In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing fight for racial equality in the United States, intersectionality has become a powerful tool for addressing prejudice. Coined in 1989 by American lawyer and civil rights activist Kimberly Crenshaw, intersectionality explores how different aspects of an individual’s identity combine to create different forms of discrimination and privilege.
But while society focuses on many forms of prejudice, including racial, ethnic, religious, gender identity and sexual orientation, one form of discrimination has received little attention: disability.
Stark Facts
This is an issue I have experienced firsthand. As head of JPMorgan Chase’s Global Office of Disability Inclusion, I work to advance opportunities for employees with disabilities and demonstrate their incredible leadership potential. But personally, I have also faced this discrimination. I am paralyzed from the chest down and live and work in a wheelchair. With the accommodations I needed, I rose to senior management positions, where I not only got to advocate for people with disabilities, but also had the opportunity to demonstrate what we can accomplish as a group.
A recent study on race, ethnicity, and disability from the National Institute on Disability (NDI) connects the dots about the impact of disability discrimination: The NDI found “significant and persistent disparities” in employment, income, and net worth between people with disabilities and those without.
And here, too, intersectionality is at play: For Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Americans with disabilities, these disparities are even greater. Moreover, NDI found that the health and economic challenges caused by COVID-19 have further exacerbated economic disparities for this population.
One of the institute’s conclusions was particularly striking: “The combination of racial and ableism discrimination and lack of access to economic opportunity demands urgent action.”
The need for action
“Abilism” is not a new problem. It is a form of discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities, based on the belief that “normal” abilities are superior.
It would be nice to say that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 eradicated disability discrimination, but that’s far from the truth. While the landmark civil rights law was transformative in many ways, the fight for equality is far from over.
On the 30th anniversary of the ADA, JPMorgan Chase hosted an employee webcast with disability rights activist Judy Heumann on July 26, 2020. Judy, who, like me, uses a wheelchair, fought tirelessly for the passage of the ADA and continues to advocate for disability equality today.
Despite the progress we’ve made in 30 years, Judy pointed out the underlying prejudice that many of us hold, saying: “Whether conscious or unconscious, I think people look at us and think: ‘If I was like Judy or Jim, what would my life be like?'”
Judy is spot on when she says this. I have lived a full and productive life with or without a disability. I have been married to my able-bodied wife, Maggie, for over 30 years. She has given me two children, and we are now proud grandparents.
I was already in a wheelchair when we met, and it often seems to me that Maggie would never have chosen to marry a quadriplegic. I can’t tell you how many times Maggie has been asked in our marriage, “Was your husband in a car accident?” or “When did he become paralyzed?” My favorite was when a waiter in a restaurant asked her, “What would your husband like for dinner?”
These people aren’t being intentionally rude, but they are in uncharted territory, and their comments are shaped by society’s views of people who look, act, or think differently.
The Need for Leaders
Prejudice is disappearing, but not as quickly as we’d all like, and that’s what JPMorgan Chase is trying to change.
In 2016, with the support of Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon and his leadership team, the Office of Disability Inclusion was established. Since then, we have been working to make our business more inclusive for people with disabilities. We have standardized how we provide reasonable accommodations and assistive technology to employees and job applicants, actively seek out and do business with disability-owned businesses, and continue to work to make our workplaces, branches and public facilities fully accessible.
These examples are the result of our approach focused on our “4 A’s” strategy – Attitude, Accessibility, Adaptation and Assimilation. If we are serious about making progress in this field, we need a methodical and results-driven roadmap.
As our efforts continue to make JPMorgan Chase more inclusive, it’s our colleagues with disabilities who are making the real breakthroughs. These people include:
Dana Rundell: A business analyst for Chase Home Lending in Plano, Texas, Dana was born deaf. She pitched the idea to drive the development of Chase’s first retail banking branch fully integrated with technology to enable hearing-impaired customers to do business. The branch, located on H Street in Washington, DC, is near Gallaudet University, one of the top higher education institutions for deaf students in the United States.
Lauren Oplinger: A vice president of JPMorgan Public Finance Sales in New York City, Lauren is legally blind. She covers bond funds, asset managers and money market funds across tax-exempt and taxable municipal bond products. Her managers say she has the energy of four people and displays an overwhelming drive to succeed, bringing the whole group together.
Sandhya Thakkar: A team leader in Agency Lending in Mumbai, India, Sandhya is partially paralyzed on her left side. She joined JP Morgan because she wanted to grow and be challenged. Now, she leads her team, proving her skills and training new colleagues without being discriminated against because of her disability.
Role models dispel misconceptions about what people with disabilities can accomplish, and we’re proud to have so many of them at JPMorgan Chase. To dispel myths and prove that people with disabilities are leaders, we featured Dana, Lauren and Sandia in a series of ads in CAREERS & the disABLED magazine, a leading resource for job seekers with disabilities.
Find the best
Talent comes in all sizes, shapes and forms, and if you qualify, you can be a leader, a pioneer and a great manager.
All you need is an equal opportunity to prove yourself.
Already at a disadvantage, people with disabilities must prove themselves every day. One blind lawyer I know navigates the streets and subways of New York City unassisted. One deaf colleague says her ability to analyze body language and other nonverbal cues gives her an advantage in her work with clients. Of course, she can read lips, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, she has had to overcome yet another hurdle: masks.
We need to tell these stories and show people with disabilities overcoming obstacles because that’s the job of leaders. If we want to create more jobs and economic opportunity, we need to leverage our capabilities and think beyond our disabilities.
“The business community needs to do more to dispel the perception that people think we can’t do something, no matter what kind of obstacles we have, and establish what we can do,” Judy Heumann said.
We at JPMorgan Chase very much agree.