A job creating and performing live DJ shows

Brian Begin

Welcome to the Job Matchmakers podcast, where we share stories from employment consultants about supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to find employment in their communities one person, one job at a time.

Sherry Healey

This podcast is produced by the Minnesota Transformation Initiative, a technical assistance center focused on expanding capacity for competitive, integrated employment across Minnesota. We are your hosts, Sherry Healey and Brian Begin, and we work at the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota. Thanks for joining us.

Sherry Healey

Welcome to another episode of the Job Matchmakers podcast. In this episode, we're going to talk with Jill Eastman from our podcast partner at the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Brian Begin

Jill is a program coordinator for employment services at UMass Boston ICI for over 35 years. ICI has provided employment services to support people with disabilities to achieve competitive, integrated employment. Jill started as an employment consultant and now manages a team of employment consultants in the Boston area. Jill was awarded Job Developer of the year in two thousand fourteen by the Massachusetts chapter of the Association of People Supporting Employment First, that's APC.

Brian Begin

Jill has served on the Massachusetts ABC Board of Directors since two thousand seventeen, and Jill earned her CSP in two thousand thirteen. Welcome, Jill. Thank you for joining us virtually from Massachusetts. Can you tell us how you got into this work?

Jill Eastman

Sure. Thanks for having me, Brian and Sheri. I got into this work because, I've been around disability my whole life. Before I was born, my. And when my mom was just starting out in her career, she worked at a sheltered workshop when she was in her late teens, before she was even married. And, when she worked there, she developed a relationship with a young girl with down syndrome who had been, for all intents and purposes, given given up to the institution, by her parents.

Jill Eastman

And, my mother, took her in and became her legal guardian. And so, that preceded my mother's marriage to to my dad and all of us kids. And so, I grew up having a sister with, Down's syndrome who, never made it to the world of competitive, integrated employment. She. Worked in a workshop for quite some time.

Jill Eastman

And I remember her bringing home paychecks, and I must have probably been a, I don't know, ten eleven twelve. And looking at the paychecks. They'd be for something like four dollars and seventy nine cents $4.79 and I remember asking, you know, why is this so low? She talks about going to work, and for her, the workshop meant work. And she was really proud of what she did there.

Jill Eastman

She was excited to go all the time, but I remember thinking like, man, that is not equitable. Not inclusive. And when I graduated from Boston University with a degree in sociology and thinking about, you know, a graduate track and in clinical psychology, I really wanted to find a job in the human services field, working with adults with disabilities and helping them integrate into, paid employment in the community.

Jill Eastman

I just really felt strongly that it was important, for self esteem for the community at large, for just value on every level. And so that's how I started, started in this work. And so it was one of my first jobs that I applied for, after I graduated college. And, I landed at ICI. And that was 24 years ago.

Jill Eastman

My anniversary dated ICI. The Institute for Community Inclusion at UMass Boston is on Halloween. And I just celebrated my 24th year there.

Brian Begin

That's exciting. How long were you doing the work for before, you earned your CSP? And can you explain to those who may not know what that is and what it stands for?

Jill Eastman

Sure. So I had been doing the work for about. 10 or 12 years, I would say, before I earned my CSP, which stands for certified Employment Support Professional. And I believe I was probably in maybe the second or third round of, folks taking that exam. And it's a credentialing exam that, professionalized our field a bit.

Jill Eastman

For employment specialists. And it really focuses on best practices. Making sure that we are focused on the human rights and, and dignity of the individuals that we're working with, that we have their, interests and preferences and dreams and desires and talents and skills, at the heart of what we're doing and that we're providing person centered services, that are customized to, you know, the folks that we're working with.

Jill Eastman

And, so it's a way to demonstrate knowledge of those research based best practices, but also, ensuring that we are consistently providing quality services to the best of our ability. And I think that it it matters, right? It legitimizes our field. It helps and it helped me at the time feel confident in what I was doing.

Jill Eastman

And how I was investing my time in terms of where I was working with folks out in the community and, how I was speaking with them. And, giving folks obviously options, and making sure that they knew that they had options. And in terms of employment, in that, you know, here in Massachusetts, we're an employment first state, and that employment should always be the first option.

Jill Eastman

For anybody, who has those goals. So. It was really exciting for me at the time that those credentialing options became available for our field. And I've encouraged my staff. I have a small staff, that I work with at ICI and Employment Services, and, all of us are CSP certified, which is fantastic. And it just, makes a whole host of difference when we are, interfacing in the community, with families, caregivers, employers and individuals and making sure that our services are the best quality that we can provide.

Brian Begin

But also to your point, I think individuals, employees feel that they're being invested in if it's like, oh, my organization, my supervisor wants me to pursue this credentialing. And, I think that that's, an important aspect of professionals in the field.

Jill Eastman

Yeah, I think so, too. And and really, it empowers, all of us in the field, in a way that propels us forward. I think our oftentimes employment specialists, the work that they're doing is very, siloed. It's very individual. It's very, oftentimes lonely. And I think those opportunities to connect through training share expertise, and really, feel that the organization that you're working for values your voice and your opinion and your, contribution to the field can probably, I would venture to say, help with our retention crICIs that we're having in this field in terms of retaining quality employment services staff.

Jill Eastman

Right. I mean, if we're not investing, and demonstrating to our staff that they have value and that their voices are important and bringing them to the table in terms of goal setting and action planning. We're not doing our jobs as managers. Right? So, I think that it's all really important. And,

Sherry Healey

I love how you have your hand in a lot of different areas within the employment field. And, in talking about the training and the CSP and ACRs certifications and, and how those strategies are reinforced, those best practices are reinforced and, and strategies that work are reinforced. And I think that it it, like you said, just professionalizing the field, you know, really recognizing that that this work does have, it, you know, there's a process to this that there are best practices that have shown to be effective.

Sherry Healey

And, the more we can focus on following those best practices, the more successful will be, in finding people, employment in the community. So the story you're going to share with us today, began on your first day as an employment consultant that I see. Is that right?

Jill Eastman

It sure did. So my first day, like I said, was Halloween, two thousand. And I was fresh out of undergraduate school, and I'm sitting at my desk on my very first day, and I am a fish out of water, and my phone rings and I pick it up, and on the phone I hear, hi, my name is Chris, and you're going to be my new employment specialist.

Jill Eastman

And right out of the gate I was ready to go. I thought that was really awesome because, you know, first of all, who does that? But secondly, that's, you know, that's a kind of passion and that's the kind of, you know, initiative that really kind of sparks my attention. And my, I don't know, my commitment.

Jill Eastman

And so he he drew me in that way. I mean, he that was a hook man. He knew what he was, and it was really. And I said, well, fantastic. I can't wait to work with you. And, you know, that discovery process that we're talking about started right then, because what I noticed from that very first, very short phone call, was his voice, so that it had this rich intonation, I almost could like, you know, hear.

Jill Eastman

I don't know, I could picture him doing voice overs or something. But I thought, gosh, I can't wait to meet this job seeker. Right. You know, with the gumption and initiative to call me right up. And so, that started our journey, which was a very long one. Into employment now.

Sherry Healey

But he was highly motivated. He was getting you on that very first day.

Jill Eastman

There was and he hooked me right from the start.

Sherry Healey

I love it. Tell us more about how you started working with this. With. You said his name was Chris.

Jill Eastman

Yeah. And, so he actually started working with, our organization about five years prior. And Chris was somebody who, he was born blind. He has pretty moderate, cerebral palsy. He also, has ID and, Chris is somebody that, for various reasons, was couldn't read Braille. And so, you know, he relied and had lots of skill with, using his voice.

Jill Eastman

Using the telephone at the time, you know, technology wasn't super advanced, right? So we were still, you know, working on big old, you know, computers that were, you know, desktop computers and, you know, we didn't have a whole lot of fancy technology. So he, you know, he really relied a lot on, on, the skill of his voice.

Jill Eastman

And a lot of job development up until that point focused on, well, where can we apply this skill? Right. And so, you know, he he worked what I noticed, in reviewing records and speaking with him and taking a look at his resume and talking to, my supervisor and other folks that knew him well was that he spent a lot of time.

Jill Eastman

Job hopping from customer service or sales job. So, you know, he worked for the local paper, too, you know, trying to sell the paper by phone, calling up customers. He maybe had that job for less than a year. He didn't love trying to. He didn't love sales. He didn't love trying to convince people to buy things.

Jill Eastman

He didn't like disgruntled customers. It didn't feel great to him. So, you know, that was pretty short lived. He also, you know, had some volunteer work that he did with, a local, radio station, that was affiliated with a local university. And so he would do some telephone fundraising for them. And he actually loved that because, he was a big radio guy, and he knew all of the morning show hosts and, in the Boston area.

Jill Eastman

Right. And so he could interface with them and have a blast at these fundraising events. Right. And so he loved that. And, but it was volunteer, and they only happened maybe once or twice a year. He, and so there was one other job that he, he had the most success at, and it was at, the Epilepsy Foundation, where he would, call folks using technology, using a computer and a headset, and ask for donations of, you know, small household items or clothing that people wanted to kind of clear out.

Jill Eastman

And so that was a little bit softer of an ask for folks. And so he didn't get so many disgruntled old, customers or people hanging up on him and or anything like that, but he always came back to me to say, I really want to work in radio. I love music, I know everything there is to know about music.

Jill Eastman

I really want to work in radio. Can we do this? And I thought, I don't know, maybe. And so, I was like, tell me about what you know about music. And that was the start of a pretty, pretty long journey in terms of job development, but one that had an amazing outcome.

Brian Begin

I think it's great that I really appreciate how you did not dismiss, immediately dismiss Chris's, idea to to work in radio. I think at times it can be perhaps challenging as employment consultants to see like, you know, how do we break into that? There's certain there's certain fields that, at least in my opinion, seem a little bit more challenging to break into.

Brian Begin

For example, folks who are like, I want to develop video games. That sounds like a really cool job, that there's probably a long list of folks who want to do that. Actually, before I had moved into this role, I was at a, transition school talking with students wearing my employment services provider hat and talking to them about, you know, what comes after school, both the importance of, getting a job when you're in high school.

Brian Begin

For no other reason, perhaps, than just to figure out maybe what you don't like to do. But then also be thinking about future jobs. And one person said, I want to be an influencer. And I thought to myself, employment consultants are really going to have to up their game, on on how to support this new generation of folks who, you know, want to be the influencers, want to be perhaps more involved in tech.

Brian Begin

Because I can say, for me, in the, in the very talented employment, team that I managed, I didn't necessarily have anybody who is immediately like, oh, I know how to break into the influencer game.

Jill Eastman

Well, sure. And that actually, you know, is is really pretty common, right? I feel like I have these conversations in staff meetings with my staff all the time. How do we do that? Right. Like, if it's a field like that we've never explored or if it's a field where, it's a little bit more niche or the jobs are few and far between.

Jill Eastman

Right. How do we do that? I, you know, I remember, somebody coming to us and I cannot not like the influencer track, although you bring up a really good point about how we have to up our game. And I like that because, you know, we constantly, as employment specialists, we can't rest on our laurels. Right?

Jill Eastman

We need to be constantly, following the labor market. You know, figuring out, what industries and jobs and tasks are growing. You know what? Unfortunately, you know, some jobs and tasks fade away, right? And really make sure that we are learning as much about, the up and coming industries as we possibly can. I was going to bring up an example of, of, someone that came to us that wanted a job in graphic design.

Jill Eastman

And I know that I don't know a whole lot about graphic design. Right. And, my staff didn't either. And so, luckily at the ICA, we have a pretty, pretty robust, marketing and communications team. And so I was like, excellent, you know, community experts at my, at my service. And so I was able to kind of, not only have the job seeker kind of meet with each of them to review, that person's website and their portfolio and their resume to sort of ask questions and give feedback, but also help inform myself and my staff about how to talk to people in that industry.

Jill Eastman

Right. And how to how to maybe get our foot in the door, using strategies that we're not used to because we're not in that field. And so, you bring up excellent points.

Sherry Healey

So, Jill, this individual I've been working with, with the team for five years and without success, what did you do differently that led to an opportunity that seemed to be a good fit for him.

Jill Eastman

Yeah, so we did. We dialed it way back, first of all. Okay. I just started to meet with him to get to know him on a human level. That's always been super important to me because everybody is different. I really do kind of, And now I'm thinking about the Denise Bissonnette video where she talks about, peeling back the layers of an onion.

Jill Eastman

Right? And getting to the, to the core of kind of who, who a human being is in order to understand and help them sometimes understand, where their passions lie. I don't know that anybody had ever really asked him or never, ever really cared, to be honest with you. And I know that that sounds bleak. Bleak. But unfortunately, in this case, it's true.

Jill Eastman

And so I just started meeting with him away. Honestly. And I'm. I don't recommend this, but it was, you know, of the times we would order a pizza to our offices and, and we would, we would said we would eat pizza and we would talk. And what I learned was that he could tell you anything there was to know about any music genre from the nineteen forty's to now.

Jill Eastman

Wow. Any song, any artist, if the song was remade and who remade it what year it came out, I mean, I this gentleman had so much music. It was fascinating. Wow. Absolutely fascinating. And he knew things about music that,

Jill Eastman

Would be interesting to know. For example, he told me one time that, and I, I'm, I'm not going to butcher the music artist because I don't remember who it is, but he said, at one point that the person that, recorded the song runaround Sue had originally thought to call it Runaround Roberta, but he said that didn't make sense.

Jill Eastman

So he, I think, change it to running around. Sue. And so I just thought that was really neat, like, you know, all of this stuff, this is cool. Where can we apply this? And unfortunately, at the time, things like podcasts didn't really, you know, they hadn't really taken off yet. And, and, you know, so we started with his contacts in the radio business.

Jill Eastman

We started with those morning show hosts and talking with them about, you know, whether or not he could come, you know, tour the, the radio stations. We talked a lot about what the equipment looked like and whether or not, you know, there would be opportunity there for, Chris to work or to to learn or to shadow.

Jill Eastman

And he did that a few times. But there really, unfortunately weren't a whole lot of opportunities at the time in radio.

Jill Eastman

And the environment was rather small. And what we found out was that kind of working, the all of the equipment wasn't a good match. And so we started to branch out and network with other types of artists. That utilize music. So we found, an organization called Potentials Unlimited. So Potentials unlimited was, a performance company that, had people with disabilities, as the performers.

Jill Eastman

And it was run by two individuals who had a lot of contacts, in the local area. And, served as almost a braintrust for us to, to brainstorm about different ideas and maybe opportunities to explore in the community. And so, in one of those meetings with Potentials Unlimited, Chris and I. Were thinking about what types of.

Jill Eastman

Businesses, what types of organizations might want him to come in and either talk about music, maybe do music trivia or maybe, do a DJ show. His major goal was to be a DJ, but not to run his own show. And trying to figure out how to do that was a bit tricky. We explored his community, which was outside of Greater Boston, and what we noticed when we were sort of mapping out, you know, the businesses in his community and, and what that looked like was that there were several, retirement type rest home facilities that were, under the same organization umbrella.

Jill Eastman

And we contacted them to see if maybe their activities department might want, or need, somebody to come in on a regular basis to provide musical entertainment for their residents. And, we, before going in there, developed a proposal about what that might look like. So we really took our time to do some market research on, you know, first of all, kind of the programing of activities, departments, you know, what types of entertainments or what types of activities do they do?

Jill Eastman

They bring in, in terms of outside entities, you know, how much, you know, would a, an entertainer make per hour those sorts of things? You know, how long the radio show could be, what it might entail. And, and so we, we drew up a proposal and we, we brought it to this company, and, they were excited, but they didn't really they weren't really sure how it would go or whether or not it would resonate with the residents.

Jill Eastman

And so, they asked if we'd be willing to have Chris perform a pilot show, that, to, to kind of give it, give it a shot to see if the residents took to it, kind of what Chris was all about, because, you know, we could hand them a written proposal. And again, at the time, you know, their video resumes and visual resumes weren't quite a thing yet.

Jill Eastman

Right. And so, you know, we could show a picture, we could do all of these things. And, you know, he certainly had recommendations from, you know, his jobs where he where he did well, especially the fundraising job with the, the local radio station. But, you know, in order for him to really showcase his talents, people really needed to to see that and kind of experience a show.

Jill Eastman

And that's kind of fun. Right? So, so we helped him do a pilot show. We had an amp and microphone at, I c I offices, and we worked with Chris to develop an iTunes playlist. We put a little Velcro patch on, the enter key on the keyboard so that he knew when to start and stop the music so he could give, like, a little bit of an intro and outro to the to the songs.

Jill Eastman

And so really and you know, can he took paratransit to get to the job and so we would meet him there. And so for the pilot, he ran this pilot show and he rolled up in that place like a celebrity with his glasses on. His DJ had his equipment is ready to go, and he and he killed it.

Jill Eastman

You guys, he nailed it. He played music from, you know, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, early 80s. He was, you know, telling people facts. Residents were groovin in their seats. Some were standing up, having a great time. And so when it was all over, the activities director came over to Chris and to me and said, I have not seen them move this much.

Jill Eastman

This is fantastic. Can you come back? When can you come back? Would you like to sign a contract? And he was like, yes, yes, please. So he negotiated, a job with them. That was on a monthly basis. But he traveled to several of those area rest homes, and made $30 an hour performing DJ shows.

Jill Eastman

For the residents of these, these assisted living homes. And they loved it. One of the things that was really cool was that every month he would work with us. So support that we provided him was really quite minimal. He would work with us to tell us what the ideas were for, kind of what setlist he'd like to play.

Jill Eastman

And, and he was very particular about. He wanted it to be in chronological order. So he would start with the earliest, you know, mid earliest release music and he would move, forward in time. And so we would work with him to create that setlist. He would memorize it and we would meet him there and he'd be good to go.

Jill Eastman

We'd set up the equipment, plug in the plug in the amp and the mic, and he'd be off and running. And, one of the cool things he did on a monthly basis was, at the beginning of each deejay show, he would sing Happy Birthday for any residents that had happened to have birthdays that month. At the end of every show, he would ask for, song requests.

Jill Eastman

Which was really awesome because it, you know, it was nostalgic and people loved music and they want to hear what they want to hear, right? So, you know, you know, really working with the residents to provide them entertainment that was meaningful to them, was really important to Chris. And, you know, he would curate some of the music, depending on what season it was, you know, so for the summertime, there'd be a lot of Beach Boys and, you know, there would be Monster Mash at Halloween time and, you know, some, you know, winter songs during the holidays.

Jill Eastman

And so it was really cool. And like I said, the organization loved it because it boosted, you know, positivity and fun and movement and singing and just general kind of socialization and camaraderie. It was awesome that he they be kind of all scattered about, you know, when Chris would come in to the building every month and as soon as they heard that he was in the building, everybody would come out of their rooms, come in from outside, get right into the big activities room and be like, ready to go.

Jill Eastman

And literally the whole place would clear out and go into that one big room and be entertained for, you know, a few hours from his DJ show. And it was.

Sherry Healey

Awesome. I, I love this story. I mean, when you talk about customizing a job that did not exist, you created a job or, you know, yeah, the proposal, putting the proposal together and then doing the pilot and immediately being able to showcase his skills and, and the way it was received by the residents and, you know, just a win win all around.

Sherry Healey

I mean, that is that is a great story. I love.

Jill Eastman

It. Yeah, I love it, too. One of the things Chris said, one time, we had he had agreed to do a video for us once, and, at the end of the video, he, he says, and I do what I love and I get paid for it.

Sherry Healey

There you go.

Jill Eastman

And and that's it in a nutshell. I mean, I even I even think he, you know, got himself a girlfriend there. You know, he was a local celebrity, and he renegotiated his contract a year after a year for about 15 years. And then unfortunately, Covid hit. And so it wasn't an environment that was medically safe at the time.

Jill Eastman

And so, Chris was thinking about retiring anyway, he was of that age and, you know, really was, you know, thinking about winding things down in terms of work. But, man, what a way to go out with 15 years of success, you know, doing what you love, bringing joy and music to people in your community and just, I don't know, he had a blast.

Jill Eastman

They had a blast. We had a blast. It was a win win win all around.

Brian Begin

Yeah. That's great. I mean, it doesn't get any better than being able to say I have my dream job. Not not everybody, gets that opportunity. So thank you for sharing, Joe. That's that's a awesome story. And so our final question that we ask all of our guests is, what do you want people in your community to know about employment for people with disabilities?

Jill Eastman

Great question. I'm going to make it a complicated answer. I think, for individuals with disabilities, I want you to know that you can work. You can realize and actualize your dreams. Let us help you do that. There are opportunities out there, and you have value. So go for it. For employers, I want to merely state research and facts that say, you know, you can increase your profit by two times if you're doing well with, diversifying your workforce and hiring people with disabilities and tapping into that untapped kind of workforce.

Jill Eastman

And for everybody else, I just want to, you know, don't underestimate people. Everybody has value. Everybody has something to contribute. Everybody has a place in employment. And so if we can help you do that, we would love to.

Sherry Healey

Well said. Thank you, Jill, for joining us today and for sharing some of your experiences doing the work. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in to this episode. We hope you join us next time to hear another compelling story of one person finding one job in the community.

Jill Eastman

Thank you.

Sherry Healey

Thank you for joining us for the Job Matchmakers podcast, funded by the Minnesota Department of Human Services, this podcast is a partnership between the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration and UMass Boston's Institute for Community Inclusion.

Brian Begin

For more information on the Minnesota Transformation Initiative, vICIt our website. Linked in the show notes. We're glad you joined us, and we'll see you next time.