Meet New York’s inclusion warriors. These people are helping those with disabilities find fulfilling careers, while making workplaces across the city more diverse.

Jim Sinocchi, JPMorgan Chase

Jim Sinocchi had been retired for six months when he got the call. His friend told him about a new role at JPMorgan Chase — head of disability inclusion — and encouraged him to apply.

The company convinced him that, after making progress on diversity in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation, it wanted to address disabilities next. “I believed that they were serious about it,” he says. “Because why else would they hire a 60-plus person in this market?”

When Sinocchi was 25, he broke his neck in a body-surfing accident in Puerto Rico and became a quadriplegic. “I thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I turned to toast,” he says. “The most poignant part for me is that I was a lifeguard. I did all this stuff: I taught blind kids to swim. I think it’s destiny or karma — in a good way.”

After an 18-month recovery, he returned to his job at IBM, where, over the decades, he rose through the ranks.

Three years into his role at Chase, the company has now hired 2,400 people with disabilities. Sinocchi has built a small team devoted to making the firm accessible in their locations around the world, from constructing ramps and automatic doors to installing screen readers on computers. And he’s working on changing the culture, from training managers on how to recruit and support employees with disabilities, to empowering workers with disabilities to go after promotions.

“The climate is changing,” he says. “Because of technology, we can work better, longer and almost equally to able-bodied people. That’s the new paradigm.”

Susan Scheer, Institute for Career Development

When Susan Scheer was attending Yale University, she was the only student on campus with a visible disability. At the time, her cohorts flocked to investment-banking and management-consulting careers, but Scheer quickly realized that she would have to find a different path.

“I was not going to get hired for a job in either of those fields, even though I was an excellent student and had the same qualifications,” says Scheer, who uses a wheelchair. “People took one look and the blood drained out of their face. They got nervous.”

Instead, she spent 20 years working on policy and development in government and nonprofits, touching on housing, health care and other issues, helping to launch New York’s Access-a-Ride program.

“I was a unicorn,” she says. “There was no peer like me who had a visible disability and was working at a professional level. I came to see that the way that you change things is through the political process and political influence. And that was inextricably linked to employment.”

When you’re not seen, you’re not on the agenda, says Scheer.

“The real way to empower this community is through employment — 78 percent of people with disabilities in New York are not in the workforce. This is the poorest, least employed group of people for some reason, and it has been OK for this group to be left behind and left in poverty.”

In 2017, Scheer became the CEO at the Institute for Career Development, the 100-year-old nonprofit that funded research that spurred Congress to write the Americans With Disabilities Act. It’s the only organization in New York that encompasses all types of disabilities, focuses on employment and vocational training, and is free for job seekers.

“I wanted to move the needle on employment beyond what one organization can do,” she says.

Under her leadership, ICD has launched the first Cisco Networking Academy in the country that is fully accessible. The organization offers training for 20 certifications that are the industry standard for getting hired in the growing field of IT networking and security.

“There’s no reason why an individual with a disability cannot be trained and successful,” Scheer says.

David Kearon, Autism Speaks

David Kearon originally thought he’d become a school psychologist. His first job out of college was as a one-to-one special-education aide with middle school and high school students with various disabilities on Long Island. “This was my introduction to young adults with autism,” he says. “Many were really struggling — not always academically, but they were socially isolated and were unable to enjoy the same formative experiences that their peers took for granted.”

Kearon wondered what would happen to his students after high school. Who would be there to help them achieve? “The support systems that many adults with autism need simply do not exist, and that troubled me greatly,” he says. “I saw this as an opportunity, and it inspired me to try and do more.”

Kearon is now the director of adult services for Autism Speaks, focusing on national initiatives promoting solutions for the needs of people with autism and their families, across the spectrum and throughout the life span.

Under Kearon’s leadership, the New York-based organization has launched a corporate employment consultancy named ADVICE, placing more than 400 people with autism and other disabilities in jobs; an online job-search tool called TheSpectrumCareers.com; and a small-business-accelerator pilot program for entrepreneurs with autism. On the horizon: Web-based tools to assist in the transition to adulthood, as well as collaboration with other nonprofits focused on job seekers with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Kearon knows there is still a lot of progress to make.

“Many employers tell us that including people with autism and other disabilities has improved the companies’ overall corporate cultures,” he says. “Learning how to most effectively manage people with autism has made them better managers for all of their employees. They’ve also realized that they are missing very talented people by assessing candidates with traditional interviews, rather than by giving them a more practical opportunity to show what they are capable of.”