To Table of Contents the disability economy and that ecosystem . My role as a consultant , as an executive coach , and as someone living the life in this world is how can I participate and how can I engage ?
Q : You have been in a unique position as you ' re engaged in so many different aspects and areas of this world through your writing , speaking , consulting , executive coaching , and personal experiences as a person with cerebral palsy . For about ten years , you have been a consultant and executive coach . Can you share more about this ?
A : I think in terms of [ the ] therapeutic end of it , I ' m interested in the human condition . The one thing that I learned about is understanding people ' s experiences , and not just [ through ] traditional psychotherapy , it ' s the therapeutic aspect of it , which is about psychic trauma . It ' s about how you navigate the world and that relationship ; it ' s combining the therapeutic side . My work as an anthropologist was always looking at the anthropology of work and studying businesses as a culture . So how do you integrate that concept ? From both a cultural aspect and the therapeutic side of it , what are the challenges of everyday life ? How do people navigate their world every day ? When you ' re talking about the disability community in the disability space , there are multiple challenges because the environment and world was not created for us in mind . How do you navigate through that , and what needs to be said ? I ' ve learned from this that you can mine the disability experience as a really rich tool and as a value that adds to that human story . From a therapeutic side of it , particularly in the last two and a half years , that ' s been my real focus because COVID hit the world . It was more a matter of how people navigate trauma ; enormous challenges were to be had . How do we work and function ?
What was fascinating for many people in the disability community is that we ' ve already dealt with this for a long time . What are the lessons that can be learned from this lived experience ? How can it be incorporated into living in a pandemic world ? That was interesting for me to be able to navigate that . People wanted traditional psychotherapy , but companies said , how do we reevaluate the future of work ? How do we look at how we as an organization function ? What is it that we need to work on with our staff , with our employees , and what are the challenges ? Companies have to reevaluate how they think about it from a mental health standpoint . May is Mental Health Awareness Month , so it ' s a big time to amplify some of the issues of the future of work and why mental health is so important . I am [ working ] with both individuals dealing with teams dealing with organizational structures ; it allows me a fascinating perspective of helping to shape and augment the future of organizational culture .
Q : Have you always worked with companies , teams , and individuals , or is this a new advancement due to COVID ?
A : It was always part of the plan and the philosophy . I was interested in the anthropology of work , from a psychotherapeutic standpoint , from a coaching standpoint , and how things are structured . So when you look at things from a systems model , which I do , it ' s always about how we make it better ? How do we make it more efficient ? How do we make it so that people can have a pleasurable time at work ? Work isn ' t always pleasurable , but how do we function within an environment that people want to be in ? How do we build teamwork ?