Joyce Bender, a recruiter for executives in the computer-systems field, knows all about the unpredictability of life and how routine lives can be shattered in a split second. It almost happened to her.
It was 1984 and she was trying to buy a Diet Coke at a concession stand during the intermission of the movie “Amadeus” when, without any warning signs, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.
A doctor, whose identity she doesn’t know, arranged to get her to a hospital, where she underwent brain surgery. Her husband and other family members were told she might not survive and if she did, she would likely be blind and mentally impaired.
Bender not only survived–with only a 40 percent hearing loss in her right ear and a seizure disorder for which she takes medication–but after two months of therapy she also returned to work at the executive search firm, where she was one of three partners.
Everything seemed back on track, except for one thing. She couldn’t get out of her mind the images of the people she had met in rehab who had permanent disabilities.
“I would see people who had head trauma, and I would see that I was recovering and they were not, and I wondered what would happen to them,” said Bender, 43, explaining how she first got interested in trying to find jobs for the handicapped.
In September 1995, more than a decade after her hemorrhage and following years of frustration in trying to place handicapped workers in jobs, Bender, who is now president of her own executive search firm, started a second company, a consulting firm through which she hires handicapped computer programmers and other technical experts and leases them out to corporations on a consulting basis.
She also hires disabled individuals at Bender Consulting and at her recruiting and placement firm, Bender and Associates.
Her staff research assistant and writer is in a wheelchair. One of her administrative assistants is deaf, and Bender and other employees have learned sign language to communicate with her. Bender Consulting now has 13 employees.
Some of her employees hadn’t had steady jobs for years because their disabilities made employers reluctant to hire them for fear that they wouldn’t be reliable. One has had nine heart attacks, causing too many blank spaces on his resume. One is blind, and one is a double amputee.
“Jobs mean freedom for these people. Jobs mean they can earn a paycheck and buy cars and live their lives the way they want to,” Bender said. She decided to start her consulting company after “I could see that this wasn’t going to happen any other way.”
Though she tried for several years, she couldn’t get other recruiters and consulting companies excited about finding jobs for the disabled. And corporations had little interest in hiring them.
Early in her effort, she hooked up with officials at the Institute for Advanced Technology in Pittsburgh. The school trains people with disabilities to become computer programmers in the belief that technology is one area without physical barriers for the disabled.
At first Bender had tried to place students on her own. Then she founded a group effort called Partners in Placement, through which she tried to rally other executive recruiting and consulting firms to hire and place the disabled.
“For the next several years, we placed several of these clients at no cost. But as the years went on, I wasn’t seeing the progress that I’d hope to see.”
So Bender decided to take the risk and hire the disabled employees and lease them out to businesses. When she started the consulting company, she had to choose whether to create a profit-making venture or a non-profit. She quickly chose a for-profit business. After all, why shouldn’t disabled employees have the same chance as able-bodied workers to compete for the kind of raises and bonsues that a profitable company can offer? They all have full medical benefits and profit sharing.
She said the employees of Bender Consulting have been able to debunk the belief that the disabled will take off more sick days than able-bodied workers. She said it’s also a myth that it costs more to provide medical insurance for the disabled.
“We have found that they are more dedicated, take less time off and are more reliable and dependable,” said Don Morchower, senior vice president and chief information officer at Highmark, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who has hired about a half dozen of Bender’s consultants. “They are also major contributors and are very creative in their work.”
Bender’s disabled consultants have worked out so well at Highmark that their contracts, originally negotiated for six months, have been renewed.
One of them, Marianne Duffy, a systems analyst, is on her third contract. Duffy walks with a limp and is often in pain as a result of bone fusions in her spine and ankle and the reconstruction of her shoulder, injuries sustained when she was hit by a drunk driver in November 1992.
“Joyce is really important to getting people in the door,” Duffy said. “Once you are in there, you can prove yourself. But it’s hard to get in. I don’t know of anyone anywhere else who is working exclusively with the disabled like she is.”
Duffy was a waitress before her accident. Because her injuries made it physically impossible for her to return to that line of work, she was retrained at the Institute for Advanced Technology. Bender hired her upon graduation in December 1995.
“I spent a lot of time doing nothing after the accident, and I wondered if I would ever be productive again. This really makes me feel useful again and allows me to earn a living,” said Duffy, who is married and has three children.
Bender, who holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology, said she looks for the same qualities in her prospective disabled employees as she does in the able-bodied: They must be intelligent, respectful, hard working and have the necessary education and skills.
“I’m not hiring these people because they are disabled. They are qualified people who just happen to be disabled,” she said.
Bender remains active with the Institute for Advanced Technology, where she sits on the board of directors and offers her recruiting services to the graduates, and with the local Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. Bender has become the local chair for TECH-LINK, an organization that introduces technology to middle-school and high-school students with disabilities.
Norris Vactor, who is a quadriplegic as a result of a football injury during his freshman year of college, was placed permanently as a systems analyst at Highmark by Bender when he graduated from the institute in 1992.
“Joyce was a big influence on them when it came to hiring me,” Vactor said. “When you are going through that training, it’s always in the back of your mind that you have to get a job when you get out of there, and she was right there even before I graduated, talking to me, going over my resume.”
In 1996, Bender received the Small Employer of the Year Award from the Pennsylvania Governor’s Committee for Employment of People with Disabilities. She’s also on the President’s Committee bearing the same name and is national co-chair of First Hired, an organization that encourages employers to hire the disabled.
And she was honored by Carlow College, a Pittsburgh women’s college, as one of its Women of Spirit.
The accolades, Bender said, are great because they bring recognition to the cause.
In the meantime, she said, she has a long way to go. Although employing 13 people in Pittsburgh is a substantial improvement in the local scene, it’s a drop in the bucket at the national level.
“Do you know that there are 49 million people in the U.S. with disabilities and 29 million of them are of working age and 60 percent of them do not work? That’s a lot of people to have not working.”
She’s hoping to expand Bender Consulting to a national firm specializing in the placement of the disabled. Though she knows it’s an uphill battle to convince employers to open their doors to the disabled, she’ll continue to fight.
What keeps her going is knowing in the back of her mind: “It could have been me. I could have been one of them.”
