The G.E.M. Series EP25: How to Build an Impactful Inclusive Community with Tiffany Yu
[00:00:00] Blake: Welcome to The GEM Series, powered by RocketLevel. On this podcast, we empower entrepreneurs to succeed by setting big goals, executing like a pro, and having a fearless mindset. The GEM Series is all about investing in yourself. We're here to share the path to getting what you want out of life by sharing the stories of entrepreneurs who have done this themselves, providing thorough research from our team on what careers and habits are yielding the best results. Discussing the Mindset it takes to overcome the obstacles that all future entrepreneurs will face. Investing in yourself starts with putting in the work every single day, and this podcast is here to help you do exactly that. My name is Blake Chapman. I'm the Vice president of the Ambassador Program here at Rocket Level, and I am thrilled to be your host for the GEM Series.
[00:00:49] Blake: Today I am pleased to welcome another incredible guest to the GEM series. Tiffany, just to give you all a tiny bit of background, Tiffany is an entrepreneur and disability rights advocate who founded Diverse Ability, which is a social enterprise to advocate for equality for people with disabilities.
[00:01:05] Blake: She's also the founder of the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter. She's the host of the podcast, Tiffany, and you, and has been on multiple Ted Talks. In addition, in addition to doing so, so much more that I am thrilled to dive into. So, Tiffany, as you know, personally inspired me and has shown how the path of being an entrepreneur can be rooted in what's important to you.
[00:01:26] Blake: Tiffany, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? 
[00:01:28] Tiffany: I'm doing well. How are you, Blake? 
[00:01:30] Blake: I am doing great. I'm doing great. You know, And Tiffany, for those that don't know you, would you mind just sharing the audience sharing with the audience just a little bit about 
[00:01:38] Tiffany: You? Sure. So I'm the daughter of an Asian immigrant or a Taiwanese immigrant, my dad, and a refugee from the Vietnam War.
[00:01:46] Tiffany: My mom I'm the youngest of four, and at the age of nine I was involved in a car accident where my dad, unfortunately, who was driving, unfortunately, passed away. I acquired a slew of injuries, including breaking a couple of bones in one of my legs permanently paralyzing one of my arms. And much later getting diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
[00:02:09] Tiffany: And so all of those experiences growing up now as someone with a disability influenced so much of the work that I do today. And so a big part of my why is that I felt so isolated and alone. In excluded in disability experience, I started to notice that disabled people are one of the most socially isolated and excluded groups out there, and people forget that we need friends and we need the community to thrive.
[00:02:38] Tiffany: And so that's actually what we've built. And we started as a community of one person with diverse abilities. Just me going around campus, picking up flyers to now a, a global or a or, or a, Yeah, a global digital ecosystem of more than 70,000 followers and 
[00:02:56] Blake: supporters. Well, first, obviously to acknowledge the loss of your father.
[00:03:00] Blake: I'm incredibly sorry. And I, you know, I think that what you've touched on is something that. So essential. In that, you're right. I mean whenever people are looking at other folks with disabilities there is a tendency to look past and not prioritize inclusivity in the way that we should.
[00:03:19] Blake: And I just love your mission that you're on towards equitability. And empowering so many people that are out there. So it's been exciting the more I research to see everything that you've done so far. You know, I always love to learn. Going back to sort of the beginning, what was your first passion before all of this, you know became what it was today?
[00:03:40] Blake: What it is? You 
[00:03:41] Tiffany: mean like first my first, my first passion before Diversability? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think, I think a lot about nine-year-old Tiffany and my work, and she loved being outside. She loved riding bikes and rock climbing. And the world was like her playground. and in my journey, you know, I've been over the last maybe like five or so years exploring the world of adaptive sports and finding, you know, learning how to ride a bike again and going adaptive, rock climbing, and doing some of these things that I.
[00:04:16] Tiffany: Love doing as a kid. So I think maybe that was one of my passions. Also, when I was in high school, I ran for student government a lot. I think I ran maybe five or six times. I won once. But I loved the idea of, you know, I think those, those were the early stages of my community building. But it was more so like community building so that people realized that they could have a voice and they could be represented by someone like me or whoever, the student government officers.
[00:04:44] Blake: Absolutely. You know, and I, I see a common thread in all of that, in that all of it does have the potential to be centered in community. You know, it's, it's something and any sport that you do or anything like that, it's funny. You're, you're gonna get me off on a bad tangent because that's like one of my big obsessive things right now is rock climbing and bouldering and going into all that.
[00:05:05] Blake: That's cool. But I'll, I'll stay focused here, But I, I always love to hear what drove somebody the, in the early stages of life and seeing, you know, how you're able to transition into your next phase of life. So once you, you know, you were doing student go. Whenever you were in college though, what was the, what was the objective of getting the degree that you were going after right then and there was, Cause I, I'd love to know, like when you were able, Cause you're in the, you're in the forest looking at the trees.
[00:05:31] Blake: When did you take the step back and go? Oh my gosh. Finally, I think I have always had the vision of going after Diversability in this way or, 
[00:05:39] Tiffany: Mm, no. Yeah, I often call myself an accidental entrepreneur, an accidental disability advocate, and an accidental community builder. And so I'll, I'll share two stories here.
[00:05:50] Tiffany: So I studied finance and accounting in college. and after I graduated, you know, throughout college, was very focused on getting internships. I worked at a couple of different banks after, and then I did my final internship at a bank called Goldman Sachs in their investment banking dis division.
[00:06:10] Tiffany: Ultimately ended up going back to work at Goldman full time and I was in different financial services roles until about 2016. So not only did I study finance and accounting for four years, but I also spent six years kind of working in the field. Well, I'll often call that like the decade of, you know, not only getting my degree but utilizing it.
[00:06:30] Tiffany: But I also think that having an understanding, you know, I've been thinking a lot. Financial equity in my work, in what I call disability-centered economic justice. And there's the goal of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is economic self-sufficiency, which does disabled people have enough money for their basic needs.
[00:06:50] Tiffany: And right now the answer is no, even after over 30 years or resoundingly, no, you know, of course, disability is, is a spectrum. And all of us had different experiences. And so I think that now, cuz as I think through like where I'd like my advocacy to go in this next phase, you know, I spent, you know, since diverse abilities founding in 2009 until now.
[00:07:14] Tiffany: Very focused on building community, and I still think there's so much power there just knowing you're not alone, but then like realizing how powerful you are as a collective, but then also unlearning some of the harmful things you may have internalized about what your external environment is telling you about your disabled body and or your disabled mind.
[00:07:33] Tiffany: But for this next phase, I'm just really focused on how can we bring more dollars back into the pockets and hands of the disability community because that's the biggest. Growth opportunity I see. In the next little bit. So, I think there is that little dotted line of, of, you know, working on Wall Street to then coming back full circle in a way of saying, you know, I, I feel very privileged that I, right out of college I was making six figures, you know, and if we think about everything that's happening with student loan debt, forgiveness right now, even just student loans in general, I know.
[00:08:11] Tiffany: There are so many things, so many financial factors that can weigh, that can weigh people down, and I feel privileged that you know that. I mean, my privilege, it just shows that wasn't something I had to think about right? As I graduated from college. I mean, moving into running Diversability full time, I mean, I was so scrappy.
[00:08:31] Tiffany: I was renting out my place on Airbnb. I was upselling furniture. I was being, an extra in a commercial, you know? So, but yeah, I, I, To come back to it, No. So that first story was, you know, I study finance and accounting, and I think it's coming back now. And I'm so grateful that that is what I studied because it taught me how can I look at disability, not only through the lens of advocacy, but a lot of advocacy pays $0.
[00:08:58] Tiffany: You know, how can we create this as something financially sustainable that can not only support our team but also make an. I think to answer your other question, which was, you know, kind of like what happened in college now I'm starting to connect more of the dots, but when I was a freshman from freshman year until junior year, a couple of my friends and I co-founded a Taiwanese American club on campus.
[00:09:23] Tiffany: And so we had been through the trials and tribulations of creating a community around an. And so come senior year, I hadn't done that much work in the disability space, but I said if I did this for my Taiwanese identity, I'm curious if people might be interested in something like this for a disability identity.
[00:09:45] Tiffany: And so that's kind of like where like I had the experience but for a different part of my identity, and I became really curious about what that might look like for a part of my identity that just doesn't get that much visibility. Absolutely. 
[00:10:00] Blake: I think that that's so essential for people to realize is, you know, everything that you go into and learn, every s and no matter what you do is gonna probably inform something in, you know, in, in, in, in any, in any mission that you take.
[00:10:15] Blake: I think a lot of times what's hard is maybe finding, the end goal and staying true to that. And it sounds like, you know, around this time, I, I, I'd be curious, so you're working at Goldman Sachs. Was, what was your, was there a moment where it clicked for you, where you were like, I'm doing all this, Like, why don't I go do my own thing full time and support the mission that I believe in the most 
[00:10:38] Tiffany: right now?
[00:10:39] Tiffany: Yeah. You know, the interesting backstory of me moving into Diversability full-time was that I got fired. And I wasn't working at Goldman at the time, so I was working at a startup. And you know, in startup land it can be, it can be very ruthless actually in any land, probably now in the economic environment we're in, but absolutely.
[00:11:01] Tiffany: But interestingly enough, so while I was at Goldman, I got involved. In their disability employee resource group. So a lot of these big companies will have communities which they call employee resource groups, or you, they might mm-hmm. , they might call them business resource groups or affinity groups.
[00:11:17] Tiffany: Yeah. And it's pretty much. Underrepresented identities create community and can come together. So I was part of Goldman's Asian group for Asian employees. I was part of their women's group as well. I think I, you know tried to show up for the L G B T group as an ally. And then they also had a budding disability.
[00:11:38] Tiffany: And so I felt like even though I had started Diversability at college and left it there, it was still a club at Georgetown at the time. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I, I was still having my disability cup full. And so after Goldman, I moved to Bloomberg, and interestingly enough, Bloomberg was in the beginning stages of creating all of its.
[00:11:58] Tiffany: And so I got to co-found and pitch to the Chief Diversity Officer, the creation of a disability employee resource group at Bloomberg. And so what ended up happening after there? So you'll kind of see a through the line of, I'm still working in financial services in one way or another, but I'm still able to.
[00:12:18] Tiffany: I'm still able to kind of like, celebrate and connect with the disability community in one way or another. And so interestingly enough the company that I went to after Bloomberg was called Revolt, and it was co-founded by P Diddy. So black-owned so cool, which is very cool. I was still working in a finance role, so, you know mm-hmm.
[00:12:39] Tiffany: Yeah. A company that's all about hip-hop and music and, and millennials and, and media. But I'm still in finance, so, so I remind people that I was probably like the least cool person there, but. But while I was there, it was, I doubt that it was. They prioritized racial diversity in terms of having a lot of black employees.
[00:12:58] Tiffany: And then I also noticed there were a lot of women there. I mean, it was also a media company, so maybe in the media world, there was, was better representation, but the company was too small for any of these communities. And so I started to get curious about how I could, how I. Continued to stay plugged in with the disability community.
[00:13:19] Tiffany: And interestingly enough, there was someone named Liz Tab who was active on LinkedIn and had, you know, a senior position at a nonprofit that's now known as a disability in, So I met with her for coffee. You know, again, this is through a Twitter message, and I said, Hey, you know, here's something that I did in college.
[00:13:40] Tiffany: I've been actively involved in the disability communities at my past corporate companies, but now I'm working at a startup that doesn't have, you know, that doesn't have these communities and I wanna figure out how to get involved. And she was encouraging in terms of being like, you know, Tiffany, the work that we do at Disability is maybe mainly on the business level.
[00:14:00] Tiffany: So we're mainly working with corporates on their policies and their strategies. But what you built at Georgetown, I could see, a place for it in New York City. And she's like, effectively what you're trying to do is like a meetup for disabled people and you know, our friends and allies can join us as well.
[00:14:16] Tiffany: So she became our first supporter. And while, while and while I was at Revolt, I relaunched diverse abilities as a side project, as a passion project. Wow. While I was, was still working full-time. Then I ended up moving to another startup, got fired, and then I said, you know, in between, you know, finding my next role, I'm gonna see if I can make this DIVERSABILITY thing work.
[00:14:40] Tiffany: And that was March? That was in March of 2017. 
[00:14:44] Blake: Oh my goodness. You know, I love how in a career path it is just a bunny trail where you can, it's never linear. It's always everything. It can work out for a reason, you know as somebody who, you know, did the corporate path and you know, I got fired from my job too, and I was like, and I was like, Oh my goodness, what do I do?
[00:15:07] Blake: And then you sit down, you get a second to mo to focus on what is your priority, what are your priorities, and then move forward into something that. You know, opens up or are you know exactly what you're looking for? And it's interesting, all those little intersections of meeting the right person and listening to like what you know is true for yourself and how that can guide you to, you know, the next logical step and how powerful intuition is in that along the way.
[00:15:34] Blake: Yeah. Sorry. Oh, 
[00:15:35] Tiffany: I was gonna say, I think there are like two big lessons in kind of what you, what you reflected me and one. You know, and this is often advised that I give to younger people, is that it's okay to change your mind. Like I thought I was gonna be in investment banking for my whole career, and the lifestyle wasn't sustainable for me.
[00:15:55] Tiffany: And you know, as I looked at the people who were more senior to me, I, I didn't exactly want their jobs or their lifestyles. They were still working the same hours I was. And traveling all the. So number one is okay to change your mind, and then number two, you know, you talk, you shared that experience of getting fired at the moment.
[00:16:12] Tiffany: It like, I think just sitting in that grief and that hurt and sometimes it might be shame is totally fine, right? I think it makes sense in retrospect, but when it happens, it sucks. So I just want, I don't wanna diminish that. Absolutely. How hard that experience was. 
[00:16:29] Blake: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's also just a bouncing off of what you just said there,, I've realized that it is extremely essential.
[00:16:37] Blake: I was listening to some of your videos and I listened to one about toxic positivity and the impact that that has. I mean, how did you learn about that? I mean, for me, when you said that, I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, cuz the video was a few years ago, but I was like, that is still something that, I mean, actively impacts me, impacts you know, people in my community.
[00:16:55] Blake: And, and I'm, that's something I, I've been having to unlearn, you know, just to be vulnerable real about that. I mean, it's something, to unlearn, especially when we have a public platform like 
[00:17:05] Tiffany: this. Yeah. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll share two, I'll share two anecdotes to that. The first is, I have this anti-ableism series on TikTok and me.
[00:17:15] Tiffany: And one of the phrases that I made, and so the series is, is like really bite-sized ways about how to be a better ally. And I think they're like 197 as of this recording. So there's a lot. Amazing. And, and I also wanna highlight there's no one way, you know, Cause oftentimes I'll come onto these podcasts and they're like, Okay, so.
[00:17:32] Tiffany: How can we be an ally? And I'm like, I have a hundred, 97 ways that's out there that's available. So, but, one of the parts of the series was around the phrase, when people say, Don't let your disability stop you. And after I shared that I had someone come to me and they said, Well, Tiffany, what can we say instead?
[00:17:53] Tiffany: When someone with a disability or any experience is going through a hard time, you know, I wanna, I wanna say something like motivating or encouraging to them. And I went back to them and I said, What you could ask is what kind of support do you need right now? You know, and that's kind of like a pattern interrupt, right?
[00:18:10] Tiffany: Because we're so used to being like, Oh, but it's, it could be worse, or it could get better, or like, it's gonna get better. You know, you just gotta change your mindset. But the thing is, is like when you're. It's really hard because honestly, you watch this talk like that talk was really about how to experience the most out of life.
[00:18:32] Tiffany: You need to sit, whether it's in the depths of your grief, to know what extreme gratitude looks like, right? You need to sit in spaces of extreme sadness to know what, what, you know, unconditional joy looks like. And so and so, yeah, I mean even I'm trying to work on pattern interrupting by, You could even just, and I think I even have a couple of suggestions in that talk too, which are like I'm listening.
[00:18:58] Tiffany: You could even say, I don't know what to say right now, but let me know what kind of response you're looking for. You know, cuz sometimes people will want encouraging words, and other times they are just looking for someone to listen. But that leads to the second thing, which is. I gave that talk, I think I was gonna say at the midway point of the pandemic, but we're still in it.
[00:19:20] Tiffany: But one of the things I noticed in the early days of the pandemic was that there were so many positive messages going around that Yes, that started to feel kind of toxic because. What I will describe the last couple of years that we've been through, I mean, most of us, the majority of us have been through extreme periods of social isolation.
[00:19:43] Tiffany: A lot of us have gotten c and have experienced what that is like. I would just, and then there have been periods of social unrest not only around, you know, C safety protocols in the disability community, but also Black Lives Matter, anti-Asian violence. And so we've been through collective grief and trauma and so to, to relay messages that things are great, just felt dissonant with what was going on.
[00:20:16] Tiffany: And so that became the inspiration for the talk and the inspiration. We're in a pandemic right now. There's a reason why it's called a pandemic and not a vacation. Mm-hmm. . And so the message the messages I'm getting are like vacation messages, like, have a great time. But, but it's, it's hard.
[00:20:34] Tiffany: And so how can we acknowledge the hard, the hard moments as well? But all of that to say, I, I think I just wanna remind our listeners that, you know, That whole talk was about toxic positivity, but I think genuine and authentic positivity is great. But also remember that everything exists on a spectrum and a band.
[00:20:56] Tiffany: And so if we have lots of positivity, there's gonna be some negativity, and that's okay too, right? It, it's just how we experience, the fullest, how we experience life, to the fullest. 
[00:21:10] Blake: Yeah, no, and I, I think that that is I mean, it, it's funny, it comes back to a fundamental truth of just trying to listen.
[00:21:17] Blake: I mean, it's, it's a skill to develop, but listening to yourself so that you can experience what you're truly experiencing and be real, you know, to put it, to put it simply. And you know, sometimes what I think about too, Entrepreneurs that are out there that are vocalizing these kinds of messages.
[00:21:35] Blake: And I wonder maybe what are, what would be some redirects for people? Because I love your series so much of like, hey, if you're looking to make an impact, maybe I, you know, I, I know one, one redirect that you just shared was challenging people to like what kind of support do you need? Yeah. What kind of support do you need?
[00:21:52] Blake: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, and I. I think that that's something that people should take the time, to start and consider whenever they're trying to figure out what kind of message they should put out there. Yeah. Now that you're at this stage, what, yeah, what kind of impact do you like to do, you can anticipate making now that you've gotta work with you know, so many great people and gotten to be in this industry for so long now?
[00:22:16] Tiffany: Yeah. I think I'll come back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier, about the disability center: economic justice or financial equity. Mm-hmm. . And I see that happen to happen in a couple of different ways. You mentioned it in my intro. So in addition to Diversability, I also run a micro-grant called the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter.
[00:22:36] Tiffany: Yeah. Which awards $1,000 monthly micro-grants to disability projects every month. And we've awarded. Over 65 in 10 different countries, over $65,000 too, which is amazing. Wow. And I will say I remember launching that alongside another disability advocate, Alice Wong in 2017. And so many people, I mean, I'll talk a little bit of the naysayers.
[00:23:00] Tiffany: And I've had both naysayers for Diversability and when we launched the awesome DIS Foundation disability chapter, they were like, We don't think this chap. Chapters like this don't exist for longer than a year or a year and a half. And now we're going, we just started our fifth year in July. And hopefully, we're not going anywhere.
[00:23:17] Tiffany: We made it through a pandemic, you know when finances were very tight for a lot of us as we were trying to figure out how to pivot. So yeah, so economic justice. So that was kind of like the first initiative in that space where I wanted to make an impact. And then absolutely more recently, I launched something called, The Disability Empowerment Endowed Fund, which sat at Georgetown University, but it's an endowment fund, which means that it will continue to make distributions in perpetuity.
[00:23:47] Tiffany: And come 2023, the endowment fund will be fully funded. So we needed to raise a hundred thousand dollars for it to be created. So I came up with the idea. I made, a large kind of seed donation, but we needed, we crowdfunded. And we got, you know thanks to everyone rallying together. I wanted to show, the power of our community.
[00:24:06] Tiffany: Absolutely. I wanted to create this endowment fund because not only did I wanna show that disability is important and needs to be a priority, but we need to be putting dollars behind it as well. So that was kind of like the second, It's like, Yeah. Oh, go. 
[00:24:20] Blake: No, I was just gonna say, it's, it's, it's like literally putting, putting our money where our mouth is and saying, Hey, we're gonna financially support people because guess what?
[00:24:30] Blake: We live in a world where We have to, That's what people, that, that's how people get the resources that they need, you 
[00:24:36] Tiffany: know? Yeah. And, and oftentimes, I, I talk about, so a lot of people will talk about anti-capitalism or post capitalistic worlds mm-hmm. . And I think that we get too caught up in moving in that direction that we forget that we're still existing in a capitalistic society.
[00:24:54] Tiffany: Unfortunately, that's, And because of that, we, we need money to live. Absolutely. So and so that kind of feeds into like my third initiative in this space, which is, you know, when I started Diversability, it was a club and community of one person in 2009. at Georgetown, I think we grew our listserv to about 400, which is pretty good on campus.
[00:25:18] Tiffany: I ended up relaunching Diversability in 2015 as a passion project on the side. Moved into it in 2017 and from 2017 until 2020. We were very scrappy. I couldn't figure out how, how we were going to become sustainable. And we kind of danced between having one or two other team members. So we were a team of like one to three.
[00:25:43] Tiffany: Now we have a team of 10. Everyone is paid. We also host monthly events. All of our speakers are paid as well. Yeah, I, I think I'm just trying to combat this idea of free, no free labor in the disability community. There will be some things that you're super passionate about that you're willing to do or, or take into account, you know, a corporate budget versus a nonprofit budget and, and adjust accordingly.
[00:26:09] Tiffany: But I think for me, this is, this is the kind of impact I wanna make, right? So not only are we providing people with valuable. Valuable skills and job experience, I hope. We also service their references and, and we've kind of seen this model work over the last couple of years of someone will be with us for, you know, a period and then they wanna apply for something else and we'll service their job reference or we'll write them a letter of recommendation and then they get it.
[00:26:37] Tiffany: And, and that's a big win for me, right? That's how we keep, that's how we keep this ecosystem healthy and, and working so, So, yeah, so I think it's looking at, you know, I feel very, very privileged with, you know, not, I, I feel very privileged to even mm-hmm. , even though, you know, you can look at me in my story and there are parts of it that are tragic.
[00:27:02] Tiffany: You know, I, I did grow up with a single parent because my dad passed away. I grew up in a single-parent home. And my mom in many ways is the hero of this story. Working hard. I mean, I've never seen a human being work so hard to support four children through all of their education and make sure that we are taken care of in one way or another.
[00:27:24] Tiffany: And so how can I pay that forward to my community as well? So I heard someone, Those are, So there's someone I admire, name Arlen Hamilton. Mm-hmm. Arlen is the founder of Backstage Capital. And she says when she talks about money, she says, How can I make sure that I take care of myself first and then my family, and then my community?
[00:27:44] Tiffany: And I think that's a great way to think about it too. So so yeah. So interestingly enough, like at the beginning of the pandemic we applied for, I think it was, Entrepreneur unemployment benefits like divers. We hadn't, we hadn't figured out how to make it work. It was just me and one other team member who was kind of like, Yeah, we, we were just trying to figure out how, how it would work.
[00:28:05] Tiffany: Yeah. To now being able to support 10 people. And I hope that you know, as the economy changes, we can continue, to ride that as well and continue to support ours. 
[00:28:18] Blake: I think that that's wonderful. I always wonder about that perspective because I talk to a lot of folks that are, I like that you talked about also the post-capitalism ideas where I, you know, I also, I am constantly Interested in a better formula for how to do life, Right?
[00:28:36] Blake: and for everybody to be supported in a, in a better way, you know? But I do think that for us too. Unwork, some of this, we have to get to a point where we're like, Hey, how do I as an individual reach out and make somebody else's lives better? And I love what you said. You have to, one, be able to sustain yourself.
[00:28:54] Blake: Two, sustain your family. And then three, it's the people that are at arm's length. And I think you're doing such a great job of being able to welcome in you know, one people building your staff, but then two, I mean, it's so community based, being able to have a system where referrals can come in and then you're.
[00:29:11] Blake: Hey, my friend vouched for you. I, I love them. I would love to bring you in as well. I, I think that's neat, that model. Do you anticipate continuing to also, actually before I get ahead of myself, you mentioned naysayers as well at the beginning of this, when you were starting to do all of this.
[00:29:27] Blake: Were you getting any kind of feedback like that in the beginning? 
[00:29:30] Tiffany: Yeah. I mean I, I, I, I share some version of this story. There, there were points in the early days when there just wasn't excited about Diversability for it to exist. And so I share this story of, I, I came up with this idea and I think it was probably like August or September of 2009 and I reached out to two other disabled students that I knew of at Georgetown saying, Hey, I'm thinking of starting this club.
[00:29:57] Tiffany: What do you? and, you know, whether it was emailed overwhelm or email fatigue, I just didn't hear from them. But silence can also be an answer in itself. And so I, I didn't, at that time, I hadn't received any peer support yet. And so I reached out to, I, I reached out to a couple of administrators that I knew.
[00:30:16] Tiffany: So my senior year I was a resident assistant, so I was interacting a lot with Georgetown. And I told my like manager, of the resident assistants that I wanted to start this club. And he's like, Oh, there's someone that you should chat with who you know is his counter, is his like peer counterpart on the staff who's passionate about disability studies.
[00:30:37] Tiffany: So I had a conversation with her and she, and she's like, Tiffany, as much as I am passionate about this space, and you know, she had studied it in her education. She was like, I don't think Georgetown is ready for something. And, it was kind of like those couple of touch points that informed me tabling the idea.
[00:30:57] Tiffany: So keep in mind it's August, September, and October I got invited to speak on a panel around disability advocacy on campus. Now, keep in mind I wasn't even like a disability advocate. I just was a student who happened to have a dis. So I spoke on this panel and the panel brought together all DC area schools.
[00:31:16] Tiffany: So we had, you know, American George Washington University, Gallu debt. And at the end of the panel I said, You know, I had this idea to start a club. On Georgetown's campus around a disability identity. But I reached out to a couple of people and no one seems interested. And all of a sudden the people at this mini-conference slash event were like, I'll be part of your club.
[00:31:37] Tiffany: So it wasn't even like students at Georgetown, it was like a couple of professors from Georgetown and then like another student who didn't even go, like a couple of students and people who didn't even go to Georgetown ended up becoming our first supporters, you know? Wow. And I think that that. What is that well for?
[00:31:57] Tiffany: I think there's part of me, part of this whole journey that was, that was a little stubborn, but it, it was a, it was more so to say, this is something that I so desperately need, and it is fascinating to me that no one cares or thinks that the world is ready for this. And in the early days of Diversability, people would tell me that my ideas were radical.
[00:32:20] Tiffany: And Wow. And now I take that as a compliment. Yes. But, it's forward-thinking. Yeah. But, in the early days, like Diversability, this is 2009, and you can go online and find. We applied for a grant, of $500. We applied for a grant to get just get some money for this club to get off the ground.
[00:32:40] Tiffany: And in our grant proposal, which you can find online, it says, I'm looking to start a movement around disability pride. When I went to go interview for the grant, again, Diversability hadn't been formed yet. Still in super early stages, no supporters yet. I went before the grant committee and they said, Why do you think people are gonna care about it?
[00:33:00] Tiffany: Like they outwardly asked me that question and then they. I don't understand the concept of disability pride because I don't understand how someone can be proud to be disabled. Right. And I think it's so fascinating. Come, you know, in 2015 New York City declared July as disability pride month complete with the Disability Pride Parade in 2022 more cities, even the White House.
[00:33:25] Tiffany: Said Happy disability pride month. You know, it's a thing. Disability pride is a concept in and of itself, but it was, it's, and, and so this is part of why I have appreciated being in this space for this long because I have seen progress. And I think it can be easy to come in and say, This isn't the right time for this, or, I don't see, a space for this, but I think I wanna transition our community.
[00:33:54] Tiffany: Very much. I mean, and I said in these spaces, you know, scarcity and lack spaces, you know because a disability can sometimes be seen as lack. Mm-hmm. , but there's a lot more movement around seeing things instead of loss in terms of gain or abundance. Right. Or that there's space and opportunity for everyone.
[00:34:14] Tiffany: So sometimes I joke that I feel like I was before my time, but we're still around and we went through a rebranding. I think, yeah, we went through a rebranding a year ago and we were going back and forth in terms of what our tagline was gonna be. And we were like, Do we, do we want it to be?
[00:34:30] Tiffany: Cause originally it was amplifying disabled voices and we ended up with elevating disability pride. So the same thing that we started with in 2009. And part of the reason why I chose that is yes, we can amplify disabled voices or we can raise disability awareness. , but you can still be aware of disability and think that we are subhuman think that we don't deserve economic self-sufficiency.
[00:34:56] Tiffany: Think that we don't deserve to get married or have a job, you know, but when mm-hmm. . But disability pride is like, I'm here despite all of you saying all of this stuff, and I'm proud and I like myself. And that is radical. Absolutely. And so that's why we kind of. Like these are kind of the things that go into thinking about how language has the power to empower or disempower 
[00:35:21] Blake: communities.
[00:35:23] Blake: I just got chills thinking about how motivated you've been to, you know, follow through with this mission. I always am curious, whenever I hear people that are driven like this, what is the. I guess, what's the mindset that made you, even after your first, like, you know, when you, everything was you, you, you heard silence after sending out your initial emails, and then you said, You know what, I'm gonna get in front of some more people, you know?
[00:35:48] Blake: What was the mindset that you think kept driving you forward through 
[00:35:51] Tiffany: all of that? Yeah, so one thing, I'm proud. So, so I guess, I guess I'll share, you have, you have kind of like your visionaries and then you have your execution, your doers mm-hmm. , and I am, I'm a doer. And so I don't think I, I don't think I necessarily had very clear foresight into what the vision was, but I knew how to do things and so for me, it was like, oh, if it's just an email or if it's just a meeting this is one more step that I can take.
[00:36:23] Tiffany: I will say in 2015 when we were looking at relaunching Diversability, you know, now incorporating as an LLC, like coming out of a campus environment, I, I told myself, I'm gonna organize one event, and if no one shows up, then there is not a need for this. Mm-hmm. . And now, you know, we're in 2022, so that was 20, so seven years.
[00:36:46] Tiffany: Yeah, in 2022, we're now hosting virtual, virtual events. And we have, you know, in our last couple of virtual events, we've had over a hundred, two, over a hundred, 200, 300 people RSVP for them. And the topics were all different. We did one on financial equity. There was one on digital accessibility.
[00:37:08] Tiffany: But people still. People still are thirsty for this type of conversation, you know, And our launch event sold out for us, sold out was 70 tickets sold. And I think that helped, that helps cover the venue registration and some food and mm-hmm. and a couple of other things. But people showed up.
[00:37:30] Tiffany: Yeah. And so and so, yes, I think in the early days, I mean, I think for me it was that panel that I spoke at and I remember the day because October 22nd, 2009 was the day of that event. But it was also the first time I had ever been invited to speak publicly about my disability origin story. I had never told anyone about it before publicly.
[00:37:54] Tiffany: And, and then when I did, it was either like whispers cuz it was a secret or you know sure I got very emotional cuz there was still a lot of. So, Absolutely. I think I may be told myself, you know, through all of those, cuz it also happened in a short period where it was like August or September that email was sent and this event was in October.
[00:38:12] Tiffany: I think I told myself at the October thing if I made that statement that I wanted to start this club and no one was interested and it kind of just ended there, then I think I probably wouldn't have moved forward. Yeah. Yeah. But finally, oh my gosh. I guess it's like the three counts. You know you had the email, but no one responded.
[00:38:31] Tiffany: You had the meeting but didn't get the response. I won. And the third time, the third time's a charm. People were so enthusiastic, about, about the possibility of what we could 
[00:38:42] Blake: create. Wow. It seemed like from there, I mean, there's some pretty incredible momentum in terms of just thinking about that being, when you first dove into public speaking, I mean, did you have a pretty long history with public speaking in the, in the past before that?
[00:38:58] Tiffany: No. Yeah, I think it's. So my last year at Goldman, I was a recruiter, and part of why I wanted to be a recruiter was I wanted to get better at public speaking. And as a recruiter, you're like giving presentations all the time. You're speaking with prospective students. Yes. You're like, your job is like talking and selling.
[00:39:18] Tiffany: And so interestingly enough, so after I and I didn't share this about my time at Bloomberg, but after my time being a recruiter at Goldman, I got a job as a production assistant at Bloomberg Television. So I 
[00:39:35] Blake: what have you not done? I know. 
[00:39:37] Tiffany: But the through line was I could leverage my financial, my time working at a bank to mm-hmm.
[00:39:43] Tiffany: To a journalism media company that was covering financial news, you know, So I knew the subject matter, but I didn't know like, how to tell a story effectively. But I kind of look at all of these moments as. Little skills in my toolkit were, so now when I was at Bloomberg Television, I was like, I'm a production assistant.
[00:40:02] Tiffany: I'd love to work my way up to maybe doing some on-camera stuff, you know? And so ultimately what I learned from that, So I did end up getting promoted to becoming a segment producer and writer, but I realized that most journalists are reporting on other people's stories. And I thought, you know, I feel like I wanna be someone who's making the news and not someone who's just asking about it.
[00:40:27] Tiffany: But that experience taught me, and I have my podcast too, like how to ask better questions, right? So I think that there are skills just gained through every single one of these. And after, after my time at Bloomberg, I ended up going back in the house to Revolt. And at the time I. Wow. Like this company is real.
[00:40:47] Tiffany: It's celebrity-owned. It's really on the cutting edge of trying to bring music and millennials represented on the big screen and little screen everywhere. And I loved what we were building, but yeah, my, my exit out of revolt, I actually, and this is, this is random, a random thing that happened, but I ended up winning a scholarship to learn how to.
[00:41:12] Tiffany: Oh, I know. And it was, and it was in Amsterdam. So I had, I had been self-taught. I made a website in high school and it was all self-taught or just like copying code from one place to another. And I started to learn like again revolt is also when I relaunched Diversability. So while I was mm-hmm.
[00:41:30] Tiffany: still working at this, this great music startup I was running this Diversability event. And one of the events that I got to attend was it was like a partnership between at and t and NYU called The Connectability Challenge. And they were looking for tech-enabled solutions around solving different things related to the disability experience.
[00:41:52] Tiffany: And that's when I realized just how important tech was. And then I was like, well, Maybe I should like learn how to build things. . Yeah. Yeah. So, I applied for this. Yeah. I applied for this scholarship and the cool thing was, was that the scholarship was in Amsterdam and I had never been to Europe before.
[00:42:09] Tiffany: So here was a combination of kind of like personal and professional coming into play, which is, yeah, here's a, a city and a country and a continent I've never been to before. Plus learning something that I think will benefit me potentially in my disability advocacy journey. So I said yes, but because I said yes, I had to resign from the result and revolt and they were super supportive.
[00:42:34] Tiffany: Mm-hmm. . And here's another lesson I learned is that like, don't burn any bridges. Yeah. I'm still in touch with all of my former or yeah. I'm still in touch with my former manager. We're on, we're on good terms. You know, if I pass through New York mm-hmm. , we'll see if, if they have time to meet up. And the whole way I got my job at Revolt was someone I used to work with at Goldman.
[00:42:54] Tiffany: Was an, was an investor in revolt and saw that I had transitioned to Bloomberg television. So I'd made the transition from healthcare banking to media. And he is like, Oh, Tiffany, given your interest in media and that you have the finance background, do you wanna come back and do finance in a media company?
[00:43:12] Tiffany: And wow. And so wow. . And so that's how that came to be. 
[00:43:16] Blake: That's incredible and I, I love getting to learn about anybody's toolkit that has given them the skills to be able to do what they need to do today, you know or the thing that they love the most. I you know, I know for me, I, I'm, I've, I'm a little bit of a, I've always been like a little bit of a jack of all trades, and usually for me that means being able to you know, one, I, I started and I was like, Okay, I'll get the sociology.
[00:43:40] Blake: Not exactly sure what's going on. Go into you know, tech, go into you know, sales, go into marketing, go into the restaurant industry, and now I'm getting to just, you know, do what I love the most, which is talk to people and you know, come from a background of working within several different industries, getting to learn.
[00:44:00] Blake: You know about people that I, that I learn about people's stories and, and try to make connections where I can and do anything I possibly can to see other people grow and, and, and meet other people. So it's pretty exciting. All right, Tiffany. We just experience the virtual world, you know, inter internet, drop, and all kinds of stuff.
[00:44:23] Blake: I always, I like it though, because I think it's fun. It's like a fun new way to experience I don't know, just communication and, and making it happen and problem-solving and building, building things together. It's kind of fun. So, 
[00:44:36] Tiffany: Yeah, I mean, I remember the days. Most podcasts were recorded in person.
[00:44:42] Tiffany: And then I think with the emergence of. Zoom and realized that we could have virtual conversations. Like we started seeing all of these podcast platforms explode. Right? But yeah. For those who are interested, I had an internet outage, so so I had to switch devices, 
[00:45:00] Blake: Hey, and you stayed agile. It's great.
[00:45:03] Blake: I'm like, I'm like, Look at that. Where we're right back. We're right back on it. I've had the same thing happen to me countless time's over. Tiffany, I, you know, I, I've, I've loved getting to learn about you know, your, your story and, and everything so far. I wanted to ask a few kinds of closing out questions that I, I was, I was thinking of, and one of them was, what are, maybe some, what are some of the challenges that you'd extend to some others that wanna start a company in an equitable and impactful way?
[00:45:30] Tiffany: I would say, I mean, I think one thing I appreciate about my entrepreneurial journey is that I'm a beneficiary of what I've. And so it was, I think that if you just have if you're working on solving a problem that you understand so intimately, that will shine through in whatever you're building. I think the other thing I'll say is I think asking who's missing.
[00:46:00] Tiffany: Is good to take that credit critical lens of our work sometimes and think about whose perspectives are not, are not being incorporated here, and is there an avenue or a way that we can help, that we can help course correct or change that? 
[00:46:17] Blake: Absolutely. I I I think that's such a good such a great way that you phrased that too, because, you know, one thing that we don't consider is, With all of these unique perspectives out there.
[00:46:28] Blake: If they're not a part of your company, then that means that there's, they're not being represented. And that means that you aren't, you know, taking everything that you should into consideration with what you're, you know, what you're doing in the world. And I, I feel like that can leave yourself vulnerable to a position where you are Enabling racism, ableism, and, and everything because you're saying, Hey, you know, we're, our vision that we're putting out there into the world isn't taking into consideration everybody's, and we're not taking steps to, to ready that or to prepare for that, you know?
[00:47:02] Tiffany: Yeah. I mean, I think it's also important for us too. To turn inward and take a critical lens at the ways that we are complicit. Mm-hmm. in upholding. Yeah. A lot of these systems of oppression as well. I recently learned about something from Michelle Kim called Hidden Stories. And a good example of a hidden story is when I walk down the street as an Asian woman, I'm afraid of getting attacked by someone who does not like people who look like them.
[00:47:32] Tiffany: By someone who's a black man when they walk down the street, may be afraid of being interrogated by police. And so here you have two experiences, one of which I don't share. But how can I also understand that that story also exists? 
[00:47:51] Blake: Yeah, And I, I think that that is, That's something that I was, I was reading about a little bit before we hopped on here too, is you know, the ability to take into consideration a more intersectional perspective.
[00:48:04] Blake: What are, I guess, some ways that people can incorporate intersectionality into, or even how you've incorporated intersectionality into the way that you live your life and build community and do what you're doing 
[00:48:16] Tiffany: right now. Yeah, I, I think I come back to this question of, of the who's missing mm-hmm.
[00:48:22] Tiffany: Oh, yeah. But also I, I think that you know, so, so there's a, there's like a two to three-minute video that you can watch from Microsoft Enable called like what is disability intersectionality? And that's a question that I've gotten asked myself by people who don't share my race or don't share my gender, but share my disability.
[00:48:45] Tiffany: And so disability intersectionality is the way in which our lived experience of disability is impacted by our other identities. So a good example of that could be me, because I'm the daughter of Asian immigrants, and shame is viewed in the context of the family. It was instilled in me to not tell anyone about my disability and not draw any attention to it.
[00:49:08] Tiffany: I mean, I've done something very different Yeah. In the work that I've done. But yeah, I, I think it's just thinking, it's just, again, taking a critical lens at what are the aspects of diversity that we can see what are the aspects of diversity that we can't see who's missing?
[00:49:24] Tiffany: And is there a way that we can intentionally bring that perspective into, into our spaces while also. . Also making sure it's not performative or not, or not tokenizing. Sure. You know, making sure you're compensating them for their time and, and other things like that. 
[00:49:41] Blake: Absolutely. And the last thing that I always ask as well as it's a two-parter.
[00:49:46] Blake: What are you're the favorite thing, your favorite thing about what you do? And finally yeah. Is, are, are there any myths that you would wanna dispel about being an entrepreneur? 
[00:49:57] Tiffany: Mm. Okay. So the first one, what's my favorite thing about what I do? I, I guess feel proud that I'm using whatever power and privilege I can do, to move this space forward.
[00:50:12] Tiffany: So I also understand that I am not single-handedly going to dismantle the system of oppression that is able. But one person's perspective can be changed by, you know, you watched a couple of my TED talks, or by having someone join our community and realize that they're not alone. Or having someone join our team and realize that their skills are valuable.
[00:50:38] Tiffany: So, so yeah, I think for me, it. I, My favorite thing is just seeing, or, I'll, I'll change my answer. My favorite thing about what I do is that I have been doing this for, 13 years now it's being able to see how people in our community have grown and found their voices in this advocacy space, have written, books, and have become TEDx speakers.
[00:51:04] Tiffany: Because if you, The definition of community that I use is when a group of people come together to nurture their growth and, and each other's growth. And so for me, so much of what I wanted to build with this community was focused on growth. Like, how can I help you in your growth journey and how can we all grow together as a movement?
[00:51:26] Tiffany: And then to answer your second question about myths around entrepreneurship I would say it's easier and harder than you think it is. , which, which I know, which I know isn't, isn't helpful. But, I think, I think the myth is that We think that entrepreneurship needs to look a certain way and that an entrepreneur needs to be venture-backed or needs to get, needs to be a TEDx speaker or needs to be featured in XYZ press.
[00:51:55] Tiffany: But I would challenge, again, I would, I would encourage us to take a critical lens in terms of all the ways that entrepreneurship can look. . And so I've recently been using the phrase creative entrepreneurship because and I mentioned her earlier, Arlen Hamilton, not only did she talk. Making money, to support yourself and your family and your community.
[00:52:18] Tiffany: But she also talked about having multiple streams of income, and so she is, I mean, she's a venture capitalist, but also a startup founder and also a speaker and you know, does, Yeah. I mean, she has, she has a whole masterclass on diversifying your streams of income, and I. One. One of the myths that I had to unlearn was that I felt like to be an entrepreneur, I only needed to be doing my one entrepreneurial venture, and that's where all of my income was gonna come from.
[00:52:53] Tiffany: But especially in the early days, and even now as our team is growing and we're still trying to think through financial sustainability, I've gotten creative about different ways that I'm able to support myself economically to then support my family, to then support my community. 
[00:53:10] Blake: I think that that is so essential for people to, to, to learn as well, is that there are multiple ways that you can you know, get yourself out there and, and be able to achieve what you're looking.
[00:53:21] Blake: Something that I heard recently was, you know, the thing that you want to be able to, you know, stay true to is the ultimate end goal, or whatever that is. And then in between that, there's probably little, you know, the strategies gonna vary and, and always change up. Tiffany, it has been an absolute pleasure getting to meet you.
[00:53:38] Blake: I, I, I just was loving getting to absorb your, your story. I know our audience is going to love getting to learn everything about you if they have not already heard about you. It's been an honor having you on the podcast. Is there anywhere that people can keep up with you and, and any, you know, anything additional that you'd like to share with the audience about ways that they might be able to support what you're doing?
[00:53:58] Blake: Right. 
[00:54:01] Tiffany: Sure. Yeah. So you can learn about me. I have a website, tiffany u.com. All of my social links are there if you wanna follow me across any of the social channels. And if you're looking to get more involved in disability and support what we're doing there. We also have a website, my diversability.com, and we've got all of our social channels linked there.
[00:54:20] Tiffany: There's a lot of really great educational content that we're putting out at disability. We host events every single month. We also now have a membership community called the Diversability Leadership Collective. If you'd like to sponsor membership for, so, you can always do that too. But there are.
[00:54:34] Tiffany: You know, there are so many different ways to get involved. Like we have a free community as well that sits on Facebook that non-disabled allies are welcome to join. So, yeah, I would say if you enjoy this conversation, you can follow me. But if you want to be part of this broader disability movement and community that we're building, you're welcome to join and check out Diversability as well.
[00:54:55] Tiffany: Tiffany, thank 
[00:54:56] Blake: you so much. It was a pleasure and I hope you have a great rest of your day, everybody. I hope everybody listening has a wonderful day.
[00:55:02] Blake: Thank you for. On this episode of the GEM Series, the podcast for anybody dedicated to investing in themselves. If you'd like to see the resources mentioned in this episode, learn more about them while we are up to a rocket level, or come over and join our team, just click on the links below. Until next time, this is Blake Chapman, and remember to be awesome and do awesome things.