Angela Sims

My love for education began in childhood, watching my aunt, who was a teacher, set up her classroom during summers and going on field trips with her to places like Mackinac Island, one of my fondest memories. When I got old enough, I volunteered in her classroom. In high school, I attended the Career Opportunity Center (COC) program in 11th and 12th grade and got my CDA. After graduating high school, I went to college with a major in special education, but life happened - I got pregnant and had my daughter, so I completed my degree in child development instead. I went back to school later, got married, had another child, and was a stay-at-home mom for a while before returning to the field. About 12 years ago, I transitioned from general education to special education, and it was just a door that was opened for me that I wouldn't change for the world. Today, I have two roles. I'm the founder of Aim to Inspire, a nonprofit organization that services youth and young adults with disabilities. We focus on workforce development, life skills, and inclusion. We do community events throughout the year - every year we host a prom in the city for anyone with disabilities, and this is our fifth year on May 30th. Everything is free, and there's no wrong or right way to participate. Everyone gets to walk the red carpet if they choose, we have a 360 photo booth and backdrops for pictures. We also do an end of summer picnic with picnic baskets or blankets, live music from my assistant who sings, and we give out socks to help transition back into cooler weather. We do a bowling event where everybody wears something green, usually around St. Patrick's weekend. One thing I'm really proud of right now is that we've started the arm of printing at Aim to Inspire. Our young adults are learning they're more than their disability - I empower them with that. They're learning to print on shirts, cups, and mugs, and now we're creating family reunion t-shirts, vacation t-shirts, cruise t-shirts, and making flyers for people in the community. They learned the skills in November and December, and now we're producing for the community. They get to stand back and look at their work. I try to hire people at Aim to Inspire that have a disability because we are a disability service. I like to employ people with disabilities and give them a chance to be employed. The lady that taught us to print is high functioning and has a disability, and her son also has a disability. It's nice seeing her able to teach us those things. Even though she has a disability, she's employable. That's our foundation - we're more than our disability. We have skills, we just learn different.