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Women Mean Business - Jane Cummins

Jane Cummins

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WMB host Leisa Holland-Nelson, president of ContentActive, interviews Jane Cummins, founder and executive director of H.E.A.R.T.

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Leisa: Hello. I'm Leisa Holland-Nelson and welcome to another edition of Women Mean Business where we're going to take you up close and personal with extraordinary women doing extraordinary things. My guest today is Jane Cummins, founder and Executive Director of HEART, a non-profit organization that trains and provides jobs for adults with disabilities. That's a large order, Jane. What motivated you to start HEART?

Jane: Well I have a family member who lives with me who has a developmental disability and he's 25 now but when he was 15, I started thinking about what the options would be for him when he finished high school and you may not know this, but in Texas, individuals like him can attend high school until they're 22. So I thought I had a lot of time to figure this out but it only took me a short time to realize that there's very, very few opportunities. Either they can stay at home and basically do nothing, maybe play video games, or they can go to an adult daycare but there's very few opportunities for employment because these individuals need more training and education to get them ready to work. And so that's what HEART does. We started it. We hired special education teachers to come up with a curriculum to teach employment skills to these individuals and we started a vending machine route as a way of providing on-the-job training in real-world environments to these folks and now, they're out working and they're getting paid and they just love their jobs and it's so rewarding to see that.

Leisa: Truly extraordinary. There you have it; another extraordinary woman really doing extraordinary things for our community here in Houston. I'm Leisa Holland-Nelson and you can find me at ContentActive.com or follow me on Twitter at LHNelson. We'll be back again next week with another edition of Women Mean Business.

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