disability equality index survey? Anything like that I think would be really, really, really great way to draw attention um to the issues. But so talking it up you, contacting these companies, contacting your friends with that work at various companies. If you yourself are working for Fortune 1000 or similarly scoped company, getting theme signup to take the survey. Going to your HR department and asking hem to be a part of this survey is really, really important. One of the reasons that the Corporate equality index, tool that human rights campaign uses, has achieved such great results in terms of the number of people who are involved, is that they really did a great job getting folks from the Grassroots to get these companies to sign up and take the survey. Right now I would say the, because it’s the first time out of the box we can’t do this particular strategy yet but we can soon, is once we have the survey results and the survey results for the first go around will be released sometime in April, you can then start to spend your money starting places and then say hey right I don’t know if company X um is involved in this survey yet and so I’m not going to spend my money there. And let people know that. That I think can be a very, very powerful tool. It is estimated that we are a 13 billion dollar market and so we have a lot of spending power despite what critics may say. And so using your money as a vote is also going to be very important as time goes on. Jill, are there other thoughts or Walker, Tekesha, also here with me leading the charge behind the scenes. Either of you have thoughts about ways folks can get involved as well?
>>Jill: Tekesha?
>>no, I don’t have anything, we will send this information out, link to website and sort of a list of with a can be done, some of the things Mark just talked about. So what can be done so you can share this with members of your organization, members of your family, in order to really generate awareness of the importance of this survey.
>>Mark: I would say right like thanks giving is coming up, many of us will spend time with friends and family this is an opportunity to talk to them about DEI. Maybe they know people who might have some influence at companies about whether or not they can take the survey. But very simple fact that you are having the conversation is also an education tool, because it is an opportunity to talk about the unemployment rate for people with disabilities. It is an opportunity to talk about Corporate best practices, it’s an opportunity to engage people in a conversation that you might not otherwise engage them in and that I think is how this is really going to grow. It’s going to be one conversation at a time um and one lead at a time that will eventually get us to a point where, you know, there are hundreds and hundreds of companies participating um but 81 is a solid start. When the human rights campaign launched their Corporate equality index I believe, I am told is it 12 companies participated. So we are off to a really, really great start. But we can use your help talking this up. And the main thing I would just reiterate is Twitter, you know, companies follow what’s going on on Twitter, you know, if you all started to Tweet, to certain companies asking them to participate in the DEI, believe it or not I think it is hashtag DEI, and we can follow that and re-Tweet it and help build a lot of energy around this, I think we would be very, very successful.
>>Jill: I would also say that in the same social media, also work on FaceBook, if you are not on tertiary treatment yet use FaceBook go to the company Web page and use that hashtag and ask them the same question.
>>Mark: So with that um I don’t have anything else to add and so we are about 15 minutes before the hour is up. But I’m happy to answer any questions that people have about the tool. And I just be interested in any reactions at all about um your thoughts on the tool, if you have thoughts to share rather than just questions.
>>This is Diane —
>>This is Jessica.
>>Sorry this is Jessica, I just wanted to jump in to thank Mark and Jill pore such an excellent presentation, that’s all. I will turn it over to whoever was trying to make a comment.
>>This is Diane. I was just kind of going online on the side to see if I could figure out, okay, what companies are in the Fortune 1000 in Rochester New York where I am. I didn’t get too far, I got to the list, one of the lists any way that’s out there, indicated there is three such companies here and so I can probably figure out who they are. And then it crossed my mind that Nickel would probably be a good vehicle for identifying, you know, the centers in each of the, you know, focus their energy on the small number of companies in their particular city that um would fit the profile that you are looking for. So I was just thinking about collaboration with Nickel on this issue as being a good thing.
>>Mark: I can —
>>That’s kind of already in the works.
>>Mark: I couldn’t agree more. I think that we have had services conversations with folks like Kelly who sits literally almost right above me here at the national youth transition center. And so but I think that we haven’t really formalized it and I think it is a great suggestion, so thank you Diane.
>>This is Jessica again. I think the survey looks really nice, very comprehensive. I really like the way culture and leadership are included kind of recognizing it is not just what policies you have down or what kind of access you have, but you have to have um you know there has to be part of the culture of how the organization works to really make that kind of difference. And the question I would ask is can you say a little bit more about either how it is being used now or how you envision it being used.
>>Mark: Yeah so right now um we are just about to, or we have officially closed right the um open enrollment, if you will, for companies to participate in the first annual DEI. But, you know, nothing is cut in stone um and so if there are companies that are interested in taking the survey um we have sort of between you, me and everyone on this call, agreed that we would yet companies that fit the profile um, you know, participate. So there is still a chance for companies to do that. What happens now is they have until February to or middle of February to fill out the survey. And then the surveys will be tabulated during month of March and released in April. So that will be, that’s sort of where we are in terms of the time-line of what’s happening with the DEI. And so April is the first time that we’ll actually be able to see some results, which is pretty exciting. I think that we are going to be, it will be interesting actually right, you know, hopefully will there are 80 companies plus that come out, 80 or higher number, my guess is that won’t be the case. So it will provide us with an opportunity to do a lot of education but also to really, you know, again spend our money with the companies that are doing well.
>>And to try to get, we are talking about 80 something of a thousand, right? Fortune 1000 companies. So we did snailmail to, you know, a thousand CEOs and chief diversity officers of these companies and, you know, we were so excited that we caught the number that we caught. But look at how much um room we have to grow, right. It’s interesting we can’t, we can’t say who we caught because we promised them confidentiality and so they can take this process. But we can tell you that it’s not necessarily the choir, which is interesting. And great. But, you know, we need your help getting, pushing this out there and pushing, pushing business. I mean who better to do that than people with disabilities because our money matters.
>>Mark: Other questions? Well I just want to thank everyone for your time today this is a really exciting thing I think for our community. It’s a new tool, hopefully a tool that will deliver some powerful results for the community because from my perspective if it isn’t making a dent in that unemployment number f it isn’t advancing our communities access to equal opportunity or economic power or independent living, it’s not really worth doing. I do think this is going to be, have an impact on those areas. And so it’s really, really exciting. I hope that you will consider sending out a few Tweets at the very least or maybe having a conversation over the dinner table this Thanksgiving, because we can use your help. And so thank you for your time today. Again thank you Jessica and thank you Diane for organizing this terrific call.
>>I would just echo what Mark said. It matters most is at the local level. We can talk until the cats come home at the national level and really quite frankly, who cares. The way things play out at local level, in people’s lives and in people’s communities. The opportunity to um be working together with each of you is extremely important. And thank you for this opportunity.
>>Gray well thank you again, this is Jessica. Thank you again to mark Perriello and Jill Houghton. Any comments or questions, we ended up with some extra time which is kind of a miracle for the Organizer’s Forum. All right. It doesn’t look like it. So I want to remind everyone about our FaceBook site and our list-serve if you want to put a comment on there about what you got out of the call today, something that’s in your head, a question you may have, a thought, any of that. We would love to be able to continue the conversation. And Mark and Jill, if either of you can do that that would be great. And our next call will be the third Tuesday of December, which is Tuesday December 16th. We don’t have a topic yet, we talked about doing something on LBGT issues and disabilities. We are going to figure out if that’s going to happen in December or later. Please mark your calendars for December 16th. And I think that covers it. Thanks to our captioner and Kristin at center for disability rights for recording the call today and everybody can go on the website in the next few days for the transcript and the recording. And I think that’s a wrap, thanks again everybody.
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