Karla Lynch is the Employment and Community Inclusion Program Manager with the King County Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS), Developmental Disabilities and Early Childhood Supports (DDECS) Division serves as a systems partner to coordinate the delivery of employment and community inclusion services to approximately 2,400 adults in King County, through a network of thirty contracted service providers.
Cesilee Coulson is the Executive Director of the Washington Initiative for Supported Employment; Wise. She brings 22 years of experience in competitive integrated employment training and technical assistance to her position. Cesilee uses her experience to assist with organizational transformation, employment systems change and community employment capacity building.
Chisa O’Quinn is a Program Manager and Social Worker who has traveled with individuals through the worlds of Corrections, Counseling, Disability Services, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse. What sets her apart as a leader and advocate in the field is her ability to creatively seek solutions in difficult situations, as well as her focus on person centered planning strategies.
Dale Verstegen is a Senior Research Associate at TranScen and one of the State Liaison for the YES! Center.
Announcer: You’re listening to YES! To Employment, a podcast series that seeks to improve competitive, integrated employment outcomes for transition-aged youth and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Today the YES! Center’s Dale Verstegen talks with Cesilee Coulson, the Executive Director of the Washington Initiative for Supported Employment, or Wise; Chisa O’Quinn, a Program Manager with Wise; and Karla Lynch, the Employment and Community Inclusion Program Manager with the King County Department of Community and Human Services, Developmental Disabilities and Early Childhood Supports Division. They discuss diversity and inclusion and have a surprisingly forthright discussion about how to elicit input from people across cultural barriers.
Complete transcript forthcoming
Announcer: You’ve been listening to YES! To Employment, a podcast that seeks to improve competitive, integrated employment outcomes for transition-aged youth and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Today Dale Verstegen spoke with Cesilee Coulson and Chisa O’Quinn from Wise and Karla Lynch from the Developmental Disabilities and Early Childhood Supports Division with King County Department of Community and Human Services. You can learn more about WISE at www.gowise.org and more about the Developmental Disabilities and Early Childhood Supports Division at the kingcounty.gov website.
For more about YES! To Employment, including show notes, links to the resources discussed, a complete transcript and a schedule of episodes, visit www.yestoemployment.org/podcast. You can subscribe through iTunes or your favorite Android podcast app to have the series delivered automatically to your device so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a rating on iTunes. Ratings will help us get the series in front of more listeners.
YES! To Employment is a production of the Youth Employment Solutions Center, the national Training and Technical Assistance Center that serves as a hub of information and expertise for the Partnerships in Employment (PIE) state projects. The YES! Center is a collaboration of TASH and TransCen. You can learn more about TASH at tash.org and more about TranCen at transcen.org. You can receive updates from the YES! Center on this podcast and our other activities by following us on Facebook or on twitter at @YEStoEmployment.
Partnerships in Employment is a series of seed grants funded by the Administration for Community Living’s Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, made to states for the purpose of transforming state disability support systems to competitive, integrated employment. AIDD is dedicated to ensuring that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families are able to fully participate in, and contribute to all aspects of community life in the United States and its territories.
Music for YES! To Employment is an original composition and performance by Sunny Cefaratti, the Co-Director and Autistic Self Advocacy Mentor at the Musical Autist. You can learn more about the Musical Autist at www.themusicalautist.org.
Be sure to keep YES! To Employment on your list: we’ll have another episode on competitive integrated employment for you in the near future.
Musical postlude
This interview was originally recorded .
The audio of this interview and the transcript have been lightly edited for clarity.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, redistribute or adapt it for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, provided you adhere to the terms, including that you attribute the original source.
The post Diversity and Inclusion in King County, Washington appeared first on YES! Center.
