Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowYou might recognize Indianapolis-based Bosma Enterprises as a not-for-profit that helps Indiana residents who are blind or visually impaired. Its business model includes providing products and services for the public and private sector. This provides jobs for people with vision loss who otherwise would face a 70% unemployment rate. In fact, more than half of Bosma’s employees are blind or visually impaired—including its vice president of external affairs, Lise Pace.
She was climbing the ladder in the banking industry in the early 1990s when she learned that she would eventually lose her sight to a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Married and the mother of a young son, she slowly retreated into a dark and isolated life as she lost most of her sight, stopped working and became a stay-at-home mom. As she says, “I didn’t know how to be someone who was blind.”
In this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, Pace tells the story of how her son inspired her to break out of a years-long funk to start volunteering. That led to a full-time job at Bosma and then a raft of promotions that brought her to her current position as a company executive. You could see her as a prime example of how someone with limited sight can excel in the corporate world. Indeed, one of Bosma’s missions is to help clients learn the skills required for succeeding in almost any business environment. But as Pace acknowledges, employers considering visually impaired applicants also need to see beyond sight impediments and trust the results from past work history.
Click here to find the IBJ Podcast each Monday. You can also subscribe at iTunes, Google Play, Tune In, Spotify and anyplace you find podcasts.
You can also listen to these recent episodes:
IBJ Podcast: Sweetwater’s Surack on selling stake in billion-dollar firm, backing Indy heliport
IBJ Podcast: Indiana’s Jiffy Lube guru on art, entrepreneurism, police relations and March Madness laundry
IBJ Podcast: How Homefield sprints to make apparel for Cinderellas of March Madness
IBJ Podcast: Are apartments the future of downtown Indianapolis?
IBJ Podcast: Pete the Planner on the new rules for saving
Looking for another podcast to try? Check out IBJ’s The Freedom Forum with Angela B. Freeman, a monthly discussion about diversity and inclusion in central Indiana’s business community.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Bosma is an amazing organization. They are fortunate to have Lise Pace on their team.
My nephew went to the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and currently works at Bosma. I can’t stress enough how important both of these organizations are to those who are visually impaired or blind.
The School for the Blind not only educates grades K-12, it teaches them how to carry out their lives–how to take public transportation, how to access programs and software that allows them to have things read to them, how to grocery shop, etc. They are taught how to survive in a sighted world.
At Bosma, they learn how to carry out a job and thrive as a contributing member of society. While some are born visually impaired or blind, these skills might be needed by anyone who become visually impaired due to an illness or accident. This could be any of us!