Small Business Ownership by People with Disabilities: Challenges and Opportunities

More than 62 percent of people with disabilities are outside the labor force, making entrepreneurship and small business ownership viable employment options. However, they are often hindered by limited access to affordable startup capital and a scarcity of supports, services and programs tailored to their unique needs and challenges.

Nearly two million U.S. business owners with disabilities often must overcome unique barriers to entrepreneurship as they strive to compete alongside their non-disabled counterparts in a business world that does not fully recognize their abilities and resilience.

Learn about the findings and recommendations from the report, Small Business Ownership by People with Disabilities: Challenges and Opportunities, and how the ecosystem that supports entrepreneurs and small business owners with disabilities can be improved and expanded. This report includes national data, information gathered from disability and entrepreneurial support organizations and the lived experience of entrepreneurs with disabilities.

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During this webinar: 

Beth Daly-Torres, Executive Director with the Office of Disability Inclusion at JPMorgan Chase, will explain why the investment in this research is important and vitally needed.

Three entrepreneurs with disabilities will share their experiences in building and growing their businesses, their challenges and successes, including how they navigated gaps in the support system.

• Tiffani Martin who is the founder and CEO of JancynCo and Visio Tech. She has a degree in entrepreneurship. Tiffani believes that individuals with disabilities are often put into the box of low expectations that they should survive on their disability benefits so they lack the resources and support to start their own business. She believes the ability is there, but the support is lacking, even more so for those at the intersection of gender and ethnicity.
• Alvaro Silberstein is the founder and CEO of Wheel the World. A native of Chile, Alvaro came to the United States because of winning a scholarship for his master’s degree to the University of California, Berkeley. His ambition, as a person with a disability who is a wheelchair user, is to find ways to innovate in the disability space and identify solutions to problems people with disabilities face every day.
• Chioma Oruh, Ph.D., is the founder, principal consultant, and parent coach of Chi Bornfree. Chioma has a passion for family-centered practices, primarily because of her own lived experiences as a Black African immigrant mother raising two young sons with autism.

This webinar will be applicable to any entrepreneur or small business owner with disabilities, along with policy makers, financial institutions, all organizations that support entrepreneurship and provide employment support or services to individuals with disabilities and anyone interested in disability advocacy and entrepreneurial support.

The report and research were made possible through the generous support of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

National Disability Institute is committed to full inclusion for everyone. Please note: Real-time captioning will be provided for this webinar. For other accommodation requests, questions about the webinar or the registration process, please contact Hope Price at hprice@ndi-inc.org.