Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP)

Webinar Announcement

NEON Community of Practice Webinar Series

What Employers See: 

A New Lens on Customized Employment

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Wednesday, September 3, 2025  

3:00 – 4:30 p.m. ET

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Join the Office of Disability Employment Policy’s (ODEP) National Expansion of Employment Opportunities Network (NEON) initiative for a new video premiere directed by Oscar- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Amanda Micheli. In the first of an ODEP-funded video series, Amanda focuses her lens on the transformative impact of customized employment (CE), highlighting the working life of a person with a significant disability who has become integral to the success of their workplace through CE. In the webinar, you’ll hear from Amanda and TransCen, the employment provider featured in the video. TransCen specializes in using CE to bring together people with disabilities and employers who need their skills.

CE is a process for achieving employment through a relationship between employee and employer that is personalized to meet the needs of both. It is a universal strategy that benefits many people, including people with significant disabilities, who might not have found success through other employment strategies. In 2014, CE was included in Title IV of WIOA as a strategy under the definition of supported employment.

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Webinar Objectives: 

  

• Watch the first video in an ODEP-sponsored series that explores how CE meets the workforce needs of employers large and small. 

• Discover TransCen’s “value-add” approach to employment, which identifies specific business needs and matches them with job seekers with the right skills 

• Learn from the video’s director and TransCen about how they captured the authentic integration of an employee into a CE opportunity.

• Discover how to use digital media to reshape perceptions and inspire employer engagement through strength-based storytelling.

  

Please email any accommodation requests

to [email protected]

  

Register here for the free webinar. 

Panelists:

Sara Murphy
TransCen, inc
NEON Subject Matter Expert

Sara Murphy is a Senior Training Associate for TransCen, Inc. For more than 30 years, Ms. Murphy’s focus has been on community inclusion and employment for people with disabilities. She is based out of TransCen’s San Francisco office, and has extensive experience in program development and management; person-centered, community-based services; and Customized Employment. As part of TransCen’s technical assistance and training team, she works with federal/state agencies, school districts, service providers, employers, and individuals/families to improve services and employment outcomes for people with disabilities.

Over the years, Sara has worked throughout the country and abroad to promote community employment and Customized Employment methods. She has worked on numerous initiatives that focused on defining Customized Employment principles and methods and demonstrating the model’s effectiveness, including one of the first Customized Employment demonstration projects with the University of Tennessee, WinTAC’s workgroup to identify the essential elements of CE and the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability and Employment Policy/ODEP CE symposiums, roundtables and their NEON projects. Currently, Sara’s projects are focused on service transformation and technical assistance and training for provider and state agencies.

Amanda Micheli
Director and Founder
Runaway Films

Amanda Micheli is an Oscar and Emmy-nominated director and founder of Runaway Films. Her last feature documentary, HALFTIME, featuring Jennifer Lopez, opened the 2022 Tribeca film festival before its world premiere on Netflix. Her first film, JUST FOR THE RIDE, garnered her a student Oscar and an International Documentary Association Award. Her next documentary, DOUBLE DARE, explored the lives of Hollywood stuntwomen, and in 2008 she earned an Academy Award nomination for LA CORONA, which followed an unlikely beauty pageant in a Colombian women's prison. In 2018, she was nominated for an Emmy for VEGAS BABY, which explored the wild west of America’s fertility industry.

Amanda’s corporate and non-profit work features authentic stories about women, health care, and the human side of tech; she has directed commercial work for clients including Nike, Google, Adobe, Verizon and the U.S. Air Force. She is also a celebrated cinematographer, a former Creative Director at MasterClass, and a past visiting lecturer at Stanford University. This video is her second project showcasing the capabilities of people with autism.

 

Simon Ho

Meet Simon Ho, an administrative assistant at a downtown San Francisco law firm. Simon, who has autism, handles the firm’s mail, filing, and responds to requests from lawyers. These tasks play to many of his strengths. In the video below, we highlight how Simon found his ideal job through WorkLink, a program that enables people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) to work. Started by Maryland-based nonprofit TransCen, WorkLink specializes in one-on-one assistance, facilitating ideal matches between employers and job seekers with I/DD and supporting wraparound day services for disabled workers who need them. The video, created with ODEP’s National Expansion of Employment Opportunities Network (NEON) initiative, explains how WorkLink used customized employment strategies to match Simon’s specific skills with the law firm’s needs. His coworkers say Simon’s contributions greatly improve office efficiency and productivity. “For PSA, they now have one of their most reliable employees,” says WorkLink program director Jeric Lake. “Simon doesn’t miss work. He doesn't come in late, and he loves his job.”

 

Funded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, the National Expansion of Employment Opportunities Network Community of Practice (CoP) Webinar Series augments the technical assistance areas of knowledge building, provider transformation, school-to-work transition, employer engagement, and policy/funding alignment. CoP participants benefit from national subject matter experts who will present information and resources to support increased employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

Disclaimer: This document was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) under Contract No. GS-02F-0092T, Order No. 1605C5-22-F-00019, with Economic Systems Inc. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to DOL, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

 

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