Revisiting 2025 Show Highlights with Mai Ling Chan & James Berges

James Berges 00:05 
and the guests this year taught us this, that your specific challenge, the thing that feels the most limiting, might be exactly what qualifies you to create that change in that area. 

Mai Ling Chan 00:15 
Welcome to the Exceptional Leaders Podcast. I'm Mai Ling Chan, and together with James Berges, we're getting you top tips and resources for building and scaling your disability-focused offerings straight from the forefront of disability advocacy and leadership. 

James Berges 00:33 
Welcome to our final episode of 2025. I'm James Burgess. 

Mai Ling Chan 00:38 
And I'm Mai Ling, and before we get into everything we covered this year, James, your life has been a bit of a rollercoaster. 

James Berges 00:44 
Yeah, that's one way to put it. Oh, let's see at Osmind, my full-time job, mental health tech company, we went through pivots, layoffs, new hires. All that to say is that startup life can give you whiplash.

But here's the reframe that kept me grounded mailing. It's all learning. None of it's personal, especially now with AI changing everything so fast. Staying adaptable I've realized is not optional. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:07 
Yeah, that adaptability theme actually showed up in many of our conversations this year. 

James Berges 01:11 
It did. And on the personal side, let me just say I traveled to Portugal. This is so crazy. France, Spain, Germany, Mexico City. And now I'm back in L.A. And every place brought out different parts of me. And also that language barrier gave me more empathy for people with speech and language disabilities, just that need to communicate. And what about what about you, Mai Ling? 

Mai Ling Chan 01:35 
Wow. Where do I start? My second son got married in July. He sped past my other son who had gotten engaged last Black Friday. That was an amazing intercultural experience for my family, and it was just beautiful. We love her. 

The Exceptional Leaders Network just keeps growing, and it's been incredible to watch everyone supporting each other and growing together. That's been fantastic. I've been hosting AI in Disability, and that's been so exciting and important. I've put myself in a leadership position to really talk about what are the ethics and the important strategies that SLPs should be using to integrate. That's been just amazing and exciting, and it almost changes every day. I've also been putting myself out there on social media in a very big way. I'm going to say doing more about vulnerability and my side of building startups. That was really uncomfortable to begin with, but it's real, and people are responding. Thank you to the listeners and the people that have been just kind of being there beside me and saying, wow, I'm so glad you shared, because it's my story too. 

James Berges 02:47 
Yeah. I think it's like we're talking about the valley of cringe before we started recording of how to feel so cringy to put myself out there. But I think the reframe that helped us both is that you're helping. You know, if even one person resonates with it and it helps them, that's like shining a light for other people. So it's worth it.

For me, I was just putting out silly comedy sketches out there. And that was important to just get out of my own comfort zone. Another uncomfortable topic is finances, which we'll talk a little bit about. But I know you worked with one of our guests this year on your own finances. 

Mai Ling Chan 03:21 
Yeah, Michael Ringel, he was great. He came well recommended to us in that he was helping families who have children with disabilities to do long-term planning. And so I said before I could recommend him, I thought, you know, my husband and I should have our own experience. So we went through the process with him and his team and really helped us to look at different avenues and different buckets for savings and for investing.

And ours has always been real estate. And that's just my family thing. And we've done very well. Been very blessed. But Michael helped us to really look at like long-term investing and things like that. But we'll get to that later. 

James Berges 03:57 
Yeah. Oh, God. My dad's voice is coming into my head just saying, live below your means and invest in index funds and just watch it come back. Which is good. Which is good advice.

But we'll get back to that. Let's talk about some other themes that came up in 2025. One thing that kept coming up was so many of our guests turned their own challenges into something that serves others. 

Mai Ling Chan 04:19 
Yes, and that's why we do this show, right? Like that's the thread that runs through almost every episode for eight years now.

Let's say a patient who can't afford therapy, a sewing machine at a rehab center, just waking up being unable to speak and then finding a way to make a difference for coming through that challenge. 

James Berges 04:38 
Yeah, we opened 2025 with Vanessa Abraham's story. She's a speech language pathologist who woke up in the ICU on a trick and ventilator, unable to speak. And the person who helps others communicate, imagine as an SLP, that's your thing, suddenly you couldn't express yourself and your own basic needs. 

Mai Ling Chan 04:57 
Absolutely. That irony was not lost on her, and she turned that experience into a book. It's called Speechless, and it's really transforming how she works with her patients now. She's not just treating them.

She's actually been one of them. And fun fact, James, I am a co-convention chair for our state association this year in Arizona, and she is going to be co-presenting with another SLP who had Guillain-Barre syndrome, and they're going to be here in Arizona presenting at the conference. 

James Berges 05:25 
amazing and see you got to put your voice out there and even if you have to write a book and you'll connect with all kinds of people i love that then there's also shy senior he was 23 traveling the world for business when a hand surgery left his arm paralyzed and suddenly he needed his mom to help him with basic tasks tasks excuse me like putting on a jacket

Mai Ling Chan 05:48 
These are just momentary disabilities, we think, but when he was at his rehab center, he started tailoring his own clothes to help himself. There happened to be a sewing machine there. And then other patients start to see what he was doing. And they were like, oh, hey, that's so cool.

Can you help me to do these types of alterations? And suddenly, he saw this need and he created Palta clothing and eventually led to designing uniforms for Israel's entire Paralympic team. 

James Berges 06:15 
Yep, and then Nike came calling after that. 

Mai Ling Chan 06:18 
Shwing! 

James Berges 06:20 
Just do it. 

Mai Ling Chan 06:21 
I know it's amazing which brings up something that Shay taught us which is that there's a real difference between adaptive and truly inclusive fashion and building within the community is so much different than building for them. 

James Berges 06:33 
Yes, it's including people in the whole design process of the product.

And Hal Hargrave, five days after college orientation, was paralyzed from the neck down at 17 years old. He went from lasting independence to needing help with pretty much everything. 

Mai Ling Chan 06:50 
17, right? Six months into his recovery, he saw another patient who was actually close to his age who couldn't afford therapy afterwards. And so, I can't believe it.

At that time, he said, you know what? I need to help this kid. And so, he talked to his dad, and together they started the Be Perfect Foundation. They raised over $10 million for the paralysis community. And here's another number that stuck with me. 50% of spinal cord injury patients have no insurance, and most who do are underinsured. 

James Berges 07:18 
Yeah, I mean, that's part of the innovation that's happening with AI and other things is like insurance is a tricky beast in every area of healthcare and you can't always adapt your way around it, but with enough elbow grease and grit, there are creative ways to give people access to life-changing treatments and therapies, of course, with approval and the testing and everything needed. But all that aside, Hal told us something I keep coming back to, which is you may never move on, but you can always move forward. 

Mai Ling Chan 07:50 
Yes. 

James Berges 07:51 
And now he's a father of two kids under two. And he's answering questions he once wondered about himself. 

Mai Ling Chan 07:57 
I love that. How about Pamela Rochealeu? That was your guest.

She took on a different path with her challenges. Doctors told her she had, quote, the most severe case of Tourette syndrome ever documented. 

James Berges 08:08 
Yeah, and guess what her response was? Turn it into stand-up comedy and start training Fortune 500 companies on inclusion. 

Mai Ling Chan 08:15 
That's amazing. And she's performed for over 100,000 people across six countries.

And she went from holding the detention record, what she calls weird kid boarding school, to sitting on their board of trustees, and all while being under five feet tall, which I love. 

James Berges 08:30 
High five. Yeah.

I think, Mai Ling, you've said I'm vertically challenged as well. But Pam put it this way, everybody has something and there's something really beautiful about getting to decide when and how and where I share it. That's sort of a theme that's come up also is just like how you share your disability. And really it's up to the person how you want to share it. And she just chose to do it through comedy. So, she's taken Tourette's, ADHD, and OCD from things that isolated her to sort of a superpower for connecting with audiences. 

Mai Ling Chan 09:02 
It's so true. And this is the word masking. And so I learned about that last year when I got my diagnosis of ADHD. And actually, it's about two years ago, but you know, you think that you just you're trying to mask and fit in when actually you want to be unmasking and being unique.

I love that. So she uses humor as the sugar that makes the inclusion medicine go down. 

James Berges 09:25 
Yeah. The masking thing is big too, because it's sort of like naming the elephant in the room. And I had students when I was at SLP in a high school where I would ask the girl if she was comfortable to sort of just name it instead of shaming it and saying, hey, my name is so-and-so, and sometimes I stutter. And she said she tried that out. And it's not natural to always start a conversation like that, but just to feel that was to name the elephant in the room and own the thing that you're trying to hide away. And so now it's empowering.

Beautiful. Another theme was AI in the future. It's a scary, weird future, Mai Ling, but hopefully positive. We spent a lot of time on AI because it's moving so fast and it's reshaping healthcare in real time. 

Mai Ling Chan 10:12 
That's true, and I saw a poll that around 78% of therapists and psychiatrists are at least trying AI scribes, and that's not early adopter territory anymore. 

James Berges 10:21 
I know, it's funny that when was ChatGPD invented? October 2023, something around there, and it's now being used more and more than Google.

It's just an AI arms race, sort of. Leila Denna-Staiger was one of our guests who saw this gap early. She created SLPs Talk Tech, a community that didn't exist before, to discuss topics that didn't exist before. Her approach was to literally cold email presenters who spoke about AI at the National ASHA Convention and said, let's talk. 

Mai Ling Chan 10:53 
I love that, and that right there, the courage to connect to strangers around a shared challenge is exactly how movements start. 

James Berges 11:00 
Yeah. So she, she was seeing the hype around AI, but I like that her approach is not hype driven.

She keeps coming back to the theme of human in the loop, making sure that AI serves clinicians and patients and not the other way around. 

Mai Ling Chan 11:13 
Yep, I use that all the time in my presentations. If you're like me, you can't get enough of books, podcasts, blogs, and other ways to find out how to create, grow, and scale. That's why I brought together 43 disability-focused leaders to give you more of what you're looking for. You will hear their stories in three best-selling books, which focus on general offerings, augmentative and alternative communication, and speech-language pathology. I invite you to search for Becoming an Exceptional Leader on Amazon so you can learn intimate, start-up pearls of wisdom and keep growing your brilliant idea.

Now let's get back to today's topic. And then there's Emily Michelle at FlexTogether, and she's doing something similar with pulmonary rehab, where less than 4% of Medicare patients can access life-changing intervention, even though it helps people breathe better and reduce hospitalizations. 

James Berges 12:06 
Yeah, though, which is I'm learning at Osmind too, even if you can prove that something reduces hospitalizations or keeps people at work, it doesn't always get covered by insurance. It's weird.

Um, but staying adaptable, she knew that telehealth can meet patients where they are, especially in rural areas or just people with breathing issues. It's harder for them to get around. So their goals would sound simple. Like I want to walk up the stairs without stopping, or I want to walk my dog around the block, but someone struggling with breathing. Those are huge wins. And I just want to highlight the point that with tech, you know, we measure what, what we measure gets managed, meaning if I'm always measuring my steps, I'm more likely to pay attention to it. And I think it's a double-edged sword where if we overly rely on objective data, we may miss the bigger picture of how this actually impacts someone's life. At the same time, someone who is depressed, for example, might not think they're making huge progress. Hey, I only walked 10 extra steps, but you know, when you're in the middle of a disability, whether it's a trouble breathing or depression, that data can give you a nudge that sparks an upward spiral that says, Hey, I am actually making progress. So that's, it's very powerful to have that data at your fingertips. 

Mai Ling Chan 13:19 
That's so true. All right. Well, let's move to Rachel Levy's story where she really resonated with me as an SLP because she's all about seeing possibility where other people see constraints. 

James Berges 13:31 
Yeah, she was an SLP for 16 years, then moved into customer success at a voice tech startup. And one day she watched a colleague launch a side hustle and thought, hey, if that guy can do it, so can I.

Sleepless nights followed after that, and she pitched her vision, and the babble group was born. 

Mai Ling Chan 13:50 
Yeah, and everyone's talking about SLP like the shortage and it's doom and gloom and Rachel flipped it and said, Hey, what if opening up more career paths would actually attract more people to the SLP field and I love that. 

James Berges 14:02 
Yeah, the SLP field, OT field, it's all shifting very much. But if we can stay adaptable and look at what other things were useful besides just clinical work, it does attract people to clinical work because it says, hey, we're not pigeon held in this one thing. We're valued in multiple ways.

And I love that her husband calls her a dreamer grounded in reality. Don't we want to all be grounded dreamers? When someone asked her point blank if she was making money, she didn't dance around it back to that financial theme. She's sustaining the business but haven't paid themselves yet. And that's the reality of building something new is you can't always pay yourself yet if you believe in the long-term vision. That's true. You gotta keep reinvesting. 

Mai Ling Chan 14:43 
And I'm going to do a little plug is that she invited me together with Katie Seaver and Rinky Desai to be a part of a presentation at ASHA. And we were totally blessed and we were seen as a centennial presentation because it is ASHA's 100th anniversary. And so we got to talk about, all four of us talk about our unusual and unique paths as speech pathologists into alternative careers and things. And it was a packed session, James.

People were sitting on the floor. I got emails. Someone told me that they wrote me a thank you card. I haven't received it yet, but it was amazing to really share and kind of go through our like windy journeys, you know, to where we are and be inspirations for other SLPs. 

James Berges 15:27 
That is amazing. Were you, as a side note, one of the non-traditional students to SLP?

Because I was and I always felt like we were the misfit kids in the corner that came from the real world before going back to grad school. 

Mai Ling Chan 15:41 
10 years. I was out 10 years, you're right.

Okay, well, Elizabeth Jenswold's path was also equally unexpected, speaking of. She went from planting trees with the now past Jane Goodall back in China to pitching to Jamie Dimon, who was the CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank at a Sunday dinner. 

James Berges 15:59 
Yeah, what? It's just like, how does that path even line up? Well, you'll have to listen to that episode to find out if you haven't. 

Mai Ling Chan 16:05 
Ah, nice blood! 

James Berges 16:06 
She pitched hiring people with intellectual disabilities for document processing roles. And when Jamie Diamond called it, oh, that's a nice philanthropy opportunity, Elizabeth pushed back and said, well, no, this is talent, not charity. 

Mai Ling Chan 16:22 
Yes. And I met her, James, through my son, Alex, who is very big in the philanthropy community in Dallas. And he sent me an email. He's like, Mom, you really got to meet her.

And I think she should be on your show. Isn't that awesome? 

James Berges 16:36 
Yeah, you just got to put yourself out there and you never know do I need to have kids for networking? 

Mai Ling Chan 16:42 
Oh my God, I love that. That's great. Well, yeah, she was a great, great win-win for the company and obviously people with disabilities by not treating inclusion as a charity. 

James Berges 16:53 
Mm-hmm. And here's a number that made me ask her to repeat it because I didn't really get it at first But at Bank of America a team of employees with intellectual disabilities Processed 18 million mortgage documents and their error rate was 11 documents not 11% but 11 total errors Is that crazy? 

Mai Ling Chan 17:14 
Yeah, that's not feel-good PR. Yeah, that's a business case. 

James Berges 17:17 
Yeah, so she's creating win-wins, and she rolled out that program globally now. And one employee, you know, going back to those individual wins, one employee celebrated his departure from that program by saying, while I was there, I bought a truck and I got a girlfriend.

And so, you know, independence looks different for everyone, and we got to measure those personal wins. 

Mai Ling Chan 17:39 
That's true. And as you mentioned at the beginning, Michael Ringel's episode really affected me personally, my family personally, like literally. 

James Berges 17:47 
Right, you worked with him on your finances. 

Mai Ling Chan 17:49 
I did. And what he taught us really applies to so many families in our community.

I say the disability community. Because when you have a child with disabilities, Michael says you're planning for two lifetimes. Let that sit there for a moment, right? It's so true. 

James Berges 18:03 
Yeah. I mean, it's hard enough to plan for just yourself and confront those money demons, but Michael helped cut those fears. And there's also cultural taboos around money and wealth that keep people stuck. So that's a whole other interesting angle there.

So looking forward, what strikes me about 2025 is how often the biggest breakthroughs came from people who refuse to accept the gap between how things are and how they could be. 

Mai Ling Chan 18:29 
Definitely. And I'm going to bring up Vanessa Abraham again. You know, she recovered. Then she wrote the book to expand her ripple of impact.

And then we have Shai, who didn't just adapt his own clothes. He built an adaptive clothing line, right? 

James Berges 18:40 
Yeah. And in a year where AI moves faster than anyone can, can look back, I feel like I'm rubbernecking watching AI evolve.

People like Leila Denna Steiger reminded us that tech works best when humans stay in the loop. 

Mai Ling Chan 18:54 
That's so true. And this is really on our radar for 2026 also.

So for our listener, how will a disability and speech therapy communities keep up with all of the changes and updates that are coming from AI? And that's the space where I am all in on. And as I said before, I've been presenting and training SLPs on ethical considerations, tactical integration, and the importance of the human component in everything that's created. So for our listener, whether you're a clinician, caregiver, entrepreneur, or advocate, you are part of this momentous time in history. Every conversation we have ripples forward. 

James Berges 19:26 
Yes, and the guests this year taught us this, that your specific challenge, the thing that feels the most limiting, might be exactly what qualifies you to create that change in that area. 

Mai Ling Chan 19:37 
That's true. And that's what the Exceptional Leaders podcast is about. We are going to be starting our, is it our eighth season or our ninth, James? 

James Berges 19:45 
I don't even know anymore. How old are we? Who are we?

The wonderful Martin Sibley hosted before me. And you've just been carrying the torch through so many episodes. I think you're in the top 0.01% of people continuing podcasts of all podcasts. 

Mai Ling Chan 20:00 
It's so true. So I think this is now our eighth season, and it has just been an honor to serve you our listeners. 

James Berges 20:08 
It really has been an honor and I really appreciate everyone listening. So thank you for being on this journey with us.

And I'm so excited that we'll see you or hear you or you'll hear us and please reach out in 2026. 

Mai Ling Chan 20:21 
We also want to give a big shout out to JD who has been with us for all seasons, every single episode. We could not do this without you, so thank you, JD.

Happy holidays, everyone. We hope you enjoyed this episode and invite you to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and share the show with people you think will find value from it. This helps the show a lot.

Or have a great guest referral. Reach out to us at xleaders at gmail.com. And if you want exclusive tips on becoming an exceptional leader, deliver straight to your inbox, just go to exceptionalleaders.com and sign up for our mailing list. Thanks for listening.