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This podcast is brought to you by Knowledge at Wharton. Hello, my name is Stephanie Creary
and I'm an Assistant Professor
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of Management at the Wharton School
of the University of Pennsylvania. And I'm delighted to welcome you
to today's episode of the
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Knowledge at Wharton
Leading Diversity at Work Podcast series, which is focused on disability
access in the workplace.
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Joining me
today are two very special guests. First, we have Sheila Xu,
who is a dual degree Master of Business
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Administration, degree candidate
at the Wharton School, my home institution, and Master of Public Policy degree
candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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She is a disabilities advocate and researcher
and pilot who recently participated
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in a zero-gravity
flight experiment with AstroAccess. We're going to hear more
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about this experiment and more
about AstroAccess a little bit later. But Astro Access is an organization dedicated
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to promoting disability
inclusion in space exploration. Sheila is also deaf. Next, we have
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Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen, who is NASA/
Library of Congress chair in Astrobiology and an Associate Professor of Linguistics
at Bowling
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Green State University in Bowling
Green, Ohio. She is on the AstroAccess
Leadership team.
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Along with various aspects
of astrobiology, Sheri’s research interests include social
aspects of human colonization,
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disability and the relationship
between language, embodiment and thought; language evolution and ways
in which alternative sensory
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inputs could influence the evolution
of scientific thought. Sheri is on the board of SOCIA
S-O-C-I-A
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which is stands for Social
and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology and METI, M-E-T-I
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Messaging, Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
International. Sheri is also a blind person
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who has been on a couple of zero
gravity flights as well. Welcome, Sheila and Sheri.
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Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so honored to have you here with me
on the podcast
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for a conversation
about disability access in the workplace. So I want to start us off
by just getting to know a little bit more
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about each of you, having
you share a bit about yourselves, including your background on the topic
of disability access in the workplace.
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And I also would love for you to share
how you know each other. So I'd like to start with you, Sheila.
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Please share with us more about
who you are, including your background, and we'd like to also hear about the work
that you're doing with AstroAccess.
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Well, hello everybody. Yes, my name is Sheila,
and this is how I sign my name. Let me think for just a moment.
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In terms of disability access
and the workplace, accommodations
and accessibility is not always provided.
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It really can depend on the environment
and the culture -- what's happening socially in the setting.
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Equality as well as equity
and how that's being addressed. And what we need to succeed
in the workplace.
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We do have a law here
in the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act,
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but attitudes are important as well
when it comes to inclusion in many areas, not just in classroom settings or work
settings, but opportunities for network
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and socializing, -- incidental learning opportunities as well
that need to be accessible.
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For example, there are are a lot of hearing people
who just by being in a space, have access
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to the communication
happening in that space where deaf people can lose out on a lot of
that incidentally learned information
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and how we resolve that is very important
in terms of creating equal access and opportunities
for everyone in all situations.
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And how that brings us to AstroAccess. I believe that space will be our future. Right now there are a lot of people
who are really starting to think
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about the greater future,
about going up into space. And if we are thinking about that,
how do we think about including people
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with disabilities
within those opportunities to go to space? I would also add that if we are looking
at making the workplace and systems
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as well as the space stations accessible, we're really talking
about universal design,
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which would not only benefit me
and people like me, but it would benefit all peoples.
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If we look at universal design, it’s
very similar to looking at ways to create more safe
places, reducing risks for people.
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And space is a dangerous place
in and of itself. People will get hurt in space at some point.
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So how do we account for that? Well, to account for that,
we need to look at people like ourselves.
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We are, and we set the gold standard,
frankly, for design within any system, specifically
looking at how we apply that to space.
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Thank you, Sheila. Let me turn to you, Sheri. I would love to know more about
who you are,
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your background. Also, can you tell us more about AstroAccess and certainly how you've come
to get to know Sheila a bit better?
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Absolutely. Thank you. Sheila said all the good stuff already,
so I'm in a good position
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to just to capitalize
on what she has already said. So my training is in linguistics,
so that seems like
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a little bit of a jump
all the way to astrobiology. But in essence,
we have to realize that everywhere
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we go, people
are going to have to communicate, right? So every field that there is from biology
to business,
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all the way to the other
end of the alphabet -- zoology -- I dont know, whatever you want. All of those fields
are going to be necessary in space.
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So having, having linguists and business
majors involved in space is an excellent idea
because we need everybody there.
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And speaking of needing everybody there,
that's what AstroAccess is all about.
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We don't want to end up artificially limiting who can go. What we need in space are our best people,
not our best people who happen to fit
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some kind of arbitrary rule about what your body is like
and what your senses are like.
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So I met Sheila when she applied to be an AstroAccess ambassador,
to fly on one of our zero-G flights.
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It was a wonderful, easy choice
for us to select Sheila to go. She is exactly the kind of very alert,
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cheerful person with boundless energy and a real depth of knowledge. And so she was a an easy choice for us
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when we were going to pick
who was going to fly with us. So I met Sheila on our last zero-G flight,
and we work together to do
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to do some of the observations
that we did aboard the flight. Sheila talked about universal design.
That doesn't just happen.
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You don’t automatically
know how to make a new situation accessible, and space
is a very new situation, right?
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We don't automatically know
what we're going to need and how to make those accommodations happen.
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So one of the things we do aboard
the zero-G flights is we test out things. So we wanted to know, for example,
if you are signing
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in zero gravity,
and one person -- whoo! Goes upside down. How does that affect the understandability
of what the other person said?
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So if Sheila is signing
and someone else is completely on the other side of the cabin
spinning around or upside down,
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can they still understand one another? So it's things like that that we just
don't know.
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So that's
why we need to do the investigations and that's why we need people like Sheila
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who are ready to go up and experience
zero gravity for fun, sure, but also for science and to help us
figure out what we need to know.
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So I'm going to sort of
dive into this conversation a little bit more, particularly with
Sheila, around your background,
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because I had the pleasure
of getting to know Sheila over the last academic year
because Sheila joined my Leading Diversity
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at Wharton’s MBA class that I teach
at the Wharton School. This was certainly my first experience
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teaching a student at the Wharton School, who is deaf, but certainly my first time
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teaching a student at the Wharton School
who is deaf, who wants to be an astronaut.
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And so I've come to understand
so many interesting things about space
that I was not even thinking about,
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just by engaging in communication
with Sheila. So before we sort of jump back
into this space parts,
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Sheila. you are
perhaps one of the most fascinating MBA students I've come to meet in my time
at the Wharton School
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because of this work
you are doing with space exploration. But I know that work started long
before you got to us
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at the Wharton School. So can you say a little bit more about how you became interested in this topic
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and just shed some light on
how are you continuing to, I guess, think about your education
relative to this broader interest?
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I mean, you're pursuing both an MBA
and a Master's in Public Policy
at two different schools at the same time.
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So, I just would love to know more about how you got to be here, where you are
and then what the how these degrees
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are fitting into this amazing future
that I know you have in front of you. Well, I was born deaf.
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My family is not deaf. They're hearing.
My parents were immigrants from China.
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So the first time they ever met
a deaf person was when I was born. Now, in China,
they had never met a deaf person prior
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to my being born, so they were overwhelmed
and trying to figure out what to do. Ultimately,
they decided to give me a cochlear implant
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when I was three years old.
So that would mean that I really used more of the spoken language, what we refer
to as an “oral approach” in school.
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I didn't begin to use sign language until
I was 20 years old, and I was in college.
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I went to MIT for my undergraduate
education. I was studying Earth atmospheric and planetary science.
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And also at the same time,
my father was getting his Ph.D. in physics. So that was a big impact on my life
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about what it means to be a scientist. How do you view the world
from that lens of a scientist?
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So at that time, again, I was at MIT and that was my dream
top school that I wanted to attend,
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so I enrolled. I decided at that time to begin
my studies of Earth sciences, as I just explained,
and it just so happened
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that the Earth Sciences class
overlapped with a lot of space classes. I think that is where my interest in space began
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because of those classes,
because of my peers and the other students in those classes.
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So then in my freshman year
over the summer, I went to an internship for NASA,
NASA JPL.
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I was primarily focused on science work,
like building and predicting models, --
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those types of things. And then I started working
with the Department of Transportation
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in similar areas of developing models
and the greenhouse gases, those emissions coming from airplanes.
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So those are my early years where I was
focused primarily on the science work. But I did notice something at the time.
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I realized that I just wasn't enjoying
just the physical work of sitting like coding like a monkey,
if you will, -- just focusing and typing
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and working so solitary in my office.
It just wasn't for me. I wanted to get out.
I wanted to meet people.
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I wanted to be more engaging
with people in general. So that happened. And then
I received my undergraduate degree,
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which required me to do quite a bit
of writing for my senior thesis. And if I could back up for just a moment.
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yes, I explained my major,
but I also had a humanities major, as well, at the same time -- science technology.
It was called in “STS” in society.
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So I had to write a senior thesis
for that class as well, but that wasn't required
for my other major.
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So I started to give him some thoughts
about my research and the paper that I was going to write
and what I wanted to talk about.
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It just so happened that I was
I was Googling late in the evening one day. I was reading
quite a lot of things and I came upon deaf
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economics and deaf business owners.
So I clicked on that, and I started to look further
at that material,
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and there was a gentleman who had received
a Ph.D. doctorate in deaf business ownership.
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So I read further and I contacted this
person and had a lengthy discussion and he told me that there really wasn't
a lot of research in this area.
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It was quite needed. This was back in 2012, I believe He really encouraged me to pursue this research
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and make that part of my senior thesis,
which I adopted. So over the next two years,
I began that research of deaf
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business owners here in the United States,
as well as in Europe. There was a lot of travel over those two
years, meeting with a lot of people
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and improving my signing skills
at the same time as a result. And then, after graduating from MIT,
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I realized that I really didn’t want to go into a typical safe job. I was looking for something more unique,
something different.
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So I decided I would do a solo backpacking trip for one year and a half. And at that point, afterwards,
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I decided to move to Italy
because I knew that in Italy -- this was nothing
related to my science work --
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I just wanted to shift my focus
for a while. I had received a reward to research deaf
business owners in Italy, very similar
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to my senior thesis paper, but
I was focused more specifically to Italy. And so while I was there,
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I was teaching ASL and deaf culture
in the University of Venice at the same time.
I was there for five years.
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And after five years in Italy
and pursuing this work, I kind of maxed out in Italy,
just because the limitations of
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access that were provided, which was
basically none for people who are deaf. So I began to really think further
about my career
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and what impact did I want to make
when I looked at my own future? And that's one of the big reasons
that I decided to apply to this dual
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degree program of public policy
and the MBA here at Wharton. I have noticed that
policy and business strongly overlap.
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So both of those things will impact us
as deaf people, as well as people who are not deaf in many,
many areas of life.
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Policy changes have tremendous impacts on all of us
and all of our benefits. But in the business area, I was interested
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in becoming an investor,
specifically an impact investor. I've seen a lot of deaf business owners
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really struggle to raise capital
and to grow their businesses. And counter, I see at MIT, my peers there
who are hearing and able bodied
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have such an easier time of finding funds.
There’s a tremendous gap in equality there.
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So I thought, “Well,
let me get this dual degree in policy and business
in order to pursue my interests.”
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In the future, I would love to work
at the intersection of space, policy, and business development
or investing. Technology
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development, as well, possibly --
or technology transferring. Of course accessibility
and how that impacts those areas, as well.
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I have been thinking,
I don't think specifically about a job right
now, but I am looking down into the future
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possible job opportunities
in those areas of my interest and the work experience
that I can bring to it.
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Thank you for sharing all of that. As I said, you're one of the most fascinating
MBA students that I've met in my time
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here, and I wanted our audience
to get a sense of that, and what better way than to have you share
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the deep experiences and broad experiences
that you've had in your background
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as a way, I think, for not only helping us
to get to know who you are as a person,
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but as we begin to talk about the topic
of disability access in the workplace, we're talking about people who have rich
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and interesting lives
and want to achieve many of the things that people who don't have disabilities
want to achieve.
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And how can we make these opportunities
more accessible to them? And I think you gave us
a good understanding that you
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and your dreams -- they’re actually
some of them are much bigger than mine, I will admit that. My dream was not space, but
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having dreams and wanting to fulfill them
and making sure that the same access to these opportunities
is afforded
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to all of us, regardless
of what our abilities are. Sheri,
I can imagine that this conversation
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resonates
with you and your own experiences. You have an equally fascinating
background.
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You said it, linguistics and astrobiology
seem far apart from a lay person's understanding,
meaning mine.
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But certainly
I think you have tackled some places literally where many of us could only dream to go.
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So I'm curious to know, when you reflect on what Sheila shared about her own
background experiences,
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what resonated with you
when you think about yours? Well, so first off,
I mean, let me just say what everyone else
00:19:21
in the room has said already,
that the more I get to know you, Sheila, the cooler you become.
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I mean, my friend, there are
some things in there I didn't know. So I think the thing that resonated
with me
00:19:34
in particular from Sheila's story, is how pervasive and sometimes, very overt
and sometimes very subtle,
00:19:45
the force on disabled people to go home,
sit down, be quiet, don't make trouble, can be. That constant
pressure to,
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“Oh, let me -- just sit
down. I'll fix you a plate.” And nobody
really wants that in their lives.
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What everybody really wants is to be
the person, you know, organizing the plate.
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We want to be
the people who are making things happen, not the passive recipients
of other people's dreams and ingenuity
00:20:16
and love of life. So I think,
I think from my own experience, I intended to be a physicist
and astronomer.
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That was my goal. But there's just a lot of very quiet, strong messages given to disabled people
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to not do those things that seem too audacious. And if you're going to go do an audacious thing,
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you need a certain amount
of internal drive. But that's not your magic, right?
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Everybody has internal drive. Everybody's got some of that, right? What you need to succeed is each other.
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So in Sheila's work, figuring out what does business owners need,
one of the things that's pretty clear
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from the story she was telling
is that they need each other, and they need to learn to network.
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And as disabled people, we need those
conversations in the hallway, right? We need those casual
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connections between friends and future friends and business
opportunities. that can only happen
when people talk to one another.
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So I think that
is the way that we overcome, I think, the forces that tell us
that we're not needed,
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and that we are extra,
or that we're too much trouble, and really, it would just be better
if we just all stayed home.
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One of the one of the messages
that I was really quite startled to hear expressed
quite as openly as it was --
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Sheila and I were at a conference together a couple of months ago,
I guess it was, and we heard people
00:22:03
complaining over and over and over,
“Oh, man, we don't have enough people. We don't have enough good employees.
What are we going to do?
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There's this lack of good employees.” And the guy actually said, “Well,
I don't know. You all will have to have more
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babies. And maybe we need to have robots
do some of this work.” And Sheila and I and other disabled
people were sitting right in the audience,
00:22:26
and I thought, “Holy smokes, buddy. Think about this: A quarter of the people on the planet
have some kind of disability.
00:22:34
So if you look around in your workplace
and a quarter of those folks don't have disabilities,
that means that you
00:22:42
have structured your workplace
so that disabled people aren't applying there,
00:22:46
or disabled
people can't work there. And that's where your extra employees are.
There are disabled
00:22:52
people waiting, ready to to do part of the work, of getting humanity into space and following the dreams
that everyone else has at the same time.
00:23:05
I love it. I love it. Sheila, so I can imagine that
this resonates with you, as well
00:23:13
because we've talked about these things
quite frequently in our class, but certainly in our one-on-one conversations.
00:23:21
And so as we begin to think about what
disability access in the workplace would look like -- specifically, Sheri,
you just gave the example of,
00:23:30
let's just say a quarter,
which is a small number, right? A quarter of your workforce,
let's say is now
00:23:36
represents people who have various forms
of disabilities. In order for that workplace
to be accessible to them.
00:23:45
What are the types of things --
other than just giving people jobs, which is the first barrier,
right? and opportunity.
00:23:52
What are the types of things
that employers should be thinking about? And I want to now relate that to perhaps
00:24:01
what you learned through this space
exploration experience with AstroAccess. Were there lessons learned about
00:24:08
-- what you needed to have in order
to be successful in space that we can transfer
to thinking more broadly about what anyone,
00:24:18
or people who are disabled
might need in the workplace to be successful. Well, Yes, you're absolutely right.
00:24:33
That big impact is the hiring process. And behind
that are people's attitudes and policy.
00:24:39
So first of all, we need to be aware of
that, because when we're looking at space,
00:24:44
the space agencies on the government side,
in the government sector, are not allowing people
with disabilities to become astronauts.
00:24:52
And that's simply because of their system
that they have created, looking for people who,
if you will, have the “right stuff.”
00:25:00
They're talking about people
who are young and healthy, able bodied. So if that's the system,
and what the system requires, in addition
00:25:13
of being able to communicate
through a radio transmission -- that's not accessible,
I can’t access that type of system.
00:25:21
I think the better strategy is looking at changing the system to meet my needs, as opposed to a system
00:25:29
that only allows for a very specific type
of person to be selected. So, for example, for myself as a pilot,
I’ve noticed that I very much
00:25:38
prefer to read a text
as a way of communicating. We already have that technology.
00:25:44
It exists, but
it's just not really broadly out there. I'm hoping that we will see that
that type of technology is out there
00:25:51
and available to all people,
not just very specific types of pilots. So all of those ideas,
to borrow that in the space
00:25:58
sector, to be able to create systems
that work for us, not just as a deaf person
00:26:03
specifically, but for all kinds of people
with a variety of disabilities. And that's where the concept
of universal design really comes in.
00:26:10
How are we able to step back,
look at systems, products, and services
that are accessible for all people?
00:26:18
I think
it's very important in its next step is to look at the problems
being within the systems,
00:26:24
as well as changing attitudes
and creating better policies that really show a greater commitment
to pushing the ball forward for change.
00:26:34
When we look at leadership
and management, at the top they also really need to be able
to recognize and disseminate
00:26:42
this type of information
to reach out to people further down the line
in terms of their employees.
00:26:47
I think you talked about this
in your class previously, how important it is to really have the commitment
from the top level.
00:26:57
I hope I answered your question. Yes. Did I miss any part of your question? No, you didn't.
00:27:03
What we're going to do in just a minute -- and I'll give you a chance
to think about that.
00:27:08
I'm going to move to Sheri. What are two to three concrete, practical tips?
Just like you and the students
00:27:17
always hold me accountable to saying,
what are two or three concrete practical tips
that you would share with employers
00:27:26
who would be listening to this podcast
about how to make people with disabilities
have better access to the workplaces.
00:27:36
I will also,
because we're talking about space today and your more recent
experiences have been space-related,
00:27:43
you can certainly target those to the space industry as well.
But we're going to come back to you.
00:27:49
I'm going to shift to Sheri for a second, sort of asking you
some of the broader questions.
00:27:54
You've done -- participated in
a number of zero gravity flight experiences.
00:28:01
You're a leader at this wonderful
organization, AstroAccess, which is giving not only you and Sheila,
but people
00:28:08
from a variety of abled backgrounds and disabled backgrounds,
the opportunities to participate
00:28:16
in these experiences
that most people would even dream of, right? We can only dream
that we would have access to space.
00:28:23
I'm wondering about the lessons
that you were learning, the implications
of what you were learning for
00:28:30
certainly disability access to space more broadly,
but also to settings like workplaces.
00:28:37
What have you come to learn and understand
in your work that would give us some pointers that we can hang onto
as we think about, you know, broadening
00:28:46
the net of who gets to participate in the
things that we have available to us? That's a good question.
00:28:52
And I think that the tangible suggestions
are a good are a good direction to go.
00:28:58
And so the first thing that we learned,
I think, as a organization is that all kinds of marvelous disabled
people are out there
00:29:10
and it matters where you recruit, right? So if we had just said, “Hey,
we need twelve people to go on a zero-G flight,”
00:29:17
and took the first 12 people
who walked in our door, we would have probably no disabled people
on that flight,
00:29:23
right?. But what we wanted was to show the power and really the efficiency, the joy,
00:29:31
the power of what diversity can bring
to something like a zero-G flight. So we didn't just take the first 12 people
who walked in the door.
00:29:40
We went on a search for exactly
for disabled people. We were very intentional
about that kind of inclusion
00:29:47
and the people we got were top-notch. So this idea that as you go recruiting, you're somehow compromising
is completely wrong.
00:29:57
We got really strong people. We got Sheila, right. So it matters where you recruit.
That's one thing.
00:30:04
And then when you're looking around -- and we're we're thinking now about how to make space stations
accessible, right?
00:30:10
How to advise people
about the design of their space station. So one of the places we start with
is this: If you're
00:30:19
looking around your work environment
or your home environment, and you find something
that just is kind of
00:30:25
I dont know, it’s just terrible, it's terrible,
it's inconvenient, it's bothersome,
00:30:29
it's inconvenient
for everyone. It's a problem every day. You have to do this thing,
00:30:35
Say you’ve got a lousy coffeemaker. Every day it happens.
You use the coffeemaker.
00:30:40
It's always terrible. So start with those
things that are bothersome to everybody
00:30:46
and rethink them and redesign them
so that they're accessible. So get rid of the yucky coffee maker
and get one that
00:30:54
that doesn't have the access problem. Like our coffeemaker
might have had a touchscreen,
00:30:59
which makes inaccessible
for blind folks to use, right? That coffee maker was a problem
in the first place,
00:31:05
and so we made everything better and make our morning workflow go better by getting rid of something
00:31:13
that was a problem in the first place,
that we just were living with. And so when we think about
what's already in our way,
00:31:21
getting rid of that thing,
that's a bother and redesigning it so that it is inclusive, and
then everything gets better for everyone.
00:31:30
And I think the other thing
that we think about, -- I mean, there's a there's a long list of things
that we're going to do
00:31:36
when we're thinking about outer space, but the other the other kind of thing
that we look at
00:31:41
to make an environment more accessible
are things that you do every day. What are the little tiny
things that you do every day?
00:31:48
And if you can make
one of those things better -- because you do it all
the time -- you've made a big step forward.
00:31:54
So I think Sheila's
example of communication by text messages, that's a really cool idea, right?
00:32:03
And it's super easy. It's a fix that we already know how to do. We communicate with people every day,
and adding in
00:32:13
a text message, which is accessible to deaf folks and blind folks again, makes everything easier for
00:32:22
everyone, makes everything more
accessible, for everyone. And because we do it all the time,
changing that one thing up buys us a lot.
00:32:30
So I think those are the three places
I would start. Things that you do every day --
rethink those.
00:32:34
How can you make those simple things
better? Rethink the things that you already know
are driving you nuts.
00:32:39
I already know our problem.
Fix those things, and then pay attention
to where you go to look for people.
00:32:45
Where are you recruiting? Absolutely wonderful.
And when I think about leaders who I talk to from other industries
and people who I’ve had on this podcast
00:32:56
previously, you are saying the same things
that they are saying. So whether we're talking about
other groups -- women or people who are,
00:33:05
you know, from various racial or
ethnic minority groups, like black people. Or whether we're talking about people
00:33:11
who are coming
from different socioeconomic classes, To me, the lessons that you just laid
out, the key takeaways, Sheri,
00:33:18
are the same things that they're asking
for, as well, which leads me to believe
00:33:22
that these are the things that we all want as citizens, as participants
in any economy and certainly as workers.
00:33:30
How do we ensure to ensure that all of us -- and when we begin to look at our data
and our group,
00:33:39
by our differences -- how do we ensure that we're all getting these things,
if it's the case that we all want them?
00:33:45
Thank you, Sheri.
Sheila, so turning to you, based on certainly the experiences that you’ve shared
with us today, your experiences
00:33:52
with AstroAccess,
what key takeaways or calls to action/ concrete tips do you have
00:34:00
for our audience? Well, first, I would say if you are committed to accessibility
00:34:13
and inclusion, that's very important. Put your money where your mouth is. So if you have a private space company
00:34:25
and you have built this space company
and just like we were talking about this a moment ago about the space station,
Sheri was just sharing,
00:34:33
if you want to make that more accessible,
have more inclusive design, then you need to have the financial investment
to make that happen.
00:34:40
Not just the space station,
but so many things. The hiring process. Adding a line
00:34:46
there, a line item for your budget,
for example, in your hiring process. I, for example, would need a sign language
interpreter for communication.
00:34:54
And all companies need to add that
accessibility line item in their budget, as opposed to saying “So sorry,
we don't have that in our budget.”
00:35:04
if you say that that means you're
not really valuing me, my thoughts, what I can bring to the table
if you can't communicate with me.
00:35:11
So I think that's really important
to have the money behind whatever it is, whatever impact you're talking about,
to make your company inclusive.
00:35:19
Number two, I'd say, policy changes. Policy changes are critical. When it comes to policy
00:35:27
that establishes the rules. We have laws, of course, but when it comes
to the rules, the social norms,
00:35:34
both formal and informal -- both of these environments and societies. Number three, I would say from what I see
00:35:47
looking at the government sector,
you know, they're very risk averse. They still really don't want to accept
astronauts with disabilities.
00:35:54
But if you look at the private sector,
that's where we see growth. That's where we see
people willing to assume risk.
00:36:01
We need to look to the private sector. Many, however, do contract with the government
00:36:07
and are looking for government monies,
where they will then assume the risks. So I do believe that's a great opportunity
00:36:14
for all of us
to look to the private sector where we really are able
to find the monies, where contracts
00:36:21
exist with the government for accessibility
specifically into space. So I would say if you're interested
in really supporting our work,
00:36:34
in supporting AstroAccess, then
please feel free to contact any one of us. We have plenty of ideas.
We’re ready to speak with you
00:36:42
at any time and looking forward
to those conversations. Thank you, Sheila. I really appreciate you being here today.
00:36:50
I also want to say Sheri and Sheila,
I think it is so important that you are willing to participate
in these types of engagements and podcast
00:37:01
and you’re showing up to conferences.
Because I think the more that your presence is felt
00:37:07
and the more that your thoughts are shared
and the more that people begin to understand your backgrounds, the less
00:37:14
I would say puzzling it feels for people to include you
in what they are already doing.
00:37:21
So thank you for joining my platform
and engagement today and helping people to understand
how you include someone who is blind
00:37:30
and someone who is deaf
in the same podcast episode? I think this will go a long way
towards inviting other people
00:37:38
who run podcasts to consider broadening
the base of guests that they include as part of these
really important platforms, as well.
00:37:48
Because, as you know, podcasts have become a thing for every topic imaginable under the sun.
00:37:55
And so I think the more that we can --
as people who host these things -- diversify who we are including
and also make sure that people
00:38:04
who access the platform or who communicate in various ways,
who sign, are included, I think we will be putting
our money where our mouth is, as well.
00:38:17
So thanks to both of you,
Sheila and Sheri, for joining me today. Thank you for sharing your insights
and your expertise with us.
00:38:25
I truly,
truly appreciate you for being here. So thank you to the audience
for being here
00:38:32
and for listening to this episode
or watching this episode of the Knowledge at Wharton
Leading Diversity at Work Podcast series.
00:38:39
I look forward to sharing more
with you again in the future. For more from Knowledge at Wharton, please
visit
00:38:47
knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu