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2025 National APSE Board of Directors At-Large Candidate

CLICK to meet all nominees before the election ends on March 10.

Please describe your history/nature of involvement/interest in promoting competitive integrated employment in your state. Additionally, explain why you are passionate about competitive, integrated employment for people with disabilities:

I started in the field of customized employment in 2010. In 2011, I became an APSE member. In 2016, I joined our state chapter board. The thing that has always inspired me most about being part of APSE, is the community; it has been so rewarding to develop relationships with like-minded people who want to make the world a better place. We are a community that grows together in the support of a common mission. In all honesty, it has been the highlight of my career.

In turn, the National APSE board is a lens for everything that APSE does and while I haven’t served on it yet, I think my experience at the state chapter level as co-president and committee chair for the last 7 years, in addition to participating on National APSE Professional Development Committee since 2020, has helped me prepare for a role as a national board member. My experiences have shaped an intimate understanding of what APSE stands for and I know how to help advance our mission.

As a person, the math is pretty simple. I believe with all my heart that everyone who wants to work, should be afforded the opportunity to do so. My career has served as a bridge to helping to make that happen. I would like to continue those efforts on the National APSE board. We need to advance the field forward, we need to continue to elevate professionals who do the work and, most importantly, we need to continue to build real capacity. In most states, there are still more jobs available than people to work them and there are more people with disabilities who want to work than our states currently have the capacity to effectively serve them. For that reason, the fundamental mission of APSE – the mission to support people with disabilities in the workforce – is as relevant today as it ever has been and I am as passionate about it now, as I was 15 years ago when I first helped someone with a disability find a job.

What best represents your position/lived experience?

Service Provider or Manager

What skills, knowledge, or lived experience do you have that will contribute to strengthening and growing the financial health of APSE and promoting its mission to advance employment and self-sufficiency for all people with disabilities?

I have led the Minnesota APSE chapter as co-president for the last 7 years. In that time, we played a key role in implementing new, waivered employment services in the state, including Employment Exploration services that allow people to make informed decisions about the pursuit of employment. Under federal guidelines, we have also assisted Minnesota’s Department of Human Services and Vocational Rehabilitation Services teams to craft and implement a MOU in 2021 which outlined funding sequencing for service recipients. We also played a key role in the development of the Coalition for Disability Wage Justice, a group in the state that has spearheaded efforts to phase out subminimum wage. We’ve come up one vote short, each of the last two years, in getting this through the state legislature and onto the governor’s desk. But our efforts have let our legislators, and the people of Minnesota know, that subminimum wage is not just exploitation, it is an injustice. We will continue the fight to end it until it is eliminated, whether it happens at the state level, at the National level or through the courts.

At my regular job, I am the Director of Customized Employment at Kaposia, Inc, a leading customized employment services provider in the state. We closed our sheltered workshop in 1990, and after acquiring another agency, closed a second sheltered workshop in 2000. Since reinitiating job development services after Covid in May 2020, we have helped over 400 Minnesotans find jobs that are competitively paid, that align with their strengths and interests, and that are integrated in businesses throughout the Twin Cities metro area. As a person living with my own mental health challenges, I am grateful to be able to be a part of a team of supervisors and customized employment professionals that help people with disabilities find meaningful employment opportunities.

What relevance does/should APSE and its chapters/members have in national and state conversations regarding equity, diversity, and inclusion?

We haven’t always called it DEI, but since our inception 37 years ago, the fundamental mission of APSE has been to advance equity, diversity and inclusion through our efforts to increase competitive, integrated employment and to elevate people with disabilities out of poverty and isolation. In the last decade or so, the national conversation around DEI has progressed rapidly. Many employers, including some state and federal governments, have launched specific initiatives that have helped to magnify DEI efforts, allowing more people than ever the opportunity to bring their unique talents and skills to the workforce. From my viewpoint, this was wind behind our sails. As a people – as a society – it seemed we were beginning to understand that everyone has value and can contribute to a business’ bottom line. In my own organization, we even developed a pathway for service recipients to ‘graduate’ from the need from formal, paid services. Employers, it seemed, really were starting to understand.

Then, 2025 happened. With a few swipes of a pen and a couple unconscionable news cycles, federal DEI efforts have been essentially eliminated. Many employers in the private sector have unfortunately followed suit. In a few weeks’ time, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that more harm has been done towards formal, DEI efforts than in all the progress we have made in my 15 years in the field of customized employment. I understand that these dynamics could have a real impact on whether people are supported by their organizations to participate with APSE. This has the potential to impact not only APSE membership but also attendance at our annual national conference. These are real worries and we need to be sensitive to them.

But here’s the thing: long before DEI became a catchphrase, through practitioners, through peer-reviewed research and through thought leaders, APSE drove the initiative of helping people with disabilities find and retain competitive, integrated employment. It’s the only national organization committed to that exact mission. And the thing is, people with disabilities can’t wait for the rest of us to sort through when things are politically convenient for us to support an idea that directly impacts their ability to be included, their ability to earn real income and to be afforded the life choices that only income allows them to have. This is our north star and always has been. We can’t forget that no matter what lies ahead.

Biography

I have worked for the last 15 years in the field of customized employment, first as a practitioner, then as a manager and now as the Director of Customized Employment at Kaposia.

I have served on the Minnesota APSE state chapter board since 2016, and as co-president for the last 7 years. At the state level, I co-chair our communications committee and serve on the Employment First Coalition. I have also participated in the National APSE Professional Development Committee since 2020.

I am fluent in Spanish and have a working knowledge of Somali. I love to travel the world, am a passionate –if somewhat cynical — Minnesota sports fan and am an avid gardener. I live with my wife Ilhan and two young boys in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul.