Kelvin Crosby: 0:06

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners Podcast. We're not waiting for change. We're investing it. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating a more accessible world. Hey, hey, hey, it's so good to see you. It's another beautiful day in the neighborhood and I'm your host, Kelvin Crosby. And this is my co-host, Chris Maher. How you doing, man?

Chris Maher: 0:41

Hey Kelvin, I'm good, my friend. It's good to see you. Good to be with you as always. What's happening?

Kelvin Crosby: 0:46

I'm doing good. It was great to see you at CES, even though there was a smell coming from you. It wasn't bad, you know? It's always an interesting smell when you smell Chris Maher, you know.

Chris Maher: 0:58

I hope it's not bad.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:01

I have to, I can't resist that. Because as a deaf/blind person, you know, smells and touch and taste are my only main senses I got left. And so when I, so I'm always leaning on, like, I'm hoping you smell okay. But hey,

Chris Maher: 1:19

You know, Kelvin, ever since, and you've always kind of busted my chops a little bit, but ever since my daughter was on the podcast, like that has unlocked.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:28

Oh, it sure has. Because now I know where the limits are. You know, I I know how far we can go and how far we should not go.

Chris Maher: 1:37

All right, fair enough. Fair enough. Well it was great to see you at CES and being there together in person was awesome.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:43

So I'm excited about today's guest, and I'm excited to kind of see because honestly, this lady has a history of doing amazing things. And man, I'm just excited about it. So I'll let you take it away.

Chris Maher: 1:57

You got it. Me too. No, it's gonna be a really fun conversation. So our guest today is Lauren Labrano, who is, and I'm gonna hopefully get this right, Lauren, is the head of accessibility and global disability inclusion at Amazon for the Inclusive Experiences and Technology Group. Did I get that right, Lauren?

Lauren Lobrano: 2:14

Thumbs up. You you nailed it, Chris. Thanks for that.

Chris Maher: 2:18

Awesome. Well, it's great to have you on the show. It's funny, I was thinking about, we've known each other now for about two years, and we actually, I was trying to figure out where we first met, and I bet you you don't remember.

Lauren Lobrano: 2:32

I don't remember.

Chris Maher: 2:33

So Lauran, I didn't either, but you know where we met? We met in February of 2024 up in Boston at the Perkins and Howe Innovation hackathon.

Lauren Lobrano: 2:45

That's right. The Perkins School for the Blind and the Howe Innovation Center when we co-hosted with Perkins and MIT to hold that that accessibility hackathon. That's right.

Chris Maher: 2:57

That was amazing. So we met briefly there. Yeah, we met briefly there, and then and then we actually spent some quality time together at CES in '25, January of '25. And then we, you know, bump into each other all the time now at all the various events, and you are just the best. So thank you, though, because we know you're super busy, and thank you so much for coming on the show. Before we get into the amazing work that you're doing at Amazon and and amazing work that Amazon as a as a company is doing around accessibility and inclusion, I'd love to start just with your background, because your background is amazing, as Kelvin alluded to before, because you've spent time working in the government, you spent time at the Red Cross, you spent time working with veterans and wounded warriors. Like the ARC is really pretty phenomenal. And so I'd love for you to start there with kind of like uh and also any personal family connections to disability if you're willing to share that. But let's start there before we get into the Amazon stuff.

Lauren Lobrano: 3:50

Absolutely. Thanks, thanks for that, Chris. It's it's great to be here with you and and Kelvin today. So I'll jump right in. I I don't know that it's an amazing path, but it is certainly a non-traditional path that brought me to this work. I, you know, as you mentioned, I started off working from the government. I graduated from Vanderbilt University, wasn't quite sure what I was going to do. I had done some internships on Capitol Hill. So I moved to DC. I started working like everyone does in Banana Republic and doing the Capitol Hill, and really found a lot of the policy discussions really interesting. Was thrilled to have the opportunity to go work for the Office of Management and Budget, which is executive office of the White House, and is not a well-known organization, but it's probably the most powerful organization that you've never heard of. Control the Purse Strings, Control Policy. And while it was interesting, one of the things that I I really um started to understand, took a shift, and and part of that shift was that that really led to some of my purpose was I remember it very vividly, in April of 2003, the United States had just launched this campaign in Iraq. And I was sitting at my desk and watching TV as the statue of Saddam Hussein came down. And some talking head somewhere said, look how easy that was for us. And I very clearly remember thinking, the complexes in the world, and there's no us in this. There's the people who are doing this. However, you think about it, or whether you agree or disagree, there were people who were serving and following orders, and then there were the rest of us who were watching from afar. So from there, I really started to think about how can I have a bigger impact and find a better calling? And that's what eventually led to me working for the American Red Cross. I was very fortunate to work and have a couple of different positions there. One of our primary goals was for service members, veterans, military families, not in-depth, what we were, we were at the bridge. So, how do we take some of the fear out of some of the conversations happening around TBI and post-traumatic disorder and some of those other things to really make it that to bring in a little bit of comfort and to having conversations about it. Was also very fortunate to be part of a program to really bolster our support services within the global Red Cross network with some funding that we gave out. So that, again, I'm a big fan of anchoring. Let's serve people where they are with what they need. They're gonna be the most likely to know what's gonna grow in their community. So worked on that, went from there uh to Wounded Warrior Project, which was...

Chris Maher: 6:50

Lauren, quick question on that. Was it that experience at the Red Cross and working with active service members? And I'm assuming to someplace like Wounded Warrior Project?

Speaker 1: 7:01

Absolutely. It was one I learned a lot from that experience with the American Red Cross. So a lot of people know of the Red Cross due to their work in first aid, CPR, health classes, also disaster response. We built a really strong relationship with disaster response around mental health and well-being. And again, this long-term care, where we were trying to build in the psychological first aid. And you know, the signature wounds of these conflicts was TBIs, traumatic brain injuries, PTSD. And what we also saw were a lot of people surviving due to really strong, fantastic battlefield care, right? We learned how to do this really well. We and I'll talk about this a little bit more, but we learned how to treat people at point of injury and very rapidly get them through a system to having sustainable care. So it really changed a lot of my perspective around acquired disabilities and those non-apparent disabilities that people do carry with them. An eye-opening experience was also the humanitarian response that we ask a lot of our National Guard and Reservists to respond to, Hurricane Katrina, earthquakes globally, you know, that stuff. A lot of veterans and service members would say their deployments to disaster zones were significantly harder because of what they saw around innocent people. I've obviously not been to war, but they would carry these visions of children who had been, you know, crushed in when buildings came down and families who were separated. These are people who are just sleeping. They were going about their business. So I learned a lot from that experience around long-term support and care that people will really need to thrive. To live their lives, right? Not just not just come home and and sit around, but how do you get people re-engaged? That was that was the start of that journey.

Chris Maher: 9:11

Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. It's really interesting that it was the disaster relief experiences that almost had in some, in many cases a greater impact on the soldiers and their and their mental health and well-being.

Lauren Lobrano: 9:28

Yeah, but a lot of these countries that we deployed people to for humanitarian support were at the time, these are not always, you know, these are countries that that don't have well-established ecosystems of care. So tough decisions would be made around these individuals who are going to have lifelong disabilities. And how can we support them when we literally have craters where buildings used to stand?

Chris Maher: 9:56

Right.

Lauren Lobrano: 9:57

And that is something that I think in the US we're not as accustomed to as some other places. And certainly we have our challenges with with safe drinking water and housing and things like that, but that level of destruction without the ability for long-term care is very different.

Chris Maher: 10:16

Yeah.

Lauren Lobrano: 10:16

And that that really resonated and and became an unfortunate part of the stickiness that that these service members and veterans were living with.

Kelvin Crosby: 10:26

I mean, I think as you talk about it. Like I've done some 911 emergency stuff and some of the blue envelope stuff and all of that. And it's like, man, there's so much that need that it's so important. And it's just listening to you talk, I'm like, wow, we still have a long way to go. B

Lauren Lobrano: 10:47

Yeah.

Chris Maher: 10:48

And I also think that a lot of people when they think about disability, it's visible disability, right? They don't think about you know non-apparent or non-visible disability. Mental health, I think for most people is not a part of disability, and it's a very large subsection of disability. And then and then it's the acquired, right? I heard a stat recently. I think the stat was like in the neighborhood of 70 percent of people with disabilities, they're not born with them, they acquire them.

Lauren Lobrano: 11:18

And usually working age, right? Between the age of 18 and 65, statistics vary. It's it's hard to get global statistics around this because disability is defined in in various different ways from country to country, but somewhere between 70 and 80 percent is what we we think is the number of people who acquire a disability at working age, which is one of those challenges around when we think about a corporate ecosystem. There's always a lot of thought around talent acquisition, but I really like to think about manager enablement, professional development, support systems again for those who acquire a disability while they're in the workplace and not not necessarily connected to work, but while they're working age and how that changes. And that was a big part of working with the the military and veteran community and being an advocate and supporting that that process that it really the intensity in that community from what we saw for you know 21, 22 years was foundational to a lot of my approach and how I view disability now.

Chris Maher: 12:29

And the military itself is one of the largest corporations with quotes around the word corporations. I mean, it's a massive organization with you know global infrastructure, et cetera. So how do you go from there, and I think you might have taken one corporate stop before, but how do you end up at Amazon?

Lauren Lobrano: 12:48

So yeah, it it was a it was an interesting journey. So I did leave the American Red Cross and went to work for Wounded Warrior Project. I was based out of Germany, Landstuhl Germany, where Laundstuhl Regional Medical Center, which is the largest US military hospital outside of the United States, and we saw everyone who was medically evacuated from Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, Europe, you know, training exercises still happen, went through Laundstuhl. So well over 100,000. And these are pretty serious catastrophic injuries, also people diagnosed with cancer, you know, a lot of different diagnosis coming through. Worked there for about three and a half years, and then went to very briefly work for the US Chamber of Commerce, hiring our heroes and workforce development. And again, that experience between the American Red Cross and Wounded Warrior Project really led me to Paralyze Veterans of America, which is one of the longest standing, truly a civil rights advocacy organization, not just a veterans organization, but they do consider themselves to be a disability civil rights advocacy group, workforce development program. And part of my belief is people do acquire disabilities, and we have to work together to help them build community with however they're living now and where they want to go in the future. And a lot of times that can start with volunteering. It could start with sports. We see adaptive sports, it's a great entryway, you know, wheelchair basketball invented really for veterans coming home from World War II. We see individuals who perhaps break in through volunteering. Sometimes it's the veteran service organizations, the military service organizations, the other disability advocacy orgs that give people that lifeline and education is important. How do you find a new trade, a new skill, combine it with what you really knew well and were doing well? You know, we have a range of opportunities as human beings. We don't have to stick with one career. So how do we help people develop those new passions and interests? And that was a big part of my role at Paralyzed Veterans of America. And there I was working with a lot of different corporations, you know, wheeling and dealing, trying to find out who was who was really hiring individuals with disabilities well, who was seeing through on the commitment, who was taking it a step further b eyond just, you know, maybe filling a requirement or a goal. And met people at Amazon. And they were at one point they were looking for a global disability inclusion leader, and a contact reached out to me. I had just taken my first corporate job and I had been there about 10 months. And at first I was like, Oh, I, you know, I'm in this role 10 months. No, I want to try to see this through, I want to be committed. And then the next day I woke up and said, Lauren, you're, the ability to scale at a company like Amazon is unmatched.

Chris Maher: 15:53

Right.

Lauren Lobrano: 15:54

So that's that's how I ended up here.

Chris Maher: 15:56

Yeah, the scale, the this somewhat of a company of one when you think about it. You know, it's global reach. And that's amazing. I I gotta say, as as we were sitting here listening to your background, and I knew some of it, but not all of it. I think about my own formative years, and God, I was a slouch compared to you. I mean, it's it's incredible. Like it's incredible, Lauren.

Kelvin Crosby: 16:14

So I mean, we we we kind of expect that from you, Chris. You know, slouch, sitting out eating bon-bons, you know.

Lauren Lobrano: 16:23

You know, I think we all have a different journey that leads us to different places. I was very lucky, and I do think that that advocacy work with the nonprofit space was really fundamental to my perspective now and how I approach my day-to-day work. And I do think business is an important part of this equation for the sustainability. I think nonprofits and government are certainly, you know, there's a three-legged stool. You have to have business. Business is a make or break across the board. So I'm very lucky to be at Amazon and have this opportunity and work with really, you know, just like when I worked at the Office of Management and Budget at OMB, here at Amazon I get to work with some pretty brilliant people who open a lot of doors and have been great about bringing me in and educating me and teaching me how to do this at scale.

Chris Maher: 17:15

Yeah. So tell us, so let's dig into that. Tell us more about the work that you and your group, and the company, are doing within, I guess, I guess initially within, or to start, within the inclusive experiences of technology group, and then maybe more broadly Amazon.

Lauren Lobrano: 17:30

Yeah. So I'm very lucky to be part of Inclusive Experiences in Technology or IXT as we call it. We're really a central inclusion team. So we reach across multiple Amazon business lines and business orgs, which is fantastic. It, you know, Amazon tends to be a very decentralized company because it brings innovation. And a part of what we get to do is see that innovation and understand how do we pick this up and build it across the company, right? What are the things that we're doing really well? A big part of that, and I just love this philosophy. Candi Castleberry, who is the the vice president of IXT, she's one of the top leaders at Amazon. She's on what we call our S team or our senior team, which is the top executives in the company globally. She has really brought us into this idea of how do we adjust our inclusion work, our accessibility work around what we call the three B's. Bolted On, Built-In, and Born Inclusive. And I love this because it resonates so well with the accessibility community all the time. So, how do we take, you know, when we think about bolted on, it's these are the programs that kind of run parallel to the real work and the accessibility community. I would call these a website overlay. So it's there, it provides some access, but it's not, it's not, it's extremely inelegant. It may not have lasting impact, and it's probably at the most risk for reorganizations, you know, when things have to be cut and again burnout because you're constantly fighting, right? You're constantly fighting for your seat and your place and to be taken seriously. And then Candi really has us on this journey to shift that to built-in. Built-in is when you have a seat at the table, you're influencing things, you're able to start building accessibility into the product lifeline, right? You're starting to think about accessibility along with security. More often, perhaps not all the time, but you're making you're making progress. It leads to less burnout. There are probably still some burnout as you as you advocate and push for this. And then board inclusive, right? This is the goal. This is accessibility in this world that we live in, is right up there with security. It's in there from the design infrastructure. We're not remediating as much as we have a team that's set up to identify the bugs that are coming in post-launch, right? But we're minimizing those because we're thinking already about the ecosystem, the accessibility ecosystem from end to end. And really what we're doing is we're keeping up with technology advances at this point instead of trying to repair. And that's how Candi is leading us through all of our inclusion work at Amazon. And again, I love the three Bs because every time I talk to the accessibility world about it, they're like, yeah, we get it. We get it. How do we do it? And that's part of what I'm trying to do at Amazon is not just think about our customers and the community, but also our employees. The 10,000 paper cuts that the disability, internal disability community faces every day, when perhaps an email is sent without alt text, you know, when Slack is as we now have so many ways of communicating. How do we make sure that that our Slack images have have image ID so that you can get the full context? How do we think about color contrast, right? For the what is it, one in 12 men, I think, who who are colorblind? How do we think about that to make sure? Because as we think about communication in our day-to-day work, communication is fundamental to being successful at work. Right. And if you're not communicating accessibly, then you're actually not communicating because you're not actually sharing information that can be absorbed. So that's a big part of what I'm working on right now. And again, I'm so fortunate to work with so many different people at Amazon who are embedded in business, embedded in the other HR functions, who feel the same passion and have the same interest.

Kelvin Crosby: 21:49

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things is as my motto and running my company is is always building for deaf blindness. If you can solve for deaf blindness, you can solve for the world. And because it's one of it's the most difficult communication structure and navigation structure to to accommodate for and it and very few products are fully accessible to deaf blind individuals. And I love this like concept when you talk to the three B's. And I I think that's so important 'cause like when I'm when I'm building the See Me Cane, my whole my whole model, how can a deaf blind person fully access the See Me Cane and it fully be available? And we've done that, we've been able to accomplish that and know all the things you need to know without ever being able to hear or see. And I think that that's such a huge thing. And it truly is, when you once you start building in and bringing the disability part to the table, and you start solving that, you save so much more money. You save a ton of resources, and you save a lot of time, and you can get the product faster to market.

Lauren Lobrano: 23:09

That's right. And again, when you think about your accessibility team and your disability inclusion team, right? You allow them to go think about the bigger problems and the bigger innovations that will support the disability community and support the rest of the world as well. I mean, Kelvin, when you think about deaf-blind people as somebody who's neurodivergent, heading structure is really important to me. I love good heading structure. I don't use Jaws, but when I have a clear way of digesting information and finding information, it is incredibly helpful to me. So you're right, when you build backwards from some of these core ideas and you think about building that into the architecture, you're benefiting a whole group of disabled individuals, which is so difficult to define disability. And Chris, you mentioned this earlier. You know, we have a pparent and we have non-apparent disabilities, we have a lot of people who have multiple disabilities and are living with multiple disabilities. And so they they do have a compounding effect. So when you start with some fundamental truths and everyday actions, you really can be more opening to the world.

Chris Maher: 24:28

Yeah, what I love about the three B's framework, excuse me, and so Lauren gave a keynote speech back in October at the M Enabling conference. And I know this because you and I were were huddled over in a corner because I was preparing for a panel that I was on that I was moderating, and you were getting ready, putting the finishing touches on your keynote, which was the following morning. And I asked you, I think that was the day I asked you to be on the podcast after hearing you talk about what you were going to talk about. And you're like, you know, when they reached out to ask me to do a keynote, they wanted me to talk about how Amazon is approaching disability inclusion and accessibility, et cetera. And your response was that's fine, I could do that, but we are kind of so unique as a company. Like, how how is that gonna be, how are people in the audience gonna feel like it's applicable to them? Like how you right, like, okay, this is Amazon, they're gigantic, they got resources, yeah, they can do whatever they want, but me and my company, and and you're like, so I'm gonna take a different size company, and I and I think you're right. And so that yeah, that would that is what's so wonderful and and honestly simplistic about it, you know, in terms of like the structure of it and the framework of it. Now, implementing it, I know has its challenges because I think where most companies are and where they've gotten to, and it's like any company that starts, you know, any software technology company, they start off with you know, version one or iteration one, and then it grows over time. What a lot of companies end up having many iterations down the road because they're just putting band-aids and fixes on it or bolt-ons or add-ons. They wake up one day and say, Oh my god, we've got all this tech debt. And like now it's now now it's it's starting to create problems across the organization. And now it's costing more money, costing more time. It's in effecient, all these things the cascade, the cascading effects of that. And then you have to, in many instances, make the decision, okay, we need to kind of go blank canvas and kind of rebuild this thing. And that can be a pretty, really painful process. And I think the bolted on is where most corporations probably have been because, and this was the title of your keynote, beyond compliance, right? So, you know, because it was very much about checking the ADA checkbox for the last several decades, we've built some of this kind of accessibility or disability inclusion debt, for lack of a better term, and we have to start approaching that differently. And so I think it's a really elegant way to think about it.

Lauren Lobrano: 27:00

Yeah, I appreciate that, Chris. And again, they, you know, they wanted this technical conversation. And I'm like, first of all, I'm not technical in my approach. You know, I spent most of my time focused on on disability inclusion and programming to support individuals. But I do think we think about AI, the AI revolution, but who's creating AI, right? The programmers, people. Where's AI learning? It's learning from the ecosystem. So the more we do to educate people and have them start thinking about this three B approach, the more successful we're going to be in the long term. Too many people treat accessibility like a service provision, right? So we've got accessibility practitioners, disability individuals, and again, this this hits other marginalized groups almost as clearly. But the service provision of okay, go fix this. What's next on my list, right? Open a ticket, go fix this. It's never ending.

Chris Maher: 28:01

Yeah.

Lauren Lobrano: 28:02

And it it creates usable approaches, but inelegant approaches. And of course, my goal is to make sure that everyone can use and navigate, especially when we're trying to bolt on or built-in broken systems. But the truly elegant processes that are usable by everyone that lead to the innovations that we all use today, like keyboards and texting and all of that greatness, comes from the simplicity of a challenge and saying, okay, well, I need to better communicate. How am I going to do that? I'm going to start texting with people and I'm going to have a keyboard. Those things lead to revolution. And I want people to stop thinking about service provisions. And this is what Candi wants, right? And start thinking about innovations. Like instead of catching up, how do I move us forward? So that was really part of it. And also I think the accessibility, I mean, when we think about the EAA and some of these others, the EAA is wildly helpful, right? It kind of just like we have WCAG, right? Because you have a universal set of standards that are still sometimes a little difficult to understand or influence and people who aren't familiar.

Chris Maher: 29:18

And for our listeners, the EAA is the European Accessibility Act.

Lauren Lobrano: 29:21

Accessibility Act, yeah. Sorry. And so when we think about it, it's always good to have a line, but the pressure that we put on people to reach that line can very much lead to a bolted on or at best a built-in approach, right? So so the fundamental point of these EAA and others is to start thinking about it earlier, but we're still catching up. So again, I just think Candi was brilliant in this three B approach. And that was really something that I think that audience needed to hear as well.

Chris Maher: 29:55

Yeah. Are there any things that you folks have done recently or that is kind of on the future roadmap around disability inclusion and accessibility that gets you really excited?

Lauren Lobrano: 30:10

Yeah, I think one of the things that we're really taking the look at now is in the disability inclusion space when we think about our employees, is that consistent employee experience? Amazon, again, it's it's such an amazing opportunity to work at this company. It's also a huge challenge. And you have to start, I have to, every day it's very easy to become overwhelmed when we think about, you know, 60 countries, different business lines, people in fulfillment center roles, up to corporate roles, you know, eight Amazon Web Services, Prime Video, so many varying and diverse business lines. So how do we deliver consistently? And that's our goal that we're really trying to take a look at now is what are the most consistent challenges that we see for our employees? And how do we identify those? And again, really start that shift to make sure that we're thinking and we're educating people. You know, what is our baseline so that we can map this out? And and I'm fortunate to work with some internal folks who are really thinking about this again globally, because it's really easy when you sit in the United States to be US centric. And we do have a lot of employees in the United States. But when we start thinking about, okay, and and I always use the analogy of we want to plant something, but it doesn't have to be the same tree because a cactus isn't gonna thrive in Washington, DC, but a cactus is gonna thrive in the desert. So what are the trees that we want to plant globally? And then how do we identify ensuring that that tree is gonna plant, take roots, and then grow globally, right? So it doesn't have to be a copy paste. You want to get to a point where you have 60, 70% of a solution, and then you say, we want you to adapt this locally. And that's what we're really thinking about right now, which I love. Because a company like Amazon, when we do this well, people replicate, right? And that's the beauty of us is we are willing to innovate and try things out and see what's going to be successful.

Chris Maher: 32:20

By the way, I love that example about the trees. It's like it just like makes it, it's really oh, sorry. It really, kind of brings it to life for you. And it's very much about the born inclusive, right? So inclusive or universal design, getting all of the key stakeholders at the table to be involved in the process versus having a small group, you know, creating stuff that they think other people will value.

Lauren Lobrano: 32:50

And want.

Chris Maher: 32:50

Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. That's a great example.

Lauren Lobrano: 32:54

Yeah, somebody will probably say, well, cactus isn't a tree. I don't know. I do like analogies for a lot of people because I do think that there's there's beauty in saying we want to plant something that's gonna benefit these employees and and but make sure that it it adapts to the local culture. But there are some things that are non-negotiable, like language, right? We just want to be baseline that we think are really important. And you know, we do have a lot of great organizations like the UN and World Health Organization that are setting standards around language that again, as a company, we can go in and start adopting and using that takes some of this out. And Chris, you made an interesting point. You know, some people say nothing about us without us, but I just say nothing without us. Yeah, because that's where the innovation is gonna be. When you have the diversity, everyone at the table, that's where you're gonna really blossom.

Chris Maher: 33:46

I gotta, I gotta say, it's it's so wonderful to hear that an organization like Amazon, you know, one of the largest corporates in the world, has made this sort of commitment with people like you and others in the organization, and that you are building this out globally because we need more of that. I, you know, I've said a number of times on our podcast we need more courageous leadership from corporate America. And I think that there are some organizations like you and some of the other large tech companies that have really taken the lead on that. And I think part of it has to do with lived experience, right? You know, they've got people in roles around inclusion, disability inclusion, accessibility that have the lived experience of it. And that is just so critically important. And then because those folks are in those leadership positions, they're now bringing more people around the table who have that lived experience. So then you can ultimately build and develop better, cool systems, features, functionalities for everybody. And so we just we need more of that. So it's, god, it's I gotta say, it's really heartwarming and encouraging, you know, that a large corporate like Amazon has has made such a commitment to this and really seems to be not only doing it internally, but also sharing it with your partners, right? Which is great. We need more of that.

Lauren Lobrano: 35:05

We do need more of that. And that's why I love the C SUNs and M-Enablings and have open and honest conversations. Again, and that was a big part of my keynote was this idea of community. Because, you know, the one person at Costco who's managing accessibility, they aren't they aren't lucky like me, where I have the Joanna Hansons of the world, the Megan Smith who leads our global accommodations and a lot of our people accessibility. You know, Charlie Riggle who and Josh Miele, who lead our our Amazon PWD employee-led group, they don't always have the beauty of that. So when we go to these conferences, it's not just about going to conferences and talking about how amazing we are. It's going and really learning and being honest around the challenges that we're facing and the fact that we're trying to innovate and what's going well and what isn't. And again, coming from the advocacy and nonprofit space, so many organizations that are out there, American Association of People with Disabilities, World Institute on Disability, you know, all of these global nonprofits that we can go to and have that shared experience, you know, where you have some level of Chatham House rules where you're not breaking industry secrets. This was my experience. And then somebody else can say, well, this was Lauren's experience. And I know she wasn't wildly successful, but let me bring my own perspective and perhaps pivot a little bit, just a little bit, you know, one direction to the left, 15%, and then be wildly successful and come back and share that. Um, we have got to build community around this work.

Chris Maher: 36:42

Yeah, I love it. That's a great point. I think with that, it's probably a good note to start to wrap up here. And so Lauren, how can people learn more about the work you're doing at Amazon over all the work that Amazon is doing around disability inclusion and accessibility? Is there a white paper or something on the 3Bs framework that you presented at M-Enabling?

Lauren Lobrano: 37:06

I'm always happy to share more about my journey via LinkedIn. I try to be a pretty active LinkedIn user. Strongly recommend people follow Candi Castleberry. That's C-A-N-D-I Castleberry. I'm happy to send you Chris these links. We do have several Amazon landing pages that I'll send to you as well for external resources. We have Amazon.com backslash in this or backslash in this together for some of the work that we're doing around our employee work and building that community, Amazon.com, together at Amazon. So that's how we're doing it. But again, I encourage everyone to find their community. Go work with these advocacy companies, these advocacy organizations, reach out to people, ask questions. I think, you know, at Amazon we have what we call leadership principles that we kind of live and die by on our culture. And one of mine is learn and be curious. The second one is earn trust. So I'm a big advocate of the learn and be curious and understanding what other people are doing. And I'm always happy, you know. Kelvin, you've you've taught me a lot at the beginning of this before we started. I learned a lot and really made my mind start thinking about where do I want to go a little deeper to understand some of that work. Chris, we've had a lot of conversations, the work that you're doing investing in these companies that have great ideas, but have really been overlooked.

Chris Maher: 38:27

Yeah.

Lauren Lobrano: 38:28

You know, I think I'd love to see that ecosystem being built. So, you know, come back to the podcast too.

Chris Maher: 38:34

Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Lauren, thank you so much. And we'll put all those links in the show notes. Kelvin, any final questions or comments for Lauren before we let her go?

Kelvin Crosby: 38:42

Uh like I said about kind of like Microsoft, I'm I'm just excited to see how Amazon is continuing to make this happen. And it's just it truly is just an awe. Like I really didn't know the all this. And I think this is really, really important for the world to know.

Lauren Lobrano: 38:58

Yeah.

Chris Maher: 38:59

Yeah.

Lauren Lobrano: 38:59

You know, we have this saying that Candi also has we're in this together. So let's go be in this together and figure it out.

Chris Maher: 39:07

You're you're right. We are better together, you know. And I've said this on some other episodes and on some panels that I've done is I do think that we're at a moment in time where we have the best opportunity if we work together to create a world that is better for not just some of us, but better for all of us. But doing it together is the key. That community and working together and collaborating and sharing is gonna be the key to it. And it's so it's so nice to hear how much of that that Amazon is doing, and Lauren, and you'll be embarrassed, but I think that's probably got a lot to do with you and Candi and some other folks that are in roles there so thank you so much for your leadership and what you're driving and also for sharing that with all of us. And so really neat to chat with you today. So thank you so much for being on the show.

Lauren Lobrano: 39:58

Thank you both. Again, this is a big part of that community. So thanks for the opportunity. Love it. And look forward to seeing you probably at the next big thing, which may be CSUN right around the corner.

Chris Maher: 40:10

You got it. All right. Thanks, Lauren.

Kelvin Crosby: 40:12

That wraps up Investing in Accessibility. As I always say, go live beyond the challenges and we'll see you in two weeks. Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast, where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow us, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn at @Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email Chris at chris@samaritanpartners.com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www.samaritanpartners.com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know so we can spread the word so that we can give access to all by Investing in Accessibility.