Making Space uses its tech platform to help companies identify, train, and access talent with disabilities. Founder and CEO Keely Cat-Wells says, “There are a lot of stereotypes around access requirements and accommodations, and just misconceptions around accommodations.”
Cat-Wells joined WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation Overheard at CES 2024 in Las Vegas to share her thoughts on using technology to open workforce doors for an often overlooked talent pool.
Cat-Wells – who offers that she has a hidden disability – says employers are often afraid to make accommodations for people with disabilities. She recounts that she started Making Space after disclosing to her employer her own disability – after which, she was told she no longer had a job.
She says companies are fearful about what’s involved with making accommodations for people with disabilities – and workers are often afraid to self-disclose to their employers.
Cat-Wells says, “I come from the media and entertainment side and, oftentimes, within that space, disabled people are depicted as one of three things – villains, victims, or inspirations. That has led to society thinking that disabled people can cannot do certain things, are scary, are inspiring for just going to the grocery store.
“All of these misconceptions have led to the workforce not employing disabled people. So that’s one thing we are working towards. We have built a tool and a feature within our platform that turns our lived experience of disability into transferable skills and professional strengths.”
She notes, “We set it off by partnering with large companies like Netflix and NBCUniversal to create education that’s specific to open roles that they have.”
Learn more about Making Space.
Learn more about CES 2024.
Funding for WorkingNation Overheard at CES 2024 was provided, in part, by Walmart.
© Copyright 2024 by Structural Unemployment, LLC dba WorkingNation
Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.
Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.
Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.
Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.
Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.
Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.
