How young people with special needs enter the workforce.
John Montell “Monty” Mitchell was reeling last year. He heads into next year, though, freshly certified as a paramedic, committed to fatherhood and nurturing a dream that ends in the letters “M.D.”
Between high school graduation in 2021 and today, he’s lost a sister to murder and his best friend to an accident. That’s a lot to carry.
He’s been helped, though, by something his late sister shared with him: A video explaining, through animated ducks, the obsessions common to those on the autism spectrum.
“The type of duck that I am? A little bit of a special duck,” he said as he sat in the lobby of the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) Boyce Campus.
This year he’s waddled through a curriculum of academic study and practical training that he’s eager to demonstrate. “There’s two types of cardiac arrest protocols you follow, for v-tach and v-fib, which is ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation,” he began, and for 10 minutes quacked nonstop about the symptoms and emergency procedures for each.
He’d like to work as a paramedic, pronto, and an ER doctor eventually. Though his anxiety sometimes brings him near tears, he’s not stopping. “The quote I like to live by is: ‘I’m scared all the time, but every day I get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other,’” he said.
It’s a scary time to step into the job market. It’s unclear how rising unemployment will affect people with disabilities, who in the last few years reached historic levels of employment that have yet to be tested by recession. Adding to the uncertainty: ongoing changes to federal disability programs.
This year, Pittsburgh’s Public Source has shared the journeys of people with disabilities into and through the work world. As Mitchell starts his career, local and national experts we’ve interviewed see reasons for both optimism and worry.
Chrissy Whiting-Madison
Program Director, Sally & Howard Levin Clubhouse & Supported Living Programs
- Hope: “We’re seeing a clear shift from employers viewing disability as a barrier to recognizing it as part of a diverse, talented workforce. More companies are adopting intentional DEI hiring practices, more states are expanding supported employment models.”
- Concern: “If resources tighten, employment supports like job coaching, transportation assistance, and transitional/supported employment opportunities could become harder to maintain.”
Mitchell’s challenges are of the sort that make everything difficult without necessarily drawing attention that can lead to support.
Remembering facts is second nature for him. Interpersonal stuff, though, can be tricky on his part of the autism spectrum. “It is hard for you to, you know, sometimes see how other people are feeling,” he said. “Sometimes it is hard for you to even understand what you’re feeling.”
High school in Penn Hills was tough. “I never really fit in, and I could never understand why.”
He got through it without an individualized education program, finding himself in a heating and air conditioning vocational program. It didn’t excite him. He graduated high school into the “depressing era” of COVID-19 shutdowns.
“At that point I’m like, what am I gonna do with my life?”
Susan Adelman
Family faculty, University of Washington Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (UW LEND)
- Hope: “States are working together to learn from each other. Washington state legislators are championing ideas and policy and looking to others for strategies.”
- Concern: “Personal care and job coach pay rates are not aligned with the workload. Case loads are going up, while supports are shrinking. Unemployment and uncertainty is up in the general population so that can translate to the same in the supported population.”
Mitchell comes from a family heavy with firefighters and medics. His mother nudged him into an emergency medical technician program. He began volunteering with the Rosedale Volunteer Fire Department in Penn Hills.
Just as he was getting started, his sister, Amari Mitchell, was murdered in Homestead at age 18. She was rushed from the scene to a hospital but died three days later. Mitchell’s closest friend later died in a vehicle accident.
“I haven’t sat down and had the time to fully grieve,” he said.
He couldn’t focus, and failed a key test. For around a year he drifted. He was finally certified as an EMT in late 2023, and he started applying his training with the fire department.
“And then after a few months, I said, you know what, this is easy.” He could do much more.
Ryan Hyde
Executive director, Pennsylvania Office of Vocational Rehabilitation
- Hope: “More employers are stepping up to partner with OVR. For example, Wawa recently began collaborating with us to grow employment opportunities, and Sheetz has been a longtime partner: hiring workers with disabilities and supporting Special Olympics events. Last year alone, OVR helped more than 6,000 Pennsylvanians with disabilities secure jobs with over 3,500 employers statewide.”
- Concern: “The federal proposed budget would reduce the national vocational rehabilitation program’s funding back to 2024 levels and eliminate several support programs that are critical to the disability services and disability employment ecosystem.”
The news that he’d be a father prompted, in Mitchell, an internal gestation process.
“It warps your brain just a little bit,” he said. “And then once your child is actually here, OK, that’s when it kicks you in the teeth, and that’s when you say, excuse my French, shit’s gotten real.”
He said he needs his daughter, approaching age 2, to feel supported, and to see that “she can accomplish anything that she desires.”
He vowed to demonstrate that.
He told his fire chief that he planned to attend paramedic training at CCAC Boyce. Chief Dave Sanford told him about a full scholarship program for firefighters.
“And I was like, free college?” Mitchell recounted. “Heck yeah.”
Katherine Bournelis
Director, University of Washington Employment Program
- Hope: Some states are pursuing policies and laws that discourage employers from requiring a driver’s license “if driving is not an essential function of the job” and moving away from other “requirements that are unrelated to job functions.”
- Concern: “Economic uncertainty, including impacts of tariffs and market instability, is pushing employers to operate with a leaner workforce, and increased expectations that fewer employees do more. This has led to much broader ‘do it all’ job descriptions that intentionally or unintentionally exclude folks with disabilities.”
A year ago, Mitchell started paramedic training. He had to take a mid-year break, and occasionally tapped the campus cupboard to supplement his groceries. Despite distractions, he was able to absorb the material and recall it at will.
“I would say that’s John’s superpower, and it always kind of shocks me when he can recite verbatim,” said Anthony Kane, the campus’ dean of students for student advocacy.
Kane met Mitchell when another educator told him the student was having difficulties. By their second conversation, Mitchell opened up about fatherhood, food insecurity and housing instability.
Kane worked to build a campus family around Mitchell, including secretarial staff, a support specialist and the security staff. The team “was able to help just make sure that his basic needs were being met because when you’re doing this type of work, the last thing you’re thinking about is yourself,” said Kane. “The people who show up first to serve are always the ones that are last to get their own help.”
Kathleen Walker Borgione
Faculty specialist, Center for Transition and Career Innovation, University of Maryland, College Park
- Hope: “More people understand something simple: Having a real job at a real wage opens doors for people with disabilities. It helps people build skills, make choices and live the lives they want. States are making progress by moving away from subminimum wage and creating better pathways from school to work.”
- Concern: “I’m worried that cuts to education and Medicaid will take away the support people need to get and keep jobs. When funding is uncertain or stalled because of politics, progress slows down and people lose opportunities.”
Remembering details of 72 drugs? Not an issue for Mitchell. Mastering digital endotracheal intubation? “Like 1,000 or 2,000 times on a mannequin, you get pretty used to it,” said Mitchell, while demonstrating the process. “You feel for the epiglottis, you use your fingers to maneuver the ET tube inside of the trachea …”
Dealing with a person he felt was being dishonest, though, threw Mitchell into confusion. He turned to Kane. “I was in his office almost crying,” he said, “but I don’t give up.”
Instead he refocuses on the work. “Sometimes I do EMS just to get away from my personal life. When you focus on other people’s problems, sometimes yours seem just quite small.” Compared to the person you’re serving, who is in a life-or-death situation, “What is a little bit of an emotional problem?”
Kris Eichner
Transition coordinator, Montour School District
- Hope: “One approach that was passed in Pennsylvania was the PA ABLE account [which is now expanding]. It’s a trust fund that allows individuals with disabilities to save money and incentivize them to work more hours.”
- Concern: “Balancing how many hours one can work without getting federal funding getting cut draws its own problems. I [still] hear stories often that they need to limit hours, because it will affect their [Social Security] funding.”
As December waned, Mitchell was waiting to take the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians test, which would officially make him a paramedic. He was running through hundreds of practice questions on protocols and pharmacological facts.
He was also looking at job openings. He said he knows it’s a tough labor market, but his training gives him a shot. “As long as people get sick or there’s house fires, I’ll have a job.”
He’d prefer to stay local, but also has eyes on openings a few states away, as long as it’s not so far that he can’t get back in a day if his daughter needs him. Mitchell called his ex “a wonderful mother to our daughter.”
“Once I finish raising my daughter, I plan on actually going back to med school,” he said. Being a paramedic would prepare him well for an emergency room residency, he added.
Is he as self-assured as he seems? “No, I’m worried about the future every day.”
Brandy Solomon
Director of employment programs, Strong Center for Developmental Disabilities, University of Rochester Medical Center
- Hope: “Employers across [New York] state are also recognizing the value of tapping into diverse talent pools, which gives me confidence that inclusive hiring is becoming a core workforce strategy rather than a specialty initiative.”
- Concern: “System fragmentation remains a challenge as individuals still have to navigate multiple agencies and funding streams, and gaps in coordination can limit access to employment.”
Paramedicine is stressful work. A high percentage of medics suffer post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mitchell said he’s gotten accustomed to the stress. He’s seen patients rapidly deteriorate before his eyes and become unresponsive. He’s been out on scenes in which the patient is in cardiac arrest — and doesn’t make it. He has had to tell people that a loved one is gone.
He’s been there when he knew, and the patient knew, that the end had come “but they don’t want to die alone. You have to be that person who is just not going to leave.”
His aspirations would put him in a field in which people with disabilities are dramatically underrepresented. While 1 in 4 U.S. adults has a disability of some kind, only around 1 in 32 physicians identifies in that way.
There’s no reason someone on the autism spectrum can’t have great bedside manner, Mitchell argues.
“Just because it’s hard for you to understand how people are feeling doesn’t mean that you can’t be a good healthcare provider,” he said. “Just because it’s hard to understand people’s feelings doesn’t mean you can’t have great empathy for others.”
Note from Rich, the reporter: Throughout the Job One series, I’ve shared snippets of my family’s path through disability toward sustainability. Our elder son Zach, or Z, continues to work two part-time jobs that contribute to his sense of connection to community and make good use of his relentless drive to make the world a cleaner, neater place. Reporting this series has allowed me to get to know people at many stages of similar journeys, and I’ve been thrilled to help them tell their stories. Below: updates on three of the people we’ve chronicled as they head into 2026, certain only that it will be eventful
Judah Scott, 13, Greenfield
Eighth grader, Pittsburgh Arsenal 6-8
Judah showed up at a gift giveaway in a Grinch tossle cap. Pulling it down over his face, he announced: “I’m a Grinch.” Then he rolled it up. “It’s me, I’m under there.”
When Public Source first met Judah last winter, he was darting between school and extracurriculars while building a social media following. He’s still uninhibited enough to do a cartwheel down the middle of the UPMC Health Plan Community Center in East Liberty in the middle of a gift event. But you can’t miss the fact that he’s maturing.
“Don’t you want to decorate a cookie?” asked his mother, Teaira Collins, who leads Lion of Judah Enterprises, one of the three organizations that ran the Dec. 20 giveaway.
“Mom, I don’t want to decorate a cookie,” Judah protested. “I have plenty of cookies in the house.”
With Judah now eight months from high school, Collins is considering moving him to a private high school with a special program for inclusion of Down syndrome students in mainstream classrooms. She has pushed for more inclusion at Arsenal, but staff have said they’re “worried about him not getting the supports that he needed,” said Collins.
Judah is less active on YouTube and other platforms than he used to be, said Collins, but he’s still thinking big.
“He still wants the Lamborghini,” she said. “He still wants to live in Vegas.”
Talan Baker, 20, Lincoln Place
Welding program student, Commonwealth Technical Institute at the Hiram G. Andrews Center
In the spring Baker was dreaming of a career in underwater welding. After seven months at the state-run trade school in Johnstown and lots of time on YouTube, he has an even edgier ambition.
“My personal favorite that I saw on a YouTube video is explosion welding,” he said on a Saturday morning over Christmas break while lounging in the living room of his family’s home.
Explosions are not on the curriculum at the center, where Baker has knocked out core classes plus stick welding, and is heading next year into metal inert gas (MIG) and tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding. After completing welding training at the center mid-year, he could work with OVR to find a job or pursue a more specialized certification.
Two seasons living in a dorm room and studying with a class of 11 would-be welders has also made him more friends than he’s had at other schools. Each of them is overcoming a challenge: childhood cancer, a brain tumor, paraplegia or (like Baker) autism. “The whole school is filled” with autistic students, he said. He’s unique in one way, though: He can drive a stick shift.
Geoffrey Gordon, 44, Shadyside
Artist, Geoffrey Gordon Fine Art
Seven of Gordon’s paintings sold by the end of a late summer exhibit in Tarentum — a personal record.
His skeletal dysplasia, though, flared when he tried a retail job that could have brought in regular income.
“It was too physical for me to do,” Gordon said, as he sat in the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, where a dozen of his paintings hung. “I’d work four hours, take a day and a half off. That’s one of the reasons I’m using my cane. It’s also a reminder that I need support and I can’t outthink it.”
The brief-but-acute crisis in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which he receives, reminded him of the downsides of dependence on government assistance. “I’m still terrified, to tell you the truth,” he said. “I have no idea what our president is going to do, and whether I’ll be able to eat next month or not.”
He’s working with OVR to find another job.
Meanwhile? “Art is a therapy for me to figure out life,” he said. “Making sense of things that I see on canvas helps me to gain confidence in a world that does not make sense.”
Rich Lord is Z’s father, and the managing editor of PublicSource, and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Angela Goodwin.
Pittsburgh-area resources:
Allegheny County Department of Human Services Office of Developmental Supports
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Bethany Ziss, M.D., developmental-behavioral pediatrics at Allegheny Health Network
Commonwealth Technical Institute at the Hiram G. Andrews Center
Community College of Allegheny County Disability Resources and Services office
Disability Rights Pennsylvania transitioning guide
Gary Swanson, M.D., psychiatry at Allegheny Health Network
Pennsylvania Community on Transition
Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations
Pittsburgh Public Schools Program for Students with Exceptionalities
Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission
Pennsylvania Office of Vocational Rehabilitation
Sally and Howard Levin Clubhouse
