Meredith Koch and Nicole Bettè are engineers who’ve bonded over conversations about their apparent and non-apparent disabilities. They recount how at different moments in their careers they’ve gotten the understanding and assistive technology necessary to do their jobs—and when they haven’t, all with the hope that you’ll be able to better advocate for yourself and your colleagues.
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It'S always really interesting.
Like, whenever my colleagues have seen me for the first time with a wheelchair, they usually ask, what happened?
And it's hard to answer.
It's like, literally nothing happened to me.
I did not have any accident.
Yeah, it's just, I don't know how to answer.
I will say something like, oh, no, I'm okay.
I have connective tissue disorder and leave it at that.
People are naturally curious.
I get that.
Yeah.
And when I'm like, out in public, I don't have this happen in my actual office, but I can be out and someone's like, oh, were you in a car accident?
And I just look at them and either a, no, and I wheel away, or B, actually, I had a piano fall on top of me and then I wheel away.
And then they just don't even know what to say.
And who's uncomfortable now?
Nicole Bettey and Meredith Koch are engineers who our podcast team met at a Women Impact tech conference here in Boston.
Over the past few years, they've bonded over conversations about disability, a topic that Meredith feels a lot of us are scared to talk about, including at work.
I think, because it's so personal and there's so much that you just don't understand about it.