Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion: January 30, 2025: Eddie Mazariegos, CE...

In this episode of Supercharge Your Bottom Line Trough Disability Inclusion, Dr. Kirk Adams speaks with Future Gen CEO, Eddie Mazzariegos, about innovative ways to improve employment outcomes for youth with disabilities.
They explore how technology-driven career exploration can reduce barriers, highlight new opportunities, and empower students - especially those who are blind or visually impaired - to chart their own professional paths.
Eddie also shares the inspiring story behind Future Gen, the platform's collaboration with vocational rehabilitation programs, and practical tips for educators, families, and advocates aiming to supercharge career readiness and break the cycle of chronic unemployment.
📌 Key Topics Covered:

• 👉 The importance of early exposure to diverse career pathways
• 👉 How short-form video curation personalizes career exploration
• 👉 Strategies to build confidence, self-advocacy, and high expectations
• 👉 Partnerships with schools and vocational rehab agencies for inclusive education
• 👉 Real-life successes and how to scale meaningful impact
For more insights or to connect with Dr. Kirk Adams: ► Website: drkirkadams.com | Email: [e-mail] (mailto:[e-mail]) 📧️ | LinkedIn: / kirkadamsphd
Learn more about Future Gen: ► Website: www.futuregenx...| LinkedIn: / emmazariegos
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TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
disability inclusion, employment for disabled, career pathways, workforce participation, chronic unemployment, poverty issues, home ownership, health disparities, blindness skills, high expectations, internal locus, career exploration, future Gen, mentorship programs, career readiness
SPEAKERS
Speaker 1, Speaker 2
Speaker 1 00:02 Welcome everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams speaking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington, and this is my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through Disability Inclusion, where we focus on employment for people with disabilities, and that is my passion, both professionally, personally, academically, what I have focused on. And each month, I bring a guest who shares that passion with me to create career pathways for people with disabilities to thrive our world. And today, I have the pleasure of having a conversation with Eddie mazzariegos from future Gen. And Eddie, if you can just say hi, and then we’ll come back to you in a bit.
Speaker 2 00:53 It sounds perfectly fine. Hi everybody. My name is Eddie mazzaregos, as Dr Kirk just mentioned, and I’m Di Len as a neighbor nearby Kirk here in Tacoma, Washington,
Speaker 1 01:06 and you are the CEO of a fairly new company called Future Gen, which is addressing some really pressing needs in the space of employment for people with disabilities. So it’s a pleasure to have you here, and we’ll hear a lot more about future Gen in a bit. So for those of you who don’t know me, again, it’s Dr Kirk Adams. I am the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, prior to that same role at the lighthouse for the blind here in Seattle, I’ve spent the last 30 plus years really focused on employment issues for people with disabilities, people who are blind, in particular, and there’s, there’s, there’s some really well documented reasons why I do that. Only about 35% of us with significant disabilities are in the workforce. That’s about half the workforce participation rate of the general population. So with chronic unemployment, chronic lack of workforce participation, come to poverty just to just to be really clear about it. So a lot of our people in our community live in poverty.
02:23 Many people have a small
Speaker 1 02:28 transfer payment from the government. Social Security, disability insurance being the most typical one, where people get a $1,700 or so per month, which is is not a living income level in our country. So along with poverty comes a lack of home ownership. Our home ownership rate is about 110 that of the general population. Health Disparities, lower life expectancy greater substance abuse issues, depression, mental health issues. So I say, if you look at people with disabilities, blind people in particular, compared to the general population, our outcomes are either half as half as good or twice as bad as the general population. So we really want to address that by being thoughtful and understanding what all the dynamics are to this complex problem. And I want to talk about young people in particular. So as we look at the demographics, as I said, Only 35% of us are the workforce. Of those of us who are working, the majority of us,
03:49 more than half, work for nonprofits or government,
Speaker 1 03:54 which is a lower income ceiling ...