Lime Connect offered a sweet deal to students who shuttled downtown on Tuesday evening.
Representatives from Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, PepsiCo, Target, Goldman Sachs, and Google shared a panel and recruited talented Columbia students at a career event, co-sponsored by Lime Connect, Columbia’s Office of Disability Services, and the Center for Career Education. The event was held in the Bank of America Tower at 1 Bryant Park, on the corner of 42nd Street and 6th Avenue.
Lime Connect is an organization founded in March 2006 by Richard Donovan, CBS ’02. After completing his MBA, Donovan, who happens to have cerebral palsy, went on to become a successful trader on Merrill Lynch’s proprietary trading team. He recognized a need to expose the corporate world to a talented and often untapped group in the labor market: people with disabilities.
According to Lime’s website, the organization seeks to “add demonstrated value to the global corporate community by unlocking economic potential through employment of people with disabilities.”
In 2005, of the millions of people in the United States who reported having a disability and who, together, control more than $1 trillion in aggregate annual income, only 38.1 percent were employed.
With U.S. employers likely to face a shortage of 12 million skilled workers by 2010, it is essential to the well being of both groups, that the obstacles standing between people with disabilities and employers are broken down.
According to Daniel Lipsitz, CC ’10, one of the obstacles to people with disabilities connecting with perspective employers is concern about disclosing disabilities. The Lime Connect event “eliminates concerns about disability disclosures that so often arise when a person with a disability is being considered for a job. This allows our clients to go forth into the recruitment process without fear of being discriminated against,” he said.
Lipsitz is a Lime Connect Ambassador, which means he represents the organization on campus, along with Jason Marshall, GS. The pair host events and workshops, and mentor students with disabilities in their job searches.
Lipsitz chose to become involved with Lime at its inception in 2006 because, “it represents a cause close to my heart—I myself am profoundly deaf and a recent Cochlear Implant recipient,” he said, although he pointed out that “Lime is available for students with all disabilities, whether of learning of physical varieties.”
Susan Lang, President and CEO of Lime, said that talented students with any type of disability—visible or invisible—are encouraged to attend Lime’s recruitment events. “We simply serve as a broker of the supply and demand of talented people with disabilities, and make that connection,” she said.
Lang said, “Lime puts talent first and disability second.” She emphasized that, “there are no ‘special jobs for special people.’ When candidates are hired for investment banking, trading, brand management, software development positions, etc., they are adding real value and making money for the company. Partnering with Lime is about being smart—finding top talent that happens to have a disability—not about being nice.”
Alex Taylor is an investment banking and wealth management recruiter for Bank of America. She said she sees this event as “another opportunity to meet quality, talented students.”
“I like to think that any of our [recruitment] events is fostering an environment that’s inclusive,” Taylor said, “but to make sure we’re diverse…we partner with organizations like Lime.”
Columbia is one of Lime’s 28 university partners. Lang said, “we have had great hiring success there.”
Ryan Burwell, a junior in GS, is majoring in theatre with a concentration in human rights, and hopes to go to law school. He said he appreciated the event, which he used as an opportunity to look for internships. The best thing about the networking portion, he said, was having so many employers “all here in one location.”
Alexander Grinshpun, a senior at CUNY Baruch who hopes to become a financial adviser or asset manager, said, “I love networking with the top of the top of these companies.”
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