Amid the koosh balls, bowls of snacks and brightly colored Post-it notes, serious discussions were going on.

“What is not on that report about leadership that we know?” Wendy King asked the adults seated around her.

Heads bent, they scribbled on Post-it notes, waving them on the ends of their fingers when they were finished.

King or her partner group leader, Alex Cherup, collected the notes and read them to the group before placing them on a whiteboard. Through all that collaboration, a map began to emerge of what needed to change in how employers, policymakers and people with disabilities thought about employment.

King and her group were part of a two-day Employment Policy Summit. The Summit’s goal was to identify key issues in order to encourage the growth of employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The information generated from this and two other Nevada Summits would then be combined to create a recommendation for 2011 Nevada State Legislature.

The first day, the Summit attendees were split into groups, which then discussed six issues in breakout sessions. They focused on leadership, strategic goals and objectives, financing, training and technical assistance, employer engagement and services and innovation.

The groups mixed together employers, people with disabilities and service providers to people with disabilities. Judy Kerr, who works in Washoe Ability Resource Center, said the collaboration between the different groups not only produced high-level discussions about the Summit topic, but opened lines of communication between the agencies.

“What has been a confusion for all of us has been where to go for what,” Kerr said. “So, the flow of information has been helpful.”

The need for enhanced communication and collaboration was echoed in and out of sessions. Over lunch or during breaks, attendees marveled at what they’d been learning, shared bureaucracy horror stories and traded notes on whether Honda or Ford made a more wheelchair-friendly van.

Out of the six breakout brainstorming sessions on the Summit’s first day, nine themes emerged. After generating problems and possible solutions facing employment for people with disabilities, the Summit’s attendants voted on the ones they felt were most pertinent.

These votes, three per person per session, were then aggregated and the nine similar issues with high frequency became the discussion basis for day two.

Read more about the Employment Summit at:
Hashing out action plans: Employment Summit’s second day
NCED’s Employment Summit page