The Our Ability, Inc. founder and CEO shared lessons in resilience with the Derryfield community
On Monday, October 26, Derryfield welcomed John Robinson ’86 back to campus as part of this year’s Isakovich-Critz programming, centered on the theme of resilience in action. Robinson, a congenital quadruple amputee, husband, father of three, and founder and CEO of Our Ability, spoke at Community Meeting, then spent the day visiting with students and teachers in classrooms and during lunch in the Matarese Commons.
“I was you,” Robinson told the students. “I wasn’t sitting in this building because this building didn’t exist, but I was wearing your colors, reading your books, walking your halls, and listening to the advice of your great teachers.”
He opened with a question: what are you looking for when you check the mirror before school? Hair, outfit, headband, students called out. “You’re checking out what’s wrong with you,” he said. A best friend, by contrast, sees what’s right. “Imagine what you could do if you said, what’s great about me, not what’s wrong about me.” He admitted that at their age, he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. Friendships, many formed at Derryfield, helped him learn that “not only am I okay, but I have a lot to offer.”
Born in Binghamton, New York, in 1968, Robinson attended public school in the small town of Greene because his father, an Episcopal priest, joined the school board and became its president to make sure his son could be educated. When the family moved to Manchester in 1980, Robinson came to Derryfield. “I got a great education,” he said.
As a senior, he met with a vocational rehabilitation counselor named Jack Smith, who asked him one simple question: What do you want to do? Robinson loved sports, and Smith pointed him toward a career in media and Syracuse University. Having since worked with vocational rehabilitation programs in all 50 states, Robinson said that question is rare. “The experts like us that are sitting behind a desk think we know what’s best for you.”
Robinson graduated from Syracuse’s Newhouse School in May 1990, two months before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed. While his roommates landed jobs right away, he spent four and a half years unemployed, completing 25 second-round interviews before an NBC affiliate in Syracuse offered him an unpaid, commission-only trial. He finished his first year ranked number one in new business sales, only to be told he couldn’t go on the reward trip because he didn’t “look the part.”
“What it taught me is I have to fight,” he said. “I have to work towards achieving something every day.”
After 16 years in television, Robinson founded Our Ability in 2011. What began as a mentor network grew into a jobs board and, with support from Microsoft, an AI platform that matches the skills and interests of people with disabilities to employment. Today, more than 300,000 people visit the site looking for work.
Robinson also spoke about his 33-year marriage to his wife, Andrea, and their three children. “That title of a parent is the most important title that I have,” he said.
During a lively Q&A, students asked about everything from his pickup truck (a Tacoma, his third) to whether he tires of being called an inspiration. “Yes, it’s exhausting,” he answered honestly, explaining that visibility is still how he gets his message heard.
He closed with a challenge. “At the end of the day, you are the person you are internally. You just have to learn to bring it out,” he said, “with love and kindness … with confidence.” Tomorrow morning, he asked, look in the mirror and ask: What does my best friend see in me that they love?
