Closing the Disability Wealth Gap

SOCAP Global November 28, 2023

A Money + Meaning Podcast With Regina Kline, Disability Tech Entrepreneurs, and Their End Users

People with disabilities currently represent 50% of those living in long-term poverty in the U.S., and nearly two-thirds of the world’s working-age people with disabilities are not employed. Enable Ventures is the first impact venture fund dedicated to closing the disability wealth gap. The fund’s team believes that they can lower these statistics by supporting companies and solutions that are inclusive of the full range of human experience.

A new Money + Meaning podcast features a SOCAP23 panel moderated by Enable Ventures Founder Regina Kline. During the “Closing the Disability Wealth Gap” dialogue, Kline spoke with entrepreneurs from four catalytic, impactful, high-growth startups who are leading the charge in technical innovations specifically for the disability sector. In this conversation, they are joined by customers and end users of their products to discuss how these innovative solutions are changing the world.

Hardwig Media

“We have promoted a model of disability that has been largely analog at the exact moment that there is the most dramatic disruption to the capital markets by technology,” said Kline. She noted that all of the featured founders “are on the bleeding edge of AI.” She said, “They are leveraging new technology for good in a way that other founders in Silicon Valley haven’t thought about the customer experience, the end user, in quite the same way.”

The entrepreneurs featured on this SOCAP23 panel represent companies that have developed a range of technologies for people with disabilities. From a next-generation captioning solution to a neuro tech sleeve that facilitates muscle re-education to improve mobility, these technologies improve overall well-being, promote equity and inclusivity, and provide scalable opportunities for future advancement.

Kline also interviewed Andy McMahon of UnitedHealthGroup, a believer that healthcare is in alignment with impact. McMahon praised the technological advances presented and applauded their dedication to increasing opportunities for the disability community. “The work that all of these four amazing organizations and that you all at Enable are doing is really just destroying and dismantling perceptions and biases against people with disabilities,” he said.

In this podcast, you’ll hear from these disability tech leaders and end users of the technologies they’ve developed:

  • Thibault Duchemin of Ava and customer Bernardo Ibarra of Golden Gate University
  • Byran Dai of Daivergent and customer Joseph Spence
  • Sarah Bernard of Inclusively with customer Catherine Nichols of Salesforce
  • Jeremiah Robison of CIONIC and customer Jan Grierson

Listen to the full Money + Meaning conversation to learn how the disability market has tremendous potential to drive both profit and purpose, returning value to investors and society.

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Money + Meaning is the official podcast of SOCAP. The series aims to expand the conversation around impact investing and strategies to finance and support social change while stimulating innovative and valuable new partnerships across sectors.

Equity and Inclusion / Impact Investing / Social Entrepreneurship
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