ReThink Ability Episode 1 – Why We Had to Rethink Ability — and Made the Damn Series to Do It

In this candid kickoff to Rethink Ability, co-hosts Marion Anderson, Danny Gluch, Cacha Dora, and Lia Seth unpack the personal journey that sparked this series — born from lived experience, late diagnoses, awkward conversations, and the realization that HR wasn’t trained for this.

What began as DMs and shared frustrations turned into a collaborative effort to rethink how we talk about disability at work — and to create the resource we all wish we had.

We talk about:

• Becoming the one who needs accommodations
• The gaps in HR training — and why they matter
• Lia’s jaw-dropping wheelchair moment
• Why ignorance still causes harm
• What real inclusion actually takes

This one’s for every HR pro winging it, every unsure manager, and every disabled employee tired of being the explainer-in-chief.

Honest. Unfiltered. Necessary.

Marion Anderson
PhD researcher, founder of The Fearless PX, and a disabled HR leader working to make work suck less — especially for those the system forgets.

Danny Gluch
DEI strategist, philosopher, educator, and squinter-in-chief.

Cacha Dora
Cultural strategist, equity whisperer, and the person you want in hard conversations. Makes inclusion make sense.

Lia Seth
Director of People at Cylinder, disability advocate, Accessibility Queen. Lives in Seattle. Loves mountains.

🔗 Show Notes
🔗 Follow Rethink Ability on LinkedIn

Rethink Ability is a limited seven-part series exploring the unseen dimensions of disability at work — and what it really takes to build environments where everyone can thrive.

Brought to you by The Fearless PX and The Elephant in the Org, in collaboration with Invisible Condition and The Performance Innovation Collective, the series centers disabled voices, advocates, and changemakers across seven honest, human, action-driven episodes.

This isn’t another checkbox DEI moment.
It’s a call to rethink assumptions, redesign systems, and reshape culture.

Perfect for HR pros and leaders ready to go beyond performative inc

🐘 Connect with Us:

🚀 Follow The Fearless PX on LinkedIn: The Fearless PX
📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email Marion, Cacha, and Danny at elephant@thefearlesspx.com
🎧 Catch every episode of The Elephant in the Org: All Episodes Here

🚀Your Hosts on Linkedin:

🐘Marion Anderson

🐘Danny Gluch

🐘Cacha Dora

💬 Like what you hear?
Subscribe, leave a ★★★★★ review, and help us bring more elephants into the light.

🎙️ About the Show

The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024.
Get ready for even more fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits

🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Transcript

Episode 1: Why We Had to Rethink Ability — and Made the Damn Series to Do It

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Danny Gluch: Welcome everyone to this special series called Rethinkability. I'm here with my co-host from the elephant in the org, podcast Marion Anderson.

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Marion: Hello!

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Danny Gluch: And Cacha Dora.

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Cacha Dora: Hello!

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Danny Gluch: And joined by our collaborator from the invisible condition Lia Seth

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Lia Seth: Hello!

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Danny Gluch: Thank you everyone for joining us. We're really excited about this series that we're starting. And we wanted this 1st episode to be about why, we're doing a series called Rethinkability.

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Marion: Why are we, Danny?

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Danny Gluch: You know, that's a really good question I was just about to ask you, Marion, and you're supposed to have the answer to this.

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Marion: Aha!

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Marion: Why are we doing it this this little project, this little bit of our summer work came out of some fun stuff we did last year?

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Marion: And some not so fun stuff. Actually, the the fun stuff was we

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Marion: as a 3 working through some of our stuff in elephant new org, where we talk about psychological safety a lot, wellness, disability. They started to come up as regular themes that we were hearing a lot. That sort of coincided with my own diagnosis of Ehlers-danlos and complex Ptsd, and then I was

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Marion: that made me disabled, apparently and around that time I was kind of like trying to figure that out. You you guys remember, we talked about that a lot

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Marion: and then we met Lia.

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Marion: and we got to bond and connect over those shared experiences as well as our friend Greer.

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Marion: and it all just kind of started to come together.

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Marion: And it it, I think, certainly for me. I realized that

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Marion: these types of conversations I don't care.

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Marion: I hear a lot of stuff about disability and about you know support and inclusion and needs and stuff like that. But some of the real detailed stuff about the difficulties of accommodations and and the the emotions that we feel like shame and and

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Marion: grief, and all of these things like I'd never really heard that explored. And it it just became something that I thought.

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Marion: oh, I think we need to talk about this more. And then Greer and I had a gorgeous conversation one sunny afternoon.

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Marion: and the idea of doing a limited series, just kind of came around. And here we are.

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Marion: So it's definitely been a labor of love for everyone that's involved in this project. A lot of hours, a lot of

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Marion: thought, leadership and love and care has gone in. But

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Marion: I'm really excited about it.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah, the the appetite for it just sort of kept coming up and echoing and echoing and echoing, and eventually it got so loud that Marion was like everybody.

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Danny Gluch: I think we're just doing this.

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Danny Gluch: And

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Danny Gluch: so here we are. And, Leah, I know that that you are working on this, and you came on our podcast to talk about some of your experiences.

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Danny Gluch: And a lot of that was was really eye-opening to to myself and a lot of our listeners.

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Danny Gluch: What? What are some of the experiences that that you've had, that you think really

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Danny Gluch: are are vital or pivotal to making this happen in in a reality where it was like. You know what? I can't just sit on the sideline. This is too much like we need to talk about this and make it public, and and engage whoever wants to listen.

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Lia Seth: Yeah, I mean, I think.

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Lia Seth: really, the conversations around inclusion. They've they've grown. They've shrunk. They've kind of shifted. I just haven't seen a very, very cohesive and like strategic conversation around disability and specifically disability in the workplace that

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Lia Seth: is like consistent and with a clear call to action. So I think that's the really important thing we're building here and like you said, there's such an appetite for it. People have stories to share. People have experiences of

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Lia Seth: some good experiences, but a lot of really bad experiences, of how they've been treated at work because of their disability or around a disability. I know the story that I always tell, which I've told you all before, but I will always tell it again just because I love watching Danny's expression when I tell it is

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Lia Seth: the 1st time I got a wheelchair which was not long after my disability diagnosis, when I was 24, early in my career.

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Lia Seth: and I was so excited to be able to have a wheelchair. I was in pain every time I would stand for more than like 20 min. I just couldn't do it. I had to sit down. My knees would give out. It was just no good, and I was

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Lia Seth: telling my manager about this as just part of a routine like one on one. Catch up, hey? How's it going? What's new? Oh, I'm super excited. I just got my 1st wheelchair, and I'm really excited for the access it's going to give me. This wasn't even me asking for an accommodation. It was just me telling her a life update the way I would with anyone I worked with.

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Lia Seth: and she got a little awkward around that, and then just said.

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Lia Seth: Don't bring that to client meetings, and

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Lia Seth: I didn't know how to respond.

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Lia Seth: and I think there are so many people who have been in similar situations. I made it to a point where I've now moved into a career in Hr. A lot of my job is managing accommodations and helping train managers and coach managers around. Having these conversations and making sure that everybody has the resources they need to do their work and support each other.

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Lia Seth: And I think that manager just didn't have those resources. She didn't have that training. It's something that's missing, and as much as I love doing that in my own organizations it's clear that there's a need for a broader conversation. People don't know what they don't know, because there is no

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Lia Seth: training around disability. No one teaches managers. Hey? This is what you should do. If someone asks for an accommodation you think about, like the annual anti harassment training that all managers are required to take in the Us.

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Lia Seth: And it, you know, it'll cover disability like this is what a disability is. This is what a protected class is. Here is what the Americans with Disabilities Act is. It was signed in 1990, but it doesn't really give the practical day to day. Here's what to do. If someone on your team comes to you and says I have a disability. I need an accommodation.

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Marion: Hmm.

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Lia Seth: So what

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Lia Seth: what do those managers do? And how can we support them? And I think that's really the thing that we're we're looking to build, and I'm just super excited about

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Lia Seth: we're kicking this off.

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Marion: 1st thing, I think that's maybe the 4th time I've heard that story, and I'm still no less

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Marion: shocked and horrified by it. It's.

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Danny Gluch: Head in hand every time.

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Marion: Really is. It does give the optimum, Danny squint trademark.

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Marion: But it's it's shocking, and it's sadly not in isolation and and

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Marion: adding to your point about manager capability. I'm going to take that one a step further.

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Marion: Hr, people

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Marion: don't know like like you're the anomaly right? I like to think that I am now but one thing I realized, going through my own

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Marion: experience of becoming disabled or being classified as disabled.

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Marion: Was there the difficulties in navigating the accommodations process 1st of all, that's awful.

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Marion: But the thing that was more shocking were some microaggressions that I experienced from other hr practitioners.

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Marion: and I was so upset I was so angry, and I was so hurt, and then I stopped, and I thought about it, and I thought.

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Marion: shit like have I done? Has that been me? And I realized that

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Marion: the microaggressions weren't coming from a place of malice or nastiness? They were coming from a place of absolute, just lack of awareness. And

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Marion: you know I've talked about this pretty openly as well. But I grew up as the cold of 2 disabled parents. I've never known anything different. I think.

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Marion: You know I've been a carer my entire life, you know, and I think I thought that would set me up well in an Hr. Career that I would just magically know how to support people with disabilities because I grown up in that environment. I've been doing it my whole life, and it wasn't until I became disabled myself that I realized that I knew absolutely nothing, really. And I then went through this whole like rewinding all of the years of interactions and thinking.

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Marion: oh, my God! Like I must have failed people left, right and center, and

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Marion: you know, I guess my atonement, my

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Marion: passion for doing this work is to do better. But also

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Marion: Hr people. We know that we are the

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Marion: the junk drawer of the leadership team right? If no one knows where something belongs, it will just get thrown to us, because that's what we do. We're a catch all

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Marion: and bit of a jack of all trades, right? And there's lots of things that we're incredible at, and we excel at. And that's great. I don't think this is one of them, and that's not our fault. They don't teach this stuff in Hr. School. They don't teach this in Mbas. They don't teach this stuff period.

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Marion: and so it's a lot of winging it. It's a lot of figuring it out as you go along, and sadly we figured it out. We learn by fucking it up. We learn by making mistakes and then trying to do better next time, or being guided by those who need support or service. Right? So

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Marion: I

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Marion: really want to. I all have this thing that I want to leave my profession in a better state than how I found it. That is my mantra right? I think that this is a significant part of that. And I definitely want to support our

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Marion: profession with tools, to do better, to learn more and and to be able to do this stuff effectively.

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Cacha Dora: Yeah. And I think it's also one of those things that for us when we think about things, you know, like disability, we grow up in a very

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Cacha Dora: ableist society where people don't realize potentially, where those microaggressions come from. And I'm not like excusing things right. But that awareness factor of like, where do are there biases? Where do these biases come from? How can I start to notice that that is a bias, and then start to correct that for myself.

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Cacha Dora: to help others is so key because those biases need challenging, you know, like we had, was it this year or last year, even in the State of California, where they created a boardwalk. So people with wheelchairs could go to the beach otherwise how do you get to the beach? And you don't think about how impossible that is for so many people.

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Cacha Dora: and finding those pathways for so many things or people who have any form of disability being seen and heard and like believed.

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Cacha Dora: is half the journey to someone listening. In the 1st place, like there's always a hurdle over a hurdle over a hurdle, and to just have your own presence

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Cacha Dora: be accepted. And I think that

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Cacha Dora: for people who are listening and are very interested in this conversation,

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Cacha Dora: that awareness and that bias challenging is so key to helping people

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Cacha Dora: and to helping yourself and to helping your peers in the Hr community or the people that work within our organizations.

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Marion: Sure.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah.

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Danny Gluch: And I think you know, all of us are very passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion.

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Danny Gluch: And our our big passion. You know what our podcast is about is talking about the elephant in the Ord.

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Danny Gluch: And I think a big part of that is, we can talk as much as we want about

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Danny Gluch: Dei and have initiatives.

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Danny Gluch: But there's so much about the way ability and accommodations is handled.

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Danny Gluch: the the language that's used, the structures that are built, the the emotions that are in play, but just never talked about.

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Danny Gluch: that we needed to have a space where we could bring people in and have the conversations and share it with as many people as we could, because they need to hear it too. Whether it's an affirming thing of like oh, my goodness, I've experienced this. It's so nice to hear that someone else has experienced this as well

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Danny Gluch: a place where people can find community of oh, my goodness. Now I have a friend. I have an ally

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Danny Gluch: or awareness where it's I never knew this before. And oh, my goodness, that unconscious bias and unconscious stereotypes now become

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Danny Gluch: awareness, and you can work on what you're aware of. It's really hard to work on what you're not aware of.

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Danny Gluch: and I love that you brought that up, Marion, because you're right. It's it's not malice. It's not nefarious. It's.

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Danny Gluch: Well-intentioned people who are trying to be good managers who are trying to care for their people who are trying to be good Hr. Professionals.

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Danny Gluch: Who maybe just don't know.

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Danny Gluch: And this is, I hope, a learning tool. You know I have an education background, and

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Danny Gluch: I hope that some people somehow learn from me, even though that seems unlikely.

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Lia Seth: I mean, I think it goes back to you know you don't know what you don't know, and I think the manager who told me not to use my wheelchair. I don't think she had malicious intent. I think she just. She didn't know what was a legal to say what was a human empathetic thing to say, but also like she had her own perspective, which is okay. I have this knowledge of our clients and how they might see this, and

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Lia Seth: maybe I mean again. Maybe she had good intent. But it wasn't well explained, it wasn't a good experience for me, and

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Lia Seth: with the right training and tools. I think that could have been a very different conversation, and if she had known. Here is how I can respond to an employee who's telling me about a disability.

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Lia Seth: Then we could have had a conversation where we both landed in a place where we felt good afterwards, and I think, like you said. There's so many managers out there who just don't know any better.

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Lia Seth: So we we just want them to know better. Marion and I have learned trial by fire of, you know. Okay, we've been on both sides of it. So we're going to have that built in empathy. You don't have to have the experience to have the empathy.

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Lia Seth: I think people people want to do right by the people that they're working to support. So we just want to give them the tools to do that.

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Marion: And and it's a toolbox, right? And I think, you know, we've talked about that a lot. It's a toolbox. It's never ending. There's always things that you can learn from others, and curate, and add to your toolbox, and share with others to be able to navigate these situations because it's not a 1. Size fits all. It's, you know. It's

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Marion: so.

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Cacha Dora: Impossible to be.

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Marion: Completely, and it, and it has to be person centered. It has to be very tailored to that individual, and that takes tools, and it takes a bit of experience. But more more than anything, it's the C's right. It's the common sense, courage, compassion, communication, the things that we talk about a lot. And again, if you can keep them at the forefront of what you're doing, it'll help guide you through.

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Danny Gluch: Absolutely. And this series has a lot of really amazing people who have volunteered their time to give their experience, their passion, their knowledge, and we hope you all listen. We're going to keep this intro episode short and sweet. We're going to be releasing these

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Danny Gluch: weekly.

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Marion: Yes!

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Marion: Episode one and 2

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Marion: will be released together, and then it's 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 together. So 6 and 7 of the last week, one and 2 the 1st week, and then the in between 3 weeks, 3, 4, 5.

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Lia Seth: So every every week throughout the month of July.

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Danny Gluch: Through disability, pride, month.

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Marion: Yes.

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Danny Gluch: So, Marion, when are we releasing these.

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Marion: Wow!

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Marion: By great planning on our part. We are going to release over disability pride month, which runs for the month of July

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Marion: 1st 2 episodes, this one being episode number one released today. If you're listening on release date, it's 1st of July

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Marion: episode 3, 4, 5 will then release over the following 3 weeks, and then the last week of July, as we wrap up disability, pride, month, episode 6 and 7 will be released together.

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Danny Gluch: We hope you all enjoy these podcasts and be on the lookout because the work's not done. Then Greer and a lot of volunteers have been working towards a community event coming in October. More details to follow, but be on the lookout, be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast? Be sure to follow rethinkability on Linkedin to keep up? On

Danny Gluch: Be sure to follow the rethinkability page on Linkedin to stay up on all of the new information, and the latest on what we're going to be releasing, and be sure to have conversations in the comments below, because we'd love to see how people are touched and moved, and to hear your experiences as you're going through this with us. Thank you all very much.

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Danny Gluch: We'll see you next time.