Diversity & Inclusion
In today's episode number 93, I interview Debra Run a global disability inclusion strategist. She is CEO of Ruh Global Impact, as well as the nonprofit Billion Strong. I consider her the ideal candidate to interview to commemorate Disability Pride Month in July. We chat about self-identifying as a person with a disability(PWD) and “Discoverability” to position your talents as a PWD to prospective employees.
Edited Transcript
Marsh Naidoo (00:17):
Hello, and welcome to the Raising Kellan Podcast. My name is Marsh Naidoo, and I blog@raisingkellan.org where we curate resources for parents raising children with disabilities. As always, remember, the content on this podcast is for your information only, and if you seek advice for your specific situation to contact a trained professional, we have less than a month to go for Day At The Lake. This is our first live in-person event that brings together parents, teachers, and other service providers to learn about resources available in Dyersburg, Tennessee, as well as the state of Tennessee. This event is made possible, and this podcast is brought to you by the Changemaker sponsorship of Security Bank. In today's episode number 93, I interview Debra Ruh, who is the founder of Ruh Global Impact and Billion-Strong. So without further ado, put your feet up, grab that cup of coffee and get ready for some awesome conversation.
Marsh Naidoo (01:45):
Deborah Ruh, welcome to the Raising Kellan podcast. Debra Run is a global disability inclusion strategist. Her work is concentrated as CEO of Ruh Global Impact, as well as a nonprofit, which is called Billion Strong. Welcome, Debra!
Debra Ruh (02:12):
Oh, thank you so much. And thank you for inviting me to the show. I think it's really important that we have shows like this because we need all these different voices and the diversity of voices. So I really appreciate being on the show. Thank you.
Marsh Naidoo (02:30):
So guys, me and Deborah just had a brief conversation before I hit the record button, and in that, conversation we talked about visual descriptions and the benefits of describing ourselves to the listeners, just as a way for us to kind of connect perhaps on a deeper level.
Debra Ruh (02:53):
I do the same thing on my show, Human Potential at Work. And we were talking about off air that I actually talked to some colleagues that were blind and they said, boy, they really do appreciate when we take this step because they feel more included. So I am not an old woman. I'm a mature woman with gray and purple hair. And today I have on a blue hat and gray and blue I have on a real pretty blue Indian dress. So I am a white woman and I have some lights around my head today because there are some Christmas lights in the room.
Marsh Naidoo (03:31):
I'm Marsh Naidoo. I am a woman of Indian heritage. I have brown skin, black hair, and today I'm wearing my work scrubs. That is my visual description. So, without further ado, Deborah, can you please tell us more about the catalyst that set you on the trajectory to joining the disability community and how that happened?
Debra Ruh (04:01):
Yes, and once again, thank you so much for having me on the show. It is really an honor. I didn't know what I was gonna do as a kid. And so when I grew up, I became, I fell into the mortgage banking industry. And when I was in the Mortgage banking industry, I had been married and I had my first child and she was born with Down Syndrome. And that I knew of, I didn't know any other person with a disability. I didn't think I knew anybody else with a disability. It was just brand new in my life. And so I was really discouraged that I did not find out my daughter had Down Syndrome until she was four months old. But I was, when this came out, how people treated us so differently, like somehow my daughter was broken. And instead of saying, congratulations on your baby, it was oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
(04:47):
And it, it just sort of broke my heart a little bit because I did, I do have a perfect baby girl. That's 36 now. So society acted odd when this happened to me. And so it just really sort of woke me up to you know, a little bit more about this community. And then whenever my daughter reached middle school I started hearing she wouldn't be included in the workforce. And she can't do this, she can't do this. And, and I was like confused why they thought that, because they weren't even looking at her as an individual. Even at the time when they were saying these things. My daughter actually was working part-time at Wendy's holding, you know, a marketable position and doing well with it. So I just, I decided to enter the field at that time. What I didn't know when I entered the field, I thought with my professional experience, I could come in I could add value and I could employ people with disabilities, and learn about the field.
(05:46):
But I didn't feel very welcomed into the field. It was almost like, no, we don't need you. We got it. By the way, none of us got it. We all need each other. Yes. But I also learned as I walked this path that my beautiful husband had 40 years. He also was a person with disabilities. He had been hit by a car in Buffalo, New York when he was 11 years old and died on the spot. They brought him back, went into a coma for 10 days, then he didn't go back to school for months. So what I didn't know, which I don't care, I would've still married him, was that dementia would come for him early in life because even though our beautiful brains can rewire, a big part of his brain was destroyed. So he aged differently. So he passed away last year after a seven-year journey with dementia.
(06:36):
And then also what I got to learn was, I myself am a person with disabilities. According to the law I have ADHD, which by the way, so do 65% of other business owners, many people with A D H D and dyslexia will become business owners because we don't always work well with micromanagement or people telling us what to do. We're creative. So even though society has legislatively said, I have a disability, I don't really buy it, but okay, I also am part of the community. I think actually what we need to do a better job of is supporting people that are in need and making sure people have what they need. But sorry for that really long answer, but I just wanted to explain to the audience. I had to sort of learn that I was part of this community and now celebrate that.
Marsh Naidoo (07:25):
So Deborah's podcast that she was referring to, I want you guys to know that that is actually called The Human Potential at Work. So please go ahead and give it a listen. I actually wanna give a shout-out, even though it's in the middle of the show, to Eric Jorgenson from True North Disability Planning. He is the gentleman that told me all about you, and thank you, Eric.
Debra Ruh (07:52):
I love Eric and what beautiful work he's doing, but this is the way we do it. We help each other.
Marsh Naidoo (07:58):
Deborah, tell us more about the work being done at RUH Global Impact.
Debra Ruh (08:07):
I will say that when I first moved into the field, I'm a technologist. I just come from a long line of technologists. And so I created Tech Access. And what we focused on was making sure technology was accessible to everybody. And so the websites were accessible or the apps accessible, and the majority of my employees, about 90% were people that self-identified as having disabilities. And then I ran that company until about 2011 and then I merged it with another accessibility group and then created RUH Global Impact. I was just gonna do that as a placeholder to get the real name. And oh, well, it sort of got away from me. So that's our name. But what we do is we work with major corporations, major brands, Amazons of the world, the Microsofts, the at and really big global brands to meaningfully, meaningfully include people with disabilities in their workforce, but also to make sure their customers with disabilities are being included, their investors with disabilities are being included, their vendors.
(09:11):
So we, we really try to help 'em look at it holistically, including also from the branding and marketing perspective, which is what we're good at. Because society right now is tired of corporations doing things that hurt us. We're tired of it. And we have something that's going on called consciously quitting. Consciously quitting. You're the best worker, if you were playing badly and we're seeing you in the news, doing really bad things, or you were seeing sexual harassment suits that you're not dealing with, you're not including people with disabilities, whatever you're doing, people are consciously quitting from the large corporate brands because they don't wanna be part of it anymore. And so we're guiding the corporations on how to be better, how to be better corporate citizens. But at the same time, we also work with you in agencies, we work with governments and we do a lot of partnering.
(10:01):
So I'm now at a very high level in this field talking at really big, big organizations like, the World Economic Forum or Zero Project or really big efforts that are being made. And the big efforts are very important, but we all have to be included all the way to the local levels. So it is very strategic to work with these corporate brands and make sure they include us. But recently, two years ago, had a major success for our community in that under the efforts of Dr. Caroline Casey and the help of people like me, we got 500 major CEOs of major corporations all over the world to come together at the World Economic Forum level and agree to meaningfully include people with disabilities. Yay. But now we have to execute. Now we have to actually do it. So that's where I play.
(10:57):
But also with Billion Strong, Billion Strong is the world's first global identity organization where people with disabilities can come together with pride and talk about their lived experiences with disabilities. Even if I wasn't Neurodiverse A D H D, I'm still part of this community cuz I'm a mother and a wife of, you know. So we count us all but Billion Strong about us all coming together, highlighting our voices. Like we want your podcast to be on Billion Strong because we wanna all come together and it's ridiculous exercise. We have 1.3 to 1.7 billion people with disabilities. And that's not including people that love someone with a disability or people in society that believe all human beings should be meaningfully included.
Marsh Naidoo (11:43):
So Deborah, as a mom raising a son with a disability, a major concern would be how does he take his skills post-secondary education into the marketplace. How is Billion Strong informing that, how is Ruh Global Impact informing the decision of those employers: Hey, let's give Kellan let's give Sarah, let's give that kid out there with a disability a chance.
Debra Ruh (12:18):
Yeah, and that's a great question. And what we've done is we, the reason why I created Billion Strong, and once again let me say I have other founders involved pretty much everybody at Ruh Global Impact cuz we're a small team. It's like we're like seven people. Pretty much everybody is created because it's gonna take us all to create Billion Strong. Billion Strong's a 5 0 1 (C) 3 now it's fully licensed, it's got everything. But the reason why I created Billion Strong, it was my idea, because of the Valuable 500, which I mentioned, 500 corporations coming together at the CEO level and going, okay, we'll include you, but we have to be discoverable. You remember we've got 1.3 to 1.7, but 75 to 80% of people with disabilities have hidden or invisible disabilities. I have to tell you, maybe you can guess that I have A D H D I didn't have coffee and I'm so high-strung, but it's also good for being an entrepreneur, right?
(13:20):
But so the majority, big majority of our community, we have hidden or invisible disabilities. You can say this about someone living with autism, you know, you can't always, people sometimes think they know. Yeah, whatever. You don't know. You don't know that I live with anxiety and anxiety disorder, you know, I do. It's, you know, part of tied to the A D H D. So that is complicated. So let's just take a moment to say that's very complicated. We, we, you don't even know the people we're talking about. And people will not identify definitely in the United States because they feel that you are going to discriminate against them. So they will not identify with other countries. They are almost forced to identify because of the way the governments work if they want support. But it's different in every single country, which is very confusing as well.
(14:15):
And so the reason why I created Billion Strong was to make our community discoverable. And let me tell you why I'm using that word. The reason why I'm using that word is because we have 500 corporations with, I think they represent 22 million jobs that actually want to find your son with disabilities. They are committing to hiring people with disabilities, but they need 75 to 80% of us to actually admit that we have lived experiences with disabilities and we're not. So I was just really concerned that how can they be successful if they find us. So maybe they can find your son because you're doing a podcast about it, right? Maybe they can find my daughter Sarah. And, once again, just to make things a little bit more complicated, we are a very, very, very diverse group. Some of us are blind, some of us are deaf, some of us are blind deaf, some of us are blind, but they have, we have hearing loss.
(15:14):
Some of us have cerebral palsy, I mean, it is, we are a gigantic group. We also include chronic health. We include anyone with mental health issues, which, if you're a human being in your life, sadly you're gonna have some mental health problems. It's, you know, so it's such a gigantic community. And what's happened today has been that our communities fight each other and then we fight other diverse communities like the L G B T community or, or the women community. Cuz women are supposed to be the largest minority in the world, except sometimes we're actually the majority. Sometimes there are more women. Right now, I believe this moment, there are men have an edge over women. They're a little bit more men than women, but women are, I'm not a minority because we have not properly included women. We do not pay women, right?
(16:09):
We don't include 'em on Boards. All the gender issues, we still are being paid grossly less than men. Okay? Now you take it and you, you take a woman of brown skin like you, as opposed to a woman with white skin like me, I'm gonna make more money than you. Why? I don't know why we do this stupid stuff. So, and then you start going into the disabilities and the diversity of the other groups that are, people are being disenfranchised and we're more and more and more disenfranchised. So now what we have to do is sort of come together and say, all right, so how do we get this right? Well, we gotta get together. We gotta identify that we are proud and don't film bad for me because I'm a person with Down Syndrome. You know, don't decide I can't add value because I'm blind.
(16:56):
And so, all right, so that is why we created Billion-strong.org. But I wanna talk to also any I, I live in the United States. I believe you live in the United States as well. Eric lives in the United States. There are so many beautiful things about the United States of America. I'm very proud to be a citizen here. But the reality is, once we leave our borders, people with disabilities are really, really, really in trouble. So badly in trouble. So one thing I'm really trying to encourage my beautiful fellow Americans is to realize that you have privilege because you were born in this country and you need to step up and you need to also help and fight for other people's rights outside of our border, which is what shows like yours do, does as well. But I am, I know I often talk about these topics in a really big way because is my work.
(17:50):
But we need everybody pulling together now. And that's why we created Billion Strong. We did not create it to compete. We have a hundred countries now that have partnered with us of organizations, of persons with disabilities. And we just wanna highlight what everybody's doing so that the money can start flowing to us and so that we can start being employed and included. And education can be more accessible to us, and workforce can be accessible. I had a really large employer one time say to me, what are you suggesting, Deborah? Are you suggesting we have to hire your daughter with Down syndrome in our company that does all it stuff? And I said, well, okay. What I'm suggesting is that you hire people that are qualified to do your job, but look beyond the norm and make sure you're hiring people that have lived experience with disabilities. They have value to you as an employer. We know they're more creative and more innovative and we know they're natural problem solvers cuz they haven't had a choice. The world is not accessible to them. They have no choice. They have to be creative. And so that's just a little bit, I'm sorry for my long answers.
Marsh Naidoo (18:59):
I'm gonna go ahead and, and deconstruct that because I think self-identifying with pride that you have a disability is where does that start? Now I have an opinion obviously on this, but I'm, I'm interested in knowing what your opinion is.
Debra Ruh (19:18):
Well, where does it start? I think where it has to start is we have to convince our community we have to be brave. Oh yeah, I hear you Deborah, but you know what? I can't be brave. Am I being discriminated? I mean, just saying sometimes it's hard to, okay, but also we have to stand up for our rights together, I think in little different ways. Because now what we have, and this is a problem, I'm gonna say this, I'm on disagree with myself. We have to be discoverable. We have to be able to show these employers that are specifically looking for people with disabilities, maybe a little bit to check some boxes and to fill quotas. But regardless, they are looking for people with disabilities. They really, really are. So LinkedIn, I love LinkedIn, and they recently something that if you're looking for a job on LinkedIn, which is where a lot of people go, you can actually say in your profile that you are a person with a disability and you said it in a way, and the only people that can see that is recruiters, nobody.
(20:29):
And you're following, none of your friends can see it. So there's a way, and it's not just for disabilities, you can also check that you're a person that's part of the L G B T Q, you know, community. You can say that you're, you know, things to make it easier for employers to discover you. Okay? So it's, it's about, once again, maybe understanding there might be value to me in disclosing that have a disability because I'm looking for a job and I know all these corporations are saying I'm looking for you. Okay, then I'll do it. And I could do it on LinkedIn safely. But we also see other really big groups like say Indeed, which is a big job portal. They're really committed to making sure that we can be seen and discovered. But once again, none of these efforts will work if we ourselves won't come out and say, I will identify as having A D H D even if you judge me for that and think, wow, you're, you're broken or whatever.
(21:32):
So the way to change it is we're gonna have to walk like that. We're gonna have to convince ourselves it's safe to come out. And by the way, the 20 to 25% of us that can't hide our disabilities, like my daughter with Down's Syndrome, they don't have those same choices. So I would have to say to our 75 to 80% of us, maybe we need to be a little bit braver for those of us that can't hide, right? And sobut it, but at the same time, I know it's difficult, but the good news is these big corporations now, they're looking specifically for you if you will disclose, you have a disability. So now there's a reason for me to do it, but before, maybe there wasn't a reason before, but at the same time, I'm not saying it's not complicated every step of the way.
Marsh Naidoo (22:19):
What about media representation? What role do you think that has with regards to decreasing the stigma that traditionally surrounds or historically surrounds disability?
Debra Ruh (22:32):
Yeah, and that I'm very excited about because we're actually making great progress, especially here in the States, but not just in the States. We're seeing powerful things happen in the UK and other countries too. So what's happening are they are taking that very seriously. It's complicated and confusing. For example, whenever you're an actor, you act out a part that might not have anything to do with your real life. I look at a show that I've always enjoyed. It's Frank and Gracie, or Grace and Frank Grace and Frankie or something. It's I forget the name of it, but Grace or Frankie or Frankie and Grace. And it's wonderful with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. And I can't all the say off the top of my head, remember the two amazing men that are playing the parts, but they're playing parts of two husbands that finally admitted they were gay.
(23:24):
Okay, well the two actors are not gay that are playing gay men. Okay? So we are saying in the disability community, stop, stop using other actors. We are disabled actors including us. But, there was a big fight with the Rock because he played a war veteran who did not have a leg. So he had a prosthesis. And during this, I didn't see the movie, but during the movie at one point, he actually saves a bunch of people by using, letting his prosthetic leg come off. And it was clever how they did it. But they also criticized rock for playing a role that an actor with disabilities that uses a prosthetic could play. But then there are some realities that we have to remember. The reality is if Rock, I forget his real name, Dwayne Johnson, maybe I'm a fan, but he is a big, a big box office draw.
(24:22):
When you put him in a movie, people will come just cuz they love him. If you put an individual with that doesn't have any kind of name, the money the movies don't get funded. So there we are having a lot of arguing and fighting about that. What does it mean to be an actor? But at the same time, we're seeing some really beautiful progress. I'll give a shout-out to Netflix, Heather Dowdy, who is they are really focusing at Netflix on giving us really powerful, empowering content for that representative of our community. Like, I don't know if you've seen Attorney Wu, think it's Attorney Wu. Anyway, it's beautiful. And it's a, a Korean woman that has autism, that is a lawyer and very open about it. And they just, the last episode they took on dating, dating is so hard.
(25:18):
And they're like, well, in, in the show there was a man that was dating a woman that had intellectual disabilities. And so he was accused of raping her. So they took on this and it was so powerful. So actually there are some beautiful changes happening in our media and our marketing. I don't know if people are seeing it. I'm seeing it, but I'm out there looking for it too. But we're starting to see a lot of efforts, but I think as a society still, we're sort of gonna have to decide can an actor play any role or if there's a role for somebody that's L G B T, can it only be from that community is so I think a lot, I think the society's being rethought right now. I think we're
Marsh Naidoo (26:05):
In the middle of it really
Debra Ruh (26:06):
Excited. We're in the middle of it. And the good news is maybe right now we do have to be more deliberate about making sure people with disabilities are visible on our screens on these movies and stuff right now. And then we can shift more into how do we do this better in the future. But maybe right now we need to be very deliberate about including people at a time when we have not historically done it.
Marsh Naidoo (26:34):
Any ideas as far as how to make disability inclusion happen at a foundational phase?
Debra Ruh (26:45):
The employees the employment and the education they're not talking to each other. They're not talking to each other. And so the reality is we're not really doing a good job educating many people with disabilities. I loved my daughter's teachers, but I felt like my daughter, my beautiful daughter was babysat often. I remember when they wanted her to go get a job, and I'm like, well, I really think we should teach her to read first. Please, can we teach her to read? She'll have her whole life to work. But she, yeah, she did learn to read, but it was almost like the school wanted her to do something. And so we got a lot of problems with education and I find that the education that we are giving or not giving to students with disabilities is why we're another reason why we're not moving effectively into the workforce.
(27:34):
We're not doing a good job with the colleges and we're finding that education is not meaningfully talking to employers. So employers are their customers, right? Because you wanna educate the workforce and get 'em right. They don't talk to each other. So we're talking a lot. We're starting to talk about there's, there are some efforts being made but we still don't see it happening. It feels often, especially if you are an individual with intellectual disabilities like my daughter, cognitive. You are not being prepared for the workforce. You're not. So once again, it's a flux. It's everything that's happening. And we can sit around. And I just wanna say this one comment, I was talking to this beautiful soul, this woman that's fighting for the cause like you are, and I am, we all are. And she said I'm just talking to a legislator in my state.
(28:27):
And I told 'em all these things that were wrong with the, the education and how you can't transition ridiculous, getting a real job, forget it. I told him about all these problems. I said, okay, all right. Okay. And she's like, what do you mean? I said, all right, well, what were some of the solutions you gave him? Well, I didn't, what do you mean you can't, we can't just talk about how it's all broken. What are we gonna do together to fix it? We can't just keep talking about how broken it is, it's broken, but what are we doing together to help start to, because the employers are willing to do it? They've said, I'll do it, but is it reasonable for me to expect for you to be qualified for the job? I think it is reasonable. All right. How do we make that happen? Right? So, the front, the back, the middle, and everything is just broken.
Marsh Naidoo (29:15):
Deborah, what would be, in conclusion, what would be your call to action to parents or listeners out there? What is the one thing that you would want them to do?
Debra Ruh (29:26):
I think you, for that beautiful question, and I am bad about asking for myself, but please, please, please join Billion-Strong.org. It's free. But we so need your voices. We need your opinion, we need your children. We all have to come together. And what we want is, once again, I wanna put your podcast out there, right? We want, we're showing voices from all over the world, and we're talking about these issues, but the more we get together, the more we come together, the stronger we are. And I'll give you an example. My daughter, once again has Down syndrome. My daughter lives in the United States. We live in Virginia, thank God. But during this horrible pandemic where I lost two brothers and my husband, you know, but during these times if my daughter lived in Alabama and she got Covid 19, she would not have been eligible for lifesaving equipment.
(30:18):
If somebody that didn't have Down Syndrome needed it, that's not okay. That is not okay. That is not okay. They have that law in their books. So how do we change this? We all come together. So please consider coming to billion strong.org, volunteering with us, donating to us, help us find the voices. Let us show you who is doing what in this field because we are, a lot is being accomplished. But now we come together during these changing times to not only talk about the problems but to start coming up with solutions that work for all of us. And if we don't, we can. If we don't do it, we're not being responsible for the community and for our children. But also, if we did this right, we could be the first community that showed all of the other disenfranchised communities how we could really get it right. And I'm telling you, people are now listening to The World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, I mean, they really are paying attention. Global Compact, they want it to work, but they need us to help them make this work. Sorry, I'm just way too chatty today.
Marsh Naidoo (31:31):
We all tell our individual stories as part of our advocacy. But if we need to uplevel that, if we actually need change,, we need to communicate as a community. And I have to say, in addition to listening to you, Deborah, I have to say that Dr. Lamondre Pough message was such a powerful message
Debra Ruh (32:00):
Yes
Marsh Naidoo (32:00):
Oh my gosh, that we need your help to self-identify, if that is our lived experience was just a really powerful message. And that this is not about us as individuals, it's about the community. And that's how we power change.
Debra Ruh (32:17):
Yes. And can I, can I just make a, can I make a confession? Whenever I was creating Billion Strong, my husband was dying. My daughter was in a traumatic situation. I was trying to help her. But I really believed in Billion Strong. And I thought this was a way that we could come together and not compete in stuff. And also, Billion Strong will be having funding there for our, we'll be listing projects. We want it to be a place where we can all find each other and share. I mean, if we only hired each other and shared with each other, we're 1.7 billion people, my gosh. I do wanna come to confess that I, when I decided to create it, the nonprofit Billion Strong, I thought, okay, I'll just be the CEO and then I will select another CEO in the future.
(33:03):
And somebody said to me, a friend of mine said to me, good, another white woman that doesn't have a disability is starting a nonprofit to help people with disabilities. And I looked at him, I said, you gotta be kidding. If everything I have done, you're gonna say that to me, and I do have a disability. But at the same time, I heard it and I thought about it, and I prayed about it, and I meditated. And I thought he's right, right now. We've gotta be deliberate. And so I asked LaMondre, I always wanted LaMondre to be CEO but I said, Lamondre, Will you become the CEO? And he said, absolutely. And I agree with you. His voice is so beautiful. Lamondre self-identifies as a black African-American man growing up in the Southern eastern part of the United States.
(33:51):
He also was born, a man born with muscular dystrophy, and it’s progressive. So, you know, they keep telling, saying he was gonna die before he was three, before he is seven before he is 11. Luckily, he's 49 and beautiful and amazing, but he needs around-the-clock caregiving. He cannot shake your hand. He has limited mobility from his shoulders down. But let's talk about who this spirit, this soul is. My God, this man is a powerful, powerful voice, beautiful voice, and a wonderful representation of who we are. Deborah, thank you so much for your time. As I said, an absolute honor to talk to you, and really excited about the way this movement is moving forward. Guys, again, that's Brilliant hyphen Strong.org, check them out, Deborah, you take care and have an amazing day. Thank you for having me on your program. I appreciate it.
Marsh Naidoo (34:56):
As always, thank you for listening along on the podcast today. Remember, our live in-Person event day at the lake is coming up on August 26 2023. For more information as far as speakers are concerned, check out our Facebook page, Raising Kellan, and website, www.raisingkellan.org has more information as well about the event. Today's podcast, as well as our live event, is brought to you by the Changemaker Sponsorship of Security Bank in Dyersburg, Tennessee. So we see you guys the next time. As always, remember, get to the top of your mountain. This is Marsh Naidoo signing off.
