We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Elizabeth Redford. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Elizabeth below.
Elizabeth, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
Disability advocacy is my purpose. It partially found me by being a common thread throughout my life in several significant relationships I’ve had. I, in turn, found it right back by seeking out opportunities to learn, grow, and surround myself with the disability community. In 2017, I founded a nonprofit bakery in Richmond, Virginia, that serves as a job training and supported employment site for young adults with developmental disabilities, for whom there is a 70% unemployment rate in my home state. It is called Tablespoons Bakery.
My journey toward a career in disability advocacy began in childhood. My best friend in elementary school was born Deaf. Though she was one of the most intelligent students in our grade, we both attended a small private school with limited support and resources for her learning needs. I learned so much from being her friend – including how and when to advocate and, most importantly, how and when to support her advocacy efforts as an ally.
These lessons proved personally helpful when I was later diagnosed with a learning disability in middle school called Auditory Discrimination. I had countless experiences throughout my own time in educational settings where I did not have the support I needed to learn the best. This ultimately led me to a career in special education – I wanted to model the very best of the educators I had benefited from and advocate for those students who still weren’t having their needs met.
My career in special education first led me to a traditional classroom role and later to a corporate role where I recruited, trained, and placed young adults with disabilities into supported employment. I co-founded the larger nonprofit that Tablespoons Bakery is part of, Next Move; we first partnered with the corporate community in Central Virginia to place, train, and provide vocational education to young adults with DD, like Autism and Down Syndrome. Tablespoons began as an alumni program for Next Move with a successful local farmer’s market stand and then organically grew into a brick-and-mortar bakery with a very special purpose.
Each student we serve at Tablespoons renews my sense of purpose in this work. They deserve a full future, and competitive employment is a large part of empowering them to reach that goal.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I would love to share more about the journey to opening our bakery and the statistics that keep us inspired to do more:
An estimated 22,000 high school students with disabilities graduate each year in VA. When the VA DOE annually surveys this group, 70% are consistently unemployed and not engaged in any community programming (VA DOE, 2018). Nationally, this rate is closer to 80% (VA Bureau of Labor, 2023). Often, these individuals just sit at home, leaving their families in financial and personal limbo due to the lack of employment services available for their adult children. Understandingly, the poverty rate for this population is also high– as many as 33% of adults with disabilities live at or below poverty (Cornell, 2016).
Despite these grim statistics, the research consistently demonstrates that participation in community-based vocational training while still enrolled in high school is the best predictor of employment for the disability community throughout adulthood (Cornell, 2016). Next Move Program works daily to combat these statistics by providing comprehensive community-based training opportunities to high school students with disabilities. The VA DOE has endorsed our model and curriculum. Each classroom lesson and job site placement with individualized accommodations around Tablespoons (a bakery we own and operate that serves as an internship and supported employment site) empowers our students to achieve a brighter future.
At the Bakery, young adults with developmental disabilities (ages 18-22) who are enrolled in area schools have the opportunity to train as interns for a 6-week internship session. Each day consists of direct retail experience, baking instruction (2 hours daily), and participation in our innovative curriculum (1-2 hours daily) in our dedicated classroom space. Our students have the opportunity to put the skills they learn in our classroom directly into action – aligning with best practices for this population.
Through the daily baking instruction in our commercial kitchen, we are able to fill retail, catering, and special events orders. Our students are also able to see their ServSafe food handling skills action. In the retail and dining spaces, our students can learn firsthand about financial literacy and customer service, all while implementing those skills with customers from the community. The five graduates who have joined our team from the program support our staff in both spaces and serve as mentors to each new batch of students, modeling self-advocacy.
Additionally, I developed a school-based enterprise version of our onsite program called Bake Shop. It has been endorsed by the VA DOE for middle & high school sped, as well as middle school general education for vocational instruction. Students learn, bake, and sell within their own schools and have a robust paired curriculum. We hope this will become another funding stream for our organization.
New for our organization:
We are expanding our capacity for larger orders (especially corporate and wholesale) and for e-commerce. We can now ship our edible cookie dough by the pint or edible cookie dough pies to your doorstep. Our sugar ink cookies (which can be customized with corporate logos or any design of your choice) are also now available for shipping. We also offer a variety of custom inserts, branded labels, and even video messages to go with an order from our inclusive team. You can check all of this our on our website at www.tablespoonsbakery.com/cookies or on IG at @tablespoonsbakery
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Use your personal experiences to inspire your work.
So much of my childhood experiences and personal disability journey (and even more now as a parent to a kid with a disability and an adult with autoimmune issues) has inspired what I do. The passion I have for our work is very personal to me. That resonates as authenticity. It is so much easier to get folks excited about your vision (and wanting to work with you to help it become realized) if they sense the authenticity you bring to the table.
2. Always keep learning!
As a former classroom teacher and a state-licensed teacher who now teaches job skills, I can wholeheartedly recommend you always keep learning and expanding your skills. This approach will continue to open doors for you personally and professionally.
3. Use a proof of concept approach.
Each stage of our organization’s growth always originated as a scaled-back version at first – like the farmer’s market stand to the corporate pop-up cart to the brick-and-mortar. It is critical for you to gain confidence, figure out what works or doesn’t, and get your stakeholders excited about the next opportunity.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
We are always looking for corporate groups to purchase our cookies! We are a perfect fit for corporate gifting and catering. Each treat purchase directly invests in the future of a student. We can also offer shipping and many custom packaging options. I’d love to explore also becoming a vendor for larger suppliers like Aramark.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tablespoonsbakery.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tablespoonsbakery
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tablespoonsbakery
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tablespoons-bakery/
Image Credits
Don Mears and Kat Jones
