Kevin McDaniel speaks with Alycia Anderson, founder of the Alycia Anderson Company, LLC and moderator for Accessibility.com's 2021 Global AccessibilityPlus Conference. Alycia opens up about her childhood, her parents, how adaptive sports shaped her life and shares some of her plans for the future.
When you meet Alycia Anderson for the first time an instant connection is established. Sincere, down-to-earth, joyful, incredibly empathetic, and diplomatic, Alycia is the parent at your children's soccer game, high-fiving everyone, even the visiting team.
Born in 1975, a time when the Judith Heumann's of the world were advocating for further civil rights legislation to include citizens with disabilities, Alycia and her identical able-bodied twin sister were being born into a lifelong journey in inclusion, and they would be taught from an early age being successful in it would require them to be resourceful.
"I had to learn," Alycia says, "to play at a high level, my sister and I would play tennis together, her without a disability and me through my chair. Sports taught me to be very proficient in my wheelchair [...] taught me how to be fit, to be competitive, and to want to win [...] tennis was the most important gift I was ever given."
Alycia says that the credit for that gift belongs to her mother who sought out Brad Parks. He facilitated her first-ever tennis lessons and introduced her to adaptive sports while he was in the midst of founding the sport of wheelchair tennis. Her parent’s goal was to find a sport they could all play together as a family where they could teach her lessons of strength, confidence, and independence at a young age.
"When I was a little girl − before my mother passed away, she told my dad, 'make sure she is independent,'" Alycia says "that was her primary concern... and he did...when I was 18 he forced me to move out so I could learn to live independently."
Living alone at 18 required that she worked, so she landed a job waiting tables while living apart from her father and she continued to play sports. All of this, she says, took preparation, planning, and a lot of learning along the way.
"I have to plan for everything," she says. "When you have a disability, everything is different. I plan for transportation, I plan for inaccessibility [...] planning and preparation have been lifelong developed skills [...] and the companies I worked with found out those skills transferred to business."
Early on in her career when she looked for new employment opportunities, Alycia says, she was reluctant to tell employers that she had a disability and that it would always be an awkward moment when she did, but after years in the workforce and transitioning to her latest position with an innovative technology company her potential boss wouldn’t even know she had a disability until she arrived at the in-person hiring interview.
"It was great because I would get to the interview and we'd get right to business." After the interview and onboarding, Alycia would ask her boss why she was hired, "his response was 'because I knew you were a good planner and it would transfer to your work.'"
Indeed, her planning and preparation skills have given her an edge others do not have. "When you have a disability, you naturally develop this skill set, and it shows through in getting to work, being collaborative, working towards the life you want, being adaptable and knowing everyone's role [...] all along the way... knowing you have to work harder [...] it makes you better."
Alycia has also faced her share of adversity − which she believes made her better.
"Years ago, I was attending a concert in San Francisco, and I was very excited to see the show. On entering I found a place I could actually see the stage, the perfect seats. Before the concert began, a man and his wife walked up and stood in front of my husband and I, blocking our view and saying ‘aren't there places for people like you?' I was so embarrassed and saddened I didn't even address his comments, I just sat there and started to cry. That was the moment."
Since then, Alycia has made it her mission to speak to the largest audiences she can. Starting by leveraging her position as Vice President of Sales at Knock, an online sales management solution for multifamily rental properties, and speaking to companies in the industry on the benefits of inclusion in the workplace. She has branched out into Corporate America as well, being invited as a panelist at marketing summits on DEI, appearing on podcasts related to the work of inclusion, and keynoting internal corporate events for companies. Most recently speaking on the famous TEDx stage on disabling ableism.
All of this has driven her to form her own speaking company, the Alycia Anderson Company, LLC.
Alycia believes in putting the community first in that she has launched a giving back program, and says, "every city I speak in (live or virtual), I find a non-profit that is advancing the opportunities for independence and inclusion of people with disabilities and donate to them. I do this to provide further exposure to those doing good work in the community and to spread the belief in possible to those who have hired me."
"For me, I want organizations to see that inclusion is a benefit! Just like planning prepared me for my role as VP, it is something many of us people with disabilities must do just to live independently − it is our super ability. Our diversity makes us marketable but is not the only thing that does− I've gone from hiding my disability to embracing it," she says, "I want people to see me for me."
“The way we do this is by stripping away the stigmas, biases, and preconceived notions of each other and start with the person first, finding the human in us, this then leads us to the heart of inclusion.”
In 2021 Alycia was given the opportunity to participate in her first TEDx Talk, which she says empowered her to begin spending more time developing her company, "during my TEDx Talk, even though she is gone, it was me and my mom on that stage, which was incredibly empowering for me."
Alycia says that accessibility coupled with inclusion makes organizations better, her message to others: "my Accessibility 'Plus' is 'Believe in Possible', because it truly is."