When Tanner Clippinger met with employment consultant Amanda Stevens in 2021 to talk about his future, he felt uneasy. Clippinger had recently graduated from the Community College of Vermont with a certificate in graphic design but had an unpleasant experience at his first job. He knew what he wanted to do and was passionate about it, but Clippinger has learning differences and a stutter and requires a supportive work environment. He worried he wouldn’t find it.
Stevens wasn’t nervous at all. She took the time to get to know Clippinger and set up regular meetings to talk with him about his strengths, struggles and dreams. She was certain that they could find the right job for him.
Stevens works with HireAbility Vermont, which employs a network of employment specialists and counselors to connect Vermonters with disabilities to job opportunities and help them find lasting careers based on their skills. Stevens is an employment consultant at the Vermont Association of Business Industry and Rehabilitation, which is a key partner of HireAbility.
To help Clippinger land a job that aligned with his desired career path, Stevens met with one of HireAbility’s dedicated business account managers, who build relationships with local businesses, to see if there could be a fit for Clippinger. They connected her with Douglas Corey at Main Street Graphics.
Corey owns the full-service graphics studio in St. Albans where “anything you can print on, they print on,” he says. Whether it’s cars, signs, banners, uniforms or stickers, the company designs and prints in-house for businesses in 19 states and five countries. When Stevens reached out to Corey about Clippinger, it seemed like the arrangement could be a good fit. Corey had just one graphic designer and could use someone else to help fill orders for his growing business. So they made a six-week on-the-job training plan for Clippinger. This is a HireAbility program that would allow Clippinger to get a good idea of the work environment, and Corey could take the time to train him. HireAbility paid Clippinger’s salary for those six weeks.
Stevens said it was “like a home run” to be able to support both a local business such as Main Street Graphics and Clippinger at the same time.
Attention: Workers and Employers!
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“And it just grew from there,” Corey said. “Tanner immediately became part of our team. Everything just clicked, from us as a company needing another employee to getting Tanner out of a job market where he felt stuck. It was a perfect fit.”
Clippinger agreed. “At this job, the people here care about me as a person and want to help me. And that’s part of what makes all of us do so well here. We all work together.”
When the six weeks were up, Corey offered Clippinger a full-time job. He’s been employed there ever since.
“I’ve grown a lot in that time,” he said, referring to his skills as an employee and himself as a person. One of his recent achievements: using the money he saved from his paychecks to buy his first car.
This is the kind of work that HireAbility does for businesses and Vermonters on a regular basis. They offer a variety of programs designed to help connect employers with employees that need support and a chance.
Local Partnerships Create Local Careers
HireAbility’s team of vocational counselors gets connected with someone like Clippinger through a variety of local partnerships. One, with the Community College of Vermont, has lasted more than 20 years. CCV has a program funded by HireAbility called the Vermont Career Advancement Project, which supports students with disabilities who are pursuing career advancement through an industry credential, degree or registered apprenticeship.
Last year, CCV and HireAbility launched another effort called the Career Pathways Entry Program (CPEP). The program starts with a six-week exploratory experience for students to learn more about jobs by shadowing people doing them while also earning college credit, industry-recognized credentials and a $560 stipend. Students in the program can experience the career they want to pursue with local employers looking to hire and, once they’re hired, move directly into an apprenticeship or custom Earn-and-Learn program.
“What’s really nice for employers is that we are helping them expand talent pools with one-stop shopping. They don’t have to be experts in supporting people with disabilities; they just have to work with our team.”Michael Keogh
“What’s really nice for employers is that we are helping them expand talent pools with one-stop shopping. They don’t have to be experts in supporting people with disabilities; they just have to work with our team,” said Michael Keogh, CCV’s director of workforce development. He’s also part of a team that is developing a training program for employers on how to make hiring practices more inclusive.
“We work very closely with HireAbility to ensure a seamless transition between exploration to employment,” Keogh said.
One of these CCV students is April Irish, who is studying medical coding and billing. Irish moved to Vermont five and a half years ago while pregnant with her son. At first, Irish was living out of her car and in family shelters as she tried to find housing and a job. A single mom who experiences depression, she said she was worried about finding a job that would enable her to support her family. That’s when she found HireAbility.
“I just wanted a good employer that could work with my schedule as the sole caregiver for my son,” she explained. One of HireAbility’s counselors asked Irish about her past experience and her goals.
“They really made me feel like they listened and understood what I was looking for. I said that I wanted a real career and not just a job, and they really got that,” Irish said.
Attention: Workers and Employers!
Need help navigating your current career or finding a new path? Or are you an employer looking to hire skilled Vermonters with disabilities?
Reach out to HireAbility Vermont!
Her counselor suggested CCV and connected Irish with advisers there who helped her sign up for classes. To be with her son more, Irish wanted to work from home, and they suggested medical coding and billing. From there, HireAbility paid for Irish’s books, headphones and laptop for her classes. Her counselor also helped her apply for Vermont Student Assistance Corporation grants to pay for her classes.
HireAbility makes services accessible for people, with a disability and a desire to work being the primary components to receive services. Discussions around career goals and paths to get there include exploration around finances and funding. “We help people identify their career goal, and then we make sure that conversations around finances and tuition happen along the way,” said Emily Shiels, who works as the project director for HireAbility’s Vermont Career Advancement Project.
Irish will graduate by fall 2026 with a certificate, though she’s already started working in an internship program in her field. When she graduates, it’s likely that she’ll already have a job.
“HireAbility really does have your back and has supported me in every way it possibly can.”
The Purr-fect Career
Since Diane Dalmasse started with HireAbility in 1981, she’s been passionately committed to its mission of creating equity for people with disabilities in their careers. Back then, the organization was known as VocRehab, and she worked as a supervisor in its Barre office. She became the director 10 years later. Dalmasse has stayed at the organization for more than 40 years because of its ongoing commitment to helping people. That’s never changed, she says, even though the name has.
In 2014, the state passed the reauthorization of the Rehabilitation Act, which changed its approach to focus on careers. “It solidified that we weren’t just about helping people find jobs; we were helping them find careers. We began to focus on job retention and measurable skills,” Dalmasse explained. This change allowed HireAbility to form the Earn-and-Learn program, which funds Clippinger’s career pathway and the Vermont Career Advancement Project. But it does a lot of other things, too, whether that’s helping pay for textbooks or for a summer career exploration program for high schoolers.
That’s how Marielle Benoit, 18, connected with HireAbility. Benoit grew up in Hyde Park and went to Lamoille Union High School. She was always interested in veterinary medicine but didn’t know much about the field or whether she’d like it in practice. So Benoit talked to her paraeducator about it. From there, they connected her with HireAbility to see if there was a way Marielle could explore her passion for taking care of animals.
Benoit participated in the Summer Career Exploration Program, through which she worked at Lamoille Valley Veterinary Services for five weeks and shadowed techs and assistants. She went to appointments, attended surgeries and, by the end of the five weeks, felt confident in what she wanted to do.
“I didn’t want the program to end,” she said. So when she went back to school in the fall, she kept working at the veterinary office a couple days after school every week.
“You could tell Marielle picked up things so quickly,” said Katy Weigel, the practice manager at Lamoille Valley Veterinary Services. “She was so willing to learn a new skill or help with lab work. She was such a great addition to the team.”
Benoit left Lamoille Valley Veterinary Services in July 2024 to prepare for her next step — Vermont State University, where she’ll study to be a vet tech. But she has every intention of returning to Lamoille Valley Veterinary Services.
“I really appreciate the connections I made there, and it would be good to go back and really show them what I learned and how much they helped me,” Benoit said. Weigel’s already told Benoit that they would love to have her back.
Benoit isn’t the only HireAbility Earn-and-Learn participant who has been placed at Lamoille Valley Veterinary Services. The smiling face at the front desk of the clinic most days is Amy McGowan, another HireAbility alum. She broke her ankle in 2020, and her change in mobility resulted in her losing her job at the time. McGowan was living in a shelter when she was connected with HireAbility.
Attention: Workers and Employers!
Need help navigating your current career or finding a new path? Or are you an employer looking to hire skilled Vermonters with disabilities?
Reach out to HireAbility Vermont!
“I was feeling pretty down on my luck. It was hard,” she said. “HireAbility provided me with so much support.”
A HireAbility counselor helped McGowan refresh her résumé, and the Earn-and-Learn program paid for an online administrative training class that allowed her to apply for her current job at Lamoille Valley Veterinary Services.
“HireAbility helped me with so much,” she said. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.”
This article was commissioned and paid for by HireAbility Vermont.
