145: Diversity, Digital Transformation & Transcending Cerebral Palsy with Gregory Brown

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Gregory Brown’s mother was told her son would never graduate high school. Not only did he finish without attending special education courses, but he also graduated from college. He never let cerebral palsy hinder him. Ultimately, his childhood love for computers led him to become a digital strategist. In this episode, Greg shares his process for selecting technologies to digitize your operations. He also reveals how to tap an underutilized talent pool – those with disabilities.

Special Guest: Gregory Brown, Founder & Digital Strategist, nGenius Designs

Location: Lithonia, GA  USA

Air Date: April 18, 2021

Resources

  • Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): the website dedicated to the American law that originally went into effect in 1990. The law establishes a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability.
  • Yale University’s Usability & Web Accessibility: an example of how Yale….also includes types of disabilities and how to…one example of a disabilities services office at a university (as Greg mentions during this episode)
  • Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency: an organization that operates five programs all with the same goal – “To help people with disabilities to become fully productive members of society by achieving independence and meaningful employment.”
  • National Telecommuting Institute (NTI): a non-profit organization whose mission is to train and assist people with disabilities and those who care for them to get work-from-home call center jobs.
  • Bender Consulting: a consulting firm that “…provides disability employment expertise in the areas of recruitment, workplace mentoring, strategic planning, training, and digital accessibility to drive innovation and realize business value for customers.” They operate throughout the U.S. and Canada.
  • Social Security Administration: a website dedicated to the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income disability programs. This site has information to provide assistance to people with disabilities.
  • Schedule A: a website explaining information about the Schedule A hiring authority for people with disabilities (Schedule A). It’s an exception to the traditional hiring process for American government jobs. It streamlines the hiring process by giving hiring managers access to a highly-skilled, prescreened, and available candidate pool while reducing the amount of time to fill vacancies.
  • Drafts: an app that allows users to quickly record their thoughts. It can serve as a starting point for text by copying, sharing, or linking to other apps and services.
  • Pocket: an app that allows users o put knowledge in their digital pocket by enabling them to save articles, videos, and stories from any publication, page, or app.
  • Bartender: an app lets you “…organize your menu-bar apps by hiding them, rearranging them, or moving them to Bartender’s Bar. You can display the full menu bar, set options to have menu-bar items show in the menu bar when they have updated, or have them always visible.”
  • EverNote: a cloud-based app designed for note-taking, organizing, task management, and archiving.
  • Notion: an online, all-in-one workspace tool designed to break down silos and increase work efficiency by making information highly visible, easily accessible, and cross-referenced.
  • Slack: a communication app ideal for remote teams that offers the ability to organize work updates by topic, private groups, and direct messaging.
  • Hubspot: software products for marketing and sales, including a free Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program.
  • ClickUp: a project management and team collaboration tool with features designed to replace multiple apps with a guarantee to save one day’s worth of work each week.
  • InstaPaper: an app that enables you to save links and highlight text for articles and videos and syncs it online so that they’re waiting for you on all your devices including, iPhone, iPad, Android and Kindle.
  • Paste: an app that makes it easy to instantly find any important text, link, image, or file you have ever copied on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac computer.

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Credits

Producer & Host: Alicia Butler Pierre
Podcast Editor: Olanrewaju Adeyemo
Video Editor: Gladys Jimenez
Transcription: Jodie Maquiran
Sponsor: HubSpot

Bios

More About Guest, Gregory Brown:
Gregory Brown is a high-energy, confident professional with an infectious enthusiasm for technology and over 10 years of experience in information technology and design. He has a strong commitment to communication and data-driven decision-making, including impacts on stakeholders. Greg is highly creative in regards to problem-solving and innovation development. He runs his own digital strategy consultancy, nGenius Designs, and is the Web Administrator at Equilibria, Inc.

Greg has a B.A. in African American Studies from Morehouse College and a Masters of Arts in Public Relations from Full Sail University. Greg also holds certificates in full stack web development (Georgia Institute of Technology), email marketing (HubSpot), and Google Ads and Google analytics (Google).

   

More About Host, Alicia Butler Pierre:
Alicia Butler Pierre is the Founder & CEO of Equilibria, Inc. Her career in operations began over 20 years ago while working as an engineer in various chemical plants and oil refineries. She invented the Kasennu™ framework for business infrastructure and authored, Behind the Façade: How to Structure Company Operations for Sustainable Success.  It is the world’s first published book on business infrastructure for small businesses. Alicia hosts the weekly Business Infrastructure podcast with a global audience across 53 countries.

   

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