Our third featured social impact yoda is Keoke King, who is co-founder and CEO of Participant Assistive Products, a social enterprise which designs and produces wheel chairs, strollers, and other assistive products for people with disabilities globally. They are also currently running a WeFunder campaign to provide wheel chairs for kids around the world, if you’d like to support their work!
Keoke, thanks so much for being willing to share about your career path with us. Please start by telling us about your current role working in social impact at your organization, Participant Assistive Products.
I am co-founder and CEO of Participant Assistive Products. We have been bootstrapping for 2 years and have completed 9 iterations of our prototype, a wheelchair for children in lower income countries. My day-to-day involves a lot of Q&A with investors, coordinating our R&D team, and marketing. We have letters of intent for ~4,000 units and have raised about $400k. It looks like we will have production in May and then my role will shift towards sales and building the team.
We chose to start Participant now because this is a pivotal time in the global story of people with disabilities. Because of aging and chronic disease, the population is doubling. At the same time, many nations are adding assistive technology to their national healthcare systems, so there is a viable market opportunity. And, new technologies are opening affordable solutions. All this put a sparkle in my entrepreneurial eye and we set out to democratize assistive products so that none are left behind.
Please briefly share your career path prior to Participant.
I’ve been working in the disability field since I finished my MBA 10 years ago. My work has taken me to many corners of the world, and I have had the opportunity to work with many passionate and highly skilled people. I’ve worked on bigger projects in Indonesia, Nicaragua, and Georgia. I’ve always worked in small companies with less than 50 employees and in dynamic market environments. I’m familiar with a startup environment where decisions are made quickly, and staying in my specialty isn’t practical because there are many different needful things. I really enjoy the marketing and sales aspects of being an entrepreneur, especially where they overlap with product development and teasing out user needs.
What do you find fulfilling about your work? Why did you start Participant?
People with disabilities are the largest minority group on the planet and often the most overlooked. At the same time, working in this space is exhilarating because there are exceptional outcomes available with very little input. One of my favorite moments was following along on a motorcycle behind a guy named Purnomo. He lives uphill on a volcano in Indonesia and rides his wheelchair down to his artist studio. With that income, he has bought his family home, and his kids are on track for lives filled with opportunities in rapidly growing economy. This is a very different story line than that of the 70 million people who need a wheelchair and don’t have one. It is next to impossible for them to be productive. And in otherwise challenging situations, their families often don’t fare well versus the average. I’m delighted to see people achieve so much after becoming mobile and going where they want. With our new for-profit company, we expect the added delight of disrupting our little part of the American medical device industrial complex. It is bent towards extracting dollars from the government, not serving users. Our work abroad, where Medicare doesn’t exist, gives us an advantage in reimagining a lean supply chain that delivers high value to users.
What are the most important skills to succeed in your job? And in your career in general?
Is grit a skill? This work is exceptionally challenging, especially for someone with a preference for social enterprise versus traditional charity-oriented solutions. That’s because disability, even in ‘developed’ countries like ours, is either a charity or government-funded area. Up until recently, few lower-income country governments were buying assistive products for their people. The lack of local government leadership, lack of trained professional clinicians, and lack of funding has made solving problems more challenging. At times the little funding and government leadership available has been unstable, and we’ve seen years of work collapse. But, most things worth doing are not easy.
After grit, I’d say networking skills, speaking and writing, and a human centered design approach to product development.
What advice would you give to others who are looking to work in social impact careers? Should they go to graduate school to make the transition?
No. Please don’t. If you do, go somewhere cheap. Seriously.
Whoever it is that you want to help, my advice is, go over there, move in, and listen. You can get reading lists from wherever, buy the texts for $5 each on hpb.com, and start a book club. Also, follow the real trend. In economies that are really growing, people learn things on Youtube as much as universities. Get a volunteer job at a company that seems to be making a difference, and eventually, if you’re any good, they’ll hire you. If you are no good, then do something different. You’ll be good at something. The great news is you can switch because your diploma isn’t anchoring you to a soul killing job that is necessary for loan payments.
I’d like to see a study that surveys 5,000 Public Administration and International Development grad school candidates 10 years after graduation. I’ll bet 90% would not be in those fields and the reasons would be: #1 pay was too low or unstable (especially when covering a student loan), #2 the office culture was toxic and off mission, and #3 the work was too demanding.
If you don’t have loans then #1 is less of a problem and you can be the firebrand driving hard at #2, with less fear of getting fired. Re: #3, see below.
How do you balance your work/life?
Work-life balance helps is great for selling books and this-season’s-version of Kick Boxing classes. It is a myth and often impractical.
If you want to accomplish a lot, you’ll need to work a lot. And, if there are less resources available – the culture offers less money for progress on that problem – then to make progress, you’ll probably need to work even more. Oh, and you’re doing something hard – not selling a new flavor of booze, a fresh caffeine delivery mechanism, or a sneakier way to monetize privacy.
Good news, you will feel better about the dent in the world that you are making. Meaning is more indicative of happiness than leisure time.
If you’re reading this, then it is likely that your privilege allows you to decide what to spend your life accomplishing. This is one of the most precious choices.
Life lessons learned: Any other general advice you’d like to share about careers?
If you can’t switch, you are not free. So, become awesome at something marketable.
Be loyal if you find a mission and a solution that has real potential.
Don’t be afraid to call foul on toxic, abusive, egoist, or wasteful team situations. The people you are trying to serve deserve the team’s best efforts and you can help move towards that.
Knowing that you don’t understand is the beginning of understanding.
Get up early.
Laugh more.