Tiffany Yu
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Tiffany Yu is the CEO & Founder of Diversability, an award-winning social enterprise to elevate disability pride; the Founder of the Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter, a monthly micro-grant that has awarded $59.5k to 60 disability projects in 10 countries; and a content creator with almost 160k+ followers across platforms. She serves on the San Francisco Mayor’s Disability Council and was a 2020 Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit. At the age of 9, Tiffany became disabled as a result of a car accident that also took the life of her father.
She started her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and has also worked at Bloomberg and Sean Diddy Combs' REVOLT Media & TV. She is a 3x TEDx speaker and spoke on 5 sessions at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. She has been featured in Marie Claire, the Guardian, and Forbes.
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Tiffany Yu - powered by Happy Scribe
Hi everyone. This is Gustavo, the host of the enabled Disabled podcast. A real quick description of myself. I'm a middle aged Latin American male. I am in my living room and you can see the blinds behind me with some beige grapes shapes. My hair is dark brown and it's combed in the middle and I'm wearing a blue polo shirt. I am super excited to have Tiffany Yu on the show today. Tiffany is a public speaker, social impact entrepreneur, content creator, community builder, and I would argue a world renowned pioneer in bridge building. She has the unique experience and has traversed both the nondisabled community and has built up some really great relationships in the disabled community. And she's really helping build the gap between those two communities and actualized so much of the potential that is still latent in the disability community. Tiffany, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Gustavo. Wow, that was quite the intro. I'll provide a brief visual description. So I'm a Taiwanese American woman with long black hair and red lipstick, and I'm wearing wired headphones and a blue top. Blue is the theme. We did not coordinate, but we can pretend that we did. And I've got a background of a very white clean living room because I'm joining you from my sister's childhood bedroom, which has many posters of Blink 182 and limp biscuit hanging around.
Fun. Where are you right now?
I'm joining you from Bethesda, Maryland. It's about 20 minutes outside of Washington DC.
Very nice. Well, I'm glad you're visiting your sister and let's get started. So you've been on TEDx three times. Your disability origin story is pretty well known, but if we could just give the audience a very brief background of that story before we dive into some other topics, that would be great.
Sure. So, interestingly enough, the origin story has changed a little as I have come to learn a little bit more about myself. So I often start by sharing that I'm the first generation daughter of a Taiwanese immigrant, my dad, and a refugee from the Vietnam War. And that will make sense in a little bit. So my disability origin story happened in 997 when I was nine years old on a car ride home with my dad and a couple of my siblings. He ended up losing control of the car and we ended up getting in a single vehicle car accident. I permanently paralysed my arm, known as a brachial plexus injury, and also broke my femur and my tibia. If people are familiar with those bones in your leg, I just pretty much shattered some bones in one of my leg and then much later I would be diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. And I wanted to start the origin story by sharing that I'm the daughter of Asian immigrants because I spent twelve years after I became disabled not telling anyone about it, not telling anyone about a car accident. I wore long sleeves all the time to try to hide my arm.
And I also told everyone that my dad was way on a trip. And I actually think that those twelve years of being silent about my story are actually what exacerbated what ended up becoming a mental health disability, my PTSD. So I have both visible and non apparent manifestations of disability.
That's quite the story, and that had to have been a really difficult experience growing up. I have spoken to some people recently who have a similar disability and that they have different circumstances, but they also have one arm or one functioning hand, and they also had a similar experience of hiding it throughout their childhood and into early adulthood. So that's an interesting parallel. But I'm wondering when your friends growing up, did you talk at all about it with them? Did you also try to hide it with them? Yes.
Yeah. So the answer is no, I didn't talk about it with anyone. I still remember the first day actually. I can remember one time before 2004, I had an opportunity to do like a month long summer programme in the UK to learn about theatre, and I got to stay with a Toast family. And I remember being like, okay, Tuesday night, let's get the whole family together. And I told them privately the story of the carts and because I'd be living in an intimate environment with them, but outside of that, I never told anyone. I actually have started to reconnect with some people that I grew up with and someone who went to elementary school with me. When I posted about the car accident, he said, oh, Tiffany, I know about the car accident, but I didn't know about your dad. I'm so sorry. Right, this is 25 years later. And then I more recently got to reconnect with someone that I went to middle in high school with and he was like, Tiffany, I thought that your arm was from birth. And I'm starting to put together all these puzzle pieces from those adolescent years that I don't remember much because they were probably just very traumatic to me.
But what it's highlighting to me, or what's being reflected back to me, is that I felt like I had no safe spaces to tell anyone what had happened. And so it ended up becoming my secret.
Moving through the world as a child and a young adult, what gave you the confidence to make those adaptations? Right? Like, you have to learn you're right handed, born right handed. You have to learn how to type, how to write, how to do everything with your left hand. Did you have any help or was that something that you just figured out on your own and just started practising at home, started practising in private? Like, what did those adaptations look like?
Yeah, so I will let you in. I actually didn't know what an occupational therapist was until like three years ago. And I think what that highlights is a, I didn't know that much, but B, no one really told me that much about my injury or what resources were available to me. So I actually have a funny, not so funny story that I'll share from my childhood that I actually think helps kind of frame some of the situation that I grew up in. So as I mentioned, I shattered a couple of bones on one of my legs. So I had a cast that went from my toes up to my hip, and I was in that cast on my leg for about four months after the car accident. And my family had relocated my mattress to the living room so that I wouldn't have to navigate any stairs, but no one wanted to bedpan me, so I had to learn. And at the time I was in a wheelchair, I had to learn how to get myself out of the wheelchair, go up a couple of stairs to my usual bathroom that I would go to.
And I remember I had, you know, like during Halloween when you're trickortreating you have those little pumpkin trickortreat buckets. I had a bucket that was turned upside down that when I would use it on the bathroom, I would rest my cast, the foot of the cast where my heel was on the bottom of that bucket. And I think I wanted to share that story because I just had to figure it out. And I'll meet so many people who say, oh, my gosh, I can't imagine having to relearn how to write with my nondominant hand, or I can't imagine how to relearn how to type or tie my shoelaces. And I'm like, when you literally have no other choice, you will figure it out. This is one of those scenarios where I often tell people that you want to stretch yourself, or at least what I learned during my adolescence was how much I could be stretched. And I feel so grateful that I didn't break right. But it's a huge it's a very fine line between being stretched that much into a situation that is so uncertain, where you're really having to fend on your own to potentially going over the edge and having to be so dramatic that you end up breaking and that can ultimately impact some of your life outcomes.
That's absolutely true, and thank you for sharing that. I'm glad that you didn't break as well. And it is that fine line. But for me, I had occupational therapy when I was young, but then so much of my adaptation was figuring it out. I couldn't hide physically because my disability was so apparent, but I could definitely hide psychologically and pretend I'm just like everybody else. I'm doing all these things. I'm going to regular school. There's very few accommodations for me. And so it feels like you had a similar mentality of, I have to do this. I want to prove that I can do it. I want to do something with my life. And so you keep stretching and pushing and trying to adapt as best you can.
Yeah. And I love that you said you had to hide psychologically, because now I actually think most of the healing, and maybe my own adaptation work, is that healing psychologically, right? Is saying it's okay if you have to ask for help or you don't know, let the tears come. Let yourself feel what you need to feel.
Absolutely. Growing up is hard enough as it is for so many people that I think to have this extra layer. I don't define myself by my disability. And what I tell people is it's like a mosaic, right? If you look at it, it's a complicated picture. It's deeply layered. Sometimes the disability has had a big impact on things and sometimes it's like it's not even there. It's context specific. It depends on the time period of my life and what I'm trying to do. But it's a complicated picture and I like to think of it as I am the way that I am in part because of these things, not in spite of and I think the language that we use a lot in motivational speaking that I see is, I've overcome so much. I've done these things in spite of the disability, but it's really because of it's a part of us that has helped guide, mould, shape and lead us into the past that we chose.
Yeah. And I think a lot of the reframing now that I think we're seeing from more folks in the disability community is, I overcame all of these things in spite of ableism, in spite of discrimination. Our bodies are the way they are. And there are a couple tools and hacks out there that are very helpful, but sometimes I reflect on this in one of my talks, but sometimes the social attitudes of how other people feel about our disabilities feel more damaging than just us trying to live our lives.
It's very true. And it's something that I've been starting to realise, too, since I started this podcast, because most of my friends growing up were non disabled. Most of the people I surrounded myself with were non disabled. And so for me, it was always adapting to the world as it was, rather than asking or figuring out, how can the world adapt back to me a little bit as well? So it's a give and take, but yes, I like that reframe a lot. Can you talk a little bit as you started, you got this great internship and investment banking and you've had a really beautiful career. Can you talk about did you ever experience any discrimination in hiring in corporate America? What was that like for you? Because clearly you went to Georgetown, you're a high achiever, you did really well, but did you ever start to get that inclination of something is here that I need to deal with and that I need to talk about.
Yeah, I feel like my experience might be unique but I'm hoping that it won't be. And so I'll start off by saying I only really started to come into my disability identity in 2009. So again car accident was 1990. 712 years later was 2009. So up until that point I didn't really understand that there was such a thing as disability history or disability culture, disability pride. And so I just was like a young woman who could only use one arm. And so I didn't know any of the nuances that existed around whether you disclose or not and when in the interview you do and accommodations and how that works. And I knew nothing about disability discrimination. And so here I was maybe like my boastful millennial self. I was like, I hope that my academics and my work ethic can speak for itself. But at the same time I also understood that the industry I wanted to work in, financial services, you have to be very strategic. So strategy came a couple of different ways. It meant that even before this Goldman Sachs summer internship in the summer of 2009, I had done an internship at UBS and I had interned at Merrill Lynch and I was interviewing at Deloitte.
Those companies aren't familiar to you. It's just the whole slew of different companies within the financial services industry. So I was like, let me get as much experience under my belt before I need to show up for this place that could potentially give me a full time offer. The other thing that happened was because networking is so important in the financial services industry, I had to start showing up at these networking events as a left handed handshaker and that was something I felt a little nervous about. But I probably became the most confident left handed handshaker you could see. I will say I do remember in high school at my graduation, I remember I attempted, I shook whomever's hand like the principal, whatever, with my right hand which is my injured arm. And I remember because a brachial plexus injury I just have so much muscle atrophy so it literally takes all of my energy to try and shake my hand with your hand, with my right hand. So I remember I spent so much energy, I was so fixed during my high school graduation like how am I going to shake your hand? How am I going to shake your hand?
How am I going to shake your hand? And then I was like, first of all that was too much energy and the whole thing was just like weird and awkward. I was like, I'm just going to shake my hand with my left hand anyway. So that was a little bit of a sidebar but I started to show up. I made sure recruiters remembered me. Right. And I think to your point about the disability as a mosaic in a context dependent thing, I know that I have a very strong personality and if my arm was paralysed or it wasn't, I would probably still have a strong personality. I'm the youngest of four, so I had to like I think that's where that developed. This is why I talk so much about intersectionality in my work as well, is that I think it's all these intersections and the nuances of not only family experiences, our upbringing, that really contributes to the entirety of our disability experiences. So all of that to say I ended up getting that internship at Goldman again. Having done this internship at UBS and these other internships, I had no consciousness around whether or not people were treating me differently because of my disability.
But I will say that about halfway through my summer internship at Goldman, the recruiter who helped recruit me gave me some feedback and she said, hey, Tiffany, I want you to know that you deserved your place here. You don't need to have a chip on your shoulder. And I actually think those were the exact words. And I've shared this story a couple of times, but I share that story because I was having a hard summer internship. My attention to detail is a big thing in the banking world and like over communicating. And I was just kind of like not sleep deprived. Plus sleep deprivation does not equal attention to detail or communicating well. So I was just having a hard summer. But when she said those words, they landed on what ultimately ended up being the beginning of my disability journey. They just fell. And it made me realise that up until that point, a lot of the times, the way that I used to explain difficult things that were happening in my life, I would blame on my disability. Right? This is like the epitome of a victim mentality. And the fact that she called me out and she said, tiffany, you are here.
Do it, crush it. It kind of became this AHA moment to me and I was like, I feel like I haven't been operating at my potential. Right. We talk about this stretching but not breaking. And I was kind of operating in the same place where I'm like, I had internalised this ableist trope that because I was disabled, like I couldn't produce good work or that I was bound to fail. And then she called me out and I think sometimes we need those people like that it's okay to be in that space sometimes, but I think I don't know, I just love this imagery of a band to say we can be really sad sometimes, but if we're on that side of the band, we can also be really happy sometimes, right? That is what we call being human. So, yeah, to answer your question, I ended up going to work at Goldman full time. I will say I remembered very distinctly one of my managers at the time. It was October. So I was like, oh, I'm going to go speak on this panel with some other disabled employees at this firm. And he was like, oh yeah, go do what you need to do, but I never consider you disabled, right?
Which now looking back, we view that as an ableist microaggression because if I literally have a visible manifestation in my arm, imagine the 70% of people who have nonaparent disabilities who don't look disabled, right? But what does disability actually look like? So overall though, I had, again very long winded, I apologise, but overall I had great experiences. I worked at Goldman, they had a disability employee resource group which actually became the beginnings and the inspiration for Diversibility for me, starting Diversibility. And then I went on to Bloomberg and while I was at Bloomberg I actually got to co found their disability employee resource group. So I helped put all the pitch slides together and then we got to meet with the Chief Diversity Officer and like, what a cool experience at 24 to be able to do that. And then I ended up getting coached to another company called Revolt TV. It was cofounded by someone named P. Diddy who maybe some of your listeners might know, maybe all of us know. My mom's generation does not know and she also doesn't care. But now I was at a company that was too small for employee resource groups but really prioritise racial and gender diversity or specifically having black representation.
And it was while I was there that I was kind of like, you know, this company, I think I was the only fulltime Asian employee there at the time. And I was like, I want to do some disability stuff again. And so I relaunched irresponsibility on the side. But all of that to say I have generally had positive experiences and I wonder if maybe my trauma response just overlooked the negative ones or just said I think one of my superpowers, I don't know if I'd call it a superpower, is that I just want to understand where people are coming from. So I think people can say things that might be hurtful. I know I have done that, but I'm projecting my own stuff or some childhood. My first Ted Talk was called The Power of Exclusion. And even at 34 years old I still feel being excluded so acutely I get transported right back to when I was eleven or twelve years old in this journey to want to create these bridges as you mentioned in my intro. I think it's just really been for me, this wanting to understand where people's starting points are and at least just trying to all move forward together at whatever pace works for us.
There's so much there that's interesting. First of all, it's beautiful stories and context there. I think kudos to your recruiter for almost acting more like a mentor than a recruiter. Right. She brought to light something that you belong here. You're already accepted, you're already in. Just go do the work. And I know investment banking is I had friends that did it out of college and 90 hours, 100 hours, weeks is not fun for anybody.
I know. I get like 7 hours of sleep and I like, can't I'm just like, how did I do that?
Well, I mean, there are people who do it for a long time, but at the very least we can say it is a job that's particularly well suited for younger people coming out of school where you have that extra energy and can put in those hours much easier. Interesting point that you made about your coworkers saying I don't see you as having a disability because I've had that experience too. And it's interesting, it's always context specific, but correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think he meant to say, if he had the proper words, was I don't see your disability as stopping you from being productive as an awesome employee and belonging here. He just didn't know how to say it. It's like I don't see you as somebody who can't do something. Right. And I know that there's an association with disability and can't or disability and not good enough disability. Right. Which is the part we need to correct. But he probably meant well.
Right, but that's the thing about microaggressions, right, is that usually they're unintentional, right. And they are kind of like bad candid compliments. I think that I will acknowledge there are things I can't do because of my disability and that's okay. Right. That's part of what I think defines the disability experience. But there are also, and this is not to diminish a disability experience. There are also things that many people can or can't do. Not everyone can be an investment banker, right? Yeah. I probably would be a horrendous package delivery person. And actually one thing that I'm reminded of that I cannot do frequently is put my carry on luggage in the overhead compartment on a flight so I'm okay that I can't do things. Usually when people make that remark of I don't see you as disabled, I will come back to them and just get curious and say, well, what are you attributing to a disability experience that I don't match? Right. And maybe as you mentioned it's, that we can't be productive. Right. Or we can't be good employees. But so much of I think the reason why you have this podcast or reason why we all do the work that we're trying to do is we want to challenge all of these stereotypes.
Right. I think my disability there's also this another microaggressive saying where people are like, don't let your disability stop you. And then I'm like, well, part of a disability experience in a nabalist world is that there are things that haven't been adapted for us yet. We learn how to I mean, I remember growing up because I'm home now. I'm just thinking about it, but I'm 64. I might be dating myself, but I'm the youngest of four and each one of us had a controller. And if you remember how the N 64 controllers are, maybe whoever hears this will be like, okay, Tiffany is now going to become an adaptive gamer. So I learned how to hold the controller with my left hand, and then I used my right foot to push the keys. Mario Kart I was like, I was on Rainbow Road. I was Bowser. We have had to learn how to adapt, which has made things harder, right. I don't want to diminish that, but I digress. So I think that's the interesting thing about microaggressions is that, for example, people will come to me and I'll tell them about my arm, that's paralysed, and they'll be like, well, you're so pretty.
And that's a compliment, right, because I'm attractive. But the but you're so pretty. The way that it's framed is I don't see disability and beauty paired together. Right. And again, if we think about, as I mentioned before, this metaphor of the band, you can have beautiful disabled people and there are ugly disabled people. Like, this is being human. Like we're going to exist on the spectrum. But I think oftentimes as disabled people were only put into this one category and this one narrative.
I agree with that completely. And I'm a gamer as well, and I have adapted and I've had some controllers built for my one arm, and I am working as a side project. We'll talk about later on some adaptive controllers. Because I think gaming is a beautiful experience in many ways for people. It does make it harder, but at least I've found, like, playing tennis, playing sports, swimming, or just in general, just doing the things we love to do. If people see us doing something well, doing something excellently that they don't necessarily expect, yes, there's microaggression there, but I have found that oftentimes it opens up the door to change those hearts and minds and to have deeper interactions with people and to have that reframing the way they perceive me. So it leads to this. I know with Emily LaDow on your podcast, you were talking about Allyship and also this opportunity that we have that it's not a responsibility that we all have to take, but these learning teachable moments, right. So we have these opportunities as human beings to connect with each other. If we're just going about our day and doing something that impresses somebody, if we have the mental energy and if it's the right time and opportunity, it does impact other people's lives and it does change the way we're perceived.
Yeah, I mean, I often say if someone's impressed or if someone feels inspired, like we can't control how people feel, but we can encourage them to take action. So if they see you swimming or gaming and they're really impressed, maybe in their spheres of influence, they will continue to advocate for more spaces to create, to get more swimmers or have more gamers. Right. And so I think it's all an ecosystem that kind of exists together. But I think just feeling the feeling of being impressed, like seeing someone and thinking that they're impressive or being inspired by them, I want to take it to the next level and say, okay, those are great feel. I'm so glad that you feel those things versus like a pity or some other things that you could feel. But now that you feel those things, like, is there a way that we can actually turn that into tangible action? Because there are still a tonne of disabled people who are feeling very excluded, feeling like second class citizens, feeling dehumanised. Can we open up pathways for them?
Absolutely. And so what do you think in all of this work that you've done, these companies that you've been involved, what do you think the non disabled community is still missing? I mean, they're probably missing a lot of things, but what are some of the messages that you feel that still aren't hitting home and why do you think that is?
Recently, I'll share two pieces of research. So one piece of research was from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, and I think they had interviewed some they had interviewed disabled people as to why they felt what was the reason why they felt like they didn't get the job or they didn't apply to it. And the overwhelming number I mean, there were some answers that were like inaccessible transportation, like lack of flexible hours, but the overwhelming response was that the disabled person didn't felt like their disability got in the way of them doing a good job without work. So that was kind of like data. Number one is within our own community, we have internalised so much of this harmful messaging that the expectations are set so low that we start to believe them. That's kind of number one. Then number two was a study was done where they interviewed hiring managers and HR people, asking what was the number one reason why you didn't hire the disabled candidates? And the number one reason was that they didn't know what the disabled person could or couldn't do. So they were already making assumptions based on that person's disability about what their capabilities were.
And so as we look at how this system all works together, we have a policy in the place, right, at least here in the US called the Americans with Disabilities Act. And probably there's some form of it or the Convention of Rights on People with Disabilities through the UN that a lot of people sign on to that is supposed to protect our rights. So we've got the law thing. Implementation is a different question, right? But in order to get effective implementation, you do need what you actually use those words that I use. You need the hearts and minds. You actually need people to believe, I fundamentally believe that disabled people are magic and valuable and worthy human beings who are going to contribute so much to my workspace. And so when you see that disconnect happening between the policy and the non disabled HR managers not knowing what disabled people can or can't do, it's that hearts and minds piece that is kind of actually going to create that bridge. So much of this work is what I call like I mean, I call it intimacy, but Mia Mengus uses the term access intimacy, which is access intimacy, at least the way I understand it, is that I can show up to a place and I don't feel like I have to ask for special permission to show up.
And I am embraced fully in who I am. And a good example because it sounds like you are a fellow one armed folk. A good example could be if they made sure enough at a buffet, if they made sure there was enough table space out front that I could place my plate while I serve my food. Because I don't know if you've been to Buffet where it's literally at the edge and then I got to figure out how to hold my plate. But another example that happened, like right before I got my internship at Goldman was there was this really great nonprofit called Lime Connect where their mission is to rebrand disability through achievement. And they have all of these great corporate partners. Actually the ones I worked at are some of their partners like Goldman and Bloomberg. I think Target was on there and they hosted a networking session because we're all financing people with their recruiters, but everyone who showed up had a disability and none of us disclosed. But it was like the first networking session I went to where I was just like, no one's going to be staring at my arm.
I just do my confident left handed handshake. And I will say some of those recruiters that I met at that Lime Connect session I'm still in touch with. Now, they work in different spaces, but they were the ones who showed me, here's what it looks like if here's what a networking event can look like where you feel safe. And I know we throw around this term like psychological safety law, but anyway, your question was what are non disabled people missing? And I think it's just the bridge that needs to happen is this intimacy that Emily Liddell also talks about, right? In order to make the world more accessible, we need to make the disability experience more accessible to the world. So the people who support you in the swimming and the gaming, you have now created a friendship and that's a level of intimacy that they now understand your experience and how can we create that at scale? Right? That's the big question because there are so many more of us out there. Again, 70% of disabilities are not apparent. There are so many of us out there who are hiding in silence because they fear that if someone finds out that they have lupus or they are hard of hearing, like maybe that hiring manager will make an assumption about what they can or can't do.
Right? Like, what does it actually feel like? Because I don't know if you ever felt like when you have made an assumption about someone and then they challenge that assumption and you're like trying to grapple with that tension of what it feels like in your body, it does feel like you feel a little defensive because you're like, whoa, I believe this whole thing my whole life and how can we embrace that discomfort and kind of sit in that place and be like, okay, maybe I have some more things to learn.
Yes, the open mindedness and the curiosity, all of those things. And I'm an entrepreneur. I own my own business with my brother for 15 years. So it's interesting that sometimes disability does come up with clients and sometimes it doesn't. And I usually use those as teachable moments when it does come up with clients. But what I find interesting too about what you said is how can we as people with a disability, tell better stories about what we bring to the table? I'm going to assume most of the time that somebody knew that I'm meeting is going to make certain assumptions about me, how I walk, I use the prosthesis, I'm shorter than normal, all of these things. I know that there's all these assumptions going on in their brains. And I think it's at least my responsibility in part if I want to get hired or if I want to earn somebody's business to build that trust. And the more I understand about what I bring to the table and what my worth is, the better chance I have to communicate that to somebody else.
I mean, that's such a great question. I think there's part of me that says I don't want to have to convince someone that I am valuable and worthy. Right. But I think for you as an entrepreneur, one of the things I'm thinking about is that relationships take years. Even if I think about some of the partnerships that diversibility has done. I've known these people for four plus years. I just did a speaking engagement. She was like, Oh, we were connected on LinkedIn. And then I looked and we connected in 2012 because we met at a happy hour that the nonprofit she was working at was hosting. Right. And so I think people are going to make assumptions. One time I'll tell a little sidebar story and then I'll come back. But one time I met a girl who had a facial difference and she had had a lot of surgeries on her face and she was maybe eleven or twelve. And I was sitting with her and I was kind of just reflecting on how she was me many years ago. And then she turned to me and she goes, do you have any questions about my disability?
And I was like, whoa, at eleven or twelve years old, to be so comfortable, want to open up a conversation, create that invitation, because a lot of people are nervous to ask questions. I was like, if this is the future, like if she is an example or a microcosm of what the future is going to look like, I feel very hopeful, right? Because at that early age she's very open. And again, we don't owe anyone who's talking about our medical things. But I think that's why if you look at my LinkedIn highlight reel, I think that's why I worked so hard. I double majored in college and I double minored as well. And I did an internship or intensive language programme every summer because I knew that when I was recruiting, it was like right after, oh wait, we're in the recession and I'm trying to get an internship in I'm trying to get an internship in a place in an industry that is potentially crumbling. But I knew that I had receipts. I think that is what I feel really grateful to have had, and I want more disabled people to have as well, is the fact that whether it's a UBS or a Meryl or a Goldman, they gave me a three month chance to learn some things, be in a professional work environment, learn how to send professional emails.
I feel like people discount the value of that. So yeah, I guess I come back to receipts because even now I do quite a bit of corporate work. But I also know I have receipts because I worked in the corporate world. And not only was I an employee there, I was also on the recruiting side. I also started an employee resource group. I also got to work at a company that did prioritise some aspects of diversity and made it work. And I think that if we can draw on whatever your equivalent of those experiences are, I know you have them. Right? But I will also highlight that at Diversibility we just welcomed our 9th team member today and I will acknowledge that a lot of us probably have gaps on our resume or probably don't have the work experience for the thing that we're trying to do. And part of what I try to do at Diversibility I like to call us to tell an incubator is I want to see us win. So if we need to take you in, maybe you don't have that much social media. Or I think about we just hired a writer like a couple of months ago.
And she had only been published in one place and she had published a children's book. And Ariel was like, I've done this writing and I want to do more, but I have imposter syndrome that I'm not a writer. And now she's our teams writer. She's literally pumped out like four pieces so far across Thrive Global Women enabled we're going to have one in the world institution on disability. I'm like, you're getting into all of these places and it's like, I want to do that for more people. So, yeah, I mean, I do think it has to be this combination of, like, unfortunately, because you mentioned that when I shared my origin story, you know, other people who have limb differences, who for a period of their adolescence, like, hit it or didn't tell anyone, all of us kind of have this coming into our own story. And I think that mine came with the receipts and I want to figure out what those receipts look like for other people because once, like, you can never take away the fact that I was ranked in the top bucket of my performance class at Goldman as a one handed investment banking analyst who types with one arm.
I can't carry all 45 pitchbooks, but I'll bring a roller luggage to try and carry some of them. But that was my hack. But yeah, I think it's like we've been stripped away from so much for such a long period of time that I actually do think it has taken me some work, and I'm still doing that work to try and build up my own self confidence and my own self worth. And so even if I'm doing that, I can only imagine what other people within our community and the work that they need to do to build themselves up too. Absolutely.
Congratulations, by the way, on the 9th tire for diversity, but oh yeah, I'm part of the Facebook group. We love it. I know that a lot of people's minds tend to think of either or either we need to do this or we need to do that. And I like to think of both. And so we need to help companies create more safe spaces where those assumptions aren't made. But just think of it as any candidate. If you're interviewing anybody for a job, it's partially on the onus of that candidate to prove that they're right for the job, that they're going to fit with that culture, that they're going to be a good hire because the employers are taking a risk. You don't know if that person's going to work out, you don't know if their resume is fully accurate. You can't background, cheque, everything. So I think it's a both and combination of we can do a better job and we can teach people that's part of what I want to do. We can teach people how to tell better stories about themselves, how to become more employable, but we also need more of those companies that give us a chance.
Yeah. And I will also say that everyone who joins the Diverse Ability Team, we bring them on for a three month trial period. And we've had people who didn't make it past their trial period, right. And so I think that's why I like the internship system. And I don't want to tell you, but I do feel like Goldman, I mean, Goldman had me for a summer and then they had me back. But they probably thought they were taking a chance and taking a risk. And you do that on any hire, right? And so I actually saw an interesting LinkedIn post the other day where I think Coin Base had like, let go a lot of their staff. And the post was like, these employers don't care about you in this capitalistic society. You got a fend for yourself. I don't know where I was going with that, but I think I just wanted to highlight, like, I like the idea of letting me show you what I can do. But I know that we don't get that chance a lot, right, because these employers are putting in onboarding. Someone takes a lot of energy and a lot of time.
And so if there's an opportunity to do an apprenticeship or an internship, if someone is still in school to figure out like, is this the right is this person in the right role that I think can help ease more of us into the workplace and help kind of dispel some of those hiring managers assumptions about what they think we can or can't do? And there's a really great quote from Kathy Martinez, who I think is now that she's now a disability rights advocates, but she has a quote that says it says something, and I'm going to paraphrase, but it says, in order to overcome your fear of being uncomfortable around or not being sure what disabled people can do, you should just hire disabled people so we can show you what we can do and then we're not special anymore and we end up becoming like, co creating the fabric of this culture together. Right? But how do you get that chance, right? And actually that point right there is being given that chance is what I think a lot of us are missing within the disability community and a lot of employers are missing out on yup.
I'm still working on that too. I don't know what the answers are, but I think at least part of the answer, I suspect, is if we phrase the language in their terms right, they're taking a risk. They're hiring somebody they don't know, just like any other human being. If we can convince them that we are a good investment, that there is tremendous latent potential that's not being actualized here and we can tell better stories about ourselves, I think they may see this investment is actually worthwhile. We are not doing a good job as a society, period. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this at actualizing human potential across the whole range of humanity. Like, we are doing a poor job of that. If we can come to terms with that and understand that we're not doing a good job of that, then we can start to make more flexible systems, we can start to create more adaptable environments and really actualize all of that wasted human potential, which is just a terrible thing to waste.
I do feel hopeful maybe I'm the eternal optimist, but I do feel hopeful that it's changing. Right? I mean, I think about how many of us have been advocating for remote work forever, and it took a pandemic for us to realise, hey, M Zoom probably is very happy. But now I guess I'm hoping that it opens up more pathways for those of us who want to work in the safety of our own home, where we're not subject to different types of microaggressions and we can work in a way that works best for us. Right? I mean, as I'm doing this interview, I'm sitting on my bed, but we're still doing it and you're still getting the content. So it doesn't matter whether it's in a crowded office, an open office space where nobody and I don't know it's true.
The important thing is, can you do the work? The answer is yes. And then whether you're doing it at home, whether you're doing it at the office, it doesn't really matter. You're getting the job done. Tiffany, what have you been working on recently that you're really excited about, that you'd like to share?
I will say my latest project is called the Disability Empowerment Endowed Fund, and it was launched around this time last year. And so far we have raised around 65,000 of the 100,000 that is needed. And I wanted to specify why I'm really excited about an endowment, or why I'm just really excited about this in general. So if I think about where I want to spend kind of my next energy over the next little bit is I want to focus on what I'm calling, like, disability centred economic justice. And to me, I translate that to how can we get more money in the hands of disabled people so that they can do the things that they need to do to live and thrive in the current society that we're in? And I think that this disability endowment is kind of like my first foray slash commitment into that. And so this is going to be House at Georgetown University, which is where I went to school. And if you don't like Georgetown, that's okay. But if you have the means, please make a tax deductible donation. But once it's fully funded, what will end up happening?
And why I'm excited about an endowment is that it will exist in perpetuity, which means forever. So the fund will not need donations anymore after the first will continue to get reinvested and a small portion of it will get dispersed every year to support disability initiatives. And that can include scholarships for new students. It can include disability research because for people who are very data oriented, we always need the research. It can support student clubs. Georgetown has been looking into building a disability cultural centre which is separate from disability services, disability culture. We have our own culture and history and pride. It can go to support speakers, I mean, so many other things, and it's going to sit under the disability studies department. But I guess I'm just really excited. Like, for me, this is how I think about systemic change, but in my sphere of influence. So I don't have connections to the White House yet. And while I was in San Francisco, I was on the San Francisco Mayor's Disability Council. But it was also really frustrating to be on that council because we were only an advisory body. And so now I'm putting real dollars into something and where I went to school, and it's going to get invested in a way that makes it exist forever.
And when it exists forever, what it signals to me in hopefully Georgetown and hopefully the broader world is that disability and investing in disability is going to matter forever. So that's kind of like project number one. I will share one other project. I think over the last year at Diverse Ability, we ended up launching a smaller group outside of our Facebook community that has about 5000 members in it. And it's called the Diversibility Leadership Collective. And to me, part of that is not only am I super excited about the talent incubator that we've built within our core team, but how can I kind of like pay it forward to members of our community? So that means how can we get you more paid opportunities or how can we get you more visibility opportunities? Because the more of us and Gustavo, like, this is your work, the more of us that are sharing our stories effectively, the more that we can start to sway, right? So Tiffany's story is great. Like, those of you who are listening to this, like, know Tiffany story very intimately. But it's not just Tiffany's story, right? There are a billion of us.
I want to know Gustavo's story and Nico and Nicole. And so I've been spending a lot of my energy and time on how can we impart this empowered knowledge that it seems like both you and I feel onto this next generation of advocates.
That's absolutely fantastic. And hopefully the foundation becomes a model for other universities and other institutions and other family offices to start foundations of their own. I mean, there are so many, I've met so many entrepreneurs that have had such a challenge. They've got brilliant products with the system technology, and they have a really hard time getting funding again. There's so many people coming up with so many great ideas that are hitting those roadblocks that are not necessary.
Yeah. And isn't it it's so fascinating to me that sometimes the assistive technology that was designed without any input from the disability community gets millions of funding. Because, again, I think it comes back to this whole assumption thing. I mean, I don't know how to get people to not assume things. I mean, we're making assumptions and judgments all the time, but people are just assuming that we want things without even asking us. And that also doesn't feel good. Right. But I will say I have noticed a lot of movement around disability entrepreneurship. There's someone named Diego who runs Together International.
It was on the podcast. I know Diego.
Oh, great. Wonderful. Runs the disability startup network verizon and Remarkable. And Google, I think, are all starting to put more funding into disability entrepreneurship. It's just what does it look like at scale? You probably know. Do you know Alvaro Silverstein from Wheel of the World?
I don't know him personally.
Yeah, we should get him on your podcast. I mean, he just raised a couple of million dollars and now he's been focused on fundraising as well. And then we actually hosted an event recently with John's Crazy Socks, and it's a father son duo and the son has down syndrome. And we had them and they were talking about how they make it a priority that at least half of their staff has disabilities. Right. And so they're providing job opportunities as well. And I think when I was looking at their different stats, I think they're in the multi million dollars, so I think they're doing pretty well. And prepandemic. We all needed socks. I'm wondering now that maybe we'll need socks again. But I haven't worn socks in a long time.
Yeah, and I know that one of your LinkedIn presentations, and I'm on the board of directors of Omnium Circus, and they're doing a phenomenal job as well of hiring people with disabilities, really creating an organisation where it is representative of the diversity in our world and hiring the best people for the best roles. And it's beautiful to see all of these things coming up. We just need, like you said, we need more of it and we need it at scale.
Yeah. Actually, if anyone has ideas what the at scale part of that might look like, let me know. But maybe creating intimacy. I don't know. There's something about scaling intimacy that I don't know if I but it happens one conversation at a time, and hopefully mediums like podcasts and some of the changes that are happening in Hollywood and advertising will start to move will start to move things forward.
Absolutely. Tiffany, is there anything that I missed in this podcast that you feel is worth talking about? Important to talk about.
The last thing I'll say, I don't know when this episode is coming out, is on the topic of storytelling, this will be my last thought is I just think about how liberated I feel to be myself. And if I think about what is at the root of disability justice, it's collective liberation right across all intersections. But first, I think we need to think about personal liberation, and part of that is economic and financial freedom, as I talked about my economic justice, but also just to let your story out in a way that can impact and influence the masses. And if the masses means you getting a job, as we talked about earlier, I just want your listeners to know that who you are is such a gift. And even if we never meet, like, I can't wait to hear your story, and I can't wait to see the people who are impacted by your story as well.
Thank you so much for that. I think that's a great way to wrap up the show. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. How can people learn more about you, connect with you, get in touch?
Yeah. So if you want to follow me, Tiffany, you can follow me at I'm Tiffanyu across social media. That's the letter I, the letter M, followed by my first and last name. And then if you want more educational content or to get plugged in with the Diversibility community, you can find us across social media at diversibility.
Perfect. And I also highly recommend your podcast, Tiffany and you. It's absolutely fantastic, and I encourage everybody to go listen.
Oh, I appreciate we're currently gearing up for season three.
Fantastic. Tiffany, thank you so much for being so generous with your time for all of these great stories and thoughts. And I really appreciate you being on the show.
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