Published on 01/03/2023
00.00-00.50 (Intro jingle - upbeat music & busy urban soundscape)
Female speaker: How's your job?
Male speaker: An audio series about the future of work and personal fulfilment.
Male interviewee 1: We know that boss-knows-best just doesn't work any more.
Female interviewee 2: You have to be vocal about something, and you have to stay committed.
Female interviewee 3: Sometimes I wonder if it would be possible to bottle up empathy- it would probably help a lot of people around us.
Female speaker: Stories from the evolving universe of work.
00.53-01.15
Hi, my name is Simone Wilder. I am a quality assurance specialist at Novartis Gene Therapies.
My lived experience with disability is I am hard of hearing. I have been wearing hearing aids since I was three years old. I have profound to severe hearing lost in both my left and right ear
(Gentle harp & piano music break)
01.21-02.32
My journey with having a disability has been one with ups and downs. I remember being four years old and picking the bright pink hearing aid. I didn't care who saw it, but as I got older, I found myself wanting to hide it so I would get the hearing aid that matched my skin tone more so people wouldn't notice it as much. And just struggling with that idea of acceptance that all kids feel but it was the extra layer added to that. And as I got older, I really had to figure out how I wanted to show up in the world. I would find myself not going after certain opportunities, just because I didn't want to talk or be in environments where I had to speak. I didn't want my dreams just slip away simply because I let that hinder me. I learned to eventually see it as a way that makes me unique and brings something different to the workplace and to the community around me.
(Gentle harp & piano music break)
02.37-03.16
There was a moment in my life where I was really struggling with the idea that I had a disability and I was fortunate enough to go to a conference centred around disability inclusion. And there, I heard one of the speakers who was an ally, refer to it as a superpower and from that moment on, it really shifted my mindset to think of it as a superpower, rather than a weakness. And since then, I've really been committed to being a representation of what disability can look like and to change the way people think about them.
(Gentle harp & piano music break)
03.23-03.54
My confidence grew when I started to really see it as an advantage. Because I had hearing loss, it strengthened my other senses, as far as the attention to detail, the ability to connect and empathize with other people. And so I just took those strengths that really came from what I saw as the weakness and turned it into something that I can use as fuel every day in the workplace.
(Majestic orchestral strings music break)
04.04-05.19
When you hear about diversity and inclusion, you often think about race and gender. Disability is often an overlooked part of that conversation. For a lot of initiatives, it is sometimes not even mentioned.
Through advocacy, disability inclusion can become a forethought rather than an afterthought. It's just as important as other identities.
Talking about disability is already embedded in our culture at Novartis. It just takes us reimagining what that conversation can look like by bringing it closer to home, to your co-worker who you collaborate with every day, hearing their personal story.
The ideal workplace for me looks like a co-worker coming up to me or to anyone really trying to understand their experience. And it looks like acceptance rather than saying, "I'm sorry you have to go through that." But really saying, "Wow, that's amazing that you're able to show up and be a productive team member, despite going through a challenge.”
(Gentle string music break)
05.25-06.43
In the same way that we help patients with the work we do, we can also help our colleagues as well using those same values and passion that we bring to work every day. You can translate that to connecting with your co-worker who may have a visible or an invisible disability.
Once I disclosed my disability to several co-workers, I often have had them come back to me and say, "Hey Simone, I know it's not on your level of experience but I recently was talking to someone and they were wearing a mask and it really affected my ability to communicate because I couldn't hear them as well." And so moments like that makes me smile just because that empathy is there and that they remember my experience.
Novartis' commitment to disability equity means a lot to me. It means that I'm able to bring my best self to work and I'm able to advocate for myself as well as others. It means it's an open space for me to talk about my experience and other people to talk about their experience because no experience is the same.
(Gentle string music break)
06.50-08.08
As of December 2020, I got a cochlear implant in my left ear to help overcome some of the challenges with communication that I was facing.
When I got the implant that changed my perception of what I was truly missing. I feel like living with a disability, you get used to it but you don't realise how much the world is not accessible to you.
I have used technology in many different ways. It's come a long way since I was three years old. Now I have the ability to stream music right to my hearing aid and my implant, as well as use the microphone that is wireless to connect when I'm in a group setting and need to communicate at work. I also have the ability to stream TV sound right to my implant as well, so it doesn't affect my family members when I need to turn on the TV louder. I also found it really nice that using Microsoft Teams, I'm able to use live captioning as a way to fill in those gaps when somebody is communicating with me. And so I have learned through my experience that it is okay to ask for help and use tools to enhance my communication with others.
(Reflective piano and strings music break)
08.17-09.19
In my personal life, I actually was the first person in my family to be hearing impaired. However, I was not the last. My little cousin also wears hearing aids and through connecting with him on that shared experience, that helped me see the power of representation and the power of seeing someone that's older than you being successful in life.
One thing to remember is that everyone's story is different, to make sure that you don't put them in a box and really get to know them and what their experiences are and really just focus on what you have in common versus what makes them different, because I think that acceptance comes from connecting with the person and then saying, "Okay, we are working towards the same goal and we just get there differently.”
(Majestic and uplifting string music break)
09.24-09.37
(music continues) When you hear the word disability, I want you to think of it as someone being capable of doing something, but in a different way than you're used to.
(Upbeat outro music)
