Lucia Rios has spent decades advocating for professionals with disabilities, including her 15 years in nonprofit work before joining leading AI CRM company Salesforce in 2021. It wasn’t until this chapter in her career, however, that she realized what had been limiting her professionally: She lacked mentorship throughout her career.
Rios, who uses a wheelchair, felt she hadn’t experienced somebody coaching her along, asking what she wanted her next career move to be, or providing her with feedback tailored for navigating the workplace as somebody with a physical disability. She wonders how much of this has to do with the fact that many organizations—and the people in them—still don’t expect individuals with disabilities to be in the workplace, let alone advance much in their careers.
This would change when she joined Salesforce, a company whose work culture focuses on accessibility and inclusion.
“It's really difficult to get employment,” the Workforce Navigators Program Manager explains. “Then once you're employed, I think most people think, ‘Oh, you'll stick there. You're good now.’"
Only 22.7% of those with a disability are employed in the United States, compared to 65.5% of the general population, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Sure, hiring more people with disabilities amounts to progress, and some indicators suggest that’s happening, but genuine accessibility isn’t just about hiring. Professionals with disabilities need supportive pathways for career advancement.
Key Takeaways
These unspoken assumptions can play a profound role in the lives of professionals, even those well aware of the many barriers that remain for those with disabilities. Rios said her mindset changed when she began working at Salesforce, perhaps a reflection of the company’s accessibility-forward culture, made evident by managers and peers routinely asking, “What else do you want to do?” or “What’s next for you?”
These are basic career development questions, but they caught her by surprise. Whether previous colleagues or organizations didn’t know how to advise or not, she acknowledged a limiting, internalized assumption: “I didn't know that I could move forward. I never really thought, ‘Oh, I want a promotion.’ I never thought about going after a promotion."
Professionals with disabilities simply aren’t asked often enough about their career ambitions; many suffer under what has been called the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” a phrase coined by former U.S. President George W. Bush’s chief speech writer, the late Michael Gerson, in 2000, during an address to the NAACP. Sometimes this manifests when team members or managers discriminate against an individual of a marginalized group out of supposedly wanting to shield them from failure or discouraging them from greater aspirations, despite their high chances of success.
Whether these subtle barriers came from others or herself, the result was the same: She didn’t experience the type of mentorship or guidance that could have substantially enriched her career journey and overall personal growth.
Too many people still presume that having a job at all is enough of a mark of success for professionals with disabilities.
"I think it’s because people have misconceptions about what people with disabilities can or can't do,” Rios continues, noting the commonalities they have with their non-disabled peers. “People with disabilities want careers. They have families. They want to stay at a company for years and then retire.”
Salesforce established the Workforce Navigators program in 2020, building toward a professional world where we’ve finally overcome the so-called “disability employment gap” experienced by people living with disabilities.
To overcome this, Workforce Navigators is dedicated to empowering professionals with disabilities to realize their full potential and transform their careers in the tech industry. Mentorship lies at the heart of this work, a program Rios now oversees.
In addition to mentorships, Workforce Navigators provides resources and training for professionals looking to become more proficient in technology, specifically the Salesforce ecosystem. Informed by the company’s “shift left” mentality, Salesforce’s software is designed (and continually redesigned) to be as accessible as possible.
For the cloud-based customer relationship management software company, workplace inclusion and belonging are central.
"When I first started at Salesforce,” Rios recalls, “Workforce Navigators was created as a mentorship program geared toward people with disabilities who were looking at skilling up and getting trained.”
She’s made asking people “What’s next for you?” a common practice within the program. People from all walks of life and industries participate in the program, eager to develop new skills, discuss aspirations, and, in some cases, even change careers entirely. This comes after bolstering more confidence and assurance that they can succeed in a professional world that’s still not particularly inclusive of people with disabilities.
“This isn't the end all,” Rios says, citing Workforce Navigators' role providing mentorship, support, and as a momentum builder. “This is a stepping stone to help you grow more."
The problem, Rios explains, isn’t just that organizational cultures don’t do a good job of mentoring professionals with disabilities, but that implicit biases also stand in the way of disability representation in leadership; not enough companies are “seeing people with disabilities as leaders or growing more in their roles."
She has one simple message: “It's okay to challenge people with disabilities on what they want to do next. Understand that they can do more."
When pressed on what this looks like for organizations that want to be more accessible and inclusive, the disability advocacy veteran lists off several discrete things they can do.
Ultimately, Rios’ optimism shines through. She’s witnessed progress during her professional life and believes that trajectory will continue, saying, “I'm seeing it in my own personal journey. Don’t feel like you just have to settle because you have a job or a role in a company.”
Career growth is both a personal and organizational responsibility. When we assume professionals with disabilities have the same career ambitions as everyone else, we create space for growth that benefits individuals, organizations, and workplace culture as a whole.
As a Founding Partner of InclusionHub, Salesforce collaborates to help bring greater accessibility and digital inclusion to the professional world. Visit its a11y website to learn more.