From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 14:47:02 -0400 (EDT)
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.
[INLINE]
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.
[INLINE]
Joyce Bender
_________________________________________________________________
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.
[INLINE]
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."
VICUG-L ARCHIVES http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html
INDEX of VICUGS http://trfn.clpgh.org/vipace/vicug/vicugs.html
SUBSCRIPTION FORM http://trfn.clpgh.org/vipace/vicug/subscribe.html
|
