We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Olivia Underwood a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Olivia , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you have any thoughts about how to create a more inclusive workplace?

When I heard that The BEE Community was being founded by Taylor Ellerbrock as well as Rick and Carolyn Jones in 2018, I could not wait to get my feet in the same room as them. Their vision was to create a workplace that would provide the supports for adults with various disabilities who were unable to gain or maintain work in the competitive workforce. It would be beautiful if all adults with disabilities could find a job in the competitive workplace but the reality is that many of them cannot. So, BEE hoped to serve a niche population of those people who had either tried the competitive workforce in the past or simply was never even given the opportunity to apply for a job! People with disabilities are highly under-represented in the workplace and this leads to their indefinite isolation. BEE did not want to just move these adults to a new place to be isolated in a group so the original thought was to create a volunteer base that would allow people to come into BEE and build mutually benefitting relationships amongst people with and without disabilities. BEE is not designed for people without disabilities to simply serve and support adults with disabilities. BEE is designed so that lines between serving and being in relationship are completely blurred as they find balance with all our artisans have to offer. We want the community and the world to see that our artisans are not people to be pitied. They are people to KNOW and they are people you will learn from, glean from, and no-doubt laugh with. Our advice to workplaces would be to consider what supports might give someone with a disability an opportunity to thrive in the setting you work. We also might be as bold as to advice regular dance parties and celebrations because, let’s be honest, dancing and celebrating makes everyone feel a part or the party! We have seen people from corporate American walk into our facility and be enamored by the working and belonging taking place and even state that they will “forever view {their} work differently”. A workplace is truly missing out by excluding people with disabilities. In my experience, when people with disabilities are invited into work places, the overall environment is uplifted with creativity and joy and what workplace couldn’t use more of that? Well… maybe BEE.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I became a part of BEE when BEE was just 6 weeks old–she was the most beautiful infant organization I had ever laid eyes on. My colleague, and the founder of BEE, Taylor, and I had met briefly without knowing who one another were at the time. I had hear murmurs of The BEE Community beginning and watched my inbox intently to get a notification that they were hiring their first staff. I spent my college summers working at a summer camp for children and adults with disabilities where many of the connections to BEE later arose. Early on, I became head over heels for the disability population as I became friends with my classmates with disabilities in high school and I could simply never get enough of my time with them. The way they taught me to see the world and the creativity in which they expressed themselves made me see life more vibrantly and become truer version of myself. I was always drawn to art and creative expression so when I learned that BEE was providing employment through the handcrafting of goods, I was immediately on board! I was also completely fired up over the absolute justice in reversing the isolation that comes with unemployment by providing working and belonging. All I have wanted for my life is to shine spotlights and hand microphones to people with disabilities. They are hardly given the stages and platforms this world needs. Every person has something to contribute to this world and people with disabilities truly have something special. BEE could not more beautifully aligned with the hopes I have always had that my life would contribute to the world and what I have GAINED is sincerely beyond measure.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When BEE was just a baby business, like many small businesses, we had to make do! We rented a small Sunday school room that required setting up and tearing down on a weekly basis and shuffling products and supplies back and forth from a storage unit down the road almost constantly. This was all a part of the pioneering and we were exhausted and we were happy. We became gifted in the Tetris-puzzle-mania of fitting things into cabinets and our cars and we just made it work. In the beginning days, we said yes to everything. Every market or speaking opportunity that arose, we grabbed it by the reigns and we galloped! Over the years, as we have strived for sustainability for our staff and the growth of our organization, we have gained a facility where everything has a permanent home. We’ve learned that “no” is an ok and even good response to some opportunities and we have practiced ways to find balance and sustainability because we want our artisans to have healthy leaders and we want them to be healthy. Beginnings are hard and they are deep work and they certainly pay off and give you the tools to learn what can be the best work environment and backstage movement to all the processes possible.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We had the privilege of having model organizations like Brookwood in Houston and Brookwood in Georgetown (BiG) who allowed us to observe their product making and decide how we could best start out. Taylor and the founder team decided to start out small with two products that would give some variety but also allow artisans to really hone the craft before expanding. We started out with a simple dog-treat recipe and some in-depth step by step task analyses on melt and pour soap making. Starting out with these two products, we tried a lot, and I mean a lot, of things that didn’t work. We had a lot we learned from other organizations but finding what worked for us took a great deal of trial and an even greater deal of error. We were determined for artisans to be empowered to do the work for themselves so we pivoted and created supports as the needs presented themselves. With our dog treats, we tried tons of different sizes and varieties of cookie cutters and ways of making the dough a consistent thickness with each roll, to name a few. With our soaps, we learned slowly what types of molds and soap bases and color pairings etc. really carried our brand and produced great quality soaps as well as matched the ways our artisans functioned and worked. We relied on lots of quality control experts and have developed extensive processes in this realm to make sure that our products are of the highest quality. We care deeply about the way our artisans are represented by our products and we know they are capable of beautiful work so we hold that standard high. We live by the motto that society tries to fit square pegs into round holes and that our jobs are to carve out square holes. Instead of trying to make the jobs out there fit people, we assess the gifts and skills an artisan has and we create out of that space. We had several artisans at the beginning who displayed immense joy in the job of shredding paper. We ran with that! We realized we could probably use all those paper shreds to make something and we could also service the community by doing job that many find mundane and actually brings us more happiness than we can describe. Now we have an entire work room dedicated to crafting handmade stationery out of paper shreds and we have built a shredding service. When we follow what brings our artisans to life in their jobs, we find it benefits the entire business and all involved!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thebeecommunity.com
• Instagram: thebeecommunitybcs
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/thebeecommunitybcs

Image Credits
These photos were taken by Ashely Monogue Photography.