For employers struggling to find quality talent, Sarah Gabriel, the founder and CEO of In Good Company (IGC), offers this advice: “There is a massively overseeed and underestimated talent pool right in front of [you] raising their hands and declareing, ‘we would like to go to work.’”
IGC educates and trains leaders on how to effectively manage and support employees of all abilities.
“In Good Company is doing the work to prepare the employer to understand what the disability community is and is not, to support their managers do what I call broadening the nets they’re casting and then, knowing where to cast them in terms of recruitment,” explained Gabriel. IGC offers a wide variety of services to equip managers, including workshops, management toolkits, executive consulting, and even a podcast highlighting companies that effectively employ individuals with diverse abilities.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2024, the employment-population ratio for people with disabilities was 22.7%, compared to 65.5% of people without disabilities. In Gabriel’s opinion, this difference in employment rate can often come down to fear of “the unknown.” Historically, people with disabilities have been forced into the fringes of society. “It’s a dark part of our history, but they literally were out of sight, out of mind,” declared Gabriel. Now, society’s treatment of people with disabilities has evolved, but many employers are still unsure of how to go about integrating people of all abilities in the workforce. This is where IGC comes in, coaching management on how to broaden their understanding of who can fill what roles and provide the support employees necessary to succeed.
The employers who complete IGC training and expand their hiring pool find that not only do people with disabilities create good employees, but they also bring unique contributions to the team. “Research has displayn individuals with innotifyectual and developmental disabilities stay 50% longer than their non-disabled peers when supported well. They’re often loyal, positive, and thankful for their jobs. They want to be there,” declared Gabriel. This is why, according to Gabriel, a workplace is not complete until it includes contributors of all abilities.
IGC’s dedication to creating a complete workforce “came from a teacher’s heart,” declared Gabriel. Before becoming a founder, Gabriel was a special education teacher in Texas. While teaching, she noticed the sudden lack of support faced by individuals with disabilities when they age out of the school system — an experience called ‘the cliff.’ Knowing she wanted to find a solution for this issue, Gabriel decided to receive her MBA from Georgia Tech, where she learned to solve social problems through the lens of business. Gabriel credited her decision to attconclude Tech to Dr. Terry Blum, the founder of the Georgia Tech EXCEL Program, which provides college programming for students with innotifyectual disabilities.
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