Innovative companies across the country are embracing a new form of competitive advantage in the marketplace – the power of diversity and inclusion to improve business results. Disability advocates have implored businesses for decades to hire people with disabilities simply because it is the right thing to do, as if inclusion is a reluctant compromise made in the admirable spirit of giving back to the community.

But our experience at Northwest Center suggests that we have been looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. What we have found is that the harder we work to build, nurture, and leverage a Neurodiverse workforce, the more successful our businesses are. Coincidence? We don’t think so.
For one thing, we find the same correlation between inclusion and business performance in each of our businesses.

Every day, damaged and worn-out clothes, shoes and linens are thrown into the trash because some people think these items can’t be reused or recycled. That is why The Big Blue Truck™ has partnered with King County and Seattle Public Utilities to let the public know that these items can be donated through a program called Threadcycle. We’re asking everyone to give all their clothes, shoes and linens (as long as they are not wet, mildewed or soiled with hazardous materials) to Northwest Center instead of tossing them away.

When you ask a longtime Northwest Center board or staff member about Katie Dolan, certain words come up over and over again: dynamic, charming, tenacious, audacious. It’s no surprise that Dolan, one of the founders of Northwest Center, is still revered nearly ten years after her death in 2006 at age 82. A tribute written by Northwest Center staff at that time remembers Dolan as always “doing what couldn’t be done”.

​It’s been 50 years since Cecile Lindquist first served as president of the Northwest Center Board of Directors. But she’s just as likely today to press a flier about a proposed education bill into your hand, ask you to contact your elected officials, and work with local parents of kids with developmental disabilities.
In the early 1960s, Lindquist was a high school teacher with degrees in political science and education. She helped found what would later become Northwest Center, when her cousin Tommy, who had Down syndrome, was rejected by Seattle public schools.

​She helped found Northwest Center and helped change the world for children with disabilities. But the way Janet Taggart sees it, she just did what she had to do.

Taggart’s daughter Naida was born in 1956 with a developmental disability and cerebral palsy. At the time, kids like her were considered “uneducable” and housed in institutions. It was those institutions that first sparked Taggart’s activism for people with disabilities. “A local institution had weekend tours. For a price, you could look at all the ‘funny people,’” she says with disgust. “That was to me the absolute bottom. Hell.”

You could call him MacGyver. Like the early ’90s TV character, 19-year-old Lawrence has made innovative, time-saving tools out of household objects like empty soup cans and AA batteries ever since he was a child. But instead of thwarting secret plots against the US Government, Lawrence uses his skills to solve business problems for his employers at Electronetics, LLC.

Onna’s personality is perfectly summed up by her parents’ nickname for her: Dancing Iron Baby.
“She’d been through so much, but her little feet, as a baby, they were always dancing,” explains her mother Marija. “She was always moving along, pushing.”
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But while the nickname is perfect now, it’s one that Marija and her husband might not have imagined at first. Because when Onna was born with a heart condition and Down syndrome, Marija remembers, “The whole experience with the diagnoses is initially very negative. You’re not told, ‘Oh, your child has a Trisomy 21,’” she says in a chipper way. “You’re told,” -- now she shifts her voice to a hushed, ultra-serious tone -- “‘I’m so sorry. Your child has this diagnosis.’ So your expectations are not very high.”

For some, it can take a lifetime. But for Larissa, finding the job of her dreams came just a year after joining the workforce.

“I. Love. This. Job. I’ve loved it ever since my first volunteering day,” she says, seated in a classroom at the Easter Seals Washington Child Development Center. It’s a place Larissa has volunteered for six years because she loves working with kids, but where she officially became an employee in July. She’s now a support teacher at Easter Seals Washington, assisting classroom leads with supervising and attending to the children’s daily activities.

He benches 400 pounds and has his eye on the world record. He spends his weekends at church teaching kids about personal health, and his work week at the Pacific Science Center gaining job skills. He’s got a big heart and even bigger aspirations for his future.

His name is Tevin, and two years ago, he called himself “a shy guy” with a speech impediment and a goal to one day become a full-time personal trainer. These days, he’s quite comfortable speaking to the large crowds who attend movies at the Pacific Science Center’s IMAX Theater or shows at the Laser Dome, and his progress toward personal training certification is right on track.

Jacob is more than just an employee at Cafe 50, a restaurant and coffee shop on the Microsoft campus; he’s an Ambassador. The job title is printed on his uniform apron, and he points to it proudly.

“He has a huge sense of pride,” says his mother Jeanette. “It’s his first real, paying job. He has a uniform. He’s treated like just another member of the team.”

Jacob got his job busing trays and tidying tables at Cafe 50 through School to Work, a program where Northwest Center works with students in King County graduating from their high school transition program, helping them find a place in the workforce. According to Northwest Center Transition Services Manager Melanie Cates, both Microsoft and Compass Group, the company that manages the cafe, have greatly boosted their inclusive hiring efforts.

Northwest Center is pleased to announce that we have expanded our operations into Renton, WA -- home to Boeing's 737 plant, Paccar, Providence Health and Services, and of course our beloved Seattle Seahawks.

Our Assembly and Packaging division has been continually growing for years; a reflection of the quality of services we provide and in direct relation to our commitment to sustaining an inclusive workforce.
We continue to achieve perfect quality check scores with our most fastidious customers -- Seattle's largest retailers. By incorporating people of all abilities into our workforce we have allowed new business ideas to flourish, increased staff morale, reduced employee turnover, and grown market share. It is a powerful (and smart) vision for the future that we wish to share with all companies and organizations nationwide.

The new Renton facility is far more spacious than our previous location and well suited to our growing enterprises.

As we continue to broaden the scope of our services for people with developmental delays and disabilities, the new location also serves as a satellite office for our growing Employment Services and Client Services teams. In addition to relocating the Assembly and Packaging operations, our iconic Big Blue Trucks have also moved and are now based in Renton.

Northwest Center's corporate headquarters will remain in the South Park neighborhood.

Sitting at Craig’s work station is a small notebook, filled with dates and numbers dating back to 2005. Craig, a page assistant at the King County Library System’s Shoreline branch, has kept a tally of his productivity during every shift for nearly a decade -- making note of how many books he is able to assess and shelve during his three-hour shifts. Today, he has re-shelved 411 books -- nearly one book every 20 seconds.

When they learned their daughter Helena would be born with Down syndrome, Lisa and Joe Wasikowski knew they’d face some difficult choices. The one easy choice was to work with Northwest Center Early Intervention.

“Helena was in the NICU, and a social worker handed me a business card with Northwest Center info on it,” Lisa says. “By the time Helena came home from the hospital, we'd already met with our new team in our home and had formed a plan. She started therapy at three weeks old.”