New Stanford MBA Club Envisions A World Accessible To All

Growing up in Turkey, Batu Demir and his brother, both blind since birth, tied a plastic bag around a soccer ball so they could chase the audible crinkles and flaps while playing with their neighborhood friends.

They practiced echolocation to ride bikes around the familiar streets, learning to sense parked cars, buildings, and even sign poles. Of course, sensing a pole through one’s echo is much harder than, say, a building, but it only took crashing once or twice for Demir to learn where the poles were.

All his life, Demir has had to find his own way of doing everyday things in order to live in a world built for the seeing. When he graduates from Stanford Graduate School of Business next year, he hopes to work in AI, developing tools designed for adaptability from the start.

“This ties back to the theme of universal design. I’m against having accessibility or representation for social awareness, because I think it’s a business case – a profitability case,” Demir tells Poets&Quants.

Promoting universal design – a way of designing products, services, buildings, etc., so that everyone can access them regardless of their ability, age, or other status – is just one tenant of a new student-led organization Demir co-founded at Stanford GSB. The Disabilities and Caregivers Club aims to raise awareness, provide support, and foster innovation in the disability space.

“There are a lot of people with disabilities in the world, and if you design for them and with them in mind, your business will sell better and you will have more profits because of that,” Demir says.

‘NOT AN UNCOMMON EXPERIENCE’

When Paulina Paras arrived at Stanford GSB in 2022, she was surprised there wasn’t already a club for students with disabilities or for their caregivers. Most of her life, Paras has been a fierce advocate and caregiver for her younger sister with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She studied neuroscience at Duke University to better understand the brain and behavior of people with disabilities. As a consultant at Bain, she focused on healthcare products and started the company’s Disability Affinity Group. She also worked at a disability startup providing pediatric autism therapy.

A club for disabled students, caregivers, and allies at one of the top business schools in the world – a b-school training leaders for the top companies, startups, and organizations – felt essential.

Paras got to talking with classmate Sophia Fang who suffers from chronic migraines, a condition that often confined her own mother to dark bedrooms for days at a time. Both wanted to create a club to push back against the self and societal stigma surrounding disabilities.

“Before coming to GSB, I didn’t tell anyone in my life that I had migraines outside of a couple of close family members and friends. I honestly viewed it as something that might be seen as a crutch or that people would see me as less capable,” says Fang, MBA ‘24. “At GSB, I almost made a pledge to myself that I wanted to live transparently and really understand what it means to live with a disability. What does it mean to embrace that identity, and what does it mean to create community around it?”

Along with Demir, who is a year behind Paras and Fang, they started building the Disabilities and Caregivers Club from the ground up.

To measure the need for such a student-led group, just consider the numbers: One in four Americans live with a disability, and 15% are neurodiverse and face higher risks of comorbidities. Some 7.5 million Americans have an intellectual or developmental disability and require significant support in their daily lives. Many more act as caregivers, and still more work, go to school, or socialize with disabled people.

At Stanford, as the club co-creators learned in their research, one in five students is registered with the Office of Accessible Education.

“It’s not an uncommon experience, but there is still a stigma that exists,” says Paras, MBA ‘24. “But we also know the benefits that come with having people with disabilities participate in all different facets of life. They bring different ways of thinking and doing things. There is a ton of data showing the benefits of having people with disabilities in the workplace and in educational spaces.”

BUILDING A NEW GSB COMMUNITY

While there are more than 60 student clubs at Stanford GSB, starting a new one is no easy task.

You must develop a detailed operational plan, a workable budget, and demonstrate broad student need along with robust student support. You have to provide a sustainability plan – an assurance the club will continue after its founders have graduated and moved on. You have to present to the Office of Student Engagement and get their approval.

The trio spent this last academic year working through the application, surveying classmates, and developing their framework. They deliberately set a broad definition for inclusion because disability isn’t always visible. Neither is it always neatly categorized. They explicitly opened the community to caregivers who must sometimes interrupt their lives to care for disabled friends and family, and to allies who will inevitably work, study, and live alongside disabled people.

They built the club around three pillars:

• Building a GSB community: So far, they’ve organized quarterly dinners where students can share their stories and allies can learn about accessibility issues. They also hosted an Ask Me Anything event, inviting GSB classmates to Town Square for candid conversations with a caregiver and a student who uses a wheelchair.
• Creating a sustainable club that will outlast each of its founding members: Though Fang and Paras have since graduated, Demir will serve as club president in the coming year and is already thinking of ways to engage new students with the club. The co-founders also worked closely with admissions to ensure that students and applicants with disabilities feel included in the application process, and to alert new admits to the club. They hosted webinars encouraging disabled students to apply to GSB.
• Increasing academic inclusivity and representation in GSB programs: They are developing a list of potential case subjects centered on the disability experience, while highlighting innovators in disability tech, aiming to bring more diverse perspectives into the GSB curriculum.

IMPACT BEYOND GSB

In researching and developing the new club, the founders reached out to similar clubs at other MBA programs like Harvard Business School and The Wharton School to share ideas, experiences and strategies. It’s almost like the start of a coalition between such groups, Fang says.

They also hosted a Universal Design workshop featuring renowned inclusive designer Rama Gheerawo that attracted over 50 attendees. One mindset the club is working to change is that people with disabilities need a host of extra accommodations. While there may be some accommodations, people with disabilities also have that secret sauce called resilience, Fang says.

“We’re constantly dealing with a world that’s not built for us, being creative and flexible to work through that, and delivering on the goals that we have. That is a super valuable skill, and something I think both GSB and future leaders endorse,” she says.

Paras agrees, and takes it a step further. Perhaps the most recognisable example of universal design is the curb cut effect. Think of those small cut-out ramps in sidewalks. While they were created to ease mobility for people using wheelchairs, they make maneuvering strollers, roller suitcases, delivery dollies and other contraptions easier for everybody.

“Right now, people with disabilities have to adapt to a world not built for them. What if we turned that on its head and actually designed things that are inclusive of people with disabilities that could be used by all?”

Beyond GSB, all three club founders hope to work in the disability space.

Fang is creating a disability tech platform, Peachy Day. Inspired by her own, and her mother’s struggles with chronic migraines, the app provides patients with daily tracking, access to neurologists, lifestyle coaching, more. Fang is winner of the Stanford Impact Founder’s Prize, which is allowing her to build out her platform full time.

Paras is building LivEdge Capital, an early-stage VC firm investing in startups that support the independence and inclusion of people with disabilities.

As for Demir, though plans could always change after he graduates next year, he hopes to help build AI-enabled assistive technology that can help people navigate everyday challenges. Perhaps an AI assistant that can tell him when a traffic light changes and it’s safe to cross a street. “The thing I always say is, if cars can self-drive, why can’t I?”

You can read more about these founders’ ventures and backgrounds in several in-depth profiles on the following pages. We also feature a wheelchair rugby Paralympian looking for Gold in Paris, a founder of two disability tech startups, and a founder and caregiver who designs and advocates for care plans for her autistic brother (and thousands of others in California).

Even as the world is moving to more inclusivity, people with disabilities remain underrepresented in C-suites and leadership roles across sectors. This kind of representation still matters, Demir says.

“The biggest reason for this lack of representation is that people can’t imagine themselves in these roles. That’s what I want to change.

“I want people to imagine a life as if they didn’t have a disability. What would they want to do? We, as a society, play a big role in this. It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, you’re blind, you can’t play soccer,’ but there are different ways. It’s just we don’t know them until someone tries.”

Click through to read more about disability and caregiver stories from Stanford GSB students and alumni.

NEXT PAGE: Batu Demir, MBA ‘25, Disabilities and Caregivers Club incoming president, aspires to work in AI applications for the disabled