An Advocate for D-E-I plus A (Labor Law with Craig Leen)

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome back to season two of the Advocate Next Door.

(00:03):
We are starting off strong
and I'm excited about this season.
We're starting off with Craig Lean,
who worked in the Department of Labor.
He was the OFCCP director.
The OFCCP is the Office
of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.
Now, what they do, they protect workers,
they promote diversity, enforce the law.

(00:24):
Now, based on their website,
the OFCCP holds those who do business
with the federal government, contractors,
and subcontractors responsible for complying
with legal requirements to take affirmative action
and not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex,
sexual orientation, gender identity, religion,

(00:46):
national origin, disability, or status
as a protected veteran.
I think it was a great honor to have Craig into our studio
because he was so honest and forthright
about his background, his past,
and what really encouraged him to enter this field.
So I hope you enjoy this first episode of season two
of the Advocate Next Door.

(01:07):
And welcome back to the Advocate Next Door.

(01:37):
Today we have a very special guest
who is literally next door.
My name is Kelby Balena and I'm here with my co-host.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show.
My name is Margarita Rango.
Today we have Craig Lean.
You just recently ran a marathon
and are now walking over.
I appreciate you coming out to talk to us.

(01:57):
Your career path is very fascinating,
but majority of it is in sort of in this defending,
the people advocating for people,
people who can't speak for themselves.
It sounds like an incredible journey.
Were you born and raised in this area or in Florida?
In Florida.
You were in Florida.

(02:18):
Yes, I was born in North Miami
and I grew up in the Miami area, Broward County, Dade County.
I lived there until I was about almost 11
and then moved to the Seattle, Washington area.
And I lived there until I went to college at Georgetown,
which is the first time I lived in Washington, D.C.

(02:39):
That's where I met my wife and chose my path
to become an attorney.
I went to Columbia Law in New York City.
From there, I lived in the Northeast for a few years,
New York, Boston, then went back to Florida for 14 years.
I was for a few years in the private sector
then I was in government for most of that time.

(02:59):
Okay.
At the county and city level.
And then I moved back to D.C. in 2017
to become an appointed official at the Department of Labor,
senior advisor and then OFCCP director,
Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program.
So I've been in D.C. since 2017.
Right now you are the partner at K&L Gates.

(03:21):
I am.
I was at DOL, Department of Labor, until January,
of 2021 and then April, I started at K&L Gates.
I am very intrigued by your professional career
because you have been able to navigate
from the public sector to the private sector.
But before we get into that,

(03:42):
can we talk a little bit about,
did you always knew that you wanted to be a lawyer
when you were younger?
Well, when I was very young,
I wanted to be either the Pope or the President of the United States
or the Pope or the President.
One of those two roles.
You know, I aimed at that.

(04:03):
Not bad, right?
No, no.
You have to do that.
Yes.
I would like, for Halloween,
I would dress up as one of them.
I dressed up as both at different times.
I was always interested in leading organizations
from being very young or a general,
or maybe be a general.
I was interested in that too.
My dad is an attorney.
He's retired now,
but he was a criminal defense attorney for many years

(04:23):
and had been a prosecutor before that.
So I had that interest in the law,
but I mostly became a lawyer
because many of the presidents have been lawyers.
So I was always interested.
I thought that was a path to become president.
I ran for president of my high school.
I was the president of my high school,
associate student body,
but I never really pursued that politics afterwards.

(04:43):
Instead, I served in more appointed roles.
Well, it's never too late.
It's never too late.
Although it is hard in DC because,
one, I'm a Republican,
so it'd be hard to get elected.
Although, you never know.
You never know.
You never know, right?
That's always possible.
We need all great minds to work together.
Well, to become president,
I think you have to be like governor or a senator,

(05:05):
or I guess a business tycoon or something like that.
I don't know if there's a strategy these days.
Yeah, you're right.
You never know.
So maybe there's a possibility.
But the reason I wanted to do that
was because I wanted to help people.
And I've always wanted to be in public service,
try to make an impact.
I pursued all of that, and I've led a federal agency.

(05:25):
So I came close.
I got nominated for inspector general
for the office of personnel management too.
So hopefully I still have a number of years left.
You never know.
You never know what could happen.
In that path, when you were at Georgetown,
do you major in something that leads you
towards this career,
where you're thinking of something else at some point?
What's interesting, because I went to Georgetown

(05:47):
because Bill Clinton had just been elected.
It was 1992.
And of course I'm a Republican.
I was a White House intern for Bill Clinton though.
And I had a real interest in his campaign.
At that time, I probably wasn't really a party.
I was 17, 18, but it was exciting time.
He was talking to the bridge to the 21st century,

(06:09):
I think in the second term.
And he had been an exciting candidate,
somewhat Kennedy-esque, I would guess.
So at least that's how he ran.
So that was part of the reason I went to Georgetown,
I'd say, because he had been there.
I think he graduated in the mid to late 60s.
And Georgetown was in the nation's capital.
And I thought that that would be a great opportunity to do.
I had always wanted to live in New York City

(06:30):
and Washington, DC, which I did through my two schools.
And so going to Georgetown, being there,
that really, that was my top choice.
I felt really grateful to get in.
I studied government and economics.
I double majored and I did a lot of internships.
I initially came in, I was running cross country,
but my knees, I still have this issue from time to time.

(06:52):
I had tendonitis in my knees
and it was hard to keep up with that running schedule.
So I retired pretty early after winning a race.
I won a JV race in Navy,
which was the pinnacle of my college running career.
And then I told the coach, I think I'm gonna retire.
And he's like, already?
And I was like, yeah,
because I really wanted to intern for my Congresswoman,

(07:15):
Jennifer Dunn, who was a Congresswoman
from Bellevue, Washington, that area, and Republican.
And then after working for her,
I became a White House intern for Clinton,
who of course is a Democrat.
And she helped me get that role,
which, you know, a different time in Washington, I'd say,
but those roles weren't necessarily viewed as politically
as they probably are today.
So I was a White House intern for President Clinton.

(07:37):
Now, obviously being a White House intern
for President Clinton, that became an issue later
with Monica Lewinsky and that whole situation.
I was there before she was.
And in fact, I took that off my resume
for a number of years,
just because whenever I would apply for a job,
including for like law firms, they would ask me about that.
Oh, you were a White House intern for Clinton.

(07:58):
I feel like I would too.
Yeah, you would.
Like, oh, what was that like?
You know, and I'll be like, it was fine.
I had a good experience.
And I actually sat,
at least for right at the beginning of my internship,
I sat at the same desk that Monica Lewinsky did,
which was the Chief of Staff.
You know, I sat in that office
and then I went to the Office of Agency Liaison.
But I remember being extremely disappointed.

(08:19):
I served in the Clinton administration
and I was at the Office of the Controller of the Currency
in law school around the time it became reported
and what had happened with that scandal.
And I just remember being very disaffected,
disappointed by that and the president.
And you know, it led to an impeachment.
And of course we've had several since then.
And I think a lot of America changed actually.

(08:43):
When I was a kid,
the presidency was always 60 to 65%
of the people supported the president,
you know, Eisenhower, Kennedy,
you know, all the way probably up to Nixon.
And then of course, with Watergate,
that a lot of people lost confidence in the presidency,
but it was coming back and then happened again.
And it's been ever since then, you know,
right after that you had the election of 2000

(09:05):
with such a close election.
And all our elections have been close since then.
And they started talking about red America
and blue America.
And you know, someone like me who's more of a pragmatist
and a problem solver, or at least I like to think I am,
that's unfortunate, you know, that that's happened.
I kind of share that a bit there
because in college I was a Republican.

(09:26):
I shared this interest in the economics of it,
smaller government, more business and stuff like that.
But I guess during Bush, a W,
my politics had changed, I'd been independent since.
One of the reasons I had asked you to come
is I had admired many of the speaking engagements
that you were at with the Hispanic Bar Association,

(09:50):
talking about equal pay for Latinas,
talking about diversity.
You are one of the advocates that says,
let's put A in DEI.
Yes.
And also talking about disabilities,
having heartfelt conversations about your family.
And with the knowledge of working in the government,

(10:12):
in the public sector, and now in the private sector,
you have so much to offer that I really think our audience
can really learn a lot from you.
Oh, well, thank you.
I'm honored you'd say that.
I had a similar journey.
I've been a Democrat and independent,
non-affiliated Republican.
You know, I am a Republican, I'll remain a Republican,
but I've always been someone that's worked with Democrats

(10:35):
and the center and most people in DC are like that.
It's different in DC than in Florida.
Like I see on Facebook in Florida,
people are really upset about the other side,
whichever side you're on.
And it's almost like you're seeing two Americas,
two different groups of people
who just have totally different worldviews.

(10:55):
Whereas in DC, I have to say,
even though it's largely a Democratic constituency,
I'm very accepted in DC.
I'm always asked to participate in panels.
I've been appointed to different committees
in part because I am a Republican
and they need Republicans on these.
You're not allowed to discriminate
based on political affiliation.
That's actually in the law.

(11:16):
And there are Republicans here.
And when a Republican comes to power as president,
they serve in government and then they don't.
You know, when it goes back and forth,
but you're still working with your Democratic colleagues.
I'm friends with my successor at OFCCP, Jenny Yang.
I have great respect for her.
You know, so I work a lot with Democrats in my field,
in the civil rights field.

(11:37):
And they appreciate and respect my opinions as a Republican.
And so I don't have that experience
that you see a lot in other parts of the country,
in part because I work every day
in the governmental field as an attorney.
And I'm always working with Republicans and Democrats,
mostly Democrats right now
because it's a Democratic administration.

(11:59):
And you know, the career civil service,
although I think it's often overstated,
there are a lot of Democrats in the career civil service,
or at least I'd say probably officials
who are more open to government,
because obviously that's their career.
So, and you know, typically it's a bit of a stereotype,
but typically Republicans tend to be more focused
on the private sector,
Democrats more focused on the public sector,

(12:21):
at least comparatively.
So you would expect there to probably be more Democrats
in the civil service.
But my experience has always been positive.
If you show respect to those individuals,
you can get whatever you want to get done,
you can get your agenda done.
I was very successful at OFCCP
and having a very proactive agenda
because of the civil service and they worked with me.
And it's just showing respect to those individuals.

(12:42):
And you know, I'm gonna continue to probably live here
the rest of my life,
hoping to serve in future Republican administrations
and maybe Democratic ones too,
if they're interested in having a Republican.
I always think there's value
in hearing all sides of the story
because we're all working towards some kind of common goal.
We need to have the perspective of all the people.
And that's difficult to do if you're only around people

(13:06):
that agree with you all the time.
100% true.
Now we're talking about adding the A,
so it would be DEIA.
Yes.
But first off, for the general audience
who doesn't really know what DEI is or stands for
or why that's even important,
why we have conferences and seminars
and all talk about DEI,

(13:27):
what is it from your perspective?
Certainly.
So DEI stands for diversity, equity, inclusion,
and A stands for accessibility.
Sometimes you also see B for belonging, D-I-B, D-I-A.
DEI has become a little bit of a controversial subject
between Democrats and Republicans.
It really shouldn't be.
Most DEI programs, if they're designed appropriately,

(13:50):
they seek to use analytics to determine if certain groups,
women or minorities are underrepresented in the workplace
in particular jobs compared to their availability
of those groups within the workforce.
And if you identify an underrepresentation,
your job is to try to find out why
and to make sure that that's not the product

(14:11):
of discrimination.
And likewise, pay equity,
looking at whether men and women are paid equitably.
And that typically means that you assess their pay
and their job and other factors that could impact pay
like tenure, experience, performance, education.
And when controlling for those factors statistically,

(14:32):
if you look and you see that there's not a disparity in pay,
a pay gap, that's great.
And if there is a disparity or a pay gap,
you try to determine why and see if that could be based
on some sort of bias, unconscious bias, affinity bias,
discrimination, considering prior pay
when you're setting current pay,
which often can perpetuate pay gaps.

(14:54):
It's recognizing that in the United States,
there's a significant pay gap against women
of around 20% year after year.
And for women of color, it can go up to almost 50%.
For people with disabilities, it can be 20 to 40%.
For all protected groups, it can be significant.
So it's also looking at intersectionality,

(15:15):
looking at different groups together,
like for example, Latinas who often have the highest
measured pay gap of close to 50%.
A good DEIA program will try to include
as many different protected groups as possible,
which is why I say add the A,
include people with disabilities.
It's a group that often gets discriminated against
and has a lot to add to the economy.

(15:36):
It's an underserved population,
underrepresented in the workplace,
experience a higher unemployment rate
and a higher pay gap, so lower pay.
These are groups that we need to take proactive steps
to try to make sure they're being treated fairly
in the workplace.
So if that's what your DEI program does,
if it brings attention to under-representation,
if it tries to eliminate barriers to people advancing,

(15:58):
if it creates training programs
so everyone has an opportunity to advance in the workplace,
it should not be controversial.
That's something that workplaces should be doing.
That's how you eliminate discrimination.
The DEI programs that tend to be controversial
are really caricatures of DEI programs,
which are this idea that there's programs

(16:18):
where they adopt preferences or quotas
or have training programs that denigrate a particular group,
including whites or men.
That's not appropriate in the workplace or anywhere.
You shouldn't denigrate any group or have a stereotype.
It's important to recognize that if you're doing a DEI
program, you should look to see if white employees

(16:39):
or male employees or white male employees
are getting paid higher or are getting more promotions
compared to other groups, because you might have a problem
of affinity bias, and it's something that needs to be
addressed, you need to understand if there's a bias occurring
and why, and try to address that.
But you should never assume that.
When I was OCCP director, we did audits
of about a thousand companies a year,

(17:00):
and we would sometimes see disparities against men.
We'd see disparities against white employees.
In fact, the pay gap right now, the group that's paid
the highest on average in the United States
are Asian employees, it's about 9% higher than white employees.
So you may see white employees that are subject to a pay gap.
And you know what, if you do, you should address it,
because no group should be discriminated against.
And the point I'd often make when I talk at these conferences

(17:23):
is that on the one hand, it's important to recognize
that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act,
in fact, the Civil Rights Act generally,
as well as Executive Order 11246,
which is what OFCCP enforces, that these protect everybody,
every single person in the country are protected
from discrimination, because we're all an intersection
of different identities.

(17:44):
I'm a white male Catholic, a person with a disability.
That's how I identify.
In terms of my ethnicity and national origin,
on my mom's side, I'm Irish Catholic.
On my dad's side, Eastern European Jew.
And my wife is Cuban American, born in Spain.
Her parents were Cuban exiles.

(18:04):
My son, and my daughter, I often say,
probably could only exist in America.
The combination of Irish Catholic, Eastern European Jew,
and Cuban American exile, there's not that many places
where my children would exist.
So I love this country, its diversity is,
it's its strength, it's its strength,

(18:24):
absolutely its strength.
That's the land of immigrants.
We need to remember that, can't forget that,
because that's our comparative advantage with the world.
I love that.
Craig, I'm really interested in this DEI topic.
How did you get involved with it?
How did you choose to pursue that topic?
Because what you were saying is right,

(18:45):
and people with disabilities are often discriminated
and need to be protected.
That has happened to me.
In my family, we have someone with a disability.
So I'm really conscious of, as for example,
whenever you're creating a public policy for,
I don't know, a company, or if you're creating,

(19:06):
for a public company, if you're creating a public policy
for the government that is going to take into account
all the people that are discriminated,
but leaving aside people with disabilities.
A lot of people that talk about inclusion,
and that's very important, and diversity,
but we need to take into account those people
that have other abilities, different abilities,
they have maybe some difficulties

(19:29):
performing other activities.
Like how did you begin to get interest in this topic?
Why were you inspired to follow this?
I agree with you.
Well, for me, it started in middle school.
I used to be a special Olympics coach,
and I worked with kids with Down syndrome in my school,
and other disabilities, including autism,
which I didn't realize at the time

(19:49):
I would have two children, ultimately,
on the autism spectrum, but that was early in my life.
I was always working with people with disabilities.
You're saying in middle school?
Yeah.
It was like a special program,
because I've never heard of this.
My school had the special education program
for Bellevue Public Schools,
and I was one of the peer helpers,
peer tutors, and a special Olympics coach, and I did that.

(20:09):
In middle school and in high school,
I was always interested in trying to help people
with disabilities and make an impact there.
As a kid, I had OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
and likely ADHD as well.
I didn't consider that at the time a disability,
although it would be considered neurodivergent
or neurodiversity, but something I had to cope with,

(20:29):
and had to adjust for and manage.
It was part of who I was.
That was middle school and high school.
What really happened for me, though,
what got me involved in DEI and Add to A and all that,
was when I became Coral Gables City Attorney in Florida.
My daughter was born in 2005,
and I became City Attorney in 2011.

(20:50):
She was about six years old.
She had been diagnosed with autism.
I wanted to get her swim lessons at the Venetian Pool,
which is this gorgeous swimming pool in Coral Gables,
the largest municipal pool in the United States,
and has caves and waterfalls, and it's a cool place.
My daughter was very excited about swimming there.
She loved swimming there.
But as a kid with autism, I had to be cognizant of the fact
that the biggest danger to kids with autism is drowning,

(21:13):
and there's a higher rate of fatalities
for kids with autism in that area.
So I wanted to get her swim lessons
so that she would be able to swim,
and she was attracted to water, so it was important.
So I tried to sign her up for swim lessons,
and I was told that she wasn't eligible
because of her disability,
and they needed someone in the pool with her at all times,

(21:33):
and they couldn't support that.
This was the city swimming pool.
I was upset about that at the time.
I remember being upset and thinking,
ah, that's not right, and we struggled to find someone
who could give our daughter lessons.
We were able to get those lessons,
but it stuck with me that the city
had not supported us in that.
And then when I became City Attorney,
I went to the youth center.
They had a youth center there, similar to like a YMCA,

(21:55):
but it was for the city and city residents and employees,
and they had a gym that I was able to use
as the City Attorney, and I could bring my daughter there,
and they had a kids club.
And I remember, again, they were not able to support her,
and they told me basically they couldn't support her
in the kids club.
I was the City Attorney, and I remember them saying that
and being like a little shocked.
And so I went to the commissioners,

(22:18):
and this is all very public and very documented,
and every year now they do something related to this,
which I'll talk about in a second,
but I talked to the commissioners.
I was able to get a commissioner sponsor,
and they let me also be a supporter sponsor
of something called the Principles of Inclusion,
but it was a big focus on disability,
on autism, on disability inclusion.
I made the obvious point that Coral Gables is recognized

(22:40):
as its motto is a world-class city with a hometown feel.
It's very dedicated to the resident,
and yet we didn't have any programs
for people with disabilities.
So it was such a consumer, resident-focused city,
but yet not in the disability area.
So I raised this point, this irony, this inconsistency,
and I got so much support from the city,

(23:00):
and we ended up adopting these principles of inclusion.
We created a budget,
ultimately a Chief Accessibility Officer.
Every policy now in Coral Gables
goes through this Chief Accessibility Officer.
They have programs dedicated to people
with disabilities to inclusion,
and every year in April and in October,
in April for Autism Acceptance Month,
in October for National Disability
Employment Awareness Month,

(23:21):
they have a resolution on the agenda,
and they celebrate disability,
and they talk about all they had done in the past year,
new programs to include people with disabilities.
So it's wonderful, and then I would go from city to city
trying to convince them to do these principles of inclusion.
I got Miami-Dade County to do it.
We adopted Autism Standard Operating Procedures
for the police for when they interact
with a subject who has autism or who's neurodivergent.

(23:44):
So it became a big focus of the city,
part of its brand in some ways.
So that got me into the disability area,
and then when I got appointed OFCCP Director
in the Trump administration,
I came in and I noticed right away,
so OFCCP is responsible for affirmative action
and non-discrimination for federal contractors,
and every federal contractor is required

(24:06):
to have an affirmative action program,
and it's not the same sort of affirmative action program
you might see in higher education,
or the type of program that was struck down
by the Supreme Court.
This is something that is very legal.
It's what I talked about before.
It's identifying under-representation in your workforce,
and taking action to address that.
So as OFCCP Director, I did a big focus on that,
and on pay equity,

(24:27):
and we did the Affirmative Action Verification Initiative,
a number of initiatives and programs
to increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace,
and also to combat discrimination
through the use of statistics.
And we had two record years when I was there
in terms of recoveries.
Our four years was the highest four years
of recovery on record.

(24:47):
And one thing I noticed though,
when I became OFCCP Director,
was that there was a huge focus in these programs,
in these affirmative action programs,
but also in something similar
called the Diversity Equity Inclusion Program,
which is for non-federal contractors
have to have an affirmative action program,
but non-federal contractors, most companies,
they're not allowed to have an affirmative action program,

(25:08):
or they don't because they don't meet the requirements for it,
and they're not a federal contractor.
So instead, they often have what's called
a Diversity Equity Inclusion Program,
which does something similar.
But one thing I noticed was in the affirmative action
and in the DEI programs,
there was very little focus on disability.
Usually it was excluded.
In fact, there was a Harvard Business Review study
that said only 4% of DEI programs

(25:30):
included disability at all.
They're almost all focused on race and ethnicity,
and most are focused on gender,
although very few combine race and gender,
which is another issue,
making sure that it includes intersectionality.
So accessibility and intersectionality,
those are the two areas which I perceived
being OFCCP director,
being responsible for this area, for the federal government,

(25:52):
where there was significant underutilization,
underrepresentation,
and that's why it became a big focus of mine.
So in my speeches, I would always start with disability.
We created a disability focused review program.
So as part of our audits, we would focus on disability.
And I would always say at the beginning of my speeches,
everyone here knows that racism or sexism

(26:14):
and employment is odious, it's wrong,
it hurts the country, it's bad for productivity,
but the same for ableism.
It's just as wrong, it's just as bad,
and we need to start thinking of the three together.
We can't eliminate one of them because that's wrong.
And people with disabilities need our support,
and they will add so much to the economy
in exchange for that.

(26:35):
Definitely, definitely, no.
It's a constant search for improvement in Colombia.
We have been working on them,
and we have been improving and developing education,
special programs, people with a visual disability
are able to get to classes,
or someone that can walk very well has to use stairs

(26:56):
to get to their classroom,
but they can use an elevator or something like that.
So I actually have been working on that because,
so my sister has a sight disability,
and for her, she, for example,
doesn't see very well where there's stairs.
Like the depth perception. Yeah, the depth perception.
So she's not able to go downstairs because she'll fall.

(27:20):
So I've been working with the university she's in right now.
She's starting to be a psychologist.
Because of her disability,
she chose to pursue their career to be able to help people.
But that's a good example.
So someone with a depth perception disability,
a sight disability, that doesn't impact their ability
to do well in the workplace,
to add value, to be a psychologist,

(27:41):
but they may need an accommodation.
It may be that they need to not have stairs.
It may mean that they should work on the first floor,
or it may mean that there should be an elevator
that works at all time, that's accessible.
It may mean there should be a ramp.
Whatever it may be, the workplace should accommodate her,
and that should be what the law requires
in the United States of America.

(28:01):
There are not so many students that have those conditions.
So the university just thinks that-
They feel it's not cost effective.
Exactly, it's not cost effective.
That's why it needs to be a right, a legal right.
That's why something like
the Americans with Disabilities Act is important.
Because otherwise you're denying that group,
you're denying her accessibility for her entire life.

(28:23):
Whereas a small change could allow her to fully participate.
And frankly, we have the Undo Hardship Principle,
or Undo Burden Principle, which indicates that
if it is really expensive and cost prohibitive,
but it's not really cost effective.
It has to really be cost prohibitive.
The law's gotten pretty good in this area

(28:43):
for people with disabilities saying,
look, they have a right to be in the workplace,
they have a right to be in a special education program.
You have to provide that unless you can't.
And you really have to show that you can't.
And even then you're supposed to do as much as you can
to accommodate them.
But the Office of Disability Employment Policy
at the Department of Labor,
I used to work with them quite a bit.

(29:03):
They indicate that only half of all accommodation requests,
or more than half have zero cost.
And of the ones that have a cost, the average is $300.
So yes, every once in a while, you're gonna have a,
to install a ramp or an elevator could be thousands of dollars.
But for many accommodations,
which are often changes in policy,
just having the person placed, for example,

(29:24):
somewhere where they don't have to go up and down stairs,
for the one we were talking about,
that usually costs zero dollars.
And it's just a change in policy.
And those sort of policy changes are required in this country.
And thankfully, it would be nice to see more countries
like that.
Like in Canada, I got to talk
with the Chief Accessibility Officer there
for the whole country, Stephanie Cadoux.

(29:46):
And she told me that they are great in Canada,
in terms of giving rights to people with disabilities
regarding public access,
but that they do not have a similar law
to the ADA for private companies.
And that they need to work on that.
That's something that needs to, they need to progress.
United States, the ADA is probably the best law

(30:06):
in the world in this area.
It was a law that actually was the product
of bipartisanship between President Bush,
the first President Bush, the father,
and Democratic Congress.
And thankfully, they were able to get that done.
It was a major piece of civil rights legislation,
because people with disabilities had been left out

(30:27):
in large part of the civil rights movement.
So in the 60s, they were not included
in the Civil Rights Act.
They were included in the Rehabilitation Act in 1973,
but that act was only focused on the government
and on federal contractors.
There was not a general civil rights law
for people with disabilities until the ADA in 1990.
So that was far after the other acts.

(30:49):
And if you go to the,
if you have an EEOC commissioner on speaking ever,
they'll tell you that the highest rate of complaints
that they receive for any of the protected classes,
race, gender, LGBTQ plus status, disability, religion,
that the highest rate is disability.
In terms of the specific types of discrimination,
disability discrimination is the highest.

(31:10):
And that's year after year.
And yet we see so little done in the,
and most of the DEI programs don't include disability.
So I became an advocate for that reason,
because it seemed obvious.
Then of course, I had a personal interest,
I didn't do it for the personal interest,
but it got me engaged and I saw what happened.
My daughter's profoundly autistic and profoundly
intellectually disabled.
I did wanna build a better world for her.

(31:32):
And I had to fight year after year to get her
the accommodations she needed in her IEP,
Individualized Education Program,
which is part of the process you go through
in the school system to get her supports,
to get her a one-on-one, to get her speech therapy,
to get her an aid on the bus, to get her a bus,
all that you have to fight for.

(31:54):
And after doing that year after year,
I realized that I'm an attorney and a federal official now,
but I wasn't, or at least at that time,
and I was an attorney.
And so I know my rights in this area.
I work in the disability inclusion field.
And my wife's a psychiatrist, so she works in this area too.
And yet we were struggling to get these accommodations.
So it just occurred to me, which is obvious,

(32:16):
that probably a lot of people who are not lawyers
or doctors who don't have access to them
because they don't have the means,
they don't have the money, the wealth,
the socioeconomic status to be able to hire a lawyer
in an area where there's not a contingency
or something like that,
where they just have to pay the person to represent them,
they'd probably go without a lot of these accommodations.

(32:36):
I was appointed to the DC Advisory Committee
of the US Commission on Civil Rights as the vice chair.
And for the last couple of years,
we've been doing a whole focus on DC special education.
And the fact that DC seems to,
and we've made these findings now,
rely on the due process complaint system
in the apportionment of its services.
So what that means is that in order to be able to get

(32:58):
what you need for your child, you often have to file,
or maybe often is too strong a word,
but you more often than in other jurisdictions
have to file a due process complaint
to be able to obtain that.
And that for some of the bigger types of accommodations
that DC will even invite a lawsuit or invite a complaint
and then settle with you,

(33:19):
which is something that happened to me personally
with my daughter when we wanted to get her
into a school, a special education school
that was more appropriate for her.
And I was told by the school,
well, in DC you have to file a lawsuit
and then they'll settle with you
and you can get her into that school.
And I remember it occurring to me that, wow,
what a disparate impact that must cause against people

(33:39):
based on their socioeconomic status,
which is often correlated with race and ethnicity
in the United States and definitely within DC.
So, this is a civil rights issue.
You can't put a barrier that you have to file
a due process complaint or file a lawsuit and settle it.
That's gonna mean that the people that are wealthier
who in DC tend to be more likely to be white

(34:01):
in this city, socioeconomically,
they're gonna get the benefits
because they're the ones who are gonna sue
or bring the due process complaint at a higher rate
than people of color
because of the socioeconomic correlation
and access to attorneys.
I have a nine-year-old and a six-year-old
and you get looks the moment they start yelling,

(34:23):
having tantrums.
There's special needs, special cases
when a child has autism.
The general public, they've never been in your shoes.
They have no idea what you're going through.
And part of this issue may also be
some kind of public ignorance.
They have no idea what this is like.
They might just think, okay, hey,

(34:44):
you just have to quiet down your kid.
But you have told stories where
there were so many difficulties
that you have to deal with
that people would just not understand.
What kind of challenges did you have as a parent?
Were you getting looks?
Were you denied services simply because they were born

(35:05):
with something that you couldn't control?
Yes, yes, a number of occasions.
That's part of the reason I wanted to do
the principles of inclusion.
I think you may have seen the embracing autism,
Coral Gables story, which is an Emmy award winning
documentary from Coral Gables Television
that I was interviewed for and my daughter and my-
Which is on YouTube right now.
The audience wants to see it.
It's been viewed many times, like 10,000, 11,000 times.

(35:27):
It's a great video and it gives you
an introduction into autism.
And I mentioned on that and it's true
that I would take my daughter into a restaurant
and she would have what sometimes is called
in the autism community, a meltdown,
but she would have a difficult response
because maybe it was too bright or there was a sound
that she was having difficulty with,

(35:48):
or she just needed time to transition into the booth.
And she often used a wheelchair.
She often uses a wheelchair.
So we would be coming into the restaurant.
They wouldn't necessarily be that helpful
with the wheelchair, getting her in.
When we get her into the booth,
she might be making a lot of noise.
It could be happy noise.
Sometimes it could be a sad noise or crying
or something like that.

(36:08):
But whatever the noise, we would get looks.
And yeah, a couple of times we were asked,
well, can you go over there?
And I remember saying, and this was true too,
that at church we would get, like we'd bring her to church
and we'd get dirty looks because people think
you should be extremely quiet in church.
And although I'll tell you, I've had a number of priests
tell me, no, no, bring her and put her right in the front.
Let her do whatever she like.

(36:30):
And so, it depends.
You get people that are more accommodating,
people that are less accommodating.
But I often found it was difficult to get her
into programs that she wanted to be a part of.
And like the pool, like the youth center,
like a number of other programs
that weren't really set up for her.
I would often have to push,
like I just ran the Marine Corps Marathon.

(36:52):
You mentioned at the beginning,
when I walked over here, I had done the marathon.
And you pushed her.
I pushed her in the marathon.
But there's not a lot of marathons that allow duo teams.
They're called duo teams.
And we love doing that together.
We do it every year.
We just did it for the fourth time.
I hope she loved it.
She did love it.
And she gets a medal and-
That's awesome.
She enjoys it and it's something we do together
and we train together on the weekends.

(37:13):
And she always looks forward to it.
She's mostly non-verbal,
but she gets up early on Saturday.
She has her shoes on.
She's ready to go out the door.
We go to her favorite places.
She loves going to McDonald's.
So we go there and we have a treat.
And then we get out on the trail and we run and we hike.
And I try to get her to do a little bit of walking too,
which is good for her.
And we just have a blast.

(37:35):
And we've been doing this every year,
but it's hard to get her into programs.
And like when I look up a marathon,
it's often that they don't even have an accessibility link.
So I don't, you know,
there's a lot of people that participate
in marathons themselves who use wheelchairs,
like wheelchair racers.
I just saw at the Marine Corps Marathon,
they have a huge accessibility focus,
which is why we do that one,

(37:55):
because they have a lot of wounded vets
who participate in the Marine Corps Marathon,
people in wheelchairs.
They have blind runners who will run with someone with them.
They'll have people who've lost a limb,
who are running sometimes with a prosthesis,
but they have the duo teams.
They have a big focus on disability,
but I wish more races had a focus on disability.
And that's true in every aspect of life.

(38:17):
Like even, I remember we would try to fly in an airplane
and it would be difficult.
You get looks and there's been stories of people
sort of acting up on an airplane,
but because of autism,
like they're making noise or they're having a meltdown
but it won't be recognized for that.
It'll be recognized more as a discipline issue
and they'll be asked to leave.
The situation will be ratcheted up.

(38:38):
It won't be deescalated and the child or the adult
will not react well to that and it leads to incidents.
So you have to be very careful.
Like Miami, one thing that the county did down there
was they did the MIA air program
where you could bring your child to the airplane
and do like a run through.
A lot of autism programs have things like that.

(38:58):
Like they have autism at work programs
where you can do a practice interview,
or you can get extra time on the questions
or get the questions in advance so you can prepare.
They have autism at sea programs.
Like we did that with my daughter.
You're seeing more programs like that for autism,
but you really need it for neurodiversity in general
and for neurodivergence and for disabilities in general.
Every program should be accessible.

(39:19):
Is it possible that somebody who has a disability
or knows somebody who has a disability
and they just don't know it?
Yes, it's very possible.
Right, because you're talking about
neurodivergent disabilities.
At some point there was this video
where you were talking about how for some people
it's very difficult to interview
because they're not looking at the person face to face.
And I guess during the pandemic our technology changed

(39:41):
and suddenly there's issues about lighting, sounds.
Maybe for many people working from home is a lot easier
than being in the office where there might be a lot of noise
or vice versa.
Maybe at home they can't do that.
My old agency, OFCCP,
and the Office of Disability Employment Policy
each have on their website a list of disabilities

(40:05):
that you could self identify as having
if you had one of those conditions.
And they have a list of all the different accommodations
that might come with a disability.
There's well over a hundred different disabilities
and most people probably don't self identify
with a disability even if they have one.
They may not even think of it as a disability.
Like that was my case.

(40:26):
I told you when I was a kid, I had OCD
and my wife who's a psychiatrist says that
you always have that, doesn't really go, doesn't leave.
It's just you manage it, so I still have OCD and ADHD.
And I manage it fine.
I don't really need any accommodations related to it,
but I did not self identify as having a disability.
In fact, what really caused me to self identify

(40:46):
was I've had chronic migraines my whole life,
which used to get quite severe when I was younger.
I even had to go to the hospital a couple of times,
I remember, because I got so nauseous
related to the migraines.
But I still didn't really perceive them as a disability.
And then when I got to OFCCP and became the director,
we were doing these self identification campaigns.
We're trying to get companies to encourage their employees

(41:08):
to self identify and to put more resources
into accommodations.
OFCCP has set a goal for federal contractors
of having at least 7% of your workforce
identify as having a disability.
But what I saw when I was director was that
most companies were at two or 3%.
And yet there was still this number out there,

(41:28):
which is that 25% of the public is believed
to have a disability.
And really, when you look at the broad definition
of disability and how many different disabilities
impact different life systems that you have,
like eating, drinking, sleeping, digestion, thinking,
when you look at all the different disabilities,

(41:49):
it's probably well over 50%.
If you consider that, like the neurodivergent disabilities,
which include anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism,
you're talking about a lot of people
who have that at some point in their life, one of those.
And if you combine that with all the other
non-apparent disabilities, which include cancer,
include diabetes, without the list,

(42:09):
it's hard to go through them.
But any sort of medical condition that's more than temporary
is often a disability.
So if you have one of those medical conditions
and it's impacting a life process,
like eating or something like that,
you probably have a disability,
you probably could self identify with having a disability.
So I started self identifying because of my migraines,
because I realized that even though

(42:32):
they're largely managed today
and I don't need an accommodation related to it,
the only reason is because I'm a partner at a law firm
or I was the director of a federal agency.
So if I got a migraine, I got visual distortion,
I could stay home or I could turn my lights off
in my office and take a nap if I wanted to.
A lot of people, if they get found taking a nap at work,

(42:52):
will get fired.
So they may need to seek an accommodation,
which means they may need to disclose that they have migraines.
So I started self identifying
and then when I started learning more about neurodiversity
and neurodivergence, which I had been more aware of autism,
but not the other parts of neurodivergence,
I started self identifying there too as neurodivergent

(43:12):
because I felt like we need to show people
that you could be the head of an agency
or you could be a partner at a law firm
and that you could also be neurodivergent
or have a disability.
It's more common than people might think
and there's nothing wrong with it at all.
It's a, if anything, it's positive
because people think differently
and that's part of what neurodivergence means.
They see the world differently,

(43:33):
they problem solve differently.
Someone with dyslexia, yes, a lot of people know
that means that sometimes you transpose letters
when you read, but also there's a high correlation
of dyslexia with creative thinking
and seeing the world a little bit differently,
which can add to problem solvers.
And that's, so there's that sort of superpower part
of neurodivergence, but it's also important to recognize

(43:53):
that you don't have to have a superpower
and be neurodivergent and you could still add to a team.
Definitely, one of the things that my sister has taught me,
you have to see the world in a different view.
There are many ways of thinking about neurodivergence,
but I do think, Craig, that we need more than education,
it's empathy.
In all of your stories that you were saying,

(44:15):
someone in the airplane getting angry at you
because your daughter or your son
are acting in a different way, the world needs more empathy.
Well, I agree with you.
I remember one time in an airplane, we were flying
and she thought she had been on the plane
for a couple hours and she thought
that it was time to get out.
She wanted to get up and leave the plane.
So I had to hold her in the seat and she was making noise

(44:36):
because she was not happy about that,
having to be in the seat.
So the person next to me said, can I help you?
Well, don't worry about it
and tried to interact with her in a nice way.
And whenever that happens, you feel much better
because you have an ally, having an ally,
it makes a big difference.
But yeah, I'll tell you one other story.
I wanted to bring my daughter to a movie theater once.

(44:57):
You mentioned before with autism,
sometimes bright lights, big sounds,
that can be difficult for someone with autism.
So, whenever there's a sensory friendly production,
I think it was of Aladdin,
the live action Aladdin when it came out.
And my daughter loved the cartoon Aladdin.
So we were gonna go see that and it was sensory friendly.
So I'm like, oh, this is great, it's a good theater.

(45:18):
And so I bring her in her wheelchair
and we head over to the movie theater
and we get to the door that's supposed to be accessible.
And the sidewalks all broken up and the doors out of order.
So I'm standing there thinking,
how do I get her into the theater?
And I thought, it occurred to me the irony of the fact
that this is a sensory friendly production,
but it's not accessible.
And they haven't done anything about it,

(45:40):
put a ramp or something like that.
So, and then it's like, well, what do you do?
So I have to tell Alex, well, just sit here.
She buckled in.
I try to flag someone down.
You have to go up some stairs to flag someone down.
I did.
They came over, they're like,
well, we don't know what to do.
I'm like, well, you know, she has a right to attend us
and we're here and she's not gonna let me leave now

(46:00):
because she's expecting to see a movie.
Could you please help us, help us find a way in?
And I just remember getting an initial resistance,
which didn't seem right to me.
We didn't do anything wrong.
This is a public accommodation.
This should be accessible.
You should have an alternative route.
But they don't understand.
They're like, oh, we'll come back or something like that.
But I remember in the end, they helped me
and we were able to get her up and she had a great time.

(46:22):
And then we left.
But I just, you know, those sort of things happen a lot.
There's a lot of places that are not accessible
and you get pushback a lot of times.
Like, oh, well, why would we do that?
It's too expensive, X, Y, Z.
But in the end, what it means is that this human being
who wants to be able to go in like anyone else now can't.
And my daughter doesn't fully,
she has a significant intellectual disability.

(46:44):
So she doesn't necessarily understand why.
Right, not a lot of us understand what it's like
to be in other people's shoes.
And I mean, I relate to this a lot via two stories, actually.
One of them is working at law firms.
I had never realized how many lawyers
did have some kind of dyslexia

(47:05):
and didn't want to either admit it or let anybody know.
And I was wondering like, why?
And the second is anytime as a paralegal,
I was moving around boxes on a trolley
trying to get into federal buildings,
law offices and stuff like that.
It always resonated with me how often it was hard

(47:26):
to get those boxes in because I needed to open certain doors.
The automatic sensor never worked.
Even though they may have said this area was accessible,
there was always like, there's a step
or there's something there.
Half the time, they weren't really accessible.
So if anybody had to go through a wheelchair,
I have a favorite cousin who has cerebral palsy

(47:48):
and she wouldn't be able to hold the door
and walk through at the same time.
So you notice those things
and I would invite the general audience
to maybe take a look and see like how often
is their own building, maybe the building they work in.
Because it has to start somewhere.
And with dyslexia, there are companies out there

(48:09):
that can help you.
For example, there's one that creates a special font
that makes it easier to read documents.
And whenever I was working with a lawyer
who needed to read a brief,
I just redo the brief in that specific font
so they can read it.
And sometimes they wouldn't want other people to know.
And I was like, well, okay, I get it.

(48:31):
I mean, not everybody wants to be public
about their disability or even wants to call it a disability.
We all have differences that make us special.
In my career, I've heard so many stories where they're like,
well, we don't want to hire certain people
because they might not think the same way we do.
Well, no, that's an advantage.

(48:52):
It is.
It is an advantage.
If they're bringing in different perspective,
if we have different points of view,
especially in the DEIA spectrum,
we want a lot of those ways, especially like in a law office,
we want people to think differently.
How do we get clients who maybe we haven't been thinking

(49:13):
about and everybody has a different perspective
and it's beautiful when we all put it together.
So it's really great to hear from you,
especially to hear from your point of view
of all of these areas where we really,
really do need to work in.
I did want to say one other thing though that you mentioned,
which I a hundred percent agree with,

(49:34):
in terms of including people with disabilities
and you were talking about in the area of dyslexia
and then more generally any sort of underrepresented group
in this country, it really is,
it's one thing I would recommend that you think about,
which I often thought about a lot as OCCP director,
because we were interacting with a quarter
of the workforce and I could see
because we would audit companies

(49:55):
and these are companies that should be compliant
because they're big companies, they have federal contracts,
they have compliance divisions that are dedicated to this
and yet we would still see pay gaps, hiring gaps,
discrimination, disparate treatment and disparate impact
and it often occurred to me how much our country is losing

(50:15):
and not fully utilizing our workforce.
When you know, for example, that there's an 80%, 20% split
in terms of representation of men and women
in higher level executive positions in law,
like among law firm partners, finance,
among like the big investment banks, consulting,
the big consulting companies, tenured faculty,

(50:35):
there's four or five of these areas
which tend to also be areas
where people are paid a lot of money.
So with high salaries where men make up 80%
of the executive leadership and women make up 20%
and we also know there's these significant pay gaps
going up to 20 to 50% in this country.
So when you think about that for how much of history

(50:57):
it's always been men, the male composers in the 1700s,
the male inventors and very rarely women
because they were not given any opportunity
to be able to be part of that.
Think of all that we've lost as a world
under utilizing women, minorities, people with disabilities

(51:17):
and other protected groups throughout history
and now finally in this century and the last,
we've started to address that in a real systemic way
but yet we still have so far to go
because it's still 80%, 20% which what that tells me is
how many extremely talented women, women of color,
LGBTQ plus employees, other groups, have we lost,

(51:39):
people with disabilities, have we lost in these positions
because we did not have an environment
that was conducive to them advancing,
that was supportive of them, that accommodated them,
that supported them, that allowed for these big pay gaps
which makes you less likely to wanna stay in a job
where you're working lots of hours
if you're being underpaid, that undermines morale.

(52:00):
Think of all the people we have lost
and that's why it's incumbent on our country
to focus on this issue and it really is a bipartisan issue.
The best way for our country to advance
is to fully utilize our workforce and disability
and I'll say it, I'll conclude with this,
disability is the greatest area of under utilization
in this country.

(52:20):
That's the lowest labor force participation rate.
It's the group that we don't do right by and we should.
We should do more for that group
because it hurts us as a country.
There's so many people who have disabilities
who are afraid, they are afraid to just go
into the workplace and say, you know what,
I self-identify, I need an accommodation
because of the reasons you talked about.

(52:41):
They're so worried about the stigma.
I thought about it myself.
I talk about being neurodivergent.
I think about, well, will that mean there'll be a stigma?
Will they not give me an assignment?
But you know what, I found that it's helped me
to talk about that.
One, to be more honest about who I am
and to be able to bring my full self to work
and also because others have come up to me and said,
well, thank you for saying that
because I'm doing that too now

(53:03):
and I'm getting the supports I need.
That's why we need to do that.
It shouldn't be that way.
People should feel comfortable being themselves at work
and know that they'll get a fair opportunity,
a fair shake to be able to advance and get paid.
And that's why we still have a long way to go.
We do.
We barely scratch the surface
when it comes to the human potential.

(53:23):
And that's why DEIA is still important.
And if it's done the right way, absolutely.
You don't want to diminish anyone's opportunity.
The goal is to advance opportunity so we all have a chance.
And everyone should support that, everyone, allies,
protected groups, everyone should,
because that helps our country and that's what's fair.
Definitely.
We need awareness and empathy.

(53:45):
My grandmother used to say that kindness begins
in your home and then it spreads through the world
and we definitely need that.
I agree, ma'am.
Well, thank you very much, Craig.
My pleasure.
For coming in today and sharing your perspective.
I know that hopefully we did it justice.
It's great to talk to you and hopefully the public

(54:06):
and ourselves will find you again in the future.
Can I tell you one more thing?
Yeah, please.
You know, because I ran the marathon yesterday.
There's no better example than the marathon.
I talked about the disability inclusion,
but think about women in the marathon.
In the 1970s, women did not run marathons.
In fact, there's the famous photo
of a woman running the Boston Marathon and being tackled
because it was so offensive to the men,

(54:28):
the race director and some of the men running the marathon
that they tried to not let her participate.
In yesterday's marathon, I was defeated by thousands of women.
So many women running and any given woman and man,
you wouldn't know who was faster.
And that's what discrimination is so odious and offensive
because it denied so many women the opportunity

(54:48):
to participate in the marathon pastime,
in the wonder of the marathon.
And that's true in every aspect.
Men and women should be able to do everything together.
I agree.
And yet for so many years, it wasn't like that.
And we're still getting past that as a country.
Thank you so much, Craig.
Thank you so much for coming in and sharing your thoughts.
And we hope to run into you again in the future.

(55:10):
Thank you.
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