Ready, willing, and working

Some may stay with Triangle for years, while others just spend a few months there. Last year, the agency placed 70 people in full-time jobs in the community.

Employers benefit from Triangle staff's eagerness to follow up with support if someone needs it after starting a job.

"I want to know that once the employee is placed, they're not forgotten," says Marc Berube, the human-resources manager at Citizens who hired Wilt for the cafeteria job.

Wilt spends many of her hours washing dishes, but she says she especially likes "to cook and give food to people and have a little conversation." Eventually she wants to own a restaurant where she can cook "fancy dishes."

Before partnering with Triangle for the school-to-career program, Mr. Berube didn't know how rewarding it would be. Now he's a convert.

"There are some great skilled people out there," he says. "We just need to attract and retain them."

IBM recently bid against a competitor to hire a top-notch software engineer. He happens to be blind, but what mattered to recruiters was that "this guy was unbelievably smart and talented," says Jim Sinocchi, IBM's director of diversity communications, "and we got him."

Companies don't want to have to bid up salaries to draw talent, but Mr. Sinocchi hopes to hear more such stories echoing through corporate America. "From the perspective of a disabled person, it's great to be wanted and recognized for what you can offer," he says in a phone interview from his office in Armonk, N.Y.

Sinocchi began working for IBM in the 1970s, as a young man armed with a master's degree and "ready to take on the world." Five years later, he broke his neck while surfing. He had to face the profound task of adjusting to total paralysis.

At first he struggled with basic questions about his worth and "relearned how to look people in the eye." His employer made a huge difference by simply asking him to come back to work - for as many hours as he could handle.

Once Sinocchi got comfortable with the day-to-day tasks of his job, he says, "I started thinking: How can I make other people comfortable with me so that I can get my work done? People were coming into the office and didn't know they were going to see a guy in a wheelchair. My heart went out to them. I had to convince them I was an expert. I decided I'd start telling people what was wrong with me and that they couldn't catch it - making them comfortable right away."

Over the decades, Sinocchi hasn't seen much improvement in the way he's treated in public - people still stare, and some waiters automatically ask his companions what he'd like to eat. But he proudly recounts his own company's record of hiring people with disabilities, one that stretches as far back as 1914.

IBM pairs with the American Association for the Advancement of Science to bring in summer interns with disabilities. They must have college grade-point averages of at least 3.5 in math or computer science. Since 1997, 30 of the 150 interns have been hired. Another recruiting program, Project Able, has led to 200 hires since 1999.

Of the roughly 2 percent of IBM employees with known disabilities, 47 percent work in "core jobs" such as software engineering, sales, and information-technology support.

When hiring, managers aren't supposed to ask about the existence or severity of a disability, but they can assess a person's ability to perform job functions.

They are taught not to assume it would be too onerous for people with physical disabilities to travel for work. Sinocchi, for instance, travels with assistants, and that's paid for by IBM. "We've told managers: This person has some challenges, [and] this is how you overcome them."

Now Sinocchi looks forward to seeing the glass ceiling broken. "The biggest challenge for people with disabilities is ... convincing people that they can be a leader."

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