Cheryl Rayburn

I attribute my success to my very strong faith in God and my family, and just knowing that there's right and wrong. When you do right by others, the success comes organically, but you also have to be driven and motivated. People tell me I'm inspirational, but I don't think I'm inspirational as much as I just don't want anyone to ever feel the way I did in 2014 when I was lost and scared and broken. I think to encapsulate it, it's my love of others. My girlfriend told me I'm Buddhist because I want everyone else to be happy. I said, that is true, but I'm Lutheran. It's about wanting others to find the same independence and confidence that I found through my own vision loss journey.

The best career advice I ever received was from CFO Jeff McHenry at AlphaPoint, who told me to be patient. I know that sounds simplistic, but I had been a vice president of operations at a mortgage company before stepping away from my career for 14 years. When I went back to work as an intake coordinator, after a year I walked into his office and said I wanted to be a manager. He said, you're not ready, be patient. I kind of stomped my foot and walked out, but I went back to my desk, put my head down, and just worked. I didn't ask for anything, I took on new opportunities and challenges, and kept learning. About 8 months later, I became the practice manager of the clinic, and the promotions came organically after that. They would move me into departments that were broken and say, here, would you do this? And I'd break it down to the bottom, build it back up, build teams and people and processes. I realized that's my gift. So I'm patient now. On my last day at AlphaPoint, Jeff told me I was going to be a CEO someday, and that meant something coming from the man who told me I wasn't ready to be a manager.

I've worked with a couple of young ladies who are blind and in this field already, and one who is thinking about entering, and I've told them: Be solid. Believe in yourself. Surround yourself by like-minded people. And stand on your values. Don't step away from your values. Anytime I've stepped away from my values, it hasn't gone the way I wanted it to. Sometimes that means making tough decisions, but you gotta do right by you.

The biggest challenge and opportunity in my field is employment opportunities for people who are blind and visually impaired. The unemployment rate for people who are blind or visually impaired is about 60% across our country, but the retention rate is north of 80% nationally. Once a person who's blind or visually impaired gets a job, we rarely give it up. The biggest room for opportunity is if businesses realized that if their HR departments were educated and understood what questions to ask someone who's blind or visually impaired, like what accommodations do you need and how can we support you to be a successful employee, they'd see that those accommodations typically cost less than $500 and you have an employee for a lifetime. We often overachieve because we feel like we have to do extra to prove that we're equal. This is self-imposed, but we feel we have to work harder. That is absolutely the biggest challenge in our industry, and we're working on it.

The values most important to me in my work and personal life are, no question: integrity, honesty, compassion, and empathy. These are the foundation of everything I do.