WIP Diego Mariscal

‘Resilient, creative, and tenacious,’ the competitive advantage of entrepreneurs with disabilities

A conversation with Diego Mariscal, CEO and chief disabled person, 2Gether International
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In this episode of Work in Progress, I speak with Diego Mariscal, CEO and chief disabled person of 2Gether-International (2GI), about how his organization is working to flip the narrative about the way people think about entrepreneurs with disabilities.

“It’s really important that we start to highlight the competitive advantage of disability as opposed to disability just as something that needs to be cured or fixed rather than celebrated and embraced,” says Mariscal, who was born with cerebral palsy and who started his first business when he was just 17.

“I was born six months and a half into my mom’s pregnancy, a pretty tiny baby. My mom jokes and says that I’ve always been really stubborn even before I was born. I wanted to get out quickly. As a result of that I have CP, cerebral palsy,” he explains.

Mariscal shares his personal story of growing up and living with cerebral palsy to illustrate how it prepared him and other people with disabilities to be effective business people.

“Part of physical therapy for me has always been doing a number of exercises from swimming to playing soccer. Believe it or not, I was the goalie so that I could hold on to the goal, to the frame. Another exercise that we tried was horseback riding because horseback riding helps you with balance, and that was one of the things that my parents wanted me to improve on.

“I remember I fell off the horse and I was a little thrown off, but then immediately I said, ‘Okay, let’s get back up and let’s continue.’ I didn’t really think twice about it. But then the trainer went up and talked to my parents and said, ‘This is amazing. I’ve been coaching for years, and usually when people fall off the horse, they don’t want to get back up and it takes a long time for them to get comfortable getting back on the horse.’

“I share this story because it demonstrates how, as disabled people, we have to figure out how to solve problems every day and how to be resilient, creative, and tenacious. If we can get people to focus on that, on what are the competitive advantages that a disability brings to the table, then the whole conversation around disability changes. And not just the conversation, but also the priority around policy, around programs, around funding starts to shift.”

The Mission

Founded by Mariscal in 2012, 2Gether-International is the nation’s only startup accelerator run by and for entrepreneurs with disabilities, connecting disabled founders with resources to help their companies grow.

“More than 70 startups have participated, and these businesses have collectively raised over $54 million dollars in funding from investment, revenues, and acquisitions from outside investors, according to Mariscal.

“We started off as your traditional accelerator, which looks at 10 weeks of programming, connecting people with mentors, resources, and supports to grow their businesses. What makes us unique is that we are exclusively focusing on founders with disabilities and the reason why that is so important is because entrepreneurship resources are often not accessible for founders with disabilities,” he explains.

With financial support from Comcast NBCUniversal, 2Gether-International just launched a new accelerator focused on founders with disabilities of early-stage, technology-based startups. Participants are given tools and guidance to develop and strengthen their pitch with the program ultimately culminating in a pitch competition where entrepreneurs can earn $10,000 in seed funding for their business.

“We go through the how do you go from one customer to 10? Or if you have 10 customers to 50 or 50 to a hundred, how do you accelerate your growth and create reputable systems that allow your company to grow? And so how do you actually create a business model?,” he explains.

“Most accelerators are pretty good about teaching folks the basics of financial customer development, customer discovery, business planning. The basics don’t necessarily change. What is unique about us is the way in which we’re delivering the service, in a way that is inclusive and accessible of all people that participate, and the community of other like-minded founders that are coming together and like-minded mentors that are wanting to be a part of this movement that we’re creating.”

Mariscal says he firming believes that 2Gether-International is succeeding in its mission of redefining attitudes around entrepreneurs with disabilities.

“At the end of the day, being an entrepreneur, whether you have a disability or not, it’s still really, really hard work. The measurement that I take of whether we’re moving in the right direction is that every day I wake up and I feel like it’s Christmas. I’m excited to get up and do the work. And it’s not that there’s no hard days, of course there are, but at the end of the day, knowing that we’re making a difference in the lives of countless people with disabilities and the world makes all those hard days worth it.”

You can listen to my conversation with Diego Mariscal here, or download it wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 290:  Diego Mariscal, CEO and chief disabled person, 2Gether International
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

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.