My Kind of Networking: Not spellchecked

Note: Since my disablity, dyslexia, is a hidden one, I have decided not to spell check my blog post this week so that people can gain an insight into a part of my exspernce with disablity. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

I completed my first week of work on Friday and am very happy with my placement at the National Counicl on Disability (NCD). The staff is really wonderful and they have all helped make me feel already part of the team, just after a week. I spent last week meeting/mentoring with all of the staff and beginging to wade through NCD’s past reports so that I can come up to spead on the policie issues I will be working on.

But as it turns out, while I was busy at work at NCD my buisness cards were quietly doing some networking for me. After the AAPD gala two weeks ago, I walked with my partner to see the FDR Memorial. As we walked along the Potomic, we dicided to stop at one point to sit down. I removed my sport jacket and unbenouced to me, my case of buisnesscards sliped out of my breast pocket and into the grass along the shore.

It was not until I returned home that I relized that I had lost the set of cards. I knew exactly what had happened but doughted if I would ever find the case again. It was quite dark and I had no certainly of locating the place where we had stoped again. So, I gave them up for gone. Not only had I lost all of the buisnesscards I had painstiakingl gathered at the galla event, but my the new buisnescard case, which I had bought just a few days before was gone after only one use as well. My future as a networker seemed seriously in question.

But as it turnes out, loosing my businesscards might be one of the best networking moves that I will ever managed. Last Wednesday I came home from my day at NCD to find a message from an unfimilar sender in my inbox. I read the first line of the message: someone’s housband had found my case of cards….Unbeleavible! Not only had someone found my buisnescards but they were willing to mail them back to me. I was overjoyed by the prospect of getting the frouts of my networking back. But it gets better. I looked to see who the message was from. The email had been sent by a Vise Pressident and
Cheaf Diversity offeriser of a major US corperation. What is more, when I Googled the individual’s name, I found that they were very involved with disablity issues and had played a major part in the passage of the ADA.

I could not beleave that I had stumbled on this tremendous connection—or, rather, that this individual had sumbled on my name and gotten in touch. Anyway, I wrote back, gave my address and asked for a meeting. We have a confernce call scheduled for next week! That is my kind of networking!