I am joining Kibu!

When I was in elementary school, I couldn’t pronounce my Rs or Ss. It was adorable. This required me to receive speech therapy two to three times per week.

Despite adults repeatedly telling me speech therapy was by no means a punishment, I was not convinced. To me, these sessions were 45-minutes inside a windowless room- time that took me away from art, music, and gym class. I would return to my classmates and hear about an epic moment, or inside joke, I missed out on. Although I received candy for each milestone in speech therapy, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being “othered”, and that the longer it took me to become normal, the longer I’d be a social outcast.

In retrospect, I’m obviously thankful for speech therapy. But, what’s remarkable to me now is I felt “left behind” by only a simple language impairment- I cannot imagine how those with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) feel. We’ve learned that nearly 40% of youth with an ASD never get together with friends. Autistic individuals, including those with co-occurring intellectual disability, often experience stigma, discrimination, and a sense of not fitting in. Further, less than one in two working age adults with an intellectual disability are currently employed or searching for work. These findings highlight how feeling “left behind” exists for a heavy portion of IDD and ASD youths and adults. I want to solve this.

Today, I am happy to announce I will be joining the Kibu leadership team as its Head of Customer Success!

For those unaware, Kibu is both a content maker and software platform. It offers fitness, recreational, job, and life skill classes for the IDD community, plus an all-in-one software platform for Disability Providers and their staff (DSPs and Social Workers). Speaking with our CEO Daniel Caridi, I anticipate to focus mostly on the software platform side- as there is much work to be done in customer onboarding, training, support, and analytics.

As Head of Customer Success, I recognize Kibu has a multitude of customers that ought to succeed- parents, caretakers, DSPs, Provider Admins, and so on. However, Kibu’s most important participant is, and always will be, the IDD individual. As long as our strategy, product, and team are built around them and address the problems stated above, I am confident that all our customers will inevitably succeed.

A fundamental piece of business advice is to know your customer and build a product they will love. But, how does one do that in the disability space, when there are hundreds of diagnosed disorders, each with their own varying spectrums, and families facing unique financial and personal circumstances? You can’t. To solve this, Kibu must empower the persons that know each IDD individual the best- the parents, caretakers, and DSPs. This is what excites me about working with Disability Providers! In my first 100 days (and beyond), I plan to research, volunteer, and shadow with these people that have seen the most. I hope my work at Kibu will turn these people into recognized superstars.

Special thanks Daniel Caridi, Ben Langley, Justin Fagella, Sam Crutchfield, and the rest of the Kibu team for believing in me so far. This marks the most major step in my career, and I couldn’t have done it without you all. Let’s get to work!

- Ben