Hi listers,
For those of you in Harrisburg, I enjoyed meeting you. Here is an article
about Joyce Bender which appears in today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It can
be seen at http://www.post-gazette.com/businessnews/19981018exec3.asp:
Executive in the spotlight: Doing well and doing good
Joyce Bender's brush with disability left her a passion to help
Sunday, October 18, 1998
By Jim McKay, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Joyce Bender has a motto: Competitive jobs mean freedom.
Executive recruiter Joyce Bender is the driving force behind pilot project
to find jobs for those with disabilities. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)
That adage drives one of her for-profit businesses, Bender Consulting
Services, and a new nonprofit project she conceived that aims to train and
employ people with disabilities in well-paying computer science careers.
An executive recruiter who specializes in the hot information technology
field, Bender three years ago turned a hobby of finding jobs for computer
specialists with disabilities into Bender Consulting, a subsidiary of an
existing business, Bender and Associates.
Bender Consulting currently employs about two dozen computer experts who
have physical disabilities and leases them to client firms in Western
Pennsylvania and Delaware.
"You cannot be independent or free in this country unless you can go to the
bank, unless you have money to buy what everyone else does," she says.
A year ago, Bender ran into a problem that is bedeviling human resource
executives in Pittsburgh and across the country. She could not find enough
qualified candidates in information technology to fill available job
openings.
Joyce Bender
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Age: 44
Title: President, Bender and Associates, and of the Pittsburgh Disability
Employment Project for Freedom.
Education: Geneva College, psychology major
Career Path: First Job was substitute teacher. In 1979 began career with
executive search firm specializing in placement of computer professionals.
Founded Bender and Associated in 1988 and formed Bender Consulting Services
in 1995 to employ people with disabilities as full-time consultants in
computer information technology.
From that idea grew the Pittsburgh Disability Demonstration Project for
Freedom, a nonprofit education-to-work organization founded by Bender and
supported by corporations that need computer talent.
The first classes began last Tuesday at the Institute of Advanced Technology
at the North Side campus of the Community College of Allegheny County on
computers loaned by Transarc, the Pittsburgh-based software company that is
an IBM subsidiary.
Start-up help came from H. Lee Noble, president of Bayer Corp.'s polymers
division, and Thomas C. Sommers, senior vice president of resource
management for Highmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
"I felt it had a lot of merit," said Noble, who agreed to be the project's
chairman.
The program also appealed to the former teacher in Lorene Steffes, the
president and CEO of Transarc, who, after being lobbied by Bender, agreed to
serve on the board of directors.
Sommers said the program is patterned in part on a successful project he
undertook for Blue Shield in Central Pennsylvania that trained welfare
recipients for jobs that were guaranteed up front. A former Blue Shield
trainer, Girard Rickards, has agreed to be the program's director.
Bayer, Highmark, Transarc and Bender have pledged jobs, as have Mellon Bank
and Bell Atlantic Corp., according to Noble. He said Xerox, Fore Systems,
Alcoa, PNC and PPG are considering commitments.
The program is starting small. The first class of 10 students will be
trained for entry-level jobs on computer help desks with the goal of 100
placements in information technology careers by the end of 2000.
"There's a tremendous need. A lot of people with disabilities can get into
this field rather easily and be successful at it," said Tony Coelho,
president of the President's Committee on Employment of People with
Disabilities. "This is the way you start."
If business is driving this initiative, what drives Bender? The answer is
her own brush with a life-threatening accident, a cerebral hemorrhage that
forced emergency brain surgery.
It was 1984 and Bender was buying a Diet Coke during the intermission of the
movie "Amadeus" when the hemorrhage occurred without warning. Her fall to
the movie house floor shattered bones in her ear.
An anonymous doctor in the audience took charge and got her to a hospital,
where she underwent surgery. Family members were told she might not survive
and, if she did, might be visually or mentally impaired.
Bender beat the odds and was back at work in a few months. The accident left
her with a 40 percent hearing loss in one ear and the discovery of epilepsy,
a seizure disorder, which she controls with medication.
Although Bender recovered, she could not shake the memory of less fortunate
people she met while in rehabilitation. Those thoughts developed what can
only be described as her passion for helping the disabled.
"I've been blessed," she said.
Bender started her crusade by helping place students from the CCAC's
Institute for Advanced Technology, which trains people with disabilities to
become computer programmers.
She then tried to rally other executive recruiting and placement firms to
find jobs for the disabled. Slim success with that effort led her in 1995 to
form Bender Consulting Services with a mission to provide full-time jobs and
make money doing it.
Now an executive board member of the President's Committee on Employment of
People with Disabilities and a board member of the Epilepsy Foundation of
America and similar state organizations, Bender hopes her pilot project will
spark national programs.
"This is the only project you'll find where the jobs are there now -
guaranteed jobs waiting for the students," she said. "We want Pittsburgh to
be the national example."
PLEASE NOTE MY NEW ADDRESS!: [log in to unmask]
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Michael W. Gravitt
[log in to unmask]
528 Chatham Park Dr., Apt. 1C
Pittsburgh, PA 15220
412.344.2313
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