Redefining Disability Inclusion in the Modern Workplace - Tiffany Yu, Diversability

Welcome to season three of Bed and Butter, the podcast where passion meets profession in the world of hospitality. In partnership with Southern Maine Community College, we're back with fresh energy and even bigger conversations. This season, we're talking with culinary innovators, a brewery entrepreneur, hotel and industry leaders, a TED Talk speaker and influencer with a purpose-driven message, as well as one of the top tourism execs in the country, all sharing insights that will inspire and elevate your journey.

So whether you're just starting out or aiming for the top, Bed & Butter is your go-to guide. Let's dive in. It's an honor meeting and chatting with our next guest. Tiffany Yu is the CEO and founder of DiverseAbility, a three-time TEDx speaker and the author of Anti-Ablist Manifesto.

She She began her career at Goldman Sachs and was named to the 2025 Forbes Accessibility 100 list. At just nine years old, Tiffany became disabled following a car accident that also took the life of her father. You'll be mesmerized by how this life-changing event shaped her journey into a successful and deeply meaningful career. So sit back, relax, and get inspired.

Hi, Tiffany. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Well, you know, I was online.

I was Googling young, professional, inspiring, and successful. And your name came up. I am very excited. I appreciate Google.

Thank you, Google, for calling me all those words. I don't know if I'd call myself young, but I guess it's subjective. It's relative in this conversation with you and I. So it's a bar is pretty low, though.

Well, thank you again for being with us. And, you know, I've got a number of questions that we've talked about. And I'd love to, if you don't mind starting off with one, it kind of set the stage for your life, your career. And I mean, it goes back to nine years old.

You wouldn't mind sharing that because to me, that set everything up. Yeah, I call this my disability origin story. So if you are new to me, I am very passionate about making the world a little bit more disability inclusive and accessible for all of us. And my passion for this space comes based off of my own lived experience.

When I was nine years old on a car ride home with my dad and a couple of my siblings, he unfortunately lost control of the car. We ended up getting into a single vehicle car accident. I acquired a handful of injuries and disabilities, including permanently paralyzing one of my arms, which is known as a brachial plexus injury. I broke a couple bones in one of my legs that would leave me as a temporary wheelchair user for about four months as those bones healed.

And much later, I was diagnosed with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a type of neurodivergence or mental health disability disorder. And on top of all of that, my dad also passed away. So to me, it feels like more than just a disability story. It is what I call compounded grief, the loss of a loved one, like many of us understand grief to be.

It is loss of how my body worked in one way and then didn't in another. I call that disability grief. Some others may call it body grief as our bodies change. And then it's also grief that I don't think we talk about it in this way, but it's the loss of childhood innocence, how many of us understand childhood trauma, or more clinical terms, adverse childhood experiences.

And so I think that trifecta of grief, I think to me, kind of makes this like a grief origin story in a way. And so much of the work that I do now, not only is my why nine-year-old Tiffany, but it is kind of grieving out loud in a way to acknowledge the insurmountable loss that she experienced and how can we honor her along the way. Wow. That's incredible.

And the fact that you've turned yourself to accomplish so much regarding that. And I think, I mean, I have listened to your TikTok. Yes, an old timer like me does do TikTok. And I've listened to your podcast and TED Talk.

And that was a wow to me. It's like, tell me about that. How did you happen to get on? TED Talks takes a lot to get on there.

You know, interestingly enough, in 2013, I grabbed coffee with someone and I said, one of these years, I want to give a TED Talk because I had been so inspired by the ideas that shared. I've watched many of them, probably like you and many of your listeners. In 2013, I said, one day I want to give a TED Talk. I don't know what it's going to be about yet, but I just want to put it out into the universe.

And I will say over the next couple of years, I applied. So interestingly enough, for TEDx, there are licenses that you can get for all different cities and regions around the world. I was applying. And one misconception I guess I want to share is people People think that an opportunity to give a TED Talk is handed to them.

A lot of times it really just takes applying and probably similar to a job. Maybe you just need to get one. 2018 was my opportunity and it just so happened that my first TEDx talk was for my hometown, Bethesda, Maryland. And I remember not only when I gave that talk, but when the video came out, I felt embarrassed by it.

I didn't think that I gave it my all. And since then, I've actually done three additional TED related talks. So multiple lessons learned there. But the first is, if you are someone who aspires to want to give a TED Talk or a TEDx Talk, look for the different TEDx licenses in your local region and follow them, follow their newsletters or their websites.

And many of them, yes, some will select what speakers they want to have, but most of them will leave a couple of spots for speakers that they receive through application. So coming back to it, the idea behind TED is an idea worth spreading. So think about what's the idea that you want to spread. My first TEDx talk is called The Power of Exclusion.

It was talking about how exclusion kind of became the fuel for my fire of why I just believe so deeply in the power of community. And then my second one was called The Truths of Being a Pioneer and How Lonely and Isolating That Experience Can Be when, similar to those words that you googled, you feel like you're the only one, kind of screaming out into the void, so to speak. And then my third one was called The Problem with Positivity, and it was this idea that we have become.

Obsessed in some ways with positivity and optimism culture. When we don't make space for the wide range of emotions that many of us as humans will experience, can we make space for the softer, more tender parts? And then the last one was actually on the TED level. This was as part of a series they had called The Way We Work.

And that one was really around disability employment and three ways to better support disabled employees. Well, even though you didn't think you did well on the first one. I'm impressed already. Yeah.

And it's interesting because that first one has been how a lot of people find me. And I can still remember the day that it came out and I felt embarrassed. Many lessons learned, but the second lesson is you may have more opportunities to share different parts of your story. This isn't your only story.

But I guess the final lesson I learned was really around how you just don't know who is going to resonate with your story. And can I share one win that I did not anticipate would happen? A pediatric hand surgeon saw that TED Talk, this first one called The Power of Exclusion. And this pediatric hand surgeon, he actually works with kids who have my injury, who have paralyzed arms.

And after seeing that talk, he ended up deciding to add a mental health professional to the rehabilitation team. So for people who have my injury, we have what I call like the alphabet soup of doctor's appointments. You have the hand surgeon, you've got the shoulder, you've got the neurosurgeon, you have physical therapists, occupational therapists. Just so many different care providers, but no one had thought about the mental health aspect of all these doctor's appointments or surgeries when you're a kid or having an arm that works differently when you feel like you're the only one.

And so that was kind of like an unintended impact in some ways of that talk, because I did talk a lot about the mental health aspect of growing up in a body that was different from my peers. When I had delivered that talk, for me, it was really just about the power of community. But someone watched that talk who works so intimately with people who have bodies like mine and decided to make change in his own sphere of influence to say, we need to acknowledge the mental health and emotional component of this on kids.

So that felt like something I could have never imagined about this talk I felt so embarrassed about. Well, I think I probably shared with the company I work for, our goal is to positively impact lives. And, you know, you didn't know that that going into that, that you're going to positively impact. Now you think about the number of people with the same body are going to now be able to have that mental health and maybe help them through the PTSD or whatever kinds of things they may have that shape them.

So that's really neat. That's a real win for you. And you feel really proud of yourself, I would think. Yeah.

And I feel like part of it is I come back to that moment of feeling embarrassed. And I remind myself now that talk is seven years old. I remind myself that the message is larger than my feelings around it. And I want to acknowledge, let's make space for all the feelings.

But I do think about how many times we dim our shine or we quiet our voice because we don't think that it matters. But if we think about being part of a broader movement or the ability to be able to impact people like your company does, then I think that that will help motivate us beyond just that immediacy of feeling embarrassment or whatever the emotion is at the time. Wow. That's amazing.

You talked about your life and if we're going to peek into what drove you, why are you so driven? I mean, you've got a lot of things. It's not just your podcast or your TEDx or there's lots of things that you've done. What's driven you?

Was it that accident? Was it something along the way or was it just a combination of all? Hmm. I will acknowledge that people who have experienced the level of trauma that I have, some of them may have life and health outcomes that look very different from my own.

I guess it's two things that are driving me or three things because the best things come in three. The first is nine-year-old Tiffany. I think about her a lot. I think about the support that she didn't have.

I feel sad sometimes when I watch videos of myself recounting the car accident. And I think about how I just wanted her to be a kid. And I will say I wrote a book. It's called The Anti-Ablist Manifesto.

And I met this 11 or 12-year-old who had actually listened to my book with her blind mom. And I've actually dedicated my book to 9-year-old Tiffany. And in some ways, when I saw this 11 or 12-year-old talking about things that she learned, Not only did it make me really hopeful for the future, but it also made me feel like she was the embodiment of younger me. She was like the future younger me happening in front of my eyes right now.

And so that's the first motivating factor. I think the second is the community, the disability community that I've really gotten to know over the last 15 years. And I just think we are a generative force who shows up for each other. We have mastered life hacking because we're existing in worlds that weren't built for our bodies and our minds.

And I see us moving and shaking to try to make things better. And again, I think because I know all of them and have gotten to know all of them, and probably there's still many other disability advocates I hope to get the opportunity to know. And then the third kind of ties to nine-year-old Tiffany. But I think about my dad.

And my dad actually passed away the day after his 49th birthday. And I think about the memories I have of him. He loved bikes. He loved just being outside.

And we grew up in the Washington, D.C. Area, you know, very hot, humid summers. We were still outside.

We were still biking. But he was also just very unapologetic in who he was. And I have memories of him where I feel embarrassed by things he did. He was the type of person, we were avid garage sale people.

And one time we saw one of our neighbors moving and they had put, you know, a bunch of belongings that they could no longer bring with them in their move to the next place. So they were just on the curb, essentially, for the trash people to pick them up. And my dad pulled into their driveway and we went through what they were leaving behind. And I still have a bear that we got from that that is still in our house.

And I think about how I want to embody some version of that into how I want to live today. And I'm not one to say, you know, oh, my dad would be proud. But I just think about the ways that so much of who he was is embodied in who I am. And in some ways, I'm living out his legacy by being this version of myself.

Well, you may not want to say he'd be proud of you, but I'm going to say it. There's no question he'd be proud of you. I would be. I am.

I just barely know you, and I am. So let's take a little bit through your career. Let's not forget, I want to talk about disability tax. You talk about disability tax.

I thought that was quite interesting. Your career. You went to college. Do you want to just take a little bit of college and a little bit of your top three jobs before you get to do it?

So I went to Georgetown, which is about 20 minutes away from where I grew up. And I studied finance and accounting there because I took an accounting 101 class my first year of college. And on the final exam, you had to get your financial statements to balance. So this is your income statement, your cash flow and your balance sheet.

They all weave together beautifully. And my balance sheet balanced. And I felt it may be rare that you meet people who just find a lot of joy out of all the numbers just working out like that. I'm thinking a lot of accountants that way.

So you are not alone in that case. So there are two general paths for people who decide they want to pursue finance or accounting. One is to work in accounting and the other is to potentially go into finance. And so at that particular point in time, I was actually undecided.

I had I think I had done internships at places like Deloitte and Merrill Lynch, RIP, UBS. And then I got an internship at Goldman Sachs. And I was working in investment banking in their healthcare group. Now, while I was at Goldman, I got really involved with the Georgetown recruiting team.

And part of it was, I didn't see a lot of Asian women or disabled people in investment banking. And I thought, I think a lot about possibility in my work. Like we want to showcase the possibility of who you can become. And I did so many informational interviews with disabled students who literally never thought that a career in financial services could be for them because they had never seen anyone who had a physical disability in investment banking at the time.

This is a little over 10 years ago. So I loved having those conversations. And I will say that if I had to pull a really late night doing investment banking things, I would schedule an informational interview somewhere early in that evening. And it would actually motivate me because you're talking to these students about why you decided to do investment banking.

It would motivate me to then go back to my work and finish it, even if it was going to be long hours. So I share that because during my final year at Goldman, I actually moved to their investment banking campus recruiting team. So now I got to be on the recruiting side and I had done the internship that all of these MBA students wanted to do. And so I did that for about a year.

And after that year, I thought back to my childhood dream. And my childhood dream was I grew up watching like Katie Courant, and I just loved the idea of journalism the way that so many of us had our TVs on at six to catch the nightly news or were tuning in to talk shows during the day. So I thought about, OK, here I am, a former investment banker recruiter. Now trying to pursue this childhood dream I had in broadcast journalism.

I looked at any transferable skills I may have had, and there are a couple business TV stations, CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg Television. And I got a job at Bloomberg Television and swallowed my ego, started out as a production assistant. So this is an hourly job. I was paid $18 an hour.

I went from investment banking salary to $18 an hour, but to pursue this dream. And I will say I did that for about a year. And honestly, I'm really glad that I tried it because I realized that Childhood Tiffany, this thing that she wanted to do, I didn't actually like it that much. I was OK with it.

I thought it was fascinating that we could move markets based on the type of news that we were reporting. Like that part was fascinating to me. But because now I had this finance background and had worked on the media side of a media company, I got poached back to go back into corporate finance. But this time kind of like as a director of corporate finance or corporate development at a media startup.

And I reported to the CFO. And I will say on paper for 20-something-year-old Tiffany, this job was everything I could have dreamed of. I wanted to have my own office, you know, when offices were a thing. I wanted to have a seat at the table and have a voice at that table.

And what was really cool about this job was I managed our financial model. So I got to sit in on board meetings because anytime there's a question around something related to our forecast, the CFO and I, you know, both knew our numbers really well. But I felt like there was something more for me. So while I was working at that job, I actually started hosting a lot of meetups for the disability community.

And this to me kind of felt like a dotted line between Tiffany, who became disabled at nine. I had started a disability campus club when I was at Georgetown to now kind of in my early-ish career, still trying to find community. I know this is a little long-winded, but all of that to say. I started doing a lot of community work, and it made me want to do something kind of at the intersection of tech and community.

Tech was booming at the time. There were so many coding boot camps that you could take. I ended up taking one, actually, surprisingly so. I don't talk about that that much.

And then moved to a real estate tech startup as their community manager. And I want to share that I got fired after six months. And I think that is a part of many of our careers that we kind of gloss over because maybe it's not a long enough gap where you go to the next thing. But after I had gotten fired, honestly, I felt a lot of shame around it.

I had felt like I failed. But because I'd been hosting these disability meetups, I said, you know what, let me try to continue organizing these community events while I look for my next thing. And that was March of 2017. And since March of 2017, I have been what you would call like a full-time disability advocate.

So that's a little bit of the jungle gym, I guess I'll say. I had no idea where we were going to go with all of this. I just know you inspired me. And I think that says a lot about anybody in whatever field they go into, whatever direction their careers take them.

I, too, was at a job where I lost it. And it was embarrassing and it was difficult. But, you know, you learn something from that and you kind of go back to your passion. You did that.

You went to your passion and that was to work with the disability community. Yeah. And I will share part of why I want to share that part of my story is I think there's this misconception that we have to be good at everything. Like you can look at my LinkedIn highlight reel and it's.

It's it's a lot of great things, but there are things I'm not good at. Right. And it's part of it is, you know, whether you build out your team or figure out how to delegate, but better understanding, OK, how can I let my gifts shine brighter and then have some knowledge of the things that I'm not so good at? And is there a way I can do less of those things?

I mean, there are still some things that I don't enjoy doing as much more like daily life things like doing your laundry. And of course, you can outsource all of those, too. Well, you know, I think, as I said, I don't think I was heading in any direction with this. What I'm hearing is a lot of life lessons that our listeners, whether they're high school, college, young professionals, or people going in the industry of hospitality, which is the basis of this.

But I think that, you know, you have to be a person first. And it doesn't matter whether you're in that or whether you're going into accounting or whether you're going to media or anything. I mean, you've been through a lot in your life, starting with the initial issues. Yeah.

Talk to me about the disability tax. You had to dumb it down for me. But the disability, I thought that was quite interesting. And I never thought of that, that with the costs that are involved with someone who's disabled.

Yeah, you know, and I would I would say it's a parallel to what's known as the pink tax, which is when you're a woman, the additional things that that you need. And there was this, I think, a piece of viral content that went out that said it was a man and a woman. And they went to a grocery store to buy some daily life things like shampoo, razor, et cetera. And then afterward, they literally just bought the same things.

The shampoo was marketed as for men and then the for woman one. And they realized that the items that were targeted toward women cost a little bit more. And so I bring that back to the disability tax to say, what are the things that we have to buy that may cost us more? I'll share a simple example from my own life.

So as someone who can only use one arm, my luggage has wheels. We love our luggage with wheels. But I usually will always check my bag. Now, if you don't have status with the airline, checking your bag can cost $35 to $40.

So I already know that whenever I buy my flight, I have to tack on an extra $35 to $40. Think if you have additional access needs. Maybe you are someone who uses a mobility device and you have to get to the airport even earlier to make sure that you can check your mobility device in and make sure that it has all the paperwork. So that's time away from work, right?

So it also means maybe if you're in an hourly job, you are not able to work all the hours. And this is just in the context of traveling for a trip. We also think about things like, say you are someone who one of your access needs is you're not able to use public transit, right? Maybe you need door-to-door service.

So instead of paying $1.75, which is how much I pay to take the metro, you are paying $30, $40, $50 to get from one place to another. That's another example. And I try to use more like daily life examples.

But of course, you can think about additional health care needs, right? So I have an occupational therapist. And actually, the example that I share, probably in the excerpt that you read, so there's an excerpt that was shared in The Guardian on the disability tax from my book. So if you are interested in a little sneak preview of the book, you can check out this chapter.

But I talk about a cutting board and I did some research on if you were to buy a knife and a cutting board, just like a pretty standard one, it would be maybe $15 to $30. Now, the cutting board that I have, which is designed for people who can only use one arm, the last time I checked it retailed for about $65 to $75. So keep in mind that I'm paying over 100% to cut a cucumber if we bring it back, right? And I think that when we initially started thinking about the disability tax, we thought about it in terms of increased health care needs, right?

Maybe you need additional medications or additional mobility devices or a personal care attendant. But if we distill it back, again, I want to cut a cucumber. You want to cut a cucumber. It's summer.

We want to put it in our salad. It's costing me $75 just to be able to participate in that one activity. And I think about all of the different ways, and I'd encourage listeners to think about all the different ways that maybe someone who has different types of disabilities or a disability that impacts their mobility may cost a little bit more through all the different things that we do throughout our daily life. I found that fascinating.

We've got to kind of wrap it up, but I'd like you to talk to our listeners from the students who are going into some field, in this case, hospitality, but in any field, but also leaders that are out there already, and then owners of companies. There's a big contingency of Marriott execs and Hilton execs that follow the podcast. So talk to them about what can they do to make lives better of someone who might have a disability. I think a lot about what I call access friction.

And access friction is I go into a space with my particular type of disability and I have to ask for permission to show up. So even in the context of hospitality, if I am going to a restaurant and I love steak, but one thing I do have to think about is the staff going to be open if I let them know that my access need is that I need the steak cut or do I have a friend with me? Right. This is even the thing about the disability tax, too, where it's like, OK, if the staff is not aware, how do I make sure I have someone with me to support me in eating the steak?

Right. I want to bring it back to just like simple daily tasks. All of that said, I guess I think about two things for your listeners. One is and one thing I'm super passionate about, and I do mention this in the article about lowering the disability tax, like one way to alleviate it is by trying to incorporate accessibility into as much as we can.

And even if we can't incorporate accessibility, and accessibility essentially is, have we designed this space or experience for people who have all different types of disabilities to engage in this space? If we haven't been able to think of everything because there are so many different types of disabilities, do we have a level of care, compassion, and grace to be able to co-create that environment alongside someone who wants to engage, who may think or their body may work a little bit differently?

So that's more on, like, the customer experience side. I do think a lot about employment and the ways that part of this work is helping disabled people achieve what we call economic self-sufficiency. So can you make enough money to live? Can you make enough money to cover your disability tax, at least the way it's laid out right now?

So if there are ways that you can prioritize hiring disabled people all throughout your supply chain, that is just something that I feel really excited about because I do believe that not only is there an economic imperative to hiring disabled people and championing disability employment, but there is also we have we have power when we have economic power. And I think that starting to broaden the disability conversation to include that part of it is important. So, distill down, it's hire disabled people, number one.

And then number two, just remember that accessibility is another way to promote equity. And the more that we prioritize accessibility, the more we are able to bring in customers who have all different types of experiences into our spaces. We're going to tie this circle back to when you were an accountant and when you're, you know, the finance person. One of the things in your talking points was increasing disability inclusion in a workplace significantly improves both company profit and culture.

So one, it's the right thing to do, and it's going to make this world a little better place, but it could be more profitable, too. So it hits both ends. Yes, this is from Accenture Research as well. So you can go and look at the Accenture Research that just shows that disability inclusive business is smart business.

Well, I think I got to feel pretty smart. That's smart, as in my main accent. But I got to feel pretty smart inviting you to join us because this has been wonderful for me. And I know our listeners are going to love it.

And from the young students to the married or Hilton execs and business owners like me. So thank you so much, Tiffany. This has been a pleasure. And I can't wait for the next TEDx.

And do not be embarrassed. I'll be proud of you. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Bed and Butter, the hospitality podcast produced in partnership with Southern Maine Community College.

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