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Chris Whyte: I was in a major accident that resulted in a spinal cord injury and

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a life long disability. One day I was a hundred percent

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healthy and I had no challenges and the next day I was in a hospital and I couldn't

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move below my waist. You know when you're dealing with that challenge your thinking

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about life and are you going to return to your job, are you going to be capable of performing

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your job, and the Goddard community was tremendously supportive,

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not only just the standard programs that we have but just the people that we have

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are really incredible. My name is Chris Whyte; I'm a

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Source Evaluation Board Manager and Procurement at Goddard.

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(music)

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I actively participate in D&I and

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EEO because I think it gives me the best opportunity to work

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with others here at Goddard. Almost everything I do is in a team

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environment and I just don't think we can be as effective as a team

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if we don't appreciate our difference, if we don't try to continually educate

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our self on those issues and ultimately if we do I think it yields the best product.

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None of us work to my knowledge as individuals doing our job without working with

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each other, so I think the better we appreciate each other, we understand our differences

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we maximize our ability to work together you know the better we can accomplish these tough

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challenges we have.

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We have quarterly meetings where we actually discuss D&I related topics with each other and

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educate ourselves on different topics. In addition to that we contribute as individuals;

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topics throughout the year that you know we think would be helpful to discuss.

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So I've been both participate, listening to those discussions as well as a person that contributes

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to them when I see something. On the EEO side

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recently a coworker encouraged me to start participating in the

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Equal Accessibility Advisory Committee and

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I've been participating in those meetings and learning a lot from different people with different

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disabilities and I've also been fortunate enough to been asked to speak at

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our October meeting for the, I believe it's National

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Disability Employee Awareness month,

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and I'm going to tell my story about my recovery from spinal cord injury

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and my challenges that I've experienced from that.

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So I'm always educating myself and trying to learn more about others. And then

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on the contribution side I've gotten far enough in the organization that

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sometimes I can see that others may need some support and help in their efforts

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to work more effectively. So I try to informally provide some

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mentoring tips when I see that opportunity and more recently tried to participate

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in committees related to these topics.

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I was in the hospital for months and eventually took advantage of telework. I have a

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business job so fortunately my physical limitations didn't effect my ability to,

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to contribute so I had telework, flexible work programs,

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as I kind of continued to recover and started to come back to work more full time.

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The one message I'd want to share about D&I and EEO is that

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it's important; it's a big deal. We will not work together

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effectively, maximize our relationships with each other or accomplish

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our jobs and our mission as effectively as we can if we don't

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value our differences and continuously try to

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appreciate each other.

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