Title:
Humanizing HR | Changing Workforce Dynamics & Creating Equitable Workplaces

Subtitle:
Leveraging ADA & Empowering Inclusion with Rachel Shaw

Transcript:

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.

Let’s go.

Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia, and today, we are gonna be having a very interesting conversation with an entrepreneur, a total boss babes, a woman who is leading so many amazing things in the corporate space. She is someone who shows leaders how to do better, which I love.

Her name is Rachel Shaw. She is the president and founder of Rachel Shaw Incorporated, and an award-winning HR strategist, nationally recognized ADA compliance expert. Love that. She’s the author of the “Disabled Workforce: What the ADA Never Anticipated,” can’t wait to hear all about that. And for 20 years, she has helped organizations navigate ADA, FMLA, and accommodations in ways that protect the business. But my favorite part is also honoring the humanity and the process. As a past disabled employee for so many years, I think is often missed in HR and beyond. So we need you. Thank you for breaking some of these glass ceilings that we run into, and I’m so excited to hear about all the work you’re doing and your why.

Welcome to the show, Rachel. It’s so nice to meet you.

Rachel Shaw: Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here, Alycia, and can’t wait to talk with you and with your viewership.

Alycia Anderson: Okay. You do a lot of work in corporations and this type of advocacy that we just talked about. Can we talk a little bit about your why first? Was there a moment? What really inspired you to dive into this incredible work and advocacy that you’ve committed your life to?

Rachel Shaw: Yeah, really crazy origin story. It was the nineties. Nobody knew what the ADA was. It was passed in 1990, right? They didn’t really understand it, and why not give it to the brand new employee who doesn’t even know what ADA stands for. My first real HR job, they gave me the responsibility of implementing a compliant disability accommodation program, which is ridiculous, but not uncommon. My other duty as assigned. And I realized, no one really knew how to do it. The people that were being harmed by my lack of knowledge and my organization’s lack of care was the employees who needed it the most.

It was the employees who had leave or disability-related accommodations. And so I just started trying to figure it out, ’cause I was curious and I felt bad that I was getting in the way of people’s livelihood and lives. I just started figuring it out, and no one else was asking those questions and looking for solutions.

Over time, it just became something I was more passionate about. I advocate clearly for people, but I advocate for these laws. Because without these laws, employers will not do what they need to do. They won’t understand it, or they don’t wanna do it.

I have this wonderful opportunity, where my job is to really help ensure that the intent of the ADA and the FMLA are implemented.I get excited about it every day because of people like me, and because of people I train in-house and employers. More people have the opportunity for the benefits and burdens of employment.

And we remove unnecessary barriers. It’s exciting. And it gets me up and outta bed every day, even when it’s hard, or complicated, or time-consuming, or exhausting. I know that my ability to help organizations do it right is gonna mean that someone else has an ability to work until the day they retire, which is gonna change not only their life, but generations after them. Of their children, their families, et cetera.

Alycia Anderson: And I think it’s just such an important thing. For you to have this focal point on these initiatives, on the ADA, on compliance, and making sure that they’re helping remove barriers, and help the understanding and the education of what these laws are, how they provide. I know for me as an employee for 20 years in corporate America, it was often feared, right?

And the conversations I always felt from an HR standpoint were somewhat avoided. That could have been somewhat on my end and on their end, and not knowing how to navigate either way. And me as an employee being afraid to ask, and then the employer thinking maybe she’s got it all taken care of.

There’s just this disconnect that was pretty uncomfortable at times. It feels like to me that you’re bridging that gap to allow teams to, I’m assuming, and you can talk through this, have some comfort in the conversation to not maybe fearpotential potholes, or things that they might run into while you’re navigating these things with each individual, person and employee.

Is that part of it?

Rachel Shaw: Absolutely. So, most organizations, most corporations, they really do see the ADA as more of a compliance piece. We have to do this. If we don’t do it well, we get sued, we get in trouble. What’s so awesome is, a lot of times, I get brought in because of the compliance piece, right?

This is all about heart. It’s all about doing the right thing. And the people inside an organization, they wanna do the right thing, they get it. Most people will either have a disability during their life, or they will have a family member who has a chronic disability or an accommodation need.

People know this is something we touch, we see, we understand the value. What I find is that most of the time, just like when I was a brand new HR professional, given this important task, most HR people are not trained and they don’t have the comfort. And so they’re afraid to have a conversation with someone who might be vision-impaired because they don’t wanna say the wrong thing, and their ego, or their worry.

And so what I do is I train employers and people, the humans inside, to understand that it’s not only what you’re doing, it’s why you’re doing it, it’s how you’re doing it. And it’s seeing that yes, you’re the organization, but there’s a person that has an equal opinion and they’re equally important to the process, and that’s the employee that needs the leave or the disability accommodation.

And then how do you bridge that part of its process? It can’t be that every time an employee needs an accommodation, whether it’s a new hire or an existing employee, it can’t be that HR has to figure it out, right? Where we’re just figuring it out. It has to be consistent process you have in place for a foundational process. But then you have to also train human resource professionals to know how to have conversations, because you have to talk to the person who’s living and experiencing that disability to know what might be the solution. I train a lot of professionals, sometimes, just to be comfortable to say things that they think they can’t say. “Talk to me, how does your psychological disability impact you?

What are you asking for?” And a lot of it’s just teaching people when you say, “Talk to me about your needs, or help me understand your vision impairment. What is it that you need?” Getting them to feel comfortable enough that they’re gonna be able to help. Because you’re right, they’re straying away.

Or they’ll let me know if they need help. And what usually ends up happening is people that often have the greatest need are either afraid to ask for what they need because they don’t know if the employer’s going to accommodate, or they don’t wanna be a bother. And what ends up happening is the employer’s harmed. To make that work the easiest way to perform so the employer can benefit from the talents, and skills, and abilities of that employee are diminished, because we’re making it harder for them to figure out how to make it work. So it’s such a great opportunity when I get to work with employers, because I rarely ever met someone that doesn’t wanna do it right. But they don’t know how. They’re afraid to do it wrong. And a lot of times, no one’s invested in them. And once they have that, they’re off and running. They get the humanity side. They get how important it is to build a program that’s employee-centered. But they need to be given the vocabulary, the comfort, the tools, and then they’re off and running.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, and I have written right here, when does the fear of communication in this become the liability?

Rachel Shaw: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: And that’s part of it. Can you think of anything else?

Rachel Shaw: Yeah. So I think what often happens is employers sometimes don’t feel comfortable communicating, and so they leave the employee completely outta the process, right? “Okay, we got a medical note. We need more clarity, we’re gonna do what we do, and then here’s what we’re gonna be able to do or not.”

So I teach a protocol that involves two key conversations when someone’s asking for something that’s longer term. This is when maybe someone has a chronic medical condition or they need something long term. I literally trained them on these two key conversations, because employers sometimes forget that the person who is needing the support, needing the employer to remove barriers. Employers sometimes don’t understand that oftentimes, they don’t even know what ADA is either. They just know they need something and they need the employer to remove a barrier. Oftentimes, that employee is also unsure what might be available to them. They don’t know what the employer needs. There might be assumptions that a lot of folks come into the interactive process having had really bad situations, either with prior supervisors or prior employers. I always tell employers like, “You have to realize they could be bringing in preconceived notions about how you’re gonna treat them, because the world isn’t always really kind to anyone asking For a manager, or supervisor, or an employer to do it different, right? So you’re getting all of this. And if you don’t stop and start the entire process with a conversation, where you help that employee understand. ‘I may not know all the right words, but I care about you. I know you’re important to our business. I need to understand enough so that I can understand what kind of accommodations might be possible. Talk to me.'”

If we don’t start with that, you’re immediately telling the employee, “You’re not that important.” Even if you’re not intending to send that message, the message gets sent and that creates a distrust. Oftentimes the wrong solution, especially if it’s not a simple solution. And you’re building that expectation that employee doesn’t feel like they are really valued, and they may not be taken care of. And that really sets the whole process off, especially when a lot of folks who are coming into the workplace, if they’ve had a long-term accommodation, needs maybe some more challenging needs. They might have had some tough experiences where employers may have fired them, not promoted them, or not accommodated them.

And they’re looking for evidence that you’re gonna treat them the same way. And so you’ve gotta start with, “Look, talk to me. I care about you. Let’s have this conversation. And so we literally trained employers, HR professionals, how to build conversations into the program, so they know that’s a key part of it.

It sounds silly, but sometimes you gotta tell people, “You gotta talk to ’em.”

Alycia Anderson: I don’t think that sounds silly. That’s probably the number one question that I get with the clients that I work with, just from a keynote workshop perspective, is how do we start the conversation? How do we approach that from a human experience? So I think that is amazing that you have that as a focal point and an entry point, because I think that’s where we start, honestly.

And as beautiful. Amazing.

I know for me, I masked so much in my jobs because I was afraid. I always went after the physical jobs you wouldn’t hire the girl in the wheelchair for. And then I got tired, ’cause I was really doing things that were just way too much for my abilities.

I asked for accommodation, and then they were like, “You didn’t need this before. Why do you need this now, and why are you the one on the team?” It’s such a beautiful thing that you are doing to open up those paths of trust, to create places where you feel like you belong, to have the conversations.

That’s really powerful.

Rachel Shaw: A lot of times, employers make up assumptions about stuff. They do. They make stuff up. Just like all of us do. And we’re getting a lot of this post-COVID, right? So pre-COVID, a lot of workplaces that hire me used to be fully in-person. COVID happens, we send a lot of folks remote. We’re starting to pull more people back into the physical workplace, and they’re getting requests for remote accommodations. A lot of employers have a lot of emotions, because in their non-disabled brain, their ableist brain, they are thinking this must be fake. They just like being at home. And what is so important is, as I tell employers, “Look, I know it’s scary, but if you’re thinking these things and you’re acting on them, you think an employee who has a disability, who was able to work fully in-person before. Now that you want them back, hybrid or whatever, they’re asking for an accommodation. They never asked for one before. That must mean that they’re fraudulently asking. If you think that, be brave enough to say to that employee, ‘Help me understand why you didn’t need this before, and you need it now.'” Look, anyone can ask for stuff they don’t need, disabled, abled, not disabled, whatever. But what we often find is, you don’t always know what you need. You change over time, right? We grow, we age. But also, for some employees, they had no idea how the physical commute to the workplace, being in an office environment, being three hours away from their kids, or their doctors, the commuting, all of that. You don’t know because it’s not your experience. And so what we find is, it wasn’t an option before. They didn’t know that being home was gonna mean that they needed less medication, they didn’t need as much physical therapy. They felt like they actually had enough time left in their life to enjoy their weekends, instead of surviving and recouping on the weekends.

They could fight through another week of work. And so, a lot of times what happens is because employers aren’t asking questions, they’re thinking things. And those thoughts are creating actions and beliefs. They’re in control. Because they’re not willing to say something like, “Help me understand why you’re only missing Fridays, calling out sick only on Fridays.” Have that conversation. Be brave enough. Maybe you’ll find that there is a reason, and maybe you’ll have a conversation and find out that person has options to make better decisions. I do think employers are so afraid to have a conversation, but what they don’t realize is they’re actually taking action on their beliefs that they don’t challenge. That’s about the power differential. Employers have a lot more power than an employee, disabled or not. And employers have to continually use education in good process, communication in good process, to try to lower that power differential. ‘Cause the power differential is what gets employers sued. They make bad choices.

They feel empowered to do so without checking themselves. That’s a lot of why we communicate. I always tell employers, “Be brave. if you’re thinking it, ask it. If they’re offended because they have a right to be offended, great. But why don’t you have that honest conversation or go get data to show if you’re right or wrong, instead of just taking actions on that you think someone is not in need of it. You’re judging them. You’re thinking negative thoughts, have a conversation. They’re humans.”

Alycia Anderson: I love what you just said, that people change, and situations change, and what we need looks a different way.

Rachel Shaw: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: And I’m sure that was the case with COVID with a lot of people with disabilities. Finally got to work at home and they’re like, “Wow, I don’t have anxiety anymore. I’m not worried about the bathroom. I’m not worried about my accessibility. I can control my environment. I have more authority over my body. I don’t have to worry if people are watching me.” All the things that we go through as employees. And how freeing. And once you’re given that freedom of just control over your own body and your environment,the productivity and everything has to go up in that way.

It must.

Rachel Shaw: For some of my most disabled clients, who literally were hoping to maybe make it to 50. They’re like, “Rachel, I could work till I’m 70.” And this is what, employers struggle with, right? If an employer has limited accommodations, maybe there’s only so much remote work they can accommodate ’cause they do have an in-person component. Or maybe whatever’s being asked for, they can’t give it to everyone. Maybe someone can’t have a commercial driver’s license and they can say yes to five, but not everyone. What I always tell employers is, “Look. Sure. Could you have an employee who lies about being disabled to get an accommodation they want? It used to be parking spaces, or offices, and now it’s remote work. Sure. You’ll never know who needs it or doesn’t need it, because most disabilities are invisible. Some are visible, but a lot of disabilities.”

Part of what the ADA never anticipated is that a lot of disabilities people are managing, chronic illness, different types of psychological disabilities, neurodiversity, it’s invisible. You’re not gonna see it. And so employers can’t make assumptions about who needs what. And what we cannot do is provide accommodations when we like an employee, and deny it when we don’t.

When we value them, we say yes. When we don’t value you, we say no. And that’s where process comes in. It’s fine for an employer to say, “Look, we’re challenged.” I have a client who has a thousand of their employees asking for remote work of 5,000. They can’t say yes to the full thousand, but they wanna say yes to the people that need it and don’t have an alternative.

That’s process. You create process. You explain to employees, “Look, I hate that I have to ask you for this questionnaire to be completed, but I’m gonna ask everyone because we only have 400 spots. And we wanna make sure those 400 spots go to people who medically don’t have an alternative. And if you do, we’ll find a different way to accommodate you in the workplace. We’re still gonna find a way to say yes, but it might be different.” And so it’s fine if an employer wants to create process to address what they’re concerned about, which is either overuse, misuse, or high use of a certain type of accommodation, but they can’t use their power differential or their belief system.

You gotta use data and information, and you gotta talk to employees about it.

Alycia Anderson: So I’m assuming you’re going into these organizations and consulting them on how to create. I’m assuming some of these things could cause human resource organization panic. We have 5,000 employees, a thousand are asking for accommodations. How do we ask these 1000? I’m assuming that you help with those things.

Rachel Shaw: Yep. And part of it’s communication, right? Part of it’s communicating with the whole workforce. “Hey, this is what’s going on. This is why we care about in-person, or this is why we need in-person, right? We’re making food or whatever.” So the ADA is not about what you do for one, you do for all, as you know. Because if the law was what you give one person, everyone gets, you’d never accommodate.

It really is first come, first serve. Employers are really encouraged. I don’t care that it’s in your job description. I don’t care that 16% of the employees do it. Is it possible to get your work done with modifying or accommodating for one, or two, or three individuals that need it? And most of the time when I get called in, what I do is I help them analyze. Why is this a big deal? Why do you care? You shouldn’t care. This isn’t a big deal. Just say yes. A lot of times it’s that. But if there is a systemic issue. Work from home is one of those big ones employers manage, or if you have high levels of leave. A lot of times employers need to be looking, ’cause they don’t have the ability to say yes to everyone. That’s where I work with employers to really make sure they have clear criteria. They’re communicating with employees, they’re asking for appropriate information about limitations. And they’re communicating clearly what they’re doing, why, and they have a process so that all employees are treated similarly. Maybe not the same outcome, right? The goal is yes, but it might look different. The accommodation might look different. And a lot of times, my work is simply about helping employers create good process and stop caring about things that don’t matter, right? Employers, really, I get it. We get it, right? If everyone worked exactly the same way, if everyone was exactly the same personality, if everybody thought the same way, then it would be so easy to manage the workplace. We’d have terrible outcomes, right? You’d have terrible product development. You would not have customer experiences that you want. But it would be so much easier if everybody liked the movies I like and was similarly beliefs.

It’s human nature. And when someone’s coming into a workplace or in a workplace saying, “I can’t do it that way, or I can do it that way, but I need some support to remove that barrier. Then I can do what you need me to do. That is sometimes helping, it’s training, it’s mentorship of supervisors and managers.

Sometimes it’s just helping them. “Oh yeah, I can totally make that work. I can do that.” That’s an accommodation. No problem. And sometimes it’s telling them, “Well you have to do it because it’s legally required. And if you don’t support it with a smile on your face and we get sued, we’re not gonna support you as a supervisor.”

It just depends on what you need to do to make sure that organization is doing the right thing. But a lot of times, when it’s high-impact issues, or if employers are really concerned about what they’re being asked, have a conversation and then make sure your process is fair and consistent.

Alycia Anderson: Amazing. What a powerful business you have. I love it. It’s amazing. So you mentioned ADA and all of that. Can we talk a little bit about your book and what was missed? Let’s talk about the theme of your book and the greatest spot that was missed, explain that.

Rachel Shaw: Yeah. I still think as a country, and as a world, we still do a crappy job of removing unnecessary physical barriers so people can enter the workplace, whether that’s curb cuts and buses, or whether that’s accessibility. But the ADA was really initially passed with the thinking more about visible disabilities, right?

Mobility, hearing, vision. Generally, we were looking at a lot of folks coming out of the Vietnam War, even the Korean Wars where you had physical disabilities. And we wanted to get those folks into the workplace working and off of Social Security. So, the real focus was thinking about visible disabilities. Employers generally, not always, but generally don’t see that high volume. So they’re not always prepared to address an easy physical accommodation, where they’re seeing volume as workers’ comp injuries, psychological disabilities, neurodiversity.

And that’s where employers, they’re really struggling. And I don’t think the ADA really understood that in some workplaces, not all. In some workplaces, the level of intermittent leave taken, the amount of accommodations that come out of work-related injuries, the amount of accommodations related to psychological disabilities, neurodiverse, especially in the last five years. It’s not really caught yet up.

And that’s where really the focus, and the education, the tools, and the training are needed. Employers need to really get better at finding ways to support and accommodate the workforce that is coming to them. If you’re lucky enough to keep a talented employee through their entire life trajectory, most employees are going to have a period of accommodation need. Whether it’s happy accommodations like a baby, or whether it’s family care, or whether it’s a disability that they’re managing.

And so employers need to get good at it. It needs to be something you plan for because it’s about retention. It’s about showing your employees you care. And I think that ADA makes employers think, “Oh. Someone comes in and they have a missing limb, or their vision impaired, or we need to make sure we have ramps in place for our wheelchaired employees.” And that is absolutely part of it. But they’re not planning for the volume they’re getting, which is some workplaces have 20 to 30% of their workforce on intermittent leave, or with an accommodation at any one time. And they need to have plans for it, so they can do a better job at it.

Alycia Anderson: Wow. The ADA is an old document, right? It needs to be continually upgraded and advanced into the modern day. How do they navigate that? I guess, hire people like you to come in and help.

Rachel Shaw: Yeah, hire or use our tools. So we give our tools out and our resources. Look, we’re not gate keeping because everyone needs to do this. I only have two companies. We’re not going everywhere. But the idea is, I train on a four-step process. It’s very clear protocols.

They can also create their own programming. There’s free resources on my website. But employers need to get better at determining, “How are we going to respond to temporary accommodations and long-term accommodations?” And some employers go and hire a third-party company to outsource some of their leave management. What I always tell employers is, “You can outsource the yeses, right? The paper processing and you know it’s a yes. So if you get us this form, we’re gonna give you this.” But employers need to be keeping that piece of the process, where you’re evaluating, you’re using your company culture, you’re looking at what’s possible. The solution is out there. We know how to do the interactive process well, and we know how to help employers figure out how to find a yes. I’ll tell an employer, “Look, if you don’t have any programming process, you do not have to hire a consultant, if you simply look at every single employee who’s asking for an accommodation with two things.

Number one, curiosity. “I don’t know the answer, but I’m sure damn curious to find out how to find the right answer.” And number two, your goal is to find a yes. I don’t know what that accommodation’s gonna look like. It may not be exactly what they want. They may want a peach pie, and I’m thinking maybe more of a scone. But I always tell employers, “If you start with curiosity, which means you know you don’t know the answer. You’re curious, and you wanna find a yes, I want this person to stay. You’re gonna find the right answer.” Most employers come in, oftentimes, without the curiosity. They make assumptions. “This is gonna cost too much. This is gonna impact productivity. This is not gonna be easy. This is not gonna be possible.” And they’re already thinking about, “How do I prove the no?” Instead of, “How do I get to a yes? I don’t know what’s gonna look like? I don’t really have all the answers. I’m not living with your disability, so I need to talk with you.”

It’s amazing what can happen. So even if you don’t have processes and procedures, you don’t know what my four steps are. You’ve never heard of this whole protocol. If you start with curiosity and I’m gonna find a yes, you’re gonna be fine.

Alycia Anderson: What a breath of fresh air to go into trying to tackle some of these issues with curiosity and the mindset to get to a yes. That is a different mindset in a lot of scenarios from a disability standpoint, because you’re absolutely right. It’s usually, “How do we pump the brakes and not have to navigate this?”

Curiosity and yes are beautiful welcoming words.

Rachel Shaw: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. That’s super, super lovely. Wow. That’s incredible. What do you think is the one takeaway for organizations that are struggling with this right now? And it might be the curiosity and the yes. What advice? You’ve gone through years of this. You are absolutely an expert in this field. What is one takeaway do you think?

Rachel Shaw: I think the biggest I tell employers is, “If you’re not having an issue, if you’re finding yeses everywhere, don’t fix a problem you don’t have. If you are struggling, if you’re having litigation, if you’re having employees leave you because they don’t feel supported, if you are struggling with very painful, long, prolonged interactive processes, you need to be looking at what’s wrong. You need to look behind the Iron Curtain and you need to find out what’s broken. And you can do this in-house. You can bring in someone to help you, but you’ve gotta fix that solution.” ‘Cause here’s what we know. Employers are seeing more requests for workplace accommodation than they have ever seen, and it is not gonna go away.

We have more people who are not afraid anymore to say, “I have a disability. I am neurodiverse. I need support.” And that is a good thing. We also know that diversity makes companies more profitable. We know that there’s better product development when you have diversity. We know that employers are struggling right now because of the volume, and they’re not knowing how to resource and how to resolve it.

And so again, the takeaway is if everything’s working, don’t fix a problem you don’t have. If you’re curious and you’re finding yeses every single time, keep going.But if you are struggling, own it. ‘Cause it probably means you don’t have predetermined programming, and you don’t have a staff that knows how to quite do it right.

And the solutions are out there. There’s free solutions. There’s trainings. There’s conferences. They don’t have to hire a consultant to do it. There’s free stuff on my website. They can come in and they can pull off. That’s what I would let them focus on. You can do it. This is not impossible.

I do it. I work with thousands of employers across the United States over my 27-year career. You can do it right. There is a way. You have to want to.

Alycia Anderson: So beautiful. I love it. Did we miss anything?

Rachel Shaw: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. The only thing I will say, as well, is I love the space that I am in. I love what I do so much. And no one would ever know in looking at me, whether I have a disability or not, right? Because if I did, it would be invisible. But I will say, the other thing I would encourage employers to understand is representation matters.

I always tell them that people have to see themselves in the workplace and in the C-suite. If you have opportunities to make disability visible, even making invisible disabilities visible by talking about it, communicating, making sure you’re promoting, and you’re getting people in the C-suites that are looking like your workforce representation matters. There are things I will not know. One of my favorite stories. I’m six two. I walked into a bathroom one day and I looked at this toilet paper dispenser. It was at my nose, and I’m six two. And someone was in the bathroom in a wheelchair and she looks at me and she’s like, “Seriously?”

The fact that they built a brand new bathroom, probably spent a million dollars on this thing. And you had people that couldn’t even access the paper tower rolls because of where they placed it. If they had someone on their team who either had a mobility disability, in a wheelchair, or someone who was just not six foot two, they probably wouldn’t have made that issue and there wouldn’t have needed to be an accommodation.

When you put people with disabilities, who are living through that experience, on your planning team, you can create an environment where you don’t have to fix it later, ’cause it’s already engineered for the needs that exist in your workforce today. So representation matters. Make sure you’re including that in your planning and in your programming.

Alycia Anderson: Preach. I love it. Yes. Oh, this is powerful work. Thank you so much for everything that you’re doing. It’s incredible. How do we find you, and work with you, and all the things?

Rachel Shaw: You can check me out at my website, rachelshaw.com, and that gives you all the information on how to connect and some great free resources as well.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. We are gonna leave all your information in the show notes, so it’s easy to click, follow, work with. All the good stuff. Rachel, thank you so much for just all the incredible work that you’re doing and leading as a woman in the space. That’s pretty refreshing for me to see you.

Thanks for everything. We wrap the show up with a pushing forward moment. I warned you about this before we started. Do you have a little advice, mantra, quote, something that inspires you on a day-to-day to keep pushing forward in your life?

Rachel Shaw: My actions can make a difference in someone else’s life. And that’s what I remind myself is, “I’m not special. I am just someone who, my action, can make someone else’s life better.” And that’s true for everyone, every single person. I know that by going to work, and being willing to do the hard work, and say what needs to be said. I know that I have the possibility of making it easier for someone else, who may not have an advocate on their side, or shouldn’t have to have one.

So every day I remind myself thatI have the potential to make someone else’s life better if I just show up and do it the right way.

Beautiful. Thank you so much for wanting to come on this show and share all of your magic and power. You’re definitely making a difference for other people, and I personally thank you for that. And now we’re friends. Yes. I can’t wait to see you on the circuit. Your podcast is amazing. It’s so inspiring.

Alycia Anderson: Thank you so much, and thanks to our community for showing up again. Please share this episode, and review it, and all the good things.

This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia and Rachel, and that is how we roll on this podcast. We will see you next week.