Dr. Alex H Cohen is the Chief Marketing and Accessibility Officer at AccessiblePharmacy, a tenured professor in the Marketing Department at West Chester University, and president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Alex's story is a testament of what you can achieve if you embrace that you are your own best advocate.
Alex delves into how his passion for the hospitality industry led him from Philly to Las Vegas. By 25 years old, Alex was already a general manager of a hotel in Philadelphia. His professional career didn't stop there. We also explore Alex's efforts in networking and his initiatives in DEI and disability that facilitated his entry into a doctoral program.
In the final segment of our conversation, we uncover the story behind AccessiblePharmacy, a company that offers home delivery services to the blind and low vision community. Alex, along with his team, established this company amidst the chaos of a global pandemic. We delve into the challenges faced by Alex and the significant role his wife Sarah played in his journey. Additionally, we explore the differences between low vision and blindness, the commendable work of the Foundation Fighting Blindness, and Alex's optimistic perspective towards the future. Don't miss out on this episode filled with resilience, inspiration, and the power of hope.
AccessiblePharmacy
https://accessiblepharmacy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/accessiblepharmacy/?hl=en
Foundation Fighting Blindness
https://www.fightingblindness.org/
West Chester University
https://www.wcupa.edu/business-PublicManagement/aCohen.aspx
Dr. Alex H Cohen is the Chief Marketing and Accessibility Officer at AccessiblePharmacy, a tenured professor in the Marketing Department at West Chester University, and president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Alex's story is a testament of what you can achieve if you embrace that you are your own best advocate.
Alex delves into how his passion for the hospitality industry led him from Philly to Las Vegas. By 25 years old, Alex was already a general manager of a hotel in Philadelphia. His professional career didn't stop there. We also explore Alex's efforts in networking and his initiatives in DEI and disability that facilitated his entry into a doctoral program.
In the final segment of our conversation, we uncover the story behind AccessiblePharmacy, a company that offers home delivery services to the blind and low vision community. Alex, along with his team, established this company amidst the chaos of a global pandemic. We delve into the challenges faced by Alex and the significant role his wife Sarah played in his journey. Additionally, we explore the differences between low vision and blindness, the commendable work of the Foundation Fighting Blindness, and Alex's optimistic perspective towards the future. Don't miss out on this episode filled with resilience, inspiration, and the power of hope.
AccessiblePharmacy
https://accessiblepharmacy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/accessiblepharmacy/?hl=en
Foundation Fighting Blindness
https://www.fightingblindness.org/
West Chester University
https://www.wcupa.edu/business-PublicManagement/aCohen.aspx
Hey everybody, I'm Kimberly Dobbs.
Speaker 3:And I'm Jacob Miller.
Speaker 1:And we'd like to welcome you to another episode of Intuitive Choices.
Speaker 3:Kim and I are mental health therapists working in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1:Each week, we invite a guest to speak about how their own intuitive choices have led them to live a more meaningful life.
Speaker 3:We hope that this conversation encourages you to make meaningful choices in your own life.
Speaker 1:Alright, off we go.
Speaker 3:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody, this is Kim.
Speaker 3:And this is Jacob.
Speaker 1:And we'd like to welcome you to another episode of Intuitive Choices. Today we have with us Dr Alex Cohen. He is a professor of marketing at Westchester University right here in Pennsylvania, and he is also the co-founder of an amazing company called Accessible Pharmacy, which is a company that provides pharmaceutical services to folks in the blind and low vision community and most recently became the president of Foundation Fighting Blindness, the Philadelphia chapter. So we are really excited to welcome you and have an amazing conversation. So we'll see where this goes.
Speaker 4:Welcome. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3:Thanks for coming. We're so happy you're here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So right now you are the co-founder of this company, accessible Pharmacy. You're a marketing professor, but can you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got there?
Speaker 4:You know it's interesting. It's also funny that whenever somebody uses the word journey, I cringe a little bit. Because, I feel that the word journey implies that there's an end, there's an end point, and I feel like I have ongoing important pursuits until I'm physically unable to perform anymore. What word would you use? Really, put me on the spot. Anything but journey, anything but journey.
Speaker 1:So tell us about your process.
Speaker 4:Oh, there you go.
Speaker 1:Hey, therapists are shock-full to synonyms.
Speaker 4:This is like what we do Right. So from a very early age I was always fascinated with the hospitality industry. I love traveling, I love going on vacation. I especially love staying in hotels and decided at an early age like I wanted to do that, and so, growing up in Philadelphia, when I was 15 years old, I was able to get my first job at a hotel. I got to get the Warwick Hotel at 17th and Locust and started taking reservations and checking people in and out as a front office clerk and it was just awesome. And I got to meet some celebrities while I was there. That was just a fantastic experience, and so I attended Central High School here in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3:What class?
Speaker 4:253.
Speaker 1:Oh, is that a thing? It is a big thing.
Speaker 4:My father was 214 and my son, charlie, is now 283. So, yeah, it's a family tradition.
Speaker 1:That's so cool Okay.
Speaker 4:But yeah. So I always wanted to be in hospitality and so discovered that this was a pursuit that I could pursue and go after in college. And so I went to Purdue University, which had a really good hospitality program at the time, and so I went there and stayed there for a year and decided that, you know, it was really cold. It's very cold. Maybe Anna Also you know I'm not really a midwesterner. I needed more of a city, urban kind of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll grow it up in a city.
Speaker 3:I'd imagine you can say anymore of a bite.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, and so I decided to move out to Las Vegas, go out west to seek my fortune, and so why Las Vegas?
Speaker 1:Had you looked at any other options besides Las Vegas? Or that was just like what you had on your mind.
Speaker 4:Well, cornell University wasn't lucky enough to accept me, but at the time UNLV was the second best hospitality program in the country and it makes all the sense in the world. If you've ever been out to Las Vegas, you know you get off of Paradise and make a left right off. You know, out of the airport, I mean right there at the Four Corners, a drop in the boulevard are at the time it was the MGM Grand, the Tropicana.
Speaker 1:New.
Speaker 4:York, new York, the Excalibur. I mean there are more hotel rooms in that, you know, four Corners than the entire city of Philadelphia combined. I mean you know it's just an incredible place to be. If you know that's your professional interest Right. And so I did finish UNLV in four years. Or you know, I graduated with my bachelor's in four years. I did it. I made that happen in Las Vegas and my dorm was like right across the street from the Hard Rock Hotel. I still made it happen.
Speaker 3:Is it the kind of thing where, like, if you're so close to it, you never go? Or were people going all the time? We went all the time.
Speaker 1:Well it's funny because you're like, yeah, I graduated in four years and I was like, well, isn't that typical? But you're making a good point that you're like in a party, you know, like you're in Las.
Speaker 4:Vegas for graduate. You're not just at a college, you're in Las Vegas and nobody ever came out to visit me now one time at Purdue. Yeah, every other weekend people are coming out like, hey, this is really fun. Yeah, like, yeah, you think, yeah, that's great. I stayed out there and worked for Mirage Incorporated, based at the Golden Nugget Resort and Casino, and anybody who's ever been out west can tell you that you need to drive everywhere. There's no public transportation. It is not pedestrian friendly. You know you have to get in your car for everything, and so I was. You know had always had a problem seeing at night. My night vision was always poor, but I was also very near sighted, so I always had trouble, you know, seeing pop flies, especially at night, playing Little League, or being able to, you know, play with my friends outside at dusk. They were able to kind of see, you know, the football coming at them and where it would hit me right in the face.
Speaker 4:So, you know, and as you get older, more and more of your social life takes place in the evening, and so it was getting more apparent that, you know, I had always had this problem. I never felt comfortable driving at night, and so, in Las Vegas, as my vision was deteriorating, I was really, you know, lacking the confidence to drive and get around, and realized that I needed to move back east to a more pedestrian, friendly city, and so I moved back to Philadelphia. I do have RP, retnitis Pigmentosa, and so I was diagnosed with this back when I was 19 or 20 years old, and had been living with this diagnosis for a little better than a quarter of a century.
Speaker 3:Is the night blindness like a typical first indication? Because I know, kim, you mentioned the same with you. Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I went to Will's Eye Hospital and I remember you know being diagnosed and saying well, you have Retnitis Pigmentosa. I'm like great Wait.
Speaker 1:Did they say it with that much enthusiasm? I don't really remember it, it just makes for a better story.
Speaker 4:High fives all around. You're going blind. They're cheerful. Well, so at the time, they didn't say that. Oh, they didn't Like. I was like okay, great. What do we do about that?
Speaker 1:And they're like oh well, that's a.
Speaker 4:Well, there is a guy up in Massachusetts at Harvard Massachusetts Ion Air Infirmary that is doing some work and we can connect you with him. And they were talking about the late, great Dr Elliot Burson. And so I became a patient of Dr Burson and began in these, you know, taking part of these clinical trials to see if vitamin A combined with a lutein and several servings of oily fish each week could somehow slow down the progression of the disease. And so you know, from pretty early time we were involved with trying to do something about this. But getting back to the original point of moving back to Philadelphia, I did stay in the hospitality business. I mean, philadelphia does have a robust hospitality community, a wonderful convention center and a lot to offer. So it was not an easy transition, especially from somebody with a little bit of Las Vegas experience.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, when you like, when you moved back to Philly, was that, did this place? Was it? Did it seem boring? Was it like boring in comparison to having lived in Las Vegas for so many years?
Speaker 4:I mean it's definitely different. It's quite a bit easier to move about in Philadelphia and you know, at the time things were, things were very exciting. I mean you might forget, you know, around the turn of the century Old City wasn't that much of a thing. You know, it was just coming online when the Continental had opened up at Second and Market Street and these places started popping up around there.
Speaker 4:So it was an exciting time to be back in Philadelphia and being in the hospitality community. It's a pretty tight community. It was able to meet a lot of people and make a lot of friends and you know friends from high school and the neighborhood were still around, so it was a pretty easy transition. And yes, you know I did miss some of the Las Vegas stuff, but I had a very good reason for moving back. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Alex, can you speak a little more to the draw towards the hospitality industry? You mentioned like you love going on vacation as a kid, but you know millions of people have gone on vacation. So what was the thing that you saw in the hospitality industry that made you feel like this is where I want to be?
Speaker 4:Well, so interestingly, my father's best friend from when he was in the military police back in the 60s. My dad got injured and kind of came back to the States and now I call him my uncle. Mike actually ended up going to Vietnam.
Speaker 4:And after Vietnam, washed up on the shores of St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands and so specifically going to visit him and saying, you know, wow, st Thomas, like the Freshman's Reef, like this is fantastic. I would love to do something like this. Once I began in the hospitality you know, specifically in the hotel business, I realized that, you know, I liked the service industry. I liked, you know, making people happy, making you know sure that the guests that were there were having, you know, a great experience, not just with my hotel but with Philadelphia in general, being kind of a hospitality ambassador for the whole city. I mean, I think there's an inert sense of hospitality and service and you know you got it or you don't.
Speaker 4:Everybody's had that experience going to a restaurant or hotel where you've received really tremendous service and that was, you know, usually as a result of the service personnel, and you know also, when you don't have such a great experience, it might also be due to that service personnel maybe, who aren't putting in that extra effort and I always did put that. You know I wanted the guests to be happy. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's really. I really love the ethos of like I had a good time so I also want other people to have a great time and then to be sort of like one of the custodians or ushers of like. This is the experience of Philadelphia being a Philadelphia itself. I think there's a nice full circle beauty to that.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So eventually when I came back, I was in sales and marketing for the, the Wyndham Franklin Plaza for a little over a year and I got recruited to join the Latham Hotel as a director of sales and marketing, which is great for you know, at the time I'm still a pretty young guy and to have you know that kind of title was was very exciting. On the Latham Hotel, 17th and 1st, it is, you know, smaller European boutique place. It's not like a big convention hotel or resort but, you know, is mine, all mine, and I eventually got promoted to be a general manager there. So I like fulfilled my lifelong professional dream at like like 25.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 4:Wow, I made it. That was that was easier than I thought. But I also, you know, while I was there as a GM my first year, I implemented this process where during the reservation process, while people were booking their room, I would have our reservation agents turn into concierge and say you know, would you like us to make any dinner reservations for you? Do you need any information about tours or how to get around the city or transportation? Or you know attractions, like how can we make you know you're staying in Philadelphia better? And you know everybody, you know the whole service line, the front office staff really, really bought into that and really appreciated taking that, that extra step.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's almost like you intuited that a little bit, like you were able to kind of see naturally, like that, there was a need for that.
Speaker 4:I wondered how long it was going to take you to insert a pun.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, either you're going to say about the pun, about seeing, okay, I was thinking about more Intuitively. Yeah, yeah. Nicely done, thank you.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, it really is all about service and I loved being there. It was, it was really a great experience. And then, you know the the owners of the property decided to sell and they sold to a group that was going to convert this beautiful hotel to condominium building, which is just what Philadelphia needs more of. And so, anyway, I decided to try and stay in the hospitality business.
Speaker 4:In a way, I got a very unique opportunity with a brand new startup company which is a property management company, but the whole idea behind it was to create this ultra luxury, you know, hotel atmosphere. So it's like the residents, the people who actually lived in the condominium space, were, were treated as if, you know, they were in a five star, five diamond, you know white glove service kind of property. And so it was really wonderful and great experience to set up the entire management and hospitality and infrastructure for this, and I stayed there for a while. But unfortunately that was when, you know, the recession was happening and you know the units, especially at that price for a square foot, just you know, weren't moving and I'm not in the real estate business, I don't sell houses or you know anything like that and it just decided, like okay, to move on from there and realize that I really need to make a career change At that point when I started there, that's when I actually started my cane training.
Speaker 1:Oh, so your career change, your decision to do the career change, was more, was more because of the recession.
Speaker 4:Yes, but it was both Okay, both what Well? Simultaneously. The deterioration of my efficient and the recession were all happening simultaneously. So what I was finding is I was going on interviews for director of sales positions and general manager positions, for which I was very qualified, as my vision was deteriorating and I was using my cane more, you know. I think that might have scared some people off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard to know that discrimination is real and we're not accusing.
Speaker 4:I just, you know, I'm a fantastic guy, why not hire me? But yeah, in a way I get it. If all things are equal on paper and one person can see well and the other can't, these people are worried about their asset. So, you know, I decided that I was going to go into education first, with the idea that I was going to be a hospitality management professor. I here, I had all this experience and the desire to make this career change and I thought I also thought, being, you know, in higher education, being in academia, they might be a bit more forgiving of my vision loss. And so, you know, making this, change.
Speaker 3:really, where did that come?
Speaker 1:from.
Speaker 3:It's not something I would have naturally thought of. What the to become a professor that that education would be more accommodating or understanding of someone who was in the process of losing their vision.
Speaker 4:Well, I was aware of the Americans with Disabilities Act and thinking about in a university setting. You're covered by two of those articles, or actually you know potentially all three. Right, the workplace education, and you know common common spaces, yeah strategic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really really incredible. You know, you made you made some decisions that were really logical, you know why I always, I always pride myself on my logic and reason.
Speaker 4:Yeah yeah, you know, being illogical and hysterical doesn't usually get me very far, but at least for this, this level I mean. So I reached out to the occupational, vocational rehabilitation, blindness and visual services, for you know Philadelphia and you know they. They had helped me in the past with my cane training and so I said, okay, well, I need to make a career change. And what do you want to do? And I want to be a hospitality professor. And oh well, we haven't had one of those before. What does that entail? And it was about, you know, going back and getting a master's degree with the goal of pursuing a doctorate.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting, you went to those services to ask for some guidance and then, essentially, they turned it back around on you and asked you to guide them through that process because they had never experienced that before. Is that what you're saying? Yes, okay, okay.
Speaker 4:But I'm okay with it. Yeah, of course, you know. Sure, I just want to be clear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I that you ended up just figuring it out, you know yourself.
Speaker 4:I think it's important to help people who want to help you. Like be able to help you better Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a beautiful statement. People get so frustrated when they when they reach out to someone for help and you're like well, you know you haven't solved all my problems, but to know that you have to the person asking for help has to be facilitated in that process is paramount.
Speaker 4:Yeah Right. Well, you know you're your own best self advocate, I guess in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3:Yeah. To teach someone how you want to be interacted with in a lot of ways yeah absolutely Like people don't know what you need.
Speaker 4:Yep you know they can they can guess, but or assume which is also not ideal, but yeah, I mean but, but also you recognize somebody's willingness to help you, right, and you'd be appreciative and grateful for that. And I was grateful for these services, especially since they they paid for half of the master's degree.
Speaker 1:Well, Drexel which is not insignificant. I didn't know that that's one of the service.
Speaker 4:I didn't realize that you actually have to. One thing that was interesting and I'm always grateful to my, my wife, for having done all the paperwork but applying for social security disability is not easy. Right, it's quite an arduous task. But also the BVS, or many of the BVS services, are not free unless you have that designation. Oh, okay. So that was important to get that done first. Okay.
Speaker 3:What's, what's the? What makes it difficult to apply for the services that you mentioned?
Speaker 1:Social security, disability, I mean yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:It's. I mean it's it's a lot of paperwork, yeah, and it's getting a lot of information, health records. You know it's probably a lot easier now, yeah, actually if I think about it.
Speaker 1:But I mean back then it was probably paper pencil. Literally 17 years ago or whatever.
Speaker 3:You know that's it's a long time. It's like you think it's like good old fashioned, like bureaucracy can be inefficient. Or do you think there's like impediments that are put in place to keep you from applying to the services?
Speaker 4:I'm not sure, but I also don't think it should necessarily be easy. Okay.
Speaker 1:You know, it's an arduous process when you don't really have great eyesight paper pencil you're losing, so I think that's how I kind of interpreted like it was an arduous process.
Speaker 4:There's that right, but there's, you know, there's a sense that they want to make sure that you really should have this Yep, and I think we as taxpayers probably should be grateful that it's not just based on a phone call Like.
Speaker 1:I need this.
Speaker 4:Sure, here you go. So we did that, and so I began my master's program at Drexel, which at the time was an online program, all online, which was new.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say that was unique at that, because if we put ourselves back there. What'd you say? 17 years?
Speaker 4:ago. I mean, it wasn't that, it was 2010,.
Speaker 1:I think yeah, but still nothing was happening online.
Speaker 4:Like that. But I mean, Drexel is very innovative and they really had done a phenomenal job with that. Also recognizing that if you have an online offering, especially for master's programs, you can market those programs well beyond Philadelphia, Right right.
Speaker 4:And so. But I created a collaboration with the Office of Disability Resources at Drexel and the good people at BVS to figure out what I needed, what technology was available, what was gonna come from the university, what was coming from BVS, how I was gonna get trained on these things, how they were gonna let my professors know. And it was all about putting these two offices together to coordinate this on my behalf rather than just kind of going through me as some kind of intermediary. Is that something?
Speaker 3:you had done before, to have been a facilitator of a collaboration as opposed to a conduit between people.
Speaker 4:Well, people in the hospitality industry are really any kind of business. Do that all the time. It's like simple networking.
Speaker 3:Can you give me an example in the hospitality industry?
Speaker 4:Well, sure, well, I mean if you know that one business will benefit from the relationship of another business and they work at well, okay, so a restaurant in my hotel right needs particular equipment. Is having some equipment breakdowns. I know people who do that from my experience at other hotels and working in some restaurants and internships that I had and kind of bringing those people together to find a solution for my hotel.
Speaker 3:It's like I don't know about hotel culinary equipment, what you would need in the kitchen, but I know people who know and so it's it takes a lot of awareness to like as you move through your life and just like kind of have like a director in your head, of like oh this is what that person does and that's their function. But that look for opportunities to connect them. I think is a unique trait. Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 4:And this was before. Linkedin was such a thing. Yeah, no, but I mean hey.
Speaker 4:I always tell my students this that your network can never be too large. Yeah, so you know. So I went through my master's program and so it was time to start applying for doctoral programs, and what I realized is I didn't want to leave Philadelphia. My wife, who at the time was a neonatal intensive care nurse at Pennsylvania Hospital, I had two small children have a great deal of familial support in the Philadelphia area, not leaving to go to you know. So, specifically looking around, there were not places in Philadelphia that had doctoral programs in hospitality.
Speaker 1:Why'd you have to go for your doctorate?
Speaker 4:You can't be a professor without having a doctorate. You could be, maybe, an adjunct. Oh, okay, but you couldn't actually be like an assistant, right.
Speaker 1:So there's those different. Yeah, they had the depending on, like, the kind of instructor. You are at the collegiate level, right? You? Just you need that degree.
Speaker 4:You need that designation, and so I figured that I could stay. I could get a degree, a business degree, and I always loved marketing, particularly sales and marketing. That's how I came up in the hospitality business and decided to go to the LeBeau College of Business at Drexel and they accepted me and it was great, great. There is one thing that I will say.
Speaker 4:As interviewing for that position, I was very nervous and my advisor and very close friend gave me some fantastic advice. Fantastic advice it's like you know your GRE scores are okay, you know you have a master's degree. It's fine, it's hyper competitive. It's hyper competitive to get into a doctoral program. The school has DEI, you know initiatives, you have a compelling story, but you need to put that story in their face and make them eat their DEI policy. And so they wanted to do a Skype interview with me. And he said under no circumstances do you do a Skype interview? Yeah, and so when you meet them with your cane, maybe you bump into some stuff, like you know like you, play that for all it's worth and right on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did you feel about that? You know, depending on the relationship with your deteriorate, like, was that okay for you or not?
Speaker 4:It's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Was it Okay cool.
Speaker 4:So I don't feel that way. Okay, right, I don't get there. I don't have negativity about any of that. And when I'm giving you know, I give a lot of talks to you know kids, students with you know varying disabilities, and say like, look, all the places that you wanna go, the things you wanna do, places you wanna work, they all have these DEI initiatives and the DEI also stands for disability, which is you use that, get in, you know, and make your mark.
Speaker 4:And if you need that, if you need that additional bump to get into a place you know, so that they can have a more diverse and inclusive workforce, then you know hell yeah, make it happen, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a very clear and matter of fact way of like. This is the system, and so I will use it because it's here.
Speaker 4:That's right, and the unemployment rate is way, way, way too high in the blind and low vision community.
Speaker 1:I think it's 85%. Oh my goodness, yeah, it really is. Yeah, it really is astronomical.
Speaker 4:It's bananas. So this is a way to do that. Yeah, I also, you know, just on a side note, when I am, a lot of students are interested, you know, in the blind and low vision community, are interested in helping other blind and low vision people, which is wonderful and it's a beautiful thing Going into, you know, special education or being at special schools or working with assistive technology. I also say to them that you can do great things for this community by working in a mainstream company and reminding them that accessibility is important to everybody and all the benefits thereby making the greater world outside more accessible and not just our little own circle of our own community here. That's great, that's great advice. So, yeah, and I mean, hopefully they take it. We'll have to see. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So I finished my doctorate from LeBeau and you know it was also interesting because, you know, during that whole educational process I kept saying like I want to be a hospitality guy and they're like, oh great, but you understand that hospitality professors make half as much as like marketing professors. I'm like I'm going to be a marketing professor, yeah, and I'm going to use, and I'm going to use, I'm going to use hospitality related examples in my lectures because it's something that everybody knows, everybody enjoys, they know about the restaurant business and hotels and having been on vacation, and so it's something that everybody can get. You know, when you're talking about different marketing concepts yeah.
Speaker 4:So it works, you know it works very well, yeah. And so I was lucky enough to get hired by Westchester University and I was recently, you know, tenured and promoted to associate professor. So congratulations.
Speaker 1:Thank you yeah that's amazing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a terrible business model. You work really hard for six years and you have your job for the rest of your life. Yeah, you know, I wouldn't do that at my own company. Yeah, I'm glad to take advantage of that and it's wonderful and it's been a fantastic place to work. Yeah, what a blessing and they are incredibly supportive of me and, you know, whenever you know it's very rare, but whenever some kind of accessibility, you know related issue comes up, they're right on top of it.
Speaker 4:And they really want to do whatever they can, and it has been a wonderful place to work.
Speaker 1:So if things were so wonderful there, tell us then what inspired you to start the company Accessible Pharmacy. So I have to take a step back with that.
Speaker 4:First, because there's something that I did not realize as a college student Say it, that I thought that college professors were there to teach me, to educate me, and that was their most important job. That's not really all a college professor does, it's not even half of it, and a lot of universities it's conducting academic research. Yeah, I mean, that's why they give you the tenure right.
Speaker 3:They think you're going to be a conduit for research.
Speaker 4:Exactly. And so and your entire doctoral program is not about you know, creating or having you you know how to be a great teacher, it's how to be a great researcher. And so I looked at what my market, you know, my marketing research could be on and, you know, talked to a lot of people in the, you know, blind and low vision community about it and decided that I was going to have all of my research directed toward you know how to create a more inclusive marketplace for the blind and low vision community.
Speaker 4:And so this led to a great deal of study, particularly in the online marketplace, with websites which are astoundingly inaccessible. That's right, and so in what ways?
Speaker 3:are they?
Speaker 4:inaccessible.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was going to say we should explain that, I think Okay. So for somebody with you know, low vision or blind, to navigate a website, in the vast majority of cases they need assistive technology, usually in the form of magnification or a screen reader. Well, for this to work, the website must be designed in such a way as to be compatible with this assistive technology. In many cases, it's not so. For example, images are not described. This was at the root of the National Federation of the Blind versus Target lawsuit, where people would shop online but you couldn't get a description of the product because they didn't use something called alt text, which is used to describe images.
Speaker 1:So instead, what would happen is like again, we're all using touch screens, so you would tap your screen and you're expecting to for your screen reader to like read what you're tapping, and it would just say something like image or whatever the quite literally like whatever the IP coding is It'll? Just read that out to you, which is not helpful, not helpful at all.
Speaker 3:I mean, kim, like sometimes when we've shopped for things for the office on Amazon together, like you and I try to use the screen reader together and it's like still difficult, and then I'll take it off and I'll say, jacob, I can't do this Like I've ordered things for this office and I think it's one thing.
Speaker 1:And then Jacob's like this is what it looks like, it's been delivered, it's just, and that's Amazon.
Speaker 4:Right, or links that don't work or appropriate labeling, or if you have to fill out a form of some kind but the points aren't labeled so you can't tell if it's name first name, last name, address we could literally go on and on all day about this One other thing, though, is the CAPTCHA is the nightmare.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just having the scrambled letters and things, and only recently have they started offering the audio version. But even those are great.
Speaker 4:Because what happens for the audio version for me is it sounds like it's being said by a baby underwater and I'm sorry, that's really terrible. I didn't really. You should probably edit that.
Speaker 3:So what does it sound like with the audio CAPTCHA?
Speaker 4:It just sounds like somebody's speaking underwater and so you can't really hear it clearly. But also when the audio CAPTCHA first came out, what would happen on my computer is it would have to pop up some kind of Microsoft sound thing to listen to it and so you're not in the box where you can type it in.
Speaker 4:You're in the sound and the whole thing has been in it and it just doesn't work. So my research was really looking into this and finding out how blind and low vision consumers react in the anti-firm reactions that they would have in terms of negative word of mouth and avoidance, and these different things.
Speaker 1:And so that leads us into accessible pharmacy services, because can I just ask you a question Do you happen to know this statistic, and it's OK if you don't Do you happen to know a percentage or whatever of how many people in this country or whatever, are using that need assistive technology, that are low vision and blind? And if you don't know that, that's OK, but it's not a small percentage. So I just want to say that Is a significant amount of people, that.
Speaker 4:There's more to assistive technology than just screen readers, right, but like magnification, all those different things. So also in my work, the way that I describe online accessibility is it's pertinent to anybody who would be unable to use a mouse.
Speaker 1:Oh, like the handheld.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that could be for a variety of reasons. If you can't navigate the website using keystrokes, it's not accessible. Wow, ok. So even if things are accessible, it's still not great. Can you imagine having to tab through the old Yahoo homepage? Yeah.
Speaker 4:Like the number of links that you have to get to what you're looking for. So also, though, it's the good old fashioned universal design approach that if it works well for this community, it really is going to be easier and work well for everybody. What is the old? What can a ramp be used for? To get into a store? Who uses the ramp? Somebody's like somebody in a wheelchair, Like OK, what else? And you could really dig down for how many different people can use that ramp?
Speaker 1:Can benefit from it.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's an important thing to say so.
Speaker 4:That's the same thing with website design. And so at the time, my kids were going to Greenfield Elementary and I was introduced to one of my best friends and business partner now, andy Burstein, who is actually the fellow co-founder of Accessible Pharmacy Services, and he and his partner were working in the online accessibility space. They had developed a tool, a plug-in, that could make most websites accessible, and so I was doing consulting for them, and so he started asking me about my research, and so we went through all of this and I had done a five-year study looking at the retail environment, actually on the top 100 retailers in the US, and this included all of the major, all of grocery chains, big department stores, like anything that you can imagine is going to be on this list. And so we started looking through and noticed that, like hey, pharmacies are particularly inaccessible, and whether that was a standalone pharmacy or a pharmacy inside of a big box retailer or a grocery store, they were inaccessible. This is a real problem. I mean, this is important health care for people and so whenever you get a good research question, you dig in further and you do more research, and we started doing field research, going into the different pharmacies around the city.
Speaker 4:It's like, what do you do as somebody is blind? Like, oh, and find out, or like calling the 1-800-CUSTOMER-LINES and all the different things, like doing focus groups and interviews to see what people's experiences were, and they were, you know, magnificently negative. And so we decided like we should do something about this. And then we look at each other, like, well, neither one of us are pharmacists. That's an important part of this and so we started looking around and we're introduced to Dr Jason Barrett, who's a PharmD and is, you know, decades of experience, and you know kind of made the initial pitch to him, and he pitched us right back that you know he had a closed-door pharmacy that had specialized in packing medications for assisted living in senior centers, and so a lot of the same equipment could be used for, you know, all sorts of different packaging, and so we explored how did you find him, though, interestingly, he and Andy used the same accountant.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so I had a feeling it was going to be something like that, which is why I was like I need to ask you know how you came about this, Because, yeah, so also, we started Accessible Pharmacy, I guess in March of what was it?
Speaker 4:2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. The start of it.
Speaker 1:Well, so March started at March 13th.
Speaker 4:So we didn't know that we were launching in the middle of the pandemic, but it ended up in a way being helpful for us. Yeah Well, because yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not easy for the blind and low vision community to socially distance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a little bit, even, if possible.
Speaker 4:And taking, you know, at the time, particularly taking a septa or paratransit or anything like that, or even just walking around in any kind of retail store, it's like, oh my goodness, I'm taking my very life in my hands. We didn't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what it felt like.
Speaker 4:So it was like really I mean not that this was the marketing pitch, but this is like the theme sort of is like, you know, if I'm going to take my life in my hands, it sure as hell isn't going to be to walk around in a pharmacy. Yeah, you know. Yeah, and so we offer home delivery and it's all through the phone and there's no, you know you never get stuck in voicemail hell or having to type in a 15-digit like pharmacy or reorder code or any of these things. You know it's all like instant communication and you know free home delivery. So if you're going to be, you know, out and about, why not be out and about doing something that brings you joy? Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that was, you know, really kind of where a lot of the home delivery service started.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of doing something that, like that, makes you experience joy, so you it's, you've made all these decisions in your life, right, that, like we're talking and it's like you, just it's not just on corny, but like you really did follow your heart, right, like just recognizing at 15, how much you love hospitality, and like following your dream to go do that, and then, like you know all the while, like you get this.
Speaker 1:You know you're, you're going blind, right, but also like still, almost like not even like letting it stop you to sort of just being like this is how I want to do it and I'm just making these decisions, I'm kind of adapting, but I'm making these decisions all the while knowing that I'm going blind, but I'm still doing what I want to do. And but I want to circle back to like since you, since your eyes, I and of course I'm because the same thing happened to me, right De-de-deterior rating like what was that process like as you were? Like starting a family, like a new career, going through school, like all of that, but like all the while you're, you're still processing slowly because it's very slow, losing your eyesight. You know what I mean. So what was that like for you to have to go through all of that, or or as you're going through it too and you're still experiencing it.
Speaker 4:Well, I think a lot of it is about my support system, which is truly fantastic. My wife is really the most amazing human being I can think of she's she's a unicorn. And I'm really really lucky. I was on a cruise with my dad out of San Juan, puerto Rico, and it was a celebrity cruise lines. It was the first day of the cruise and I could see much better than I could now.
Speaker 3:How old were you?
Speaker 4:Maybe 24? I have 24 or so, and so this was we remember it was January. I think it was a January 4th or sometime in January 2002. Okay, Right. And so it was the first first day and we were having like kind of the the shove off party, and so Sarah was sitting at the, at the bar, at a bar, on the deck, and I saw her from across the way, what?
Speaker 4:But so also I had been on a number of cruises before and I had been always very good at getting the younger people together on the ship to hang out and to do things and to meet up and, to you know, form like a big group of friends for the entire cruise. And so I went up, you know, and she was gorgeous, but I went up to kind of recruit her, and again, this was in San Juan, puerto Rico, and so something that you, you wouldn't do around Philadelphia is you could ask somebody where they're from.
Speaker 4:It's a perfectly reasonable question, and so she said she was from Philadelphia and I was wow. So at the time I was living in an apartment at 18th and one on written house square. Where was she living? And I said where where are you in Philadelphia? And she's like well, actually I'm, I'm in Downingtown.
Speaker 1:I'm like that's not Philadelphia.
Speaker 4:But he's like but we're in Puerto Rico, and if I said Downingtown would you really know what that was. And so she had just actually graduated from the Pitt nursing program and was starting a job at CHOP when they got back, and so her parents were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary and took Sarah and her younger sister along, and so I, you know, met the whole family and spent time with them for for the whole week while being on a cruise, and then, you know, she started at CHOP and we started to date and really haven't looked back since. Oh wow.
Speaker 1:What a cool way to meet your wife that's. I've never heard a story like that.
Speaker 4:There is one other part to it, though, that I forgot to mention. Well, we were at the bar, and I had never done this before. Well, we were at the bar. I said I would love to meet up with you later. I'm going to be in the club. I have this thing I can't see very well at night or in the dark, and so it's pretty dark in the club. I'm going to go sit at the circle bar and I'd love for you to come find me.
Speaker 1:What was it that you didn't really do at the talk of what was what's the thing that you didn't usually do?
Speaker 4:So there were lots of times in Philadelphia that I would meet somebody out at night you know Lucy's hat shop or something like that Get a phone number, go out on a date, be at a dark restaurant and like have no idea actually, really what this person looks like yeah. Anything. Also, I never ordered off the menu. I always ordered the special because I couldn't read the menu in the dark restaurant.
Speaker 1:So you were like playing it cool yeah.
Speaker 4:So I was like adapting in a way to dishonestly adapting, I guess, yeah, you know, in a way like not, you know, recognizing this. And then Sarah would be like why don't you just get a damn light? Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was actually on the menu, but she was like the first person that I ever you know Told about that and it was you know.
Speaker 3:And she came up and she, she grabbed my hand and like that was what made you Wow, that decision in that moment of I'm gonna be honestly adaptive instead of dishonestly adaptive.
Speaker 4:Divine intervention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's something right, but it's hard to like. Who knows? Yeah, and you know what's interesting is, it makes me think because you know we're talking about this in years that she's so supportive, right, your family, and especially your wife, that do you feel like she's been an integral part of, of Helping you adapt. Like, in those moments of like, why don't you just get a light like, go, do you know? Do I mean she do a lot of that, or does she do that?
Speaker 4:for you. Well, she was part of the whole thing together. Like, yeah, going up to Boston for my eye doctor appointments with my dad, I started going with my. It was Sarah yeah. I started vision visiting the University of Pennsylvania low vision Center with her yeah and you know she, dr Steinberg at the time, was teaching her how to be a sighted guide Right like how to, you know, show just through, like arm motions when to get skinny and get behind her right.
Speaker 4:You know, with that right right yeah, and so all these different things Filling out the paperwork so I could get a really expensive ruby reader. Yeah, covered by insurance or yeah?
Speaker 4:you know all of these different things. So she's actually always been Part of the process and something you know, now that I'm part of the foundation fighting blindness, she has her own Struggles with it. It's hard to see your spouse go through something like this, yeah, and so much more weight is put on our spouses than perhaps other spouses. You know, everybody has their own issues, you know, and is getting through their life in any way that they can. But I think Spouses of somebody who is going blind, like they're going through a lot as well. And so she is very eager to Start a support group through the Philadelphia Foundation fighting blindness chapter to start a Support group for spouses of people with these diseases. So you know her work continues, our work continues and we keep, we keep going.
Speaker 4:But also, yeah, also her she had a blind grandmother, oh well, and you know the grandmother wasn't blind for her, her, her whole life, but for a lot of Sarah's life and you know had a guide dog and and all sorts of things and lived in California with her grandfather, you know. So Pardon me the Having that kind of support and you know my brother and my dad and and Sarah's family, like it's, it's a thing that everybody has adapted to. And in terms of deterioration, it's hard to say right things. Things Are slow sometimes and fast others.
Speaker 4:You know you wake up and like I can't see something that I used to see like Can happen.
Speaker 1:It. Does this happen for you? Like? From one day to the next, something might feel different?
Speaker 4:It can, yeah, it can, and so my vision is really far from good. I'm not in the dark, but I also I mean to be talked about. I mean I have retinitis pigmentosa. I'm involved with the foundation fighting blindness.
Speaker 1:And what? What do they do? Can you give us a little bit of a like broad stroke?
Speaker 4:Well, I have always had an attitude of you know, I'm not, I'm not blind, I'm. You know I'm temporarily Inconvenienced. Oh, I think so interesting this whole temporary Inconvenience of having retinitis pigmentosa. I believe that there is going to be a cure. Will it ever restore my vision to perfect? I have no idea. I don't know what it's like to have perfect vision.
Speaker 4:I've never had perfect vision right but maybe something to Reverse some of the progression of the disease, to make it so that I don't you know, don't end up in the dark. Yeah, you know, I believe that this is going to happen now. I believe this for 27 years and I keep you know and you're did that.
Speaker 3:Beliefs sink in.
Speaker 1:Well, it's all you know. When he says it's going to happen, he means the cure, not blind us.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I understand, oh, okay so I don't think I'm gonna be in the dark. I Think that there's going to be a cure and there's going to be something to help me. Now I've had this attitude. Now that attitude, you know, ebbs and flows Like the foundation fighting blindness. Sarah got involved with that, you know, almost immediately, you know, before I did, and actually brought the the vision walk Back to Philadelphia and was like the first vision walk chair, yeah, and you know, started making connections and starting raising money and awareness for Because that's a big role of FFB.
Speaker 1:Right is to raise money toward a cure is essentially what, yeah that's the, that's the primary goal.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's great, like I. So I had gone to FFB, like when I was, you know, newly diagnosed. It was kind of, you know, I went to some NFB meetings for example, and they were doing. They were really concerned with advocacy for for blind people. Mm-hmm which is fantastic, right, it's fantastic looking at different government legislation, how to make things more accessible. You know that Hybrid or electric cars make noise because yeah, many blind people.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, like walking yeah, you know all of these different things and that's remarkable and so incredibly important, but that's not. You know, there there's a you know a slight nuance there of low vision versus blind in some, some instances right, and so foundation fighting blindness is all about, you know, finding finding cures for these diseases and raising funds to Fund the science.
Speaker 4:Yeah now there's also a push that I'm working on more for the. The Philadelphia chapter is raising Money and creating awareness is fantastic and we need that. That. That is, that you know the, the, the core of the mission Mm-hmm, but also you While we're waiting for this cure we do have to live in our current state of things and learn to adapt and learn how to deal and adapt to this vision loss and how we can maintain our professional positions, how we can pursue education and higher education.
Speaker 3:I think that really speaks to that honest adaptivity. I like how you put that. And, kim, that goes back to the point that we had touched on earlier about acceptance itself. I think some people are nervous that if they accept their current state and really look at it for what it is, they won't continue to push forward. If I accept that I'm experiencing this process that is uncomfortable for me or that I hate, rather then I'll make it more real and then I won't overcome it. But, alex, I think you've done exactly the opposite. It's like via the acceptance, and actually that's.
Speaker 1:and yeah, off the air. Alex, you did say I think you actually said the words like I haven't accepted it and I said I have some thoughts about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, I haven't accepted the fact that I'm going to go blind. I think that there's going. I think and believe that science is going to catch up with this malady and is something is going to be there to help it and then help me and help the you know.
Speaker 1:But in the meantime and this is so interesting, when I think about acceptance, I believe that accepting is actually in the moment making decisions and like honestly living your life in a meaningful and fulfilling way. Is accepting not necessarily like that you're, that you know that that blindness is is what's what's going to happen, because it hasn't happened yet, so it's not something to accept.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like you should, not, you should. And Alex, I want to hear your language on this. I don't want to like put words in your mouth, but there's the difference between accepting sorry, not accepting accepting and then also over accepting, it's like you're not committing yourself to a fate that has not yet manifested. It's often, because it is not manifest, Like why? Why commit yourself to, I will go blind. It's like no, the science is continuing to progress.
Speaker 4:That's exactly right and I hope to meet at the right nexus. Well, grieving for something that hasn't happened yet, that could be inevitable. I mean, in terms of, you know, therapy, I'm I'm sure that's something that people can be helpful, but it's like you know, that would be almost like me, like Bruce Springsteen's going to die someday, and I'm really upset about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also and also it's fair to say, though, that you, that that, potentially, you do grieve over things that have already changed right, so, like maybe, not being able to see you know your son's little league, you know game, or you know, like you know, these are things that that, like, have happened already, that you're experiencing. I just think that a lot of what we're saying is is around like I don't know, like living in the moment and like living your life in a way that, like Jacob, you and I say this to each other all the time that, like, makes you feel alive.
Speaker 4:So I can't see pictures anymore, right, which would be incredibly important for capturing memories. All of my memories are in my own head. Yes, my wife has done something. You know that she was doing anyway, but didn't maybe at the time realize how special it was. She recorded the kids and took all kinds of, you know, digital videos. And so, looking back, you know listening to you know three year old Charlie talk about jumping in the rain, puddles or something you know that is worth more to me than than anything. Yeah, but you know, I do hope and expect to be able to see those pictures someday.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And you know that's like I don't really know what my kids faces look like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, my kids faces are frozen in time at the ages of four and six.
Speaker 4:And voices are much scarier than that they are.
Speaker 1:I was telling that you guys a story about my 13 year old son who yelled at me in a deep, booming voice. He was, like you know, yelling, not yelling at me, and how, and? And it comes from in the air, like above my head, which.
Speaker 1:I'm basically saying to you is like there's like this voice that's like five inches above my eye level and I'm just like where are you? You are not little. Yeah, it's, it's. It's just a different way of experiencing the world. But really you're also speaking to hope, and I think hope is an important thing to to just name here you know, as we sort of close out the episode that like absolutely, because some people might listen to this and go, oh, denial or whatever.
Speaker 1:But no, that's not what that it doesn't feel like that to me at all in hearing you.
Speaker 3:I don't think anyone could listen to this interview. I never speak to you, Alex, and like think you're in denial about anything?
Speaker 1:No, no, well, you know it's, you know, I just have to. You know, you never know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure, but I. There's also one thing that that people need to understand, that you know blindness or low vision come to people at different times and there's, you know, my story is my story. I'm lucky enough to have the support system I do right. I'm lucky enough to have had the career that I had before my vision deteriorated to a point where that would have been even more difficult. Like this is, this is my story. Like I know people with RP who are in their fifties or sixties and still driving you know yeah.
Speaker 4:So it comes to people differently and people have different, you know, educations and backgrounds and income levels, and you know support systems so many yeah so many different things making us different and it's like the only commonality is, you know, kind of traversing, having, you know, this type of malady. You know there's more to us, there are more commonalities, hopefully, than that.
Speaker 1:But that like connect us as humans.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. But so that's something that I want to do with the FFB, right. It's like, yeah, sure, we all have this mission of finding these different cures, but you know, let's have speaker series and let's have events, for you know specific interests, for you know some specific age groups, you know dating and meeting other people when you're low vision and blind is very difficult Sometimes.
Speaker 4:Even you know making friends can be difficult, yeah, and encouraging people to get together who have a lot of these other commonalities you know simultaneously could help us build a better and stronger community than just, you know, functioning on awareness and fundraising alone.
Speaker 1:And you know, and I think just hearing what your mission is with FFB and just hearing your whole story, it's like the common denominator is, I think you're. It's hate to pun, but it's like you're kind of like a visionary a little bit and being able to find the like, the humanness you know, in connecting whether it's what you were talking about with BV, blind visual services and the Department, the Office of Disabilities at your school or whatever it is. It's like you're just doing that over and over and over again and just these different on these different platforms and I think that's just like. It's just like so much of like who you are as a person, just you yourself. I think it's just like a conduit for connection.
Speaker 4:I just think that also was a terrible pun.
Speaker 1:Even though you all of those wonderful things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I completely forgot that I even hunt.
Speaker 3:Alex, as we're closing out, is there. I know we named several organizations throughout the episode, but any organizations you'd like people to reach out to learn more about a takeaway message for our listeners.
Speaker 4:Well, I would like people to know more about accessible pharmacy services, and so I really do encourage your listeners to visit accessiblepharmacycom. We have many wonderful webinars and educational.
Speaker 1:Including one on mental health on September 29th that I actually will be speaking at, very excited.
Speaker 4:I know we're so excited to have you again. You're going to blow the doors off, okay?
Speaker 1:Hopefully, yeah so, and anything else of an FFB foundation.
Speaker 4:FFB. If you, you know, if you were on the fence about membership or becoming involved, you know, please get off the fence, join, visit fightinglinusorg and join the Philly chapter and we're going to have a lot of incredible events and it's going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Very exciting, very exciting. I'm so happy that you came to visit us and talk with us about everything that you're doing. You really are. You're such, you're very inspirational. Thank you.
Speaker 4:But I've been. I've been tied to a chair here for over an hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you ready to go.
Speaker 3:We appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This has been great.
Speaker 3:All right, bye, bye.
Speaker 4:Awesome.
Speaker 3:We want to thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If anything in today's episode spoke to you, please like subscribe rate and review. Also, don't forget to share this podcast with friends and family.
Speaker 1:And if there's anybody that you know that you think would be a great guest on intuitive choices, please email us at intuitivechoicespodcast at gmailcom. Finally, if you want to know more about our mental health practice, intuitive counseling and wellness, please check us out at intuitivecounselingofphillycom.