As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Ramona Schindelheim, editor-in-chief at WorkingNation. Ramona oversees the editorial content for WorkingNation and hosts the Work in Progress podcast about how her business and others should work to accommodate employees with disabilities. She is a veteran financial journalist who has worked for CNBC, ABC News, and The Wall Street Journal. As an executive producer with CNBC, Ramona guided three daily business news shows, managed special initiatives, produced numerous documentaries, and launched the talk show Conversations with Michael Eisner.
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Inclusive Business Practices: Accommodating Customers And Employees With A Disability Ramona Schindelheim Of WorkingNation
Journalism Background
We’re here with our guest, Ramona Schindelheim. Ramona, welcome.
Thank you very much, Eric.
It’s a pleasure having you here on the show. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sure. I am Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-chief of WorkingNation. We’re a nonprofit news organization focused on solutions to workforce issues, covering a lot of how the future of work and technology is changing the way we work, and then also looking at different groups of people in the workforce, how they may face specific barriers, and what’s being done to help them. I’m a lifelong journalist. I’ve been doing this since I was twenty years old.
Tell me a little bit more about that. First of all, what got you into journalism?
I was looking for something to do with my life that was a little bit different. The best way I can describe that. I was not a good writer when I was in high school, but I was always a curious person. I fell into journalism when I was in college. I started working as an intern at a local rock station, doing the music library at first, and then somebody said, “Come over and intern for us in journalism and the news side of this.” I did, and I loved it.
I then went on to work at a local Chicago Radio Station, WBBM. Got a foot in the door, one of those answering the telephones and within a couple of months, the news director gave me and a colleague, Deidre White, the opportunity to be fill-in writers. People had to go on vacation. They needed somebody to fill in, so they said, “Let’s build from within,” which I loved. I loved the mentoring. The news director, John Holtman, mentored both Deidre and me and taught us how to write, how to do interviews, how to produce, and gave us our start, which was great.
That is cool. It’s interesting how it doesn’t sound like when you were a child that this is what you grew up wanting to do. I always quote John Lennon. “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” This is one of my favorite quotes.
I’ll say that I fell into it. I was in the right place. My interest and my search for a job all came together. I was a psychology major when I started college. It wasn’t my intent to be in journalism, but that’s where I ended up.
Disability Inclusion & Accommodation
Let’s blend it in. This show is about disability inclusion and accommodation. In your career, in what you do, how does that blend into what you’re doing?
I have done a lot of different things in my career as a journalist. I’ve worked in local news. I’ve worked in national news. I moved at one point from general news to local to business news, and then back into local news. At one point, I was looking for a different journalism, and I wanted to do something that helped people.
I wanted to do something that provided solutions because I don’t knock the local journalists that I know, but those stations don’t have as much money financially. They cover a lot of easy things. They cover crime. They cover natural disasters, but they don’t delve into the human side of things. I believe job quality and good jobs are a financial foundation for folks.
I’m able now in my job at WorkingNation to tell stories about how to get people to that point and how the disability part comes into this is there are a lot of people in our country who, as you know, have a disability, whether it’s seen or unseen. There are barriers out there for them. Some of them are self-made because people don’t want to speak out and say, “I have a disability, and I could use an accommodation.”
Some of them are institutionalized, whether it’s how an office is set up or how stairs versus elevators. There are some limits to how people can find a job for them in some places. I know a lot of work has been done on that, but I’m able to tell stories now. Getting back to your question, I’m able to tell stories now about solutions to all of these challenges that we’ve talked about.
Share best cases and best practices with people. Maybe somebody in there, either a worker, a job seeker, or an employer might see something someone else is doing to help break down those barriers, and they may want to repeat it themselves. They may want to do it themselves and make the workforce more accessible to everybody.
Can you give us some examples? What’s a story or two that you’ve written about or you’ve seen?
I’m always struck by EY, the big consulting accounting firm, Ernst and Young. They are named EY now. I’ve spoken to Hiren Shukla a lot. He runs their Center For Inclusion and Excellence. I know I’m butchering that name a little bit, but you can find the story on our website, WorkingNation.org. What they do at EY is they recognize the fact that not everybody’s brain works the same.
We are a neurodiverse society. Some people have quick responses. I can sit here. You can ask me a question, and I can pull up and tell you what I know fairly easily, but not everybody can do that. What they did was they decided that they were missing a lot of talent out there in the workforce because there may be some neurodiverse people who are uncomfortable with questions they don’t know are coming.
They started a couple of years ago. They now will give the questions in advance to a job candidate who identifies as neurodiverse. Give them a week to look at them. They know what questions are coming from an employer or a hiring manager, and they can prepare an answer. Just because you’re not quick and glib and able to sit there and talk your way through an interview doesn’t mean you don’t have the skills that you need to do the job they’re looking to have done.
That is fantastic. I also talked to a woman at TD Bank a couple of years ago, and she is deaf. She’s deaf in one ear and partially deaf in another. She never told her employer because she was afraid that would somehow keep her from a promotion and keep her from being thought of as part of a team, but she also found herself on the outside because she hadn’t told people and hadn’t asked for an accommodation.
She would miss some of what was going on in team meetings. She couldn’t respond quickly because she did not have that accommodation. She finally told her manager, and they brought in an ASL interpreter. Now, she has become a valued part of the team. She got promoted to that team. She had all these great ideas that she could share now because she knew what they were asking.
I thought that was a great thing, and we talked a little bit about how it was very hard for her to disclose this. When she did, they accommodated her, making her a valued and loyal member of the team because we all like our bosses to step up and help us if we need that help. Those are two areas where I have seen people have shared their personal stories with me.
We all like our bosses to step up and help us if we need that help. Share on XI’ll tell a third one, which IBM has a Neurodiverse Affinity Group. What Nat Lyckowski did was, she got IBM to have senior managers who were comfortable to disclose. One senior manager, a vice president, disclosed that he had bipolar disorder and once he did, it changed the culture around saying this out loud. Other people came forward and also shared their issues about this. Also, what it did was create a culture of inclusivity in that workplace.
You’re not allowed to treat another employee badly. You may not say, “I think they’re weird.” and make comments and stuff like that. Everybody is different, whether it’s physical or nonvisual disability. Everybody probably has something and that includes illness. I knew someone else who I’ve spoken to had a chronic illness that also made it difficult sometimes for them to do their job the way they wanted to and they were afraid to disclose it.
Once they did, their bosses understood certain things in the way they did their workflow. They got their job done, and we’re not talking about not being able to do your job correctly or well. We’re just talking about how these people can do it even better in these cases because they did not have that sense that they had to hide something from someone. They had bosses and companies behind them who were supportive.
Podcast And Media Content
Just to clarify, you have your own podcast. Correct?
I do. Yes.
Tell us a little bit. Do you write? Do you have magazines? I noticed your website has a bunch of different ways you can produce. Tell me a little bit more about what you do exactly.
WorkingNation, we started in 2016. I’ve been there since 2017. As Editor-in-chief, I run the editorial content. I do this with my colleagues. I don’t do this alone. We’re a small but mighty team. We have Joan Lynch, who’s our content officer, Melissa Panzer, who does all our digital videos, and then Laura Aka, our Senior Correspondent. Michael James is our Senior Social Media producer.
That’s our core team, and there are a few others who help, but what we do on the site is tell stories about solutions. I write articles. I usually write one a week, Laura writes one a week, and then we have a couple of freelancers, and these are focused on solutions. I do a weekly podcast called Work in Progress, and I’ve been doing it. I just saw it on my calendar. It’ll be five years on October 2024.
I’ve done over 250 interviews, I think it is, over this time, and we do it weekly. It’s audio and sometimes we do video, but it’s focused on, again, solutions and career pathways. I mentioned that. I mentioned Karen. I’ve interviewed them on the disability side. We also make videos that highlight solutions, and Melissa’s team puts those out.
Then another thing, digital magazines. We’ve done one on older workers. We’ve done one on veterans. That is a format. It is like a mini website that has all of our content on it and you can find that on our website. Another important thing that we do is create some media partnerships with conferences. We went to South by Southwest EDU as a media partner, and we are independent.
I like to say in the PBS model, “No one has control over our editorial.” We tell the stories we want, but we won’t partner with anybody we don’t believe has the same motive as we do, which is solutions. At those conferences, we do interviews with people who are there, sometimes speakers, sometimes just people who are attending that we have met, and we do about 20 of them over a couple of days.
We also moderate and curate panels. At the most recent South by Southwest EDU, I did a panel on closing the Hispanic Digital Skills Gap and brought in people who are big in that field to talk about it in front of an audience and to share those ideas. Coming up, we’re going to do something called the College Board Forum, which is a K to 12 exploration. How do you get kids on a pathway to good careers and quality jobs?
Then, we’re going to be partners and I’m going to do some podcasts at a new one that is also coming up in October called the Human Potential Summit. Their focus is on what employers are doing to make sure they have the talent they need. I think that I’m going to do a panel on green jobs, as there are a lot of green jobs being created in the country. How do we make sure local communities are taking advantage of that job creation to put people to work?
It sounds like all issues related to labor, employment, jobs, overcoming challenges, and things like that. If somebody, let’s say, is reading this and overcame some interesting disability project or had some interest in telling you about it, is that something you would want to connect with that person as far as our readers? Would you want them to reach out to you?
We do it on a level of, I’m going to say the nonprofit leaders, the corporations, the hiring managers, and then occasionally, through them, we will look for people who have had those experiences, but that’s not the focus of our podcast. If you go in, you’ll see it on our home page. It’s the people who are solving the problem because we want to get those out there. We want to get everybody who can employ someone to listen to those solutions and then take them into their own business. Take it home and make it work for their employers or their employees and their job seekers.
One of the focuses of the podcast that I try to do every other podcast is I try to pick somebody who’s doing a solution. Who’s for instance, we did a company that has a reader. You can use an app on the phone that reads to you, and it’s like a Wayfinder, telling you where to go. Stuff like that. It sounds like those are the types of people creating the solutions you’re looking at. That’s very interesting. Very fascinating, I think, for our readers to know about this. You can tell them one more time how they can find the articles and what the website is one more time, if you don’t mind.
We’re at WorkingNation.org. When you go there, you’ll see on top that there’s a menu. Also, there’s Content By Topic. If you look at or use that drop-down menu, you’ll see that there’s a column called People Like Me. You might see something in there that might interest you. Maybe you fall into one of those categories. You may want to read all of our content, see all of our videos, or listen to all of our podcasts.
On our home page, we curated the five most recent stories that we have right there on the home page and then just launched Age in America, which is a special series we did. It’s about ageism in the workplace. I encourage anybody who feels they’re 40 and over and want to go in and see what is being done to address that issue. It’s a topic I’m very passionate about, and I’ve reported on it a lot. Ageism in our country can hurt somebody’s job prospects or promotion prospects. WorkingNation.org. I appreciate anybody going in there and taking a look.
Ageism in our country can hurt somebody's job prospects or promotion prospects. Share on XThank you very much. I would just say that, as a side, I’ve noticed that about ageism, and I’m a lawyer who represents federal employees in discrimination cases. My least favorite cases to get in front of me are age discrimination cases because the statute for age discrimination, the ADEA, does not allow for compensatory damages or attorney’s fees.
That makes the cases much less enticing for them to take, and it’s not fair. It makes no sense at all. The statute should be across the board, whether it’s race, religion, or disability, giving the people some remedies. Maybe one day, someone out there will make a change in Congress and treat people over age 40.
Closing Thoughts
Since I’m well over age 40, I would also be appreciative if they made that change. I want to thank you for your insight. It was it’s fascinating. I want to give you the floor just for one last second as we wrap up. Is there anything that you would want our readers to know as your opportunity to connect with people if that’s what you’d like to do?
What I’d like to say is take a look. I’m an optimist. I believe that there is an opportunity out there for everyone to get a quality job, and your definition may be a little bit different depending on who you are and what a quality job is, but to me, it’s why I’m passionate about what I do, it’s a job that gives you financial ease. You don’t have to worry that you’re going to be able to pay the bills.
Any journalists out there who are reading this, I would say do the same thing. Tell these stories because there’s opportunity out there. People don’t necessarily know they’re in their backyard. That would be my message to people. Please know that there is hope and opportunity out there. If you’re feeling a little like, “There’s nothing for me.” Check out the website. We share a lot of those, and maybe there’s something that resonates with you.
Amazing. Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure to interview you.
Same. Eric, thank you very much for having me.
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