Episode #50: Workforce Innovation in Manufacturing: Gilster Mary Lee and Boone Center on Inclusion, Retention, and Productivity
In this week's episode, host Matt Horine interviews Tom Welge, CEO of Gilster-Mary Lee, and Troy Compardo, CEO of the Boone Center, about workforce innovation through employing people with disabilities and neurodiverse individuals. Welge shares Gilster-Mary Lee’s evolution as a long-standing private label food manufacturer and how labor shortages drove efforts starting in 2019 to recruit and support employees with autism through manager training, better job definition, and role matching, resulting in 21 neurodiverse employees and strong retention and culture benefits. Compardo explains Boone Center’s mission since 1959, its pivot to contract packaging, and current operations employing 185 adults with developmental disabilities, plus community placements and job coaching. They describe a partnership sparked by a need for e-commerce fulfillment and discuss misconceptions, scalable practices, and future goals including broader adoption, career advancement, and addressing transportation barriers.
Links
- Tom Welge on LinkedIn
- Troy Compardo on LinkedIn
- Gilster Mary Lee
- Boone Center
- Veryable Is Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
Timestamps
- 00:00 Welcome and Theme
- 01:14 Meet Tom Welge
- 02:17 Labor Challenges at Gilster
- 02:59 Meet Troy Compardo
- 04:43 Boone Center Mission
- 06:31 Gilster Food Manufacturing
- 08:22 Partnership Origin Story
- 11:54 Building Inclusive Jobs
- 14:47 Myths and Retention Wins
- 16:50 Systems That Sustain
- 19:04 Scaling the Model Nationwide
- 23:06 Five Year Vision
- 28:20 Where to Learn More
- 29:50 Closing Takeaways
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome to US Manufacturing Today, the podcast powered by variable, where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers, shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of manufacturing, the changing landscape policies and more.
We often talk about reshoring capital, investment automation, and supply chain resilience on this show, but none of it works without understanding how labor and people will help build that industrial capacity. Capable, reliable, and purpose-driven people. Joining us today are two leaders who are redefining what workforce innovation looks like in manufacturing.
Tom Welge is the CEO of Gilster Mary Lee, a leading private label food manufacturer based in the St. Louis area with a long history of operational excellence. And Troy Compardo is the CEO of the Boone Center, an organization dedicated to providing meaningful employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities.
Together they built a partnership that is not just socially impactful, but economically successful. From third party fulfillment to an internal neurodiverse workforce initiative, this is a [00:01:00] story about how inclusion and productivity naturally go hand in hand. Tom and Troy, welcome to US Manufacturing today.
Troy Compardo: Thanks Matt. Thanks for having us.
Matt Horine: Excited to have you guys on today and of course the variable partners, so we're really appreciative of that. And we'll just jump right into it. And Tom, I'll start with you. Can you start by sharing your path into manufacturing and how you came to lead Gilster Mary Lee?
Tom Welge: I feel like some days I had no other choice, but I'm fourth generation and our family's business, grew up around the business, worked in high school and college.
Actually even started by sweeping floors in my grandfather's feed mill, which was part of the business at that time. And that was like a hundred percent job security because the feed mill was generating dust 24 hours a day. So I, sweeping floors was a good job to have there, but came back to the business after college and I started in sales and quality and just really began to realize how much I enjoy manufacturing.
And so I rose up through operations and then I became president of the company in 2020. [00:02:00] And today, that's the role I lead and I appreciate the opportunity to be with you guys today to talk about some of the special projects that we do around labor and workforce.
Matt Horine: No, that's great. And really a testament of fourth generation family company.
That's something that sticks around and has been around for a long time. It's been you, as you mentioned, it's been around for decades. How has the company evolved? So in the past couple years, under your leadership or in recent times over maybe the past decade or so?
Tom Welge: I would say one of the biggest areas we've had to evolve around is around the availability of labor.
And qualified labor. It, it used to be there was plentiful labor in these rural areas where we were located in our manufacturing facilities, but that's not the case anymore. And so we had to get smarter both about how we, the types of products that we make, the way we lay out our operations, and then get more creative in finding other.
Sources of labor and diversifying our workforce.
Matt Horine: That's something that's been a recurring theme on our show is that folks are looking for creative ways to tackle that challenge and really excited to get into that here in a few minutes. [00:03:00] Troy, wanna jump to you? Could you tell us about your journey and what led you to the Boone Center?
Troy Compardo: It was a little interesting. I was working in the healthcare operation space at BGC Healthcare for about 10 years, while I was also working for the Illinois National Guard part time. Serving as a medical officer and it was around COVID-19. I got deployed for COVID response and I was in Chicago for about 90 days doing some work on building out McCormick Place Field Hospital up there.
And I had a lot of time in my room. 'cause after we were done with work, we were locked down to our rooms and I was reflecting on, man, I'm not sure about this healthcare job anymore. Maybe I should look for something else. I'm joking inside, I'm very mission focused, obviously with the military side and the healthcare side, and I had someone reach out to me about Boone Center.
A recruiter actually had a New Jersey, and I'm like, what is Boone Center all about? Turns out I thought it was in Columbia, Missouri, or Boone County, which is where we had A BJC hospital. But turns out it was right next to my house in O'Fallon, Missouri. It reminded me of the time I spent at SAU Carbondale where I did undergrad.
I was, I was supervisor of the special populations department down there at the rec center, [00:04:00] and I coached to the wheelchair basketball team and I was a trainer for adults with development with disabilities, mostly physical disabilities at the time. And it just really spoke to me. It was like a little bit of, I think, God calling me to a different journey and I jumped on a call with our board.
I was in Chicago, and then when I had a chance to visit, I toured our packaging facility and I tell you just all in love with it. And I just felt like it aligned with the different variable skill sets that I've built over the years. And I just felt like I was blessed to lead the mission and was chosen to lead the mission.
And so that's how I ended up here my by chance. But I think I gone.
Matt Horine: That's really a great story and something mission backed for sure. And thank you for your service by the way. That's something that's a lot of mission centric thinking and alignment there. On your journey to the Boone Center, what is the mission of the Boone Center and how has it evolved over since your time being there?
Troy Compardo: It's not a four generations like Tom's families operation, but we do trace our roots back to 1959. We call them our founding mothers, so Marker Holmes and Jane Kreer. I [00:05:00] founded Boone Center in St. Charles City back then, and they had family members, kids who had developmental disabilities, and they thought, how can we get them employed?
The unemployment rate in that space was just high, so remains high today. And so they bought a candle manufacturing company. They named it Boone Center right off of Boones like Boulevard at St. Charles City and started employing. Community members who had disabilities and St. Charles County was a very rural community at the time.
And as the county's population grew, the need for the services grew more, folks needed Boone Center. And then the county started making investments through tax levies, both real estate, personal property, which is a big ticket item right now in in Missouri to help support our operation a little bit. And now we don't get a lot of that.
We don't get a lot of that, but it helps us grow a little bit. And so, over the course of time. The number of people we employed grew. We couldn't do manufacturing solely, so we pivoted into contract packaging around 1990, and that allowed us to really grow the footprint of people we could employ. And we now reside in about a hundred thousand square foot [00:06:00] space at our main facility, employing 185 adults developmental disabilities.
Directly in our packaging facility. But we also have evolved over, over time to do more and more community-based employment with manufacturing partners and also doing vocational skills, training and development, and then placing those individuals in competitive roles in the community. And so that's been become a big part of who we are, and we've expanded that footprint into Illinois and into southwest Missouri as well.
Matt Horine: It's an incredible growth story and a really mission oriented story. It's great to hear about the growth and the size of the facility and how many people are there. Tom, we'll get into how your relationship with the Boone Center began or how it started, but also wanted to take the chance to talk about Gils and what exactly your specialties are, and maybe a little bit about food manufacturing.
Tom Welge: We grew out of a flower mill back in the 18 hundreds, and as the markets changed, we made the decision to go into retail consumer products. At the time. We did this in the late 1950s, we realized that we didn't have the capital to be a national brand. At that point. We were [00:07:00] making cake mixes, was the first product, and there was already Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines, Pillsbury and we did not have the money to compete with those guys. We hitched our wagon to store brands at that point, which was new at that point. But that's been our focus since then. And so we don't do a lot of products that have our name on them, but we probably have a product, probably a pretty good chance, and almost anybody listening because our customers are the retailers and the wholesalers and brand owners across the US and Canada, and really big buckets.
It's like baking mixes, baking needs. Breakfast cereal dinners, like mac and cheese dinners, hamburger helper type dinners, microwave, popcorn, and then smallest piece of businesses around cocoa and hot chocolate mixes, chocolate syrup and those products. So our value to our customers is we can make all these different products and our different facilities.
We combine, ship them out of our distribution centers and the grocery business, food business is about turning your inventory as quickly as you can. 'cause you don't make a lot of margin on any one sale. So our customers have the ability to buy truckloads of [00:08:00] product but not commit to a truckload of cornflakes or a truckload of mac and cheese.
And that's the way we built a business through the years. And today we sell something to every major chain in wholesaler in the US and Canada. Uh, and I'm very fortunate to have really good relationships. Some of those, the very first customer in 1961 is still a customer. Of ours today.
Matt Horine: Wow, that's incredible.
And a testament to the kind of the staying power of that and what you've built. I'm curious because we touched on it a little bit at the outset, and we can get into the details, but how did the relationship with the Boone Center begin? And you were talking a little bit about workforce, Tom. What operational need were you looking to try to solve at the time?
Tom Welge: I think the initial introduction to Troy was with Jared from the Veryable team and he said he knew of what the work we were doing around employing people with autism and Neuro diversities. And he said, you need to meet Troy. And, and I'm glad he made that introduction. Troy came down and visited us and he saw the operations, the things that we were doing, and I think at the moment we didn't have a lot that we could do [00:09:00] together, but we said, let's keep in touch, and sooner or later the needle come up and it did.
One of our serial customers. Who does a lot of licensed products. He was behind Flutie Flakes when that first came out, and some Patrick Mahomes promotional cereals and those kind of things. He came out with a product and he didn't really have somebody that could service internet orders and do small shipments, and that's not our business either.
We wanna ship truckloads of things. And so I think at that point we introduced him to Troy in the Boone Center. And they were able to get something going. And Boone Center really filled up a big need that they had to make this program successful.
Matt Horine: Yeah, that's great. And a shout out to Jared who introduced us as well, a little bit of a Veryable connected there, but Troy, what did this partnership and structurally, how does, what does that partnership mean for your organization and what's the ultimate goal of your organization with these types of partnerships?
Troy Compardo: Um, kinda just piggyback on Tom's story a little bit, because he connected us with I who needed below, who needed that e-commerce service. Tom [00:10:00] asked me, I think over email, can you do this? I'm like, I don't know if we can or not. And then Ty asked me the same question. I'm like, I'm not sure we can either.
It's not really initially one of our capabilities because we too like to ship truckloads out. It just makes more sense for us as well to package truckloads of things that send 'em out. But. As a mission driven organization, we said, Hey, does this make sense within our framework? Does it apply? Does it employ adults with developmental disabilities?
Does it provide us a new capability that we could sell so we can provide more meaningful jobs? Does it give us some exposure so we can speak about what we're trying to accomplish so we get a little bit more of the message out? We got together and said, yeah, we think it meets all those criteria. Oh, by the way, Ty, Ty already told us we had the business, which was great because Ty also has, his son had a disability and his son passed away recently.
And so we built this really, I think, unique ecosystem between Tom, Ty and Boone Center. And I think every time we get on the phone and talk about what we're trying to accomplish and who are we giving meaning and purpose to. I think it all just makes us feel good and brings a [00:11:00] tear eye, frankly. And it met, definitely met a need.
It gave us new capabilities and I'm just thankful that, uh, just from meeting, meeting Tom the first time and it led to some really unique things that we were able to do at Boone Center.
Matt Horine: Yeah, no, that's an incredible story and something that is obviously very mission driven and I think one of the big things and themes of us meeting and talking, and we've talked about all the range that both organizations have, but how this ties back into is really, is a great.
Focus in manufacturing and how manufacturing jobs really overall for the country are the heart and soul of the nation. And most of them are small, medium sized businesses and employ their local communities. And to do this in a way that that includes everybody is something pretty incredible. I think from the operations side.
Tom, how is this kind, this initiative? Helped stay focused on manufacturing. While maybe the Boone Center does things a little different, but talking about how it gets into specifically the manufacturing side, uh, of your business.
Tom Welge: Our project began around 2019 when we were really struggling for [00:12:00] employees, people that we could bring in entry level positions to the organization.
I have a son with, uh, developmental disabilities myself, and while he doesn't have autism, you're in this community and you understand what these challenges these other families are facing. And I was reading one day a stat that said like 83% of adults with autism never get a full-time job. And I think I thought, what a tragedy.
We're struggling to bring people to work and there's this group of people, and I knew some of them even in our small town that had bounced from job to job their whole life and never been able to find a place where they really fit. We said, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna explore this. We want to start a program and work with these individuals.
They have a lot to contribute and we thought, we knew they'd be great additions to our organization, but it, we didn't even begin to realize how positive the influence would be. And so we went out, hired a consultant, started training, not training the individuals, training ourselves. How to make them successful in their jobs.
Gave all our [00:13:00] managers an A course on what it's like to have autism and what it means and how you look at the world. And then we identified jobs. Not every job is for everybody, and that's whether you're neurotypical or neurodiverse, but we identified three or four positions in different production lines that were appropriate, and we brought in our first employee, COVID slowed us down a little bit, but the back half of 2020, we brought our first employee in.
Last year, that individual hit five years with us, and prior to that, I don't think he had five months with any job that he had before. So it was a very powerful success story for him. And I was, uh, incidentally like the effect on our other employees. They were so glad to see us as an organization moving in this direction because maybe they had a, an individual with special needs and their family, or they knew somebody.
And to see us put resources towards this was a very positive thing for our whole culture. And it's one thing to feel good about doing something like that, but it is a very much an economic success. They are the individuals [00:14:00] we have and we have 21 of them in our two facilities. Now, they're some of the best employees that you could hope to have tremendous attitudes.
They understand the task. They enjoy being at work. They're a positive influence to the whole team that we have.
Matt Horine: Yeah, that's a huge cultural impact on a lot of different levels, but certainly something, initial expectations were probably one thing and there were some surprises along the way. So it's great to hear the response from your workforce on that front.
The fact that a lot of times it seems like a natural conclusion, although maybe not at the outset, that the economic success story is paired so well with it. It's a natural occurring thing when people are, when they have good attitudes, they wanna work. And manufacturing is very unique in this, that people wanna build and do things with their hands, that it's a.
A really good outlet and a place to, to find that kind of meaning and purpose. Troy, from your perspective, what do manufacturers misunderstand about hiring individuals with disabilities? They don't maybe draw the connection to that kind of economic impact or where's the gap in the market that you've seen?
Troy Compardo: Yeah, I think they [00:15:00] sometimes confuse the population, the paint, A pretty broad brush over. Disabilities and they have whatever picture they have in their mind of a person with a disability. And so I think that's one thing. They think of it as a maybe a social mission, doing a favor for somebody versus really thinking about the person and they underestimate what that person can deliver to their organization, especially when it comes to retention.
So Tom mentioned somebody who's been there for five years, right. And they think it's a big lift, and they may measure it too soon. They may say 30 days in, uh, we're not successful moving on. That's the typical, Hey, you have a KPI and we're gonna get after it and it's not working, so let's throw the tablet.
I think those are some things that come to mind when I work with folks and we try to break all those barriers down and we use stories like Tom. So about the same time Tom started this programming in the community, we did the same thing with true manufacturing here across the street from us, which is one of the largest.
Manufacturers of commercial refrigeration in the world. The Tru Last family has a steep legacy, very similar to Tom's family in this space. And five years ago we started doing vocational training with them, [00:16:00] placing individuals in their facility, really worked with the HR department and that the leaders there to train them like Tom's team did.
And today we have 50 individuals working for two manufacturing and pretty intense manufacturing, hot welding. Building on paint lines, on wire, showing lines, doing spot welding, mostly on the autism spectrum, neurodiverse folks. And the retention rate over two years is 70%. Show me another manufacturer who has 70% retention in their traditional hires.
It's just, you're not gonna find it. So again, breaking down those kind of misconceptions and letting folks like Tom and I speak to the what, what can be done and not what can't be done. So I think it's really important.
Matt Horine: That's a great point. People find all kinds of ways to talk themselves out of doing certain things, and it's what can we accomplish here and what can we build?
And it sounds like both of you have implementing these programs and Troy running the program as well. Tom alluded to this earlier. The training that goes into your existing staff and how to think about this differently. What kinds of systems make these initiatives [00:17:00] so sustainable? We talk about it on a show like this, it sounds very easy.
It's your whole job and the mission of your organization to make that happen. What kind of things do make it so sustainable in manufacturing?
Troy Compardo: It's training your teams to understand and we, boot Center does a lot of that whenever we go into a new employer or existing employers. Lots of training with the teams.
I do think there's leadership buy-in. You need that and that's, that then jumps you into training and understanding and to be curious, ask a lot of questions. The teams need to do that too. Boot center, we have job coaches as well, so whatever we place, we have both two, two types of programs. We have a very specific vocational training program we have, which the state pays for in Missouri, one 20 hours of skills training.
Illinois has a similar program to their vocational rehabilitation office, so it's free to the employers to allow us to come in and provide that training for a client. But then I think it's also the follow along support we get through a job coach session. And sometimes employers that we work with think of those as a crutch, but it's not a crutch.
It's [00:18:00] just, hey, we're there to like look at the nuances, make sure we intervene on. And mostly it's tips tends to be soft skill training, which I think everybody could be use soft skill training, but between that manager and that employee and this understanding how that teammate's gonna be, maybe has a little bit of nuances to how you have to work with them.
And once you understand those, you're in good shape. Generally speaking. A couple of those things, leadership, buy-in training, job coaching, and, and just being curious about it.
Tom Welge: I'd say some of the things that we undertook benefits for the rest of the population of your labor force, right? It's like visual cues and job definition and things.
As an organization we probably didn't do a good enough job at before. This really gave us the opportunity to step back and say, okay, what are the six essential things to be successful in this job? Here's some diagrams, here's some layouts on the floor, and I think it's improved just how we onboard. Non neurodivergent people into the workforce as well.
Matt Horine: Uh, it's a continuous improvement approach and things where you can find all kinds of ways to [00:19:00] apply it across the organization. I think that leads into our next segment. We talked about this a little bit, what we could call something like labor innovation, and we talk a lot about reindustrialization on the show, bringing industry back to the US domestically, and, and the work shortage does come.
Often we talk about it as a labor access issue, which this show is just reinforcing that access to being able to participate in the workforce. We're seeing workforce participation rates start to make a move for the first time in years. And so broadening the talent pool seems like a natural Yes, it does.
This is how a one way to broaden the talent pool. But do you. You know, Tom, do you see this as an initiative as part of a broader strategy to build a more resilient workforce overall and where most companies, if they took this approach, could assuage some of those labor shortage issues? I do. I think, and I don't think there's one magic
Tom Welge: bullet for the labor situation reaching out to these folks, this population is certainly a great thing, and I would encourage a manufacturer to look into it in their own communities.
We [00:20:00] also work with people coming out of recovery treatment programs and wanting to enter the workforce. People coming out of a correction facility, trying to reenter the workforce, working with more closely with apprenticeship programs and trying to get more people manufacturing the Mark ler, who's the president of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, he likes to say, we have to convince folks that.
Manufacturing is not the three Ds. Dirty, dark, and dangerous. It's modern, it's high tech. There's all kinds of jobs and so I think, and lots of need and unfelt un unfilled need at this time. So I think as manufacturing leaders, you have to look at your, your world, where you're operating, and where are these untapped pockets.
What kind of partnerships can you form to bring more people into the workforce? It's not gonna be overnight, like Troy said. You have to commit to it, and I know you're gonna see it through and you're gonna have to adjust and, but there's some really great things that can come out of it for your organization.
If you see it through.
Matt Horine: Yeah, absolutely. Troy, I think Tom hit on something [00:21:00] there, you know, and, and maybe you can provide some insight, you know, from your perspective. Can manufacturers nationwide replicate this model? How much is what you do? Something that is very regional, because we, when we talk about reindustrialization, a lot of that has to do with ecosystems.
So supply chains, everything else being localized. A lot of manufacturing is local, small, medium sized businesses. But how. Can people, can we look at this from a national perspective? Is it something that's really regionally aligned?
Troy Compardo: Yeah. I would say if Tom can do it and Lister and true manufacturing can do it in two very different types of markets really and, and states and areas, I think it can definitely be replicated.
Just gonna depend on the buy-in from those organizations, Bo Center, we can clearly be a, a surrogate to help facilitate those things and understand what's available from a state and county funding perspective to help facilitate some of that. Tom was willing as a company to make the investment 'cause it, it mattered to him personally, mattered to him, but it also mattered to the business and to the local community.
And you have those things aligned, which is very helpful. But we have the blueprint, we know how to do it. It's a commitment from the [00:22:00] manufacturer manufacturers. I think Tom mentioned earlier, an 83% number of folks who are unemployed in this space. The number I talk about often is 75% of folks with a disability are un unemployed or underemployed, and there's roughly 40 million people who have a disability in this country.
And so it's just a, it's a labor force. It's available. Not that every one of those folks can become employed, but the labor is there. And if you want to innovate, and that's part of what a, a great manufacturer's gonna do, they're always gonna be innovating, looking to be agile, then they should. Reach out to some of these programs that have had success and let us guide 'em through it, and then they'll, the return on the investment is tenfold.
So yes, in a short, the answer to your question, yes, it can be replicated.
Matt Horine: It's a great answer. 'cause it is a complicated, it's a complicated question. People think it's just a plug and play and obviously both your organizations have invested heavily in, in this and the organizational train up that goes along with it.
We talk a lot about it from the reindustrialization perspective at the national level, or reshoring supply [00:23:00] chains or doing things like that. Sometimes the answer's right in front of you locally being creative and thinking in innovative ways. Looking forward on this, what does success look like five years from now for not only just your, both, your partnerships here, but individually for your organizations.
How do you see this growing and evolving over the next and five years is really a short time window. We can say five to 10.
Tom Welge: So we have the program in two of our manufacturing plants. Now we have 11 in my world. We bring this forward into the rest of the facilities. We, one of my really great things I'm proud of is we have one of these individuals, he's been promoted, he's a forklift operator now, and that's not a job that he or his parents, I think ever dream for him.
But that's a skill. Even if he lives leaves us, he can take that to another manufacturer and he's got skills that he is bringing forward into his job now. I personally hope we can you to work with Troy's team, get more projects and then I think there's even some opportunities that we can learn from them in terms of, in terms of how they go about things, how they train great committed [00:24:00] workforce as well.
That, that's my hope in the next few years is we just continue to see this growth throughout our organization and hopefully we can inspire. Other manufacturers to take, to take the time and put the effort and, and to make themselves better this way too.
Matt Horine: Yeah. Troy, how about yourself? Do you, how do you see, and being in the role a couple years now, how do you see it playing out over the next couple years?
Troy Compardo: And we do some visioning session with our board of directors, and we think about these things a lot like where we want to go. And I would say that we want to be the Boone Center or whoever we work with, we wanna make the, we want clients to be coming to us right away, right when they're starting to transition.
Outta high school and into the workforce, we want to be the go-to for those parents to know that there's an off-ramp or an on-ramp to the next phase. Like what happens when the bus stops coming today? Still parents don't know. Like if they get, they're just nervous, they can confused. They don't know what the resources are available.
What I want them to make sure they know that there's a pathway for all their loved ones to have meaningful jobs that are productive in the community, and there's a way to get after that. I hope by that time [00:25:00] we have some of this transportation issue solved, maybe through some Waymo's or whatever, because that's the biggest, probably the biggest barrier for employment is transportation.
Any who a neurodiverse, many can drive, but there's a lot who just never can quite get that driver's license, but they're still very effective. And your facilities as employees, as teammates. So hopefully we break some of those barriers down obstacles, both to socially and the perception that we have some of these other physical, these other limitations, the transportation broken down as well.
And so that we have a nice smooth pathway for individuals to get employed. And then I hope we have a really robust summer work program between Illinois and Missouri. We want to get young teenagers. In manufacturing and it's been proven, and we have a nice foundation that helps us support some of this called the Smartforce Foundation.
It's founded by the Mitsubishi facility or Foundation that allows us to do summer work, programming and manufacturing for 16, 17, and 18 year olds. Some states support that, but that allows us to get teenagers in this space, their first summer work experience. Sometimes they're [00:26:00] second, and if we get 'em hooked, then get their parents hooked and then they're interested and then they'll turn into full-time employees or teammates for others, and I hope that's expanded.
I think that's a really valuable opportunity for young teenagers.
Tom Welge: The transportation huge issue, and especially reaching this workforce and so to the extent both, especially in rural areas, right, and less developed areas where the public transportation system is not as robust. That's a big challenge and there are people that we would like to bring onto our program, but transportation's an issue.
That's something we gotta work on together.
Matt Horine: Yeah, that's a very common thing. What we see a lot of times in the Veryable marketplace is proximity is the truth teller. When people are bidding on ops that are way beyond reach of, they'd have to 100% drive. There's no public transportation, very common. Our manufacturers look at that proximity.
So it's, it's something that's always been true and I'm sure, certainly a challenge. Troy on that question. What is one myth that that kind of seems to persist or something that you're able to go after very quickly?
Troy Compardo: That it's a person and [00:27:00] don't underestimate the person. We're trying to remove barriers for a person to be successful, right?
Forget about the disability, don't underestimate them.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. Spot on, and it makes a lot of sense. Tom, doubling down on that. If every manufacturer adopted even part of this approach, how do you think it could change the industry or at least change their organization?
Tom Welge: I'll tell you, and I, I may have shared this with you before, but I've, I speak to some groups sometimes about our experience here, and I always start the discussion.
I say, do not hire a person with disabilities or Neuro diversities, unless you want somebody that shows up to work on time, that understands the rules and the requirements of the job, takes tremendous pride in getting 'em done. 99% of the time brings a great attitude to the workplace and that they're the kind of person that your other employees wanna work with.
Just like Troy said, I think underestimating what these people have and how they can contribute to your organization, that's the biggest mistake you can make. Not everything's gonna work fine and they'll have bad days, but I am a strong believer that just [00:28:00] big untapped resource and shame on us for waiting this long as an industry and as a country to figure out how to help these people be their very best and give their very best to other organizations.
Matt Horine: It's an incredible thing because like we were talking about earlier, the solution to a lot of workforce issues or the, the answer right there in front of you regionally, locally, however you slice that up. Tom, where can our listeners go to find out more about Gils, Mary Lee, and maybe some things that you're working on?
And it's funny because what you said at the beginning of the show. We've probably got those products in our house. Where could our listeners learn more about you and your company?
Tom Welge: Sure. Our website is a great overview of the company and the kind of things that we do. It's, it's a bit of a mouthful, but then, and I guess it'll be in your notes, but it's www.gilstermarylee.com.
I also, I'm on LinkedIn and I try to highlight. The work of our, not just of our Neurodiverse employees, but all our employees, because I think I'm very fortunate to have such a team to lead, and so certainly connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to share our experience and offer any [00:29:00] suggestions that I could if somebody's interested in exploring this.
Matt Horine: Troy work at our listeners, go to find out more about the Boone Center.
Troy Compardo: Yeah, certainly. I think www.boonecenter.com is a great first stop, but our Facebook page at Boone Center and our LinkedIn page also for Boone Center, we do a really great job at posting success stories about our individuals. We do what we call my BCI videos, so we go right to the people who are out there working in the workforce and they tell their story themselves and their quick vignettes about what that job and what.
Employment means to them both here within DCI admin, but also with our partners. And so I think those are just stories listened to and if, if you need something to make it feel good, go listen to a couple of our teammates to talk about what they're out, what they're doing.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. We'll be sure to link those in the comments on the show and on our socials as we air this in the coming weeks.
Tom and Troy, thank you both very much for your time. It's an incredible mission and a great story, and we're very happy to share it.
Troy Compardo: Thank you,
Tom Welge: Matt.
Troy Compardo: Thanks, Matt.
Matt Horine: Today's conversation shows that American manufacturing strength doesn't just come from equipment automation or policy, which we talk a lot about on this show, but it does come from people.
When manufacturers think [00:30:00] creatively about partnerships and expand who they consider part of their workforce, they unlock both economic and human potential. Tom and Troy are proving that inclusion isn't separate from performance, it reinforces it.
Matt Horine: To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our [00:26:00] website at www.veryableops.com and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies and how it will impact you and your business. If you're on socials, give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and leave us a rating and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you again for joining us and learning more about how you can make your way.