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Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: August 5, 2025: Interview with Meghan Connolly Haupt, Founder, Inclusive Saratoga
Manage episode 498816499 series 3605911
Meghan credits her sense of “relentless forward progress” to two powerful forces: parents who modeled community service and a second daughter, Tatum, who survived a 24-week birth and now navigates multiple disabilities. Those experiences, she tells Adams, taught her that togetherness is the core of healthy societies and that businesses prosper when they welcome everyone through the door. The conversation brims with optimism—citing data that disability-inclusive companies outpace peers by 30 percent on the bottom line—and closes with a call for partners who want to warm up their workplaces for both customers and future employees with disabilities. TRANSCRIPT:
Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, doctor Kirk Adams.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Hello, everybody, and welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. And I am that Doctor Kirk Adams. I'm talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And I have a special guest here today. Meghan Connolly helped. And Meghan and I met several decades ago when she was involved in resource development fundraising at the San Francisco Lighthouse for the blind. I was working for the Seattle Lighthouse for the blind. I started working there because I was hired as the first development director. So we have that resource development background in common. Hi, Meghan.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Hi. How are you?
Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm great and so cool to reconnect. I'm so glad you reached out. And Meghan is the founder of Inclusive Saratoga at Saratoga in New York State. And I think Saratoga Springs, Saratoga, Saratoga Springs there, there's horse racing there. And I think potato chips were invented there. That's what.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I. Yes, yes that's true.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Springs.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: So if you go on jeopardy, if you go on jeopardy, that's going to be that's going to be your million dollar answer right there. Saratoga Springs and the home of the birthplace of of potato chips.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. I'll hope they ask that question. Well, here we are. For those who don't know me, I am the managing director of my consulting practice, which is called Innovative Impact, LLC, and I am the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the blind AFI, which was Helen Keller's organization. And prior to that, I held that those same roles, leadership roles at the Lighthouse for the blind here in Seattle, which is a nonprofit social enterprise employing blind and deaf blind people in a variety of businesses, most notably aerospace manufacturing, making parts for all the Boeing Wing aircraft, which is a really cool thing to see 120 blind and deaf blind machinists making parts with very sophisticated computer numerically controlled equipment, but equipped with jaws and zoom text and braille display and all the assistive technologies we use. I am a blind person myself. I retinas detached when I was in kindergarten, and I went to school for blind children for first, second and third grade. Got got my blindness skills down rock solid and then sink, sink or swim into public school after that and was always the only blind student in my schooling from fourth grade through my through my doctoral program and after graduating from college, had the experiences that so many of us have with challenges to finding employment wound up in the securities industry, selling tax free municipal bonds over the phone for ten years, and then pivoted to the nonprofit sector.
Dr. Kirk Adams: And through a twisting, winding road became a resource development person and a certified fundraising executive and was hired by the lighthouse here and then Those Things unfurled was invited to join the board of the American Foundation for the blind and then given the opportunity to lead that organization, and in 2016 moved to New York City and then DC and back home during the pandemic, led AFB remotely for some time and then just decided rather than move back to the DC area wanted to stay in Seattle for family reasons, 2 to 2 of which our little grandchildren live about a mile away. So that that's our great joy. My wife Roz and I met in college. We'll be married 40 years next month.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: So congratulations.
Dr. Kirk Adams: A bit about me. Yeah, but I really want to talk about. Talk to you, Meghan, because I read your LinkedIn profile again this morning, and and and. Wow. Special events. Craft brewery. Craft brewing, which I'm very interested in personally. And fundraising, inclusion, disability advocacy. Just a very unique folio of experiences you have.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yes, that's a kind way to say it.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, but I love to hear about your. Yeah, I'd love to hear about your journey and how all of these various things came together and how you're getting them together.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Right.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. That's just fascinating to me because I, I don't often see I don't often see individuals or organizations that focus on marketing and, and campaigns and social media and festivals and associations with disability inclusion woven throughout. So I'd love to hear about it.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me to have this conversation with you today. There's not enough positive stories about inclusion, and that is really our focus at Inclusive Saratoga. You open the paper, you open social media, and there's plenty of stories that that really kind of make your heart sink about individuals with any, any number of disabilities who are excluded from participating in society. And our whole mission is sharing the positive stories of what is possible. We are founded on the belief that people are good, and the belief that togetherness is a core, core element of our humanity and and is truly the biggest indicator of a healthy society. And that's not just our core belief at inclusive Saratoga that is backed up by Unicef research. And so, yeah, I have a I have a unique A career path, but there is a common thread that runs through. From my very first, I'll say professional role at Carnegie Hall. Actually, as an intern at Fordham University all the way through to today. As the as the founder of a nonprofit that brings people together. And that thread is community. And I think that I think community is so. At the core of my being because of who my parents are. So my mother is a nonprofit executive director. She was my entire life.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Growing up where she was with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, and then she was with the Epilepsy Association, and then she was with the Albany Medical College Alumni Association. My father is a business teacher and and a coach, a track coach. And I think I kind of got the best of both worlds through their career choices. And, you know, I didn't know this. I wasn't cognizant of this at at a young age of 21 where I set out on my career path. But but kind of looking back, I think that I had both of my parents as key influences for me. I knew at a young age that I had business acumen. I was the kid who didn't just have a lemonade stand. I had a lemonade franchise where I had the kids in the neighborhood working for me at doing their own lemonade stands, and we'd pool the the funds and I would pay them right. I was the entrepreneur and Girl Scout selling 311 boxes of Girl Scout cookies door to door at the time. Right. This is before social media, where kids put the videos on before the parents were selling in the offices. This was, you know, feet on the ground selling these boxes of cookies so I could get two free weeks of summer camp as an aid.
Dr. Kirk Adams: I always buy two boxes of Thin Mints. Ever given the opportunity?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Well, I will pass that along to to to the girls who do that now. That is far in my rearview mirror, but. So I always had this acumen, this business acumen. And and so at one point in my life, I was a case manager and a social worker, and it was amazing. It was rewarding, but I felt like there were there was a whole set of skills that I possessed that were dormant.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Can you can you can I I'm really I don't know why, but I feel really centered when I know where people are. So you're you're at Fordham, which is in New York. Yeah. When you ended up in San Francisco. So that's when we met. Now you're now you're in Saratoga Springs. So when you're doing your you're a case management. Where were you?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I was in Los Angeles. Because. Yes, because out of Fordham, I participated in a program similar to a one year domestic peace corps. It's called the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, still in existence. And I was stationed in Los Angeles, and I worked with homeless drug addicted, mentally ill adults in Skid Row. And that was an incredibly pivotal experience for me. I felt very, again, very proud of the work that I was doing, helping individuals. But I also felt a disconnect. And so I left that role and went to the admin side in my first development role with Proyecto Pastoral, which is a large nonprofit in East Los Angeles working with the Latino population. They're kind of known for their gang prevention programs under Father Greg Boyle, who became kind of a national celebrity in the at risk youth space. He's an incredible human being. So I worked in development there. When I left Los Angeles, honestly, at the age of 25, being totally burnt out, just feeling like I had seen the worst that our country had to offer and feeling a little little like I couldn't be very effective in creating change and really wanted to take a step back to figure out how I could participate to the greatest extent, how I can really help people. I knew that kind of on an individual level, wasn't it? The admin level was getting there, but I still felt like I hadn't figured it out and I and I was burned, I was bitter, I was callous, so I checked out and I went and surfed in Costa Rica for almost a year.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Which was which was a wonderful break. And I'm very privileged to have had that opportunity to to take that kind of pause. And what it did for me is it realized how badly I did want to get back and work. I wasn't so great at being idle and laying on the beach. So I came back and I actually went to Santa Cruz, California, and I worked for the United Way of Santa Cruz County, and I was a track coach in Santa Cruz as well. And there I met a woman athlete. I was a track athlete growing up. Yeah, I'm a highly competitive person, which serves me when I'm playing sports. But sometimes in life it's not appropriate to be as competitive as I am. But but that competitiveness, I think, kind of helps helps me stay focused on the social impact work that I do because I believe it's possible. And I believe if we work hard enough, we are going to reach our goal. But now, as a wiser, older, more mature professional, I'm much more committed to partnerships and collaboration. So that wasn't the case in my early 20s, but it is now.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Fortunately, I hear you.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: So at the.
Dr. Kirk Adams: United Way. The United Way resource development.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I was yeah, yeah.
Dr. Kirk Adams: And for those who don't know, that's that's a kind way to say fundraising.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah. And I met some really great people doing that work and really contribute to the community again still searching for my role. And, and I met a woman who told me about a graduate program in southern Vermont at a, at in Brattleboro, Vermont, very small town, very small school, 100 100 students in their graduate program. But upon hearing about I went home that night and I did my application, I applied, and a few months later I was driving cross-country to go to graduate school at the World Learning Institute, which is the original institution that trained Peace Corps volunteers to go abroad. And and there I. I study I was studying corporate social responsibility and sustainability because at the time there were no green MBA programs. Sustainability wasn't really in the lexicon. Again, really trying to marry my business acumen with my social values and and searching for a way. So, you know, I met with Ben and Jerry's and my thesis was on how do you define corporate ethics? And I looked at I had, you know, part of it was I had two lip balms and I said, this one is a traditional petroleum based lip balm, but 100% of the proceeds fund cleft palate surgeries in Africa. And this one is made with all natural, local, organic ingredients. But there is no philanthropic component. And which one is more socially responsible? And, you know, that was that was the core of what I was studying. And felt like I was starting to figure it out. And when I say it really myself is what I'm referring to. I founded a newswire service called CSR wire which is the first of its kind. Are you familiar with it?
Dr. Kirk Adams: I sure.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Am.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah. So I founded that 23 years ago. Right.
Dr. Kirk Adams: I was shocked to say that.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah. So so the point of that newswire is to share positive stories is to help businesses push out their positive practices. Because, again, the, the the typical traditional media is a lot about negativity. And at the time, businesses didn't have many avenues to share what what good things were happening. And I truly believe that on the continuum of, you know, good and bad, there's no there's no company that's good and there's no company that's bad. I feel like 99.9% of companies are clumped somewhere in the middle with shades of grey. Every company is doing something that is noteworthy. That's good for the community, that's good for employees or what have you. And every company has its challenges. But so I did that for three years and and, and it was awesome. But Vermont was feeling a little claustrophobic for me, being an hour and a half from the closest airport and my love of travel. So I moved to San Francisco, and that is at the time at which the story picks up with you involved at the Lighthouse for the blind. And that was my first opportunity to work in the disabled community. And as part of our training, probably not part of your training. But part of my training was that we go through a full day blindfolded, and that is through the office, navigating community services, navigating a restaurant experience, and ordering lunch. And I know, I know, that can be somewhat controversial that that that tool. But it was very effective for me.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Personally to.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Talk about that was for.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, please.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So disability simulations are sometimes used in order to intentionally give people without an impairment the experience of navigating the built social and digital environments with a simulated impairment in case of visual impairment. Now Doctor Ariel Silverman, who is now the director of research at American Foundation for the blind, she did her doctoral work at the University of Washington looking at those disability simulation experiences and her conclusion to to cut, you know, cut to the end of her dissertation is that they can be very counterproductive if they're not done correctly, because they can't can give a person without an impairment the impression that living, for instance, without sight can be a terrifying, frustrating, angering chaotic experience. But you said it was part of your training. But if used as part of a more comprehensive disability awareness training, it can be very useful. So I just want to highlight that, yeah, experiences like dining in the dark where you take people who haven't had any background or training and you throw a blindfold on them and tell them to eat dinner, they can walk away from that thinking, you know, being being blind could be the worst thing ever, right? So we don't want that, right?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: We don't want to paint such a negative impression. And also my understanding of the, you know, the simulation tool is that it really doesn't touch upon the culture. Right, to, to to have a blindfold on at a restaurant. The waitstaff is going to treat me exactly the same as they would with when I take that blindfold off. But that's that's a very, very different cultural experience than somebody who actually does live with it with an impairment. And so like you said, it was part of the training. And I think the way they did, it was very effective. And it also depends on the person. Right? For me personally, it was very helpful. Especially at the age that I was at at the time.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Did you.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Find the job and then moved to San Francisco or moved to San Francisco and then find a job?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I moved to San Francisco just because I needed a change. And friends and family and said, I think you'd you do really well in San Francisco. I think it's the right culture for you. And so I moved out there really on a whim. And unfortunately, I lived two blocks away from lighthouse for the blind. So it was a very easy commute.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: And And served me very, very well. I met my husband out in the Bay area. He was at Stanford. And he's he's an alumni of Stanford. And we decided to get married and and have children. And that is what was the impetus for us moving back to upstate New York, where I'm from. And, you know, to be closer to family again, that whole of community. Right? I didn't find a lot of community in general in my years out West. But the culture of upstate New York is one that that I find very, very comforting. And my family had lived here forever. My dad has has never lived anywhere but this area. And as a teacher, as a coach, had a very, very broad reach of and community. And one of my favorite things about living here. And I'll say it happens probably once, maybe twice a week, is I meet somebody who knew my dad. Oh, my gosh, you're Jim Connolly's daughter. Oh, he was my coach. Oh, he was my teacher. Oh, he was my neighbor. And that that sense of grounding and connectedness is so incredibly powerful for me personally. And, and my siblings don't have that. It doesn't happen to them. My my brothers in Seattle. But my sister is here locally and it never happens to her. And I have read that when these kind of coincidences happen, it's an indicator that the person is more present in life and really kind of seeking out those connections spiritually. That's what I've read. And maybe that's why it happens to me and not my sister. Maybe I just talk a lot more.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.
Dr. Kirk Adams: My dad was a high school basketball coach for 40 years. So the town where I graduated from high school north of Seattle. If I. Whenever I go there, I run into players. And.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: And it.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Feels great.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Players and coaches and refs. Yeah, I knew him so I understand.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So so you you you have your first experience working around disability in the sense of wildness. Yeah. White House. Yeah. And from then on, it seems like it was baked into everything that you've done since then.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah, I did social impact marketing.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So how does that how does that happen? Because not everybody who has, you know, an initial experience with disability becomes a fierce advocate and ally. Such as yourself?
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I, like I said, I maybe just goes back to who my parents are. Were. And I knew at a young age that people were important. Are important. I knew at a young age I knew I needed to do something connecting people. I had originally gone to business born because I thought I was going to go into advertising. But my sophomore year of college, I was competitively selected to work with habitat for Humanity in Guatemala. And, you know, if you if you map your life, there are probably a handful of events that have happened that have completely earned the trajectory for you. And and working in Guatemala as an 18 year old was one of those key moments. Key events in my life. And so when I came back to campus after that trip, I went and met with my advisor and I said, okay, new plan. I don't want to go into advertising as I understood it to be at the time. I said, I have to I have to figure out how to use again business marketing. But in a more positive way. And so I added sociology as a double major, which was awesome. I absolutely I absolutely loved it. But this has been a journey. This has been decades in the making to get me where I'm at today. And one of the first posts that I wrote when I launched Inclusive Saratoga, which was just in February, was that I felt like it was all these different avenues or streams of my life, kind of converging into one raging river. Everything I had learned Learn from different careers and different people and different experiences. Kind of kind of coming into into focus at this at this moment in my life.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: And part we didn't talk about yet is when we did start having a family. I one daughter who just completely shocked me, shocked me unbelievably. I had no idea how much I would love being a parent and her parent in particular. I really I'm not that maternal kind of person. But I loved it so much and I said, I want her to have a sibling now. It had taken us five years and tens of thousands of dollars to conceive my older daughter, whose name is Porter. And it was it was a brutal five years. I called them the Lost Years because we really couldn't do anything. We couldn't move our lives forward at all until we knew if we were going to be parents. And and we were, and it was amazing. And I said to my husband. One day I said, I want to try one more time and he didn't think I was crazy. Which maybe means that he's crazy. Because it was. It was just like after what we had been through. He said, if you're willing to do it, so am I. So we tried one more time and conceived my second daughter, who's Tatum, and she was born at 24 weeks, so she was born 108 days prematurely. Yeah. That's how many days she spent in NICU. And so for the past 11 years, she's now just over 11. I have been in the disability space by virtue of being her parent. And she has physical as well as cognitive as well as speech disabilities. So she has she experiences a fairly large spectrum of challenges and navigating that with.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Her.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Has really, really. It's been it's been powerful for me. You know, again, it feels like everything I've done kind of has led up to where we're at. And and it was a year ago this week, actually, that I decided to focus on, you know, combining all my skills and energy and passions into really advocating for individuals with disabilities of any kind. And it took me about six months to flesh out what I, what I wanted that to look like. Did I want to be an LLC or a nonprofit? And what was going to be the focus? What was the real gap that I was trying to fill? And and it took a lot of searching and a lot of conversations. I connected with disability advocates all over the world who were kind enough and generous enough with their time to have frank conversations with me. And so the model of Inclusive Saratoga was based on a lot of my personal experience, but also a lot of research and and conversations with other people who face challenges in our society.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So what did you decide?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: So inclusive Saratoga is a nonprofit and and, and a lot of people were really surprised because this is February. Mine in February of 2025. And you can reflect back on what was happening politically at that time. A lot of people thought I perhaps was making a poor career choice by going into this, this field. But I, I remain very optimistic about 2025. And the reason I do is because my experience has shown me that when federal funds and federal programs are pulled back. Businesses and individuals step up. I've seen it time and time again, and I truly believe that on a very personal level, people want to make the right choices and people want to support each other, and that is what we are tapping into. And so inclusive. Saratoga, our model, is basically a consultancy where we work with businesses of all kinds. Hospitality businesses are really kind of a key vertical. But any business to help that business tap into the ROI of embracing disability inclusivity, that looks totally different for various types of businesses. And one organization, we worked with them on their parking. They were very unclear on the the laws and how to where to put handicap accessible parking and that kind of thing. Another we we do service animal training. Another we're looking at adding sensory station and sensory kits and another we're looking at staff training. So that the staff can be more prepared to better serve all their customers who have disabilities. We have worked in the brewery space, the craft beer space. You mentioned that early in our call. And my work in that industry was really rooted in the fact that breweries tend to be gathering places. They tend to be social hubs, and they tend to be very generous from a philanthropic standpoint of, you know, donating to community groups and yeah, and inviting nonprofits to have meetings there for free and that kind of thing. So that's why I had worked in that industry for, for a decade. And that industry is so, so perfectly.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Positioned to benefit from the work that we do at inclusive Saratoga to really welcome everybody into into the brewery, the brewery space. Yeah. So that's that's in a nutshell what what we do and because we are an, a traditional nonprofit, meaning we don't do direct service work. A lot of foundations are struggling with funding us because it's outside of their models. So so we have to be very innovative. We have to be creative. And one of the things we've done is launch a, an earned income stream of inclusive apparel. And so it's tees, tanks, hoodies that promote only positive messages and raise awareness. And 100% of the profits go to funding our consultancy.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. So I have to ask. Because my, my my passion, what I've devoted my professional and academic careers and energies to as employment with people with disabilities, and the fact that only 35% of us with significant disabilities are in the workforce, which leads to a lot of poverty and all the all the bad things that happen, poverty. So I have are you able to have conversations with any of the people you're serving as a consultant around inclusion of people with disabilities in their workforce?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah, that's a great question. And we do not do that work ourselves. And the reason the reason we don't is because there are organisations who are already doing that. And and I just met with one here locally the other day called Wildwood. Wildwood happens to be the fiscal intermediary intermediary for my daughter's Medicaid, so I was already familiar with them. Okay, but she's only 11, so I wasn't really familiar with their their job readiness or job placement program. But we had a meeting, and I was so pleasantly surprised at her reaction to what we're doing, because the way she viewed it was, she's like, you're warming. You're warming up these businesses. We're going to we're going to follow you in. You're going to talk about inclusivity on a larger scale. You're going to help them because we really focus on the customer service side of things. Yeah. And and she said, but but by virtue of doing that, they are automatically in better positions to employ individuals with disabilities. You're knocking down these barriers. You're warming up these businesses to the idea. So then we come in and we can hopefully, you know, form partnerships with them. So it looks like yeah, it looks like a really great relationship. And you know, and again, like what we're doing nobody was doing before. And I have two business degrees. I had never. Nobody had ever talked about disability or inclusivity or accessibility in any of my business classes. So when I knock on these businesses doors and I and I literally cold call or just show up they say this is the first time anyone has ever invited us to have this conversation. So the first time anyone has ever offered these services. And so, yeah.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Focus is to help these businesses create welcome pleasant frictionless, barrier free customer experiences for their customers with disabilities. Is that.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: And and the reason that's our focus is because everybody should be together. Yeah. So I mentioned I have two daughters. They both ski. They ski at separate ski mountains. And that is that makes for a very long Saturday for me to go to different ski mountains because they have different programs. And though in my in my opinion, that should not be the case, my daughter should be able to ski together. They want to ski together, but one has the adaptive program and one doesn't. And so I believe that when individuals are together disability or not, everyone grows and learns. And then when I talk to businesses, though, there is a real business case for it. Accenture did a study that showed that businesses that embrace disability inclusivity see 30% higher net revenue. So while I'd like to. Yes. So I'd like to think that people, you know, do it because they, they believe in it. But if they're doing it because of the economics, that's fine too. So that's that's really what I'm tapping into, is working with music venues and museums and restaurants and and breweries so that so that everybody can, can go and participate fully and have maybe a different but a shared experience.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Well, you I think one of the first things out of your mouth was community was a unifying theme for, for you in your life. So it seems that all these various experiences have indeed, I think you said, combined to form a raging river. So it seems like your your head heading down, heading down the river. So creating a nonprofit, have you founded a nonprofit?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I hadn't founded one myself. But when I was doing the development work, I. I got into training other development professionals and helping them navigate the world of fundraising. So I at least had had that background. And to be completely honest, I didn't want to be a nonprofit. Yeah, I, I feel like I feel like in general, nonprofits tend to, you know, become beholden to the funders and not innovate enough and not not be assertive enough in addressing their key goals and objectives. And so I didn't want to be a nonprofit, but I ultimately made that decision because at least initially, I feel like it opens us up to more conversations, which is part of the goal.
Dr. Kirk Adams: You know, I've been in the nonprofit space a long, long time. So, you know, the the the board is so important. And I want to talk to you a little bit about that, but I, I disclaimer I love the nonprofit sector. I love non-profit organizations. I love people who volunteer to serve on boards of directors and boards of trustees for nonprofits. But the structure is inherently really difficult to move quickly. It's very hard to be nimble. Unless you really designed it to, to have that capacity. And that usually starts with how you design a board and who you have on your board. Because our process is people that people need buy in and they need to understand and they're volunteers. And you have structures and processes and subcommittees and recommendations by subcommittees to committees and quarterly board meetings. It's really hard. It's hard to move quickly unless you build that capacity in structurally. And I. I'm sure you're fully aware of that. I'm sure you're doing that.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I'm trying to. I was very deliberate about our founding board members. We are actively trying to recruit more board members, honestly, because there's so much opportunity. For what? What we're doing. I anyone who's willing to support us, I'm willing to, to kind of figure out a role for them. But but yeah, I am trying to be very, very deliberate and intentional about how we spend our time, how we spend our resources. What what we are working on. Again, there's there is so much need and opportunity that when something isn't clicking, I'm trying to move on. I'm trying to say, okay, you know what? There's that's not clicking at this time. So rather than keep pursuing it, and this is where I have to kind of suppress my competitive nature a little bit go after the things that are starting to percolate.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So every morning when I get ready for the day, I Right. Kind of a little vision statement for the day. And I write my mantra for today. For the day. This morning it was don't, don't. Chase was pretty much for today. So there's a there's enough opportunity out there that you don't need to chase. And you can Think about being magnetic and attracting opportunity to you. Right. Which I think you talked about a little bit. Talked about connecting with people who. You know, have a relationship with your father.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: And I will say to that point about the. Don't chase the number of people that I have met who have fed me positive energy. In the last six months is is probably more than the last six years prior to these six months. The people who are coming forward and who we're meeting and we've connected with or who volunteered some time or have donated, or who have even just stopped by to say hi at our booth at one of our local events. It's really so powerful and I am really grateful for it. It's something I didn't really think about going into as a byproduct of what we're doing. But but when we have events, you know, we're there to sell our merch again as a fundraiser and raise awareness. But people are coming to our booth, oftentimes kind of teary eyed, saying things to us like, you know, how can you be so positive right now? And, and it's amazing what you're trying to accomplish. And and I literally invite them into the booth. Come on in, come in the shade, come sit down, chat with us. And we've met incredible people. And I mean, even reconnecting with you. Kirk. This was a great opportunity for for us to to re-engage after two decades. And so that is my that is honestly my favorite part of my job is is the people that I've had the pleasure of either reconnecting with or connecting with for the first time in the last six months.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Just this morning, I was invited to to visit Camp Abilities, which is a camp. Yeah, you're familiar with it. For our listeners, Lauren Lieberman, for our listeners that don't know what it is. It here in Saratoga Springs, there's a college called Skidmore College, and that is where this camp takes place, is a camp for youth who are visually impaired or blind. And it's produced by the Lions Club of Saratoga Springs. They fund it, they organize it, and and I have a really nice relationship with the Lions Club as of the last handful of months. And they invited me to the camp today and went and met some of the campers and had some really great conversations. And you know, sometimes I say, I can't believe this is my job. I can't believe this is what I get to do, right? Because I feel so privileged to hear their stories and and to be able to share our own story. Which is you know, not all positive, right? We've been through a lot of trauma as a family. But it's so cathartic to to to share that and to connect with people.
Dr. Kirk Adams: I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Manhattan and took a train to Albany. That's my experience of New York. So
Meghan Connolly Haupt: You were close. You're about 40 minutes away in Albany.
Dr. Kirk Adams: How far away is Saratoga Springs from Stony Brook?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I don't know how far it is from Stony. Maybe two and a half. Maybe.
Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm not sure. Woman. Doctor Lauren Lieberman is a professor there, and she's like the leading expert on physical education for kids.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Okay.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Capabilities there. I see. So tell I we're coming. We'll need to do a part two to get the one year report on.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Oh, that'd be great. But if you can get my time, then I may be too busy.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Okay. That's right. All full schedule. Can you tell tell me just a little bit about the community. You mentioned hospitality, and you mentioned breweries and festivals and restaurants. So it. Is that a hospitality industry hub? Saratoga, Saratoga Springs, are there other industries? How many people? Just a little snapshot.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah. So Saratoga Springs. I think the community of residents is about 28,000. It's a small city. It's a city. It's not a suburb. So it's so it is its own entity. But I think it's about 28,000 residents. However, we have the oldest sporting venue in the country here. Our other big claim to fame, beyond being the birthplace of the potato chip is the Saratoga racetrack.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Right.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: So we have, you know, it's a it's a booming, booming tourist town for several months out of the year. And in addition to that, we have Saratoga Performing Arts Center, which is in Saratoga Springs Spa State Park. And that music venue is 60 years old. And it's not a huge venue, I want to say 20, 25,000 attendees capacity, but get some really amazing acts and New York City Ballet, the orchestra, as well as partnership with Live Nation where they have, you know, modern rock pop stuff. But that, is here as well. So you've got the track. You've got stack. It is and, you know, especially during the summer with, with a lot of tourism and I'm on lots of different social media groups about tourism in the city. And I'm seeing more and more people coming to visit asking questions like, hey, I have mobility challenges. Can you give me a recommendation of a restaurant? Or, hey, we're going to go to Spac. Can somebody explain to me what we might expect when we get there? We're traveling with our disabled child or what have you, and I'm happy to pipe in and and then kind of gather that information and go to these entities and say, hey, we can we can do more. We have opportunity to better serve the community. And guess what? In doing so, you're going to see a higher net Net revenue. So I have a personal passion for the arts, and and it just, you know, it's just a logical.
Dr. Kirk Adams: My my my mind is racing now, Meghan, that I know what you're doing, so I, I have some resources I want to connect you with on some networks that are kindred spirits. Awesome. You're doing so.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Awesome. That's fantastic. I, I would love any introductions. Because you can keep going, right? I keep following the trail of breadcrumbs if.
Dr. Kirk Adams: You want people. If people want to get in touch with you and Yeah. Have conversation. Find out more about.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Absolutely. I would love to hear from any of your listeners.
Dr. Kirk Adams: How do they do that?
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah. Inclusive saratoga.com. And my email address is Hello at Inclusive Saratoga. Com there's also a form field on on the website. And and we have Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. You can find us on any one of those four platforms. Even something like a like or a follow really helps validate what we're doing and helps bring that conversation together. Kirk, I don't I don't know your opinion on this yet.
Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm hoping I will be going to your socials today.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Awesome. Well, we'll we'll share the socials to really connect this conversation, but I don't know your thoughts and would love to hear them on kind of the movement in general. You know, it's disability is such a huge term, right? There's so much that falls under that. But what I often feel like we do ourselves a disservice in, in the advocacy or in the movement of of infighting. Right. Like, no, we can't say disabled person. We have to say a person with a disability. And and I feel like that there's, there's a lot of need and again, opportunity to, to pull the conversation together and move forward as more of a united front. I know not everyone's going to have the same opinion. And you know I am not a disabled person I'm the parent of. So I have a different vantage point than you do than other people do. But I just feel like any way that we can help pull all these different groups and conversations together to be tighter, the better it will serve all of us.
Dr. Kirk Adams: I think that's right. I am very, very hopeful for the future. I've seen a lot of progress in the last 25 years. In the last ten years, things are accelerating as far as just normalizing conversations about disability and accommodations. And, you know, honestly, the Black Lives movement and the national dialogue about institutional barriers to oppressed groups really opened up and disrupted a lot of a lot of spaces around being able to talk about this kind of stuff. Of course there's there there's always pendulum, so there's pushback on that. It'll push back again. Things evolve. Of the or the arc of history been slowly, but it bends toward towards justice, to paraphrase Doctor King, but just the younger generation. I have nieces and nephews who are eight, ten, 12, 14 years old. They're just so inclusive. And they're thinking and they're talking. They have networks of people digitally they have kids with disabilities in their classrooms. They don't they don't bat an eye. You know, when I come in with my cane and my braille and you know, they have friends who are wheelchair users and friends use augmentative communication devices. And, I just think you know, 20, 20 years from now it's it's going to be. Yeah. Amazing. As far as the levels of inclusion and understanding and awareness and empathy, I feel really good about that.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: I agree with you. I had this moment recently where I. I was at the park. I had gone for a run and got in the car, put my seatbelt down and started driving home, and I realized that I couldn't remember putting my seatbelt on. It has become so habitual for for my generation. Whereas, you know, I grew up in the 70s, I grew up with a vinyl seat. I fell out of a moving car going 40 miles an hour when I was five years old. Right. Seatbelt. My generation had to learn that you wear a seatbelt. Right. Yeah, well, first they had to install them in the vehicles. But but here, you know, at my age, it's it's so habitual. I didn't even think about it. Right. So I'm halfway home. And I said, I don't even remember putting my seatbelt on, and I use that. It's not a perfect analogy, but I use it to think about. So that was, you know, 47 years ago, I fell out of a moving car because no one wore seatbelts. 47 years from now, what is inclusivity going to look like? I'm hopeful that the things that are a challenge that we're just putting into place now, 47 years from now, no one even thinks about, and they look back at this time and go, I can't believe you lived like that, I can't believe. You know, you didn't have these things, right? The way we look back on the 70s say, I can't believe you sat in the front seat with no seatbelt.
Dr. Kirk Adams: Or climbed back and forth between the seats at the station, like, oh, yeah.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Facing backwards.
Dr. Kirk Adams: I was at a conference in San Francisco and the presenter started out talking about societal change. This is how societies change. And he said 50 years ago there would have been an ashtray on each of these conference tables. Yeah, this room would have been filled with smoke.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Yeah.
Dr. Kirk Adams: So just think about that for a second. But I the time flew by. Meghan, I am so much looking forward to an update later on to see what progress you've made. How far you've gotten down the raging river? Yes. If people want to get in touch with me, my email is Kirk Adams, Kirk Adams, Kirk ams, Dr. Kirk Adams. Com and I'm on LinkedIn a lot. I'm Kirk Adams on LinkedIn. And thank you for listening to my really wonderful visit with Meghan. Catching up.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Thank you. Oh, thank you so much. It was it was really a wonderful hour spent with you. And and I look forward to sharing all of our progress on our next call, maybe a year from now or so. Every single day. Relentless forward progress.
Dr. Kirk Adams: That's it. I love that. And I'm going to inclusive saratoga.com right now. And liking you on the social.
Meghan Connolly Haupt: Thanks so much Kirk I really appreciate you and all your work. You be well.
Dr. Kirk Adams: All right. You too. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time.
Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at. Kirk Adams. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening. Keep learning and keep making an impact.
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