Your Mark On The World

Never miss another interview! Join Devin here: http://bit.ly/joindevin. After about eight cups of coffee, chatting about the idea of creating a company where they could employ people with disabilities, the pair suddenly hit upon the obvious. They started a coffee shop. Aspire Chicago works with about 1,000 differently-abled people. To prove how capable they are of succeeding on the job, they created a coffee shop to employ a few. The project seeks to prove that those with disabilities can be well qualified for the job. Interview with Jim Kales, the CEO of Aspire CoffeeWorks. What is the problem you solve and how do you solve it? Currently, two-thirds of people with developmental disabilities are unemployed. When you combine that with the insufficient funding the state of Illinois provides for employment services for people with developmental disabilities (Illinois’ spending is among the lowest in the nation), the problem is further complicated. Worse yet is that only a small portion of people with develo