This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Kale Sudhoff. It took just a few episodes for me to notice that almost every guest has a thread that runs through their early life right up to where they are now. The exception with Kale is that he is still a teenager -- a high school senior! But as you listen to our discussion, you too will see the thread that runs through him: That of a caring and empathetic person well beyond his years. Kale uses his talent for drawing and storytelling to pull you in as a reader. More than likely, it would be as a reader of bedtime ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Nate Methot May is National ALS Awareness Month (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's Disease) so we're ahead of the calendar, but I couldn't wait to drop this episode any longer. You see, Nate is now in his second decade of dealing with this debilitating disease and his message is too important to hold. As you'll hear in this episode, we read parts of his book, A Life Derailed: My Journey with ALS (Link), Nate's speech has been affected -- something he unnecessarily apologizes for -- but we wanted ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Jackie Schuld. Jackie was gracious to do the interview while she was in the process of moving from the Southwest to the Northeast. No, it wasn't while she was driving a U-Haul truck along an interstate highway. Jackie is our third guest to discuss autism. Her view is a bit different as she uses art to work with newly identified autistics and those who suspect they might be autistic. Her objective is to help autistics who felt broken their entire lives, who experienced a lifetime of feelin ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Cam Beaudoin. After I read Cam's post and image of what I call the "Gap Kid", I immediately went into research mode, and within a few minutes, I messaged him to request an interview. But that post only scratched the surface of Cam's work. Like many entrepreneurs, it was an unintended adventure while at corporate giant IBM that led him to his company, Accelerated Accessibility (check it out HERE) where his mission is to make technology more accessible for all users. The following quote from Cam should give you a good i ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Shannon Hartinger Being a soccer rat myself, Shannon and I agreed from the outset to avoid 'talking soccer'. This was very difficult for us as the boys Wisconsin State League team that I coach begins training this week and Shannon's high school girls team at Loyola Academy has been playing matches. For this episode, we talked about the TOPSoccer program that is sponsored by US Youth Soccer. TOPSoccer (The Outreach Program for Soccer) is a recreational sports program for children and adults with intellec ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Lori Frisher. The title of a podcast needs to have a hook. 'The Who' has the song, Athena. But that isn't the hook I was looking for. So I Googled "badass Greek goddess" and Athena came up. Bingo! Lori is a badass fighter. She's a disrupter, which is where I've been driving the podcast for the past month. During the show, we talked about her receiving Cochlear Implants. Not about her being the first to do so, but about how hearing impacted her life. Lori mentioned the sounds of water and coins being dropped ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Sandie Roberts Right from the start, I knew Sandie was deeper than her good looks as a model. Just four years into being a full-fledged member of the disability community, she's breaking the glass walls and the glass ceiling that surrounds this much-suppressed group. This is evident from the heading of her website: "Rolling into confidence, let’s create the life we deserve!" Sandie uses her platform as a model to bring "normalcy" to the labels that society places upon us. She is a positive role model rather than ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Deirdre Fagan #loveforward is both a personal statement for the way Deirdre lives her life and a suggestion to the rest of us to do the same. Simple, isn't it? Deirdre is the third author to appear on Life's a Road Trip, but she is the first poet as well. Listen to her read Most of the Days of the Week, or read it HERE. Pick up The Grief Eater or grab her husband, Bob's book, After Thunder, a courageous collection of poetry as he succumbed to ALS -- Lou Gehrig's Disease. Since this episode fi ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Becca Lory Hector. I was very happy to have Becca on to discuss her dealing with autism. This allowed me to add another layer to my first show with Mark Harris who provided us with a baseline about autism through his short story, Mute, and the video series that he produced for parents, Interacting with Autism: A video-based resource. Becca is totally in -- mind, body, and soul -- to help those who sit on the autistic spectrum. Be it her personal website, her training company, Truly Inclusive Leade ..read more

This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching. This week's guest is Anessa Powell.    It seems the more shows that I do, the more I'm pulled into the much-maligned and severely underrepresented disability community. This episode added fuel to my fire. Anessa Powell is well ahead of me on this front. I found her to be a warrior when it comes to supporting disabled folks who are searching for a career -- not just a job. Listening to her talk about her company, AllAbility Recruiting, will rev you up as well. She is passionate about helping employers understand the ru ..read more