Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Maury Chasteau-Simien Of Alloy On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have a Disability
An Interview With Eric Pines
Never be afraid to speak up for what you believe in — people will respect you for it.
As we all know, over the past several years there has been a great deal of discussion about inclusion and diversity in the workplace. One aspect of inclusion that is not discussed enough, is how businesses can be inclusive of people with disabilities. We know that the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. What exactly does this look like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about the “How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Are Disabled “.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Maury Chasteau-Simien.
Sixteen, scared yet excited, Maury arrived at his first job as an Assistant Media Relations Officer at the House of Commons. The fire this experience ignited led Maury to get a BA in Public Relations from the London College of Communication, a MS in Integrated Marketing from NYU and an opportunity to live & work in multiple different countries over three continents.
From fashion to consumer, and from UK Black Pride to the London 2012 Olympic Games, Maury has experience in industries as diverse as his work visas, but he found his home in B2B tech PR. It’s here where his passion for developing a story, his vast knowledge of different industries and global markets, as well as extensive media relationships collided to help his clients achieve great and repeated success.
Maury’s clients have experienced triple-digit gains on digital channels, won international awards, and been seen in top-tier publications including WSJ, Forbes and Bloomberg. But Maury’s biggest accomplishment to date was leading a successful profile building and thought leadership campaign for a previous client in B2B tech M&A that led to them receiving one of the highest rankings from Queen Elizabeth II — Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).
Additionally, Maury serves as the Chairperson of Alloy’s DE&I Committee, where he works to ensure that diversity and inclusion remains a key part of Alloy’s company culture and goals, while also offering DE&I advice and strategies to clients.
When Maury is not working hard to produce clients top-notch results, he enjoys spending his time traveling with his family, playing video games, and watching horror movies… and expanding Mickey Mouse memorabilia collection.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are?
The son of two Caribbean immigrants, I was raised in London and ended up in the U.S. through marriage. I have now lived in Texas for 6 years and have worked in PR for over 15 years. From fashion to consumer, and from UK Black Pride to the London 2012 Olympic Games, my experience is as diverse as my work visas. But I found my home in B2B tech PR where I also found my passion — doing my part in addressing the diversity issue within the tech industry.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I would say that sincerity, patience and the ability to think beyond yourself are key to being a successful leader. I like to think that I embody these. I try to apply these traits to everything I do — be it helping my team to dig a bit deeper to found out what their clients’ truly need to ensuring my trans identifying and non-binary colleagues feel safe to be their authentic self at the workplace.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
I’m a Black gay man working in the south and in the tech industry. That in itself is a struggle everyday. But I overcome it by never apologizing for who I am and what I stand for, and for understanding that we all are human, we all have our own stories and we all have things in common.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I am working with a variety of really exciting B2B tech clients who are producing amazing solutions and products in Saas, cybersecurity, fintech, health IT, UX, automotive and many more industries. However, I am not at liberty to divulge what my specifics about what I am doing with my clients.
Fantastic. Let’s now shift to our discussion about inclusion. Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience working with initiatives to promote Diversity and Inclusion? Can you share a story with us?
I founded the Alloy DE&I Committee. We are committed to creating inclusive everyday interactions, workplace expectations, hiring practices, advancement opportunities, and mentorship and partnership programs at Alloy that are equitable for all employees, clients, contractors, and prospects. We also work to provide a resource for people who have DEI concerns or questions and be a source of DEI strategists for client questions and special projects.
This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have an inclusive work culture?
I could reference the numerous statistics that show that ensuring DE&I is a part of your business culture increases productivity and revenue (Josh Berstein Research — inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be seen as innovation leaders in their market. McKinsey & Company — companies with the most ethnically diverse executive teams are 33% more likely to outperform their peers on profitability), but that not the main reason.
The main reason is that when people feel seen, heard and safe they are more likely to want to be a part of whatever is making them feel that way. We spend most of our weeks at work, so why not ensure that it is somewhere your employees want to be?
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what this looks like in practice? What exactly are reasonable accommodations? Can you please share a few examples?
‘Reasonable accommodations’ is too broad of a term. It’s too broad because there are numerous types of disabilities (some even invisible), so a ‘reasonable accommodation’ depends on what disability your employee has. But, if we want to get technical, this should start before you even hire a person with a disability. If they don’t see you making the effort beforehand then what would lead them to think that you would make it once they were hired — or that you would even hire them.
This can be achieved with small things. At Alloy, we do this is various ways but one of the ways we do this is by an application on our website called accessible. This makes it easier for those with disabilities to navigate our website and our careers page.
Aside from what is legally required, what are some best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities? If you can, please share a few examples.
The standard things like ramps, elevators, accessible restrooms, etc. But education is very important. Creating an environment where someone with a disability feels understood and that there is a patience afforded to them will more than anything.
Can you share a few examples of ideas that were implemented at your workplace to help promote disability inclusion? Can you share with us how the work culture was impacted as a result?
At Alloy, our Senior Marketing And Business Development Manager, Taylor Spung is someone with a disability that affects her visbility. However, Taylor is a rock star and the best at what she does (in my opinion). Taylor is also part of the DE&I Committee, and as a committee we put together a social media campaign for National Disability Employment Awareness Month that highlighted the Taylor and her successes within the agency, as well as used language and imagery in social copy that is inclusive of people with disabilities. We also put on a ‘day-in-life’ event for National Disability Employment Awareness Month where employees simulated working with a disability so that they can empathize with colleagues with disabilities.
This is our signature question that we ask in many of our interviews. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started My Career”?
- Your media contacts are your currency.
- PR is always evolving so evolve with it or get left behind.
- Not all money is good money.
- Never be afraid to speak up for what you believe in — people will respect you for it.
- Know your worth and add tax.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
My favorite life lesson quote comes from my father. He told me “aim for the moon because if you miss at least you’ll be with the stars.” — I apply that to my career, my personal life and my DE&I work. Also think and aim much bigger than everyone tells you that you can achieve, because even if you miss you’ll still be way above their expectations.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
A movement I would love to see happen is more civilized conversations between those on different spectrums of the political ideology. It’s not just America where political views are dividing society, it’s a worldwide pandemic and if we all just took the time to talk to one another instead of shouting and posting nonsense on Twitter, we would realize that we have a lot of misconstrued ideas of the other side.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurychasteausimien/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Maury Chasteau-Simien Of Alloy On How Businesses Make… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.