- [Stefani] Oh yeah, joining. Just give it a couple minutes for people to join in. All right, just 12 on the nose as we speak. Hi everybody, I am Stefani Cuschnir. I'm on the business development team here at TPGi. Thanks for joining us today. Our webinar is The Intrapreneur's Guide to Leading Accessibility Change and in Complex Organizations with Mark Miller from TPGi and our special guest, Amanda Roper from T. Rowe Price. I have a few housekeeping items before we get started. This session is being recorded and we'll email everyone the recording after the event. We do have captions available, so feel free to use them as needed. We will have time for live Q&A, and Amanda and Mark will keep an eye on the Q&A box. Please try to put your questions in that box, although I will keep an eye also on the chat. Sometimes they get missed if they're in the chat though. Lastly, I just wanna mention, if anyone needs any accessibility support, training, testing, we do send out an email with a link to schedule time to speak with one of our experts after the webinar. And with that, I will let Mark and Amanda get started and provide an introduction. - Thank you, Stefani, and thank you, everyone, for being here. I know we're all sort of excited and there's lots of options today because it is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. So thanks for being here. Thanks for listening to this. I am super excited about it. I am Mark Miller. As Stefani said, I am the Director of Sales here at TPGi, and I'm super excited to be talking with, I'm presenting with Amanda Roper today. She is with T. Rowe Price. And as you all know, she'll be talking about, and I have to say, I've realized, Amanda, I have to say entrepreneur and then intrapreneurship, like in a row like that otherwise I stumble over the word intrapreneurship. But she's gonna be talking about intrapreneurship today through her experience in her career of doing just that sort of thing. And if you're wondering what that sort of thing is, hold tight, we're gonna explain it. Amanda, thank you so much for doing this today. I'm gonna turn it over to you to get started, but before I do that, I just wanna say happy GAAD day or happy GAAD as it is. GAAD day's redundant. - Yeah, yeah. Happy GAAD day. Happy GAAD everyone, I'm so- - Happy GAAD. - Happy GAAD, I love it. I'm so happy to be here on GAAD. Thank you to TPGi and all the team who did support getting this up and running. Mark, Anthony, Stefani, Melissa and Dennis, I really appreciate, I appreciate your time. And yeah, so I'm excited to be talking about intrapreneurship. Mark, you mentioned intrapreneur and entrepreneur saying them side by side. Try spelling them side by side. Like, I can't tell you how it's difficult. Spelling is difficult for me. But anyways, I'm gonna talk a little bit- - You're gonna get into this, but I'm not your guy for spelling, just to be clear. - Yes. ADHD, I know it is tough for us to spell. So, yeah. So a little bit about me. I'm Amanda Roper. I use she/her pronouns. I am relentlessly optimistic. ADHD does run in my family. And in my spare time, I like to screen print and hike for fun. I am a daughter of an entrepreneur and I've had two entrepreneurship adventures myself and have been community organizing in my own backyard since high school. Professionally, I've worked in a variety of community organizing roles at university, a small natural foods chain, and City of Denver. Since 2020, I've been full focus in the digital accessibility space, working for large organizations of over 300,000 people and smaller startups less than 40 people. Today I lead accessibility at T. Rowe Price. So we are gonna talk a little bit about what is an intrapreneur, how to identify partners inside your organization, and how to think like an intrapreneur to drive change forward in your organization. So what is an intrapreneur? The simplest way to think about intrapreneurship is an entrepreneur inside the company. Intrapreneurs drive innovation inside a business, have the backing, resources, and support to build out something new and sustainable within the company. The size of the business can vary from small team of five to a larger company over 5,000 people. A famous example that you might be familiar with is Rich Barton. He's the founder of Expedia. He actually started Expedia within Microsoft in 1994 as a way to support Microsoft customers and solve a common problem. It ended up spinning off as its own business less than 10 years later in 1999. And today, he still talks about the importance of intrapreneurs and how valuable they are to business. So I suspect some of you attended 'cause you might be wondering if you're an intrapreneur yourself. So we're gonna do a short little exercise here. And for my Millennials out there, think of this as a BuzzFeed quiz. So ask yourself the following questions, they should all have yes/no answers, and keep a tally of the ones that you say yes to. Number one, are you passionate about digital accessibility? Two, do you frequently think about how things in your organization could operate better? Three, are you comfortable not knowing all of the answers? Four, do you actively seek out opportunities to improve processes within your organization? Five, do you enjoy collaborating with other teams and colleagues? Six, do you enjoy staying up to date on innovations, laws, trends, and topics in the accessibility industry? Seven, do you consider yourself a lifelong learner? Eight, are you a risk taker? Nine, are you self-aware of your strengths and weaknesses? 10, do you enjoy networking and building partnerships? And I have one bonus question, have you read "GRIT" by Angela Duckworth? Mark, how did you do? - Well, I have to say I was at 100% yeses until the very last one. I have not read "GRIT" by Angela Duckworth, and I know you've told me to do that in the past, and so I apologize, but I really should read it. But absolutely, I answered all of these with a yes, like not even a question. And one of the things that strikes me, because one of the topics that I really am passionate about is neurodivergence because of what you mentioned, right? ADD and I have dyslexia as well, so we tend to think with a little bit different brains. And this could almost be like, do you have ADD or do you have dyslexia? Because I think that a lot of this stuff resonates with me because I'm most comfortable when I'm uncomfortable, if that makes sense. - Yes. - I'm most comfortable when I don't know the answers. I'm most comfortable when I'm innovating and moving forward. And oftentimes I know what my destination is, but I'm uncertain about the way to get there. And those are the things, Amanda, that actually excite me when I'm working. Like that uncertainty and that movement forward and that pulling things together. And doing it with a team of people, even better, even better. So, really cool quiz, and and it describes me and hopefully describes a lot of people listening as well. - Yeah, I hope so. I mean, if you feel moved to share your score in the chat, feel free to do that. And yeah, the last one is a little bit of a joke, but it is a really great read. Mark if and when you get the chance, we'll talk a little bit about it later too. But Mark, you scored 10 out of 11, so 100%. I scored 110%, but I, I am a little bit biased obviously 'cause I wrote the quiz. But in general, if you answered yes to at least three of the questions, it's likely that you are an intrapreneur. If you said yes to more than six, definitely are an intrapreneur. And most accessibility specialists are natural intrapreneurs. We're solving problems, but we don't always have the framework to be an effective one, so let's start thinking like one. - So in the chat, Amanda, like so far anybody who's chimed in has just put the number 10 in there. - Yes. - So we have a whole audience full of intrapreneurs. - Nice, my people. So, we are all intrapreneurs here. Let's talk about how to identify departments in our organization that can support us along the journey. On screen, we have a woman who's looking at a big paper map. Her brow's furrowed, she's searching for something. I'm imagining that she doesn't really know what, which is how I feel when I'm starting out a new job or a new initiative at times. There's so many three-letter acronyms, there's new teams, there's new departments, it can be frustrating and confusing. So, last time I checked, businesses don't have a map on how to navigate an organization. So I like to rely on tools and information available to help me identify the departments that might have a part to play in a digital accessibility program. My favorite one is the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model. It's a fabulous resource that accessibility program managers use to track an organization's level of maturity. And I'd be remiss not to call this out, we have someone on the Maturity Model Task Force. - You do? - Mark. - Oh, me? - Yes, you. Do you wanna talk a little bit about the Maturity Model? - Yeah, so the W3C, and part of what they do, one of the working groups they have is the AMM, the Accessibility Maturity Model run by a gentleman named Dave Fazio, who's a fantastic leader in that group. And we have an unbelievable group of people that have worked for years, and we're about to publish for the first time on a Maturity Model specific to accessibility. And if I'm gonna take a step back, Maturity Models are exactly what they sound like, they're models in which you can, A, figure out what your current state of a capability is. In this case, we're talking about accessibility. And then they're a way to create exactly what's being shown on this screen right here. That is a roadmap to improve the capability around that or yeah, improve the capability around that, that thing, in this case, it's accessibility. So go check it out, right? And we'll make sure that we link it up appropriately. But the thing to recognize when you do look at that is that it's got everything in it, including the kitchen sink. And the reason for that is because it's a big general model, and the expectation is that you will look at that and refine it and modify it to be appropriate for your specific circumstance, whether that's within a department within your organization, the organization as a whole, you're only focusing on one area. And I think, Amanda, you're gonna get into it a little bit, but don't be overwhelmed by it. Look at it and say, "How can I use this in my specific situation? And how can I modify it to fit that situation?" - Yeah. Thanks, Mark. What a perfect segue. So part of the Maturity Model, as Mark was alluding to there, there are a lot of different dimensions and parts to it. So, it does have seven different dimensions: communications, knowledge and skills, support, ICT or information and communication technology development life cycle, personnel, procurement, and culture. Each dimension is an area where you can measure and track specifically in detail. And this is really great, but when we are in the searching phase and we're trying to identify departments, it serves a dual purpose of helping us identify the departments and partners in the organization. When the model first came out, someone did tell me to look at the tracking template, which we can also share out. It's essentially a task list that lays out actions to be completed in each of these different dimensions. And as an ADHDer, I really love a good checklist. When I first read through them, Mark kind of alluded to this too, I was really overwhelmed, there was a lot of information in there. And then I read through them again and started to see different patterns emerge and the different departments being listed and called out in the dimensions pretty consistently. So, I've done a little bit of legwork for you, mapping the departments to the dimensions and the departments that might handle the checklist items. So communications dimension: marketing, social media, branding, sales department. Knowledge and skills: training, human resource, operations, and that director's team and director's level. Support: customer service, again human resources or HR, team success. ICT: gonna be the tech teams, development, design, UX/UI, research team might be in here too. Personnel: gonna have the recruiting, that's gonna be the staff success or the employee resource groups, sometimes they're called business resource groups. Procurement, of course, procurement, sourcing, operations. And culture, so leadership committees, think SteerCo, legal, risk, compliance might also be part of that. And department names are different in each organization. And it's here to remix to make it fit better with your organization. This is the basic names of the departments, so I hope that this is helpful and becomes an initial map of finding the departments who likely have a stake in your accessibility goals. And before we start talking with the departments and reaching out, we have a little bit of homework to do to better understand the business. So, where are we at? We know we're an intrapreneur and we have initial map of the departments who we wanna reach out to. Next, I really wanna understand the organization and get to know what drives the different departments, why do they do what they do? So as an intrapreneur, I can use this information during conversations to build and strengthen relationships. So this is how I go about studying the companies I've worked for. You might have some other information and other details that you find interesting. But first, I look at the company goals and vision. Most companies have their mission statement posted right to the website, overtly stating the company's aims, values and motivators. The accessibility intrapreneur's role is for us to think about how does access to information and digital accessibility fit within this vision? Next, organizational structure. We all know this is important. We need and want that leadership buy-in. Company culture, so websites like Glassdoor really give that employee perspective on the company culture. There's even a filter on there now where you can filter for people with disabilities and how they perceive it. You can also do some keyword searching to really see if accessibility is being talked about. You get a good boots on the ground perspective on what's going on in the space. Also with culture, there's the leadership perspective, interviews, speeches done by company leaders. I recommend listening in to those and listening for how they talk about colleagues in the workplace. It can help us understand their stance on innovation and priorities within the company. And it can also be an indicator of if you're gonna run into any restrictions or roadblocks along your journey. Customer needs feedback. At a previous organization I was at, I learned that the customers who drove the highest amount of revenue came from the customers over 55 years old. This really helped my team make a case for the importance of digital accessibility for our customers and opened up a whole lot of conversations with product teams and leaders. Industry trends, I'm always on the lookout for accessibility-related news in my industry or even the industry adjacent. Good and bad news is good to keep up to date on. Regulatory environment and financial metrics. I saved the most fun ones for last. In many industries, regulatory and compliance requirements impact accessibility initiatives. We've definitely seen that a ton this year with the EAA coming into effect, many companies increased the funding of accessibility programs or completed exhaustive audits to ensure they're meeting the requirements. For financial metrics, earnings calls and presentations. If you work for a public company, try attending one of those. You can listen in on an earnings call or read the transcript of it. It's executives who are discussing the product lines, overall company strategy, finances and future plans. Public companies, they're required to publish this information and publish financial information, annual reports, quarterly reports, they're all gonna be on your company's investor relations site. Private companies, it's like it's a little tough to navigate. You can ask your leadership the best way to understand this, but when overall when you are aware of the company's financial health and the key performance indicators really helps to make sure that your ideas are financially viable. Overall, doing some of this homework and studying upfront to understand the current state of your organization will enable richer conversations and individually, I like to use it as like a grounding exercise to go back to on a regular basis to help inform decision-making. - Amanda, I really love this slide because I think that evangelization, which is what this sort of speaks to me a lot, is very difficult. I think that's one of the things that a lot of people sort of struggle with, and particularly In your fourth bullet point where you talked about customer's needs and feedback and the fact that you discovered that the majority of the customers were 55 or older, like that kind of information can be so important in making the case for accessibility because we all know that disabilities or we sort of collect disabilities as we get older, right? We have vision declines, hearing declines, mobility impairments, and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's just a really important point and greatly illustrates the need to understand sort of your audience when you're trying to create something within an organization. - Yes, oh my gosh, knowing your audience is so important. We'll talk a little bit more about that too, but when you know your audience and you can collect these stories and like proof points and reasons for why you're doing what you're doing and why this is important, you're able to better speak to your partners too. So, this all fits in nicely with how are we gonna approach our partners and how do we have them and empower them to champion accessibility? It's really about building as an intrapreneur, it's all about building something new and sustainable for the business. There's not one simple answer to this. This is really where grit, passion, and networking skills come out to shine. It is the time to get to know your stakeholders. And building partnerships is a lot of networking. I kind of like, I reframe it in my head, if you don't like the word networking, I know it can be a little bit of a divisive word, but you can think of it as fun interviewing where you get to learn about your colleagues and understand their niche in the organization. That's how I like to think about it anyways. How do they fit into the bigger picture? What motivates them? What are their pain points? And really try and get to understand them as people. Why are they even interested in digital accessibility in the first place? Then start pushing on the open doors, run accessibility pilots with the teams who are naturally interested and open to change. At times it might feel a little bit like cold calling. You're probably gonna get hung up on from time to time. So, there are different strategies and approaches, but Mark, how do you go about approaching new potential partners in organizations? - Yeah, I mean, so there's a lot of different ways that we would do that. And I sort of agree with you, sort of I definitely agree with you about networking. Like there's a sometimes a difficult connotation around that word, but networking is really a lot of things, right? It's making friends, like networking doesn't have to be that kind of cold call or that uncomfortable in a crowd of people that you don't know trying to get to know somebody, it literally could be having drinks or coffee with somebody after work or taking somebody to lunch during work or it's really about like connecting and making friends. And I think that if you view it that way, that helps a lot. And the way that we do it is through involvement, you know? There's traditional and ways to do it, but being part of conferences, being part of attending meetings like this, you know, there's all sorts of people talking about accessibility, talking about within your company talking about different subjects that may be accessibility is adjacent to, per your other slides. And being in those conversations and around those people is really just what networking is, and it's learning, it's making friends, it's getting to know people. It's all those things. So that's the way I frame it in my head so that it's enjoyable and it doesn't seem like something that's difficult. - Yeah, I love that. I love that making friends. And Shelly has an interesting, interesting note in the chat. "Favorite part and having conversations for understanding, not having to change your mind right from the start." I couldn't agree more. Love that you're building that relationship. - Yeah, questions are the magic sauce in any of this. And the more questions you ask, the more that you understand. And sort of you almost have to try to hold back. I think that Shelly's right on, you gotta try to hold back like the ideas you walk in with because you really need to understand where that person's coming from. - Yeah, yeah. Someone once told me, "Lower your expectations," and that was one of the best pieces of just like life advice I've ever had. Just lower your expectations and then you'll always be impressed. - Good point. - Good point. All right, so great segues, great comments. Thanks, Mark. So onscreen we have Sisyphus rolling a boulder up the hill, which sometimes that's how it feels being an intrapreneur trying to get people to make changes. And as you are pushing on those open doors or knocking on the closed ones, keep in mind that you are asking a team to do something that is different. It's important to be sensitive to the fact that we might be going against the grain of their usual workflow and they might also feel like Sisyphus on the other side. So I try and keep the golden rule in mind, treat others the way you wanna be treated, period. For me, in business, that means be transparent, don't be an information bottleneck. In best practice, create a centralized space for accessibility resources and push information out to your partners on a regular basis. Build trust over time, being curious, don't expect everything all at once. And one of my favorite takeaways from the book that Mark needs to read, "GRIT" by Angela Duckworth. - It's about consist- - Okay. - What? - I said, "Okay, okay." - Okay, okay, one day we'll have a book club after this we'll talk about "GRIT," it'll be great. It's about consistency over time and focusing more on consistency versus intensity. Consistency compounds results over time and leads to excellence or a lot of trust, and being honest in what you expect from your partners. When engagement is requested, make sure you're setting out clear asks and expectations for them. For example, "I need five hours of your time per month to support the program. The duties include X, Y, Z." So, I learned this lesson the hard way so that you don't have to, just make sure you are very clear from the start what you are asking your partners to do and communicate openly and often with them as well. Maintain clear communication, open and honest communication. When issues arise, listen closely to understand the needs and concerns of your colleagues. Ask a lot of questions and work towards an agreed upon solution. Being a great partner to your colleagues involves a lot of time invested in thinking about the needs of your department partners. It will take some time, but in the long run, things will go smoother and pave the way for an easier adoption of the ideas and suggestions you'll bring to the table later on. And sometimes you can, I like to call it going slow to go fast. Recently someone told me, "Go slow to go fast," and I wasn't quite sure what that meant. But after thinking about it, what it really means is change doesn't happen overnight. It's important to take time to set up a foundation before asking for change with your partners, and it also means taking care of yourself along the journey. When I was at a prior company, I jumped in right away into multiple teams' workflows, offering changes, suggesting testing points, asking for accessibility reporting basically like all in one go. My enthusiasm and sheer willpower, my mom calls it stubbornness, alone was contagious enough that eventually the team took on many of the suggestions and very soon it created a lot of bottlenecks for the teams and a ton of work for myself. And I burned out, it wasn't sustainable for myself or the business, it was a lose-lose situation. And as an accessibility advocate, an intrapreneur, something everyone should be aware of is what we call in the business advocacy fatigue, which is described as the emotional, mental and physical exhaustion experienced by people who are actively involved in advocating for social, political, or environmental changes. And it results from prolonged exposure to challenging issues and the pressure to continuously engage and make a difference. It can show up in different ways, but in one way it could appear is the sense of being overwhelmed by just the sheer magnitude of the issue you are addressing. One in four people have a disability, that's a lot of people that we are trying to make change for. So, to all of my fellow intrapreneurs out there, take this as a moment to remind yourself to advocate for yourself too along the journey. Practice self-care, set realistic goals for yourself, and establish healthy boundaries with your work. If you're not sure where to start, something a mentor told me to do is define and write down what does work-life balance mean to you? What does an ideal workday look like for you? Focus on the improvement and remind yourself of the small wins. It's also a marathon, not a sprint. Go slow to go fast and you'll create win-win-win situations along the way. - I think that this, that to me really resonates is sustainability. Amanda, like and go slow to go fast, like all the things that you said, if you dive in too hard too fast, you burn out, you crash up against things, your expectations are so high because you want change right away that you become so disappointed, like fill in all the blanks. The problem with all that is then it doesn't keep going, right? So taking care of yourself, taking care of the people who you do start to partner with and making sure that you have a sustainable situation, a sustainable pace, you'll always get progress, and progress is really what you're aiming for. I think it's a really, and I love this saying, go slow to go fast. At first you're like, "What?" But it makes sense, right? It's about stepping back and making sure what you're doing is sustainable and you're not trying to, I'm gonna throw another one out there, boil the ocean right away, right? - Yes, oh my gosh. Just one kettle at a time. - There you go. - There's endless metaphors. I love it. - Just yeah, got a metaphor rabbit hole. - One kettle at a time. - Yes, we could. We might have time for that during the Q&A part. - We'll see. - We'll see, we'll see. But yeah, it's been so great to chat and connect. Thank you, everyone, for showing up and doing what you do. I know it's not always easy. Today, we talked a little bit about what an intrapreneur is, how do I identify partners inside your organization using the Maturity Model framework, and thinking like an intrapreneur to drive change forward in your organization, understanding the business and understanding your partners better. I really hope this gave you some encouragement to take action and further refine your skills as an accessibility intrapreneur in the organization. So I'm gonna stop sharing and I'm gonna turn it over to Mark for questions and further discussion. - So I actually have a question for you to get things started, but somebody's using other languages here. Celebrates- - Oh. - Is that what that means, Nicole? I'm trying to figure it out. But in your career, like where have you seen yourself? Like you obviously you learned a lot, right? Like just listening to you present all of this, it's not like you went outta the gate and like had this in your back pocket and like, "Here I go," right? This talk comes from somebody who hit stumbling blocks and learned how to overcome them and created a better framework and methodology that's working for you now. Can you just talk about like some of the stumbling blocks you hit and the real successful moments that you had in getting over them? if that's something that you can pull- - Yeah. - Like out of nowhere. - What a great question. Yeah, something that comes immediately to mind is the phrase fail fast. And as an intrapreneur and entrepreneur, we are more adept at risk taking. And I do think that we are or myself, like I'm not afraid to fail and be wrong about something. And I would much rather fail fast, get it out of the way, and then move forward. And I also look a lot to my colleagues for their own guidance. Like I know that I might be the accessibility specialist in my organization, but my partners, my key business colleagues, they are the experts in their space. So really being able to sit on the other side of the table and say, "Okay, well, here's what I need. Now, what do you need? And how do we make this work? How do we come to a solution?" And then coming up with a solution, trying it out, failing fast and trying again. - I think it's a great concept. A lot of people are afraid of failure and particularly in a work environment. And depending on what your work environment looks like, you can be particularly and sometimes rightfully afraid of failure. But there is no way around the fact that failure is the pathway to success. There's no other pathway, right? There's no way to just- - That's a funny saying. Yeah, yeah. - Everything right right away, you've actually gotta dive in and fail and adjust and fail and adjust. That failure has to be a built-in part of the process if you're going to affect change. If you knew how to do it perfectly, you would just change it. The reason why it it isn't in that condition is because you don't know how to do it perfectly and you've gotta make your mistakes along the way. And when you can group behind that concept, like, "We're gonna make our mistakes, but let's do this," that really as well. - Yeah, I have a question back for you. Like, on that sense, in that same vein, 'cause as a accessibility specialist, like when we're failing, it feels like there's a lot more pressure because we're trying to make, we're trying to meet deadlines, we're trying to make sure that we're serving people who might not have access to information because of the actions and the work that our company and business does. So, with that in mind, like what advice would you give to somebody who needs to fail, but might put a little bit too much pressure on themselves not to? - Hmm. So well, so the advice I think goes back to creating that permission to fail and building it into the process. There's a couple of interesting models out there. There's one CBT model, cognitive behavioral therapy model called I think it's called the model for change. I'm pulling this off the top of my head here, so excuse me if I don't get everything perfect here. But if you look at that model, it's a complete circle, you know, starting with preparation and going into execution and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The last part of that model is, or the second to last part of that model is failing, and then there's like a respite period, I forget what it's called. And then you go back into preparation and you start all over again. So it literally, it's not like if you fail, here's what you do, it's when you fail. - Yeah. - So to build that in as an expectation. And failures, all sorts of things are failure, right? Failure in accessibility could be an error. Well, like an error on the website. It could be the failure to get people in your organization to understand its importance. It can be a lot of things, but and it could be a failure that you make because you make a decision and you try to do something and it doesn't go the way you wanted it to. And that's where we get self-conscious. That's where we think, "Oh, my colleagues are now looking at me thinking I don't know what I'm doing because I failed." But if it's built into the process, then you go, "Look, we ran into a failure. Here's what we learned. Here's some ideas I have for how to adjust from this point on. What do you all think?" And so now, respecting our partners, and we've built it as part of the process. And I'm gonna stop talking because more people are asking better questions than I can here. So first of all, I want to just jump in and thank Nicole. She had put in, as you were talking about go slow to go fast, festina lente. Lente, I got, festina, I thought meant party, so party slowly, but she's explained that it is from the Latin and it loosely translates to haste slowly, and is obviously parallel to your concept. So thank you. I love stuff like that, Nicole. So I really appreciate that. - Love that. Thanks, Nicole. - That insight there. And then she goes on to say, "In my organization, I'm leading our digital accessibility efforts. I would love to start employee-wide communication efforts early to spread awareness and build buy-in win the hearts and minds before we start demanding action." Love it. "Our leadership is resistant to communication because they think they're going to scare people away. Any advice?" And I'm going to, if you're ready for it, Amanda, I'm gonna turn that to you. I definitely have thoughts. - Yeah, yeah. I think that's such a great question and it's something that we and I've come up against in every organization I've worked at. And when I was looking at, you know, really when we're thinking about understanding our departments and our team members and our colleagues, what's also really important to understand is what motivates them? What is gonna motivate them to make that change and make that pivot to supporting you and your digital accessibility program? So, for example, if you are speaking to leadership, if this email is going out to leaders in your organization, is it gonna be more sales that is gonna drive that conversation? If you're talking to legal partners, maybe the communication needs to be about upcoming regulations and policies that are coming into effect. Or if you're talking to like your development and design teams, you might wanna talk to them about efficiency and how many more customers and people would be able to use the site effectively if it's embedded in. So when you're thinking about company-wide and like company emails, really think of your audience and think about what would resonate with them. - Yeah, that's great. Nicole, what I would say to that is you actually answered your question within your question in my mind. Right in the parentheses you say, "Win the hearts and minds before we start demanding action," and I think that that's probably how I would approach the situation. And there's a lot of detail I'm sure around this, that you're not able to add into a quick Zoom chat, right? But it's very difficult for people to understand, and a lot of people don't have exposure to people with disabilities. A lot of people don't understand accessibility, understand accommodation, so that fear is understandable, right? So understanding the fear is one thing I would say is what are they actually afraid of? Like what they'll say, "I'm afraid if we do this." "Well, what are you afraid of? What is the thing?" And then winning their hearts and minds before you really start demanding the larger thing, which is this company-wide communication. And one of the ways to do that, I'm gonna give you a specific example here. One of the things that I do a lot is I have a wonderful colleague here, Cori Perlander, and she is a mother, she's a colleague, she's a wife and her eyesight has been degrading since she was early, I think early teens, maybe even before that. So she has more and more trouble every day seeing, and it's to me, it's, I can't imagine anything scarier right than that. When she comes on, so we do a talk together that we'll do inside of organizations. And I will talk about kind of digital accessibility and the importance of it, a lot of the things that Amanda kind of mentioned today, a number of people with disabilities, you know, the legal aspects, the altruistic aspects, what does it look like? What can you do about it? And she comes on and helps me with that conversation, but she also gives the perspective of somebody who actually needs the accommodations and what she goes through and how she does it, and she does it in a very tactful way. The response from that, nobody ever says like, "Great job, Mark, you know, explaining that." They always go, "It was incredible to hear how Cori does X or does Y, or how this makes her feel, or the challenges." And people come away with a much deeper understanding, and I also think that a lot of the uncertainty and fear that they may have had had previous to that starts to abate. So what I'm suggesting here, Nicole, is that maybe start with that leadership group and say, "Look, let's not communicate company-wide right now, but I would like to start with you all," and expose them to that type of thing and help them along with that understanding, along with understanding their fear. And I think that that could really go a long way into winning their hearts and minds. - Yeah. - So you can take that next step, and get their buy-in to communicate on a wider level. I hope that- - Mark, I'm gonna... I think that's great. I'm gonna guess, and just like think about it from like the corporate perspective on how you could go about doing that too. There are employee resource groups and BRGs within an organization that might already, we might already be having, there's my cat, her name's Cheese, if anyone was wondering, but they might already be having conversations on how to support, like from a caregiver perspective or people with disabilities might already be part of a group. So how do you give more of a voice to them when you are thinking of these company-wide efforts? - That's a really good point. And I think one of the things that we see all the time is that when individuals, somebody like yourself, Amanda, starts talking about accessibility and just having those at lunch conversations and those quick mentions when you're having a call about something else. - Yeah. - You start to hear these stories of like, "Oh, you know, my cousin wore hearing aids," or, "My uncle was actually blind the last part of his life," or, "I myself, you know, actually am losing my vision," all sorts of things that you hear. So you'll be shocked at what people don't tell you until they get a comfortable space to say it. And that when you start advocating, how many people will come up and say, "I wanna be a part of this because I relate to it in this fill in the blank particular way." So I think absolutely, absolutely right. And Nicole, that leadership group, I almost guarantee that there's somebody, at least one person on that group that has a child, a family member, a friend that gives them a connection, and that's the other thing that is helpful to figure out and it starts by starting conversations really. Well, I think we are close to the end of the hour and I don't see any more questions. Certainly pop them in there if you have them. But I wanna say that this was such a fun topic, Amanda, and I think a lot of the things that we've discussed, I've heard discussed before. You know, they come at you in different ways. I absolutely love the way that you structured this around intrapreneurship. I think I said that right without saying the word entrepreneur first. - Yes. - And it's really, it was just really a fascinating model in which to think about all these things and to think about how you can make a difference and build from within your own organization. And the conversation's fun, I just love it, and I loved having it with you and I love the way that you present these things. - Thanks, Mark. Yeah, this was great. I really appreciate everyone's... I'm just going back through and reading all the comments in the chat. I had so much fun, and I'm so excited to be here for GAAD again. I hope that everyone has a wonderful rest of the GAAD week 'cause I really think it's expanded more than just a day. I don't know about y'all, but it's turning into a whole production and I love it. - What's it called, GAAW? Like G-A-A-W? - Oh, oh no. - Global Accessibility Awareness Week. - I don't like that, GAAW. - That doesn't sound good. - Anyways. - But it began make a Global Accessibility Awareness Day Week, how's that sound? - Sure, sure. What would that acronym be, please? - GAADW. - GAADW. Great, all right. Well, happy GAADW everyone, and have a great weekend. - Yeah. - Thanks so much. - Thank you, everyone, for celebrating GAAD with us. In all seriousness, Amanda, thank you for celebrating with me this way. I think in putting it all together, Amanda did all the work, everyone, and it was just a ton of fun. I hope everybody enjoys the rest of the day. Thank you. - [Stefani] Thanks. Bye, bye. I would like to end the recording, but I can't find the button.