Mara, Focus. Eat a Pickle. Or a Peanut.

July 30, 2026

4-minute read

I was the last kid in my class to learn how to read a clock.

While everyone else was at recess, I was inside, getting one-on-one time with the teacher, working out where the hands were supposed to point. That's a small thing, but it's the kind of small thing you remember, because it tells you early that you're on the outside of something everyone else already gets.

School was full of those moments for me. In math, I hovered around the 20th percentile. In English and writing, the 90th. I wasn't behind, exactly. I was uneven, strong in some places, lost in others.

After one round of evaluations, my fifth-grade teacher gave every student a card naming the thing they needed to work on. Mine said "focus." I taped it to my desk. Before long it had company, sticky note after sticky note: "Mara, focus. Eat a pickle. Or a peanut." My desk became a running joke, a little spectacle of art and silliness. People added to it every day, and it was one of the few times I felt seen. The point about focus got lost somewhere along the way, but my strengths were on full display.

I was lucky. I had a teacher who knew the law, who understood IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), and who suggested I be tested for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). She was right.

So my parents found me tutors, in subject after subject, through my whole childhood and adolescence. I had access to extended time testing, and to medication that helped. I still flunked two subjects in ninth grade, but I had people who cared and resources to catch me when I fell through the gaps.

Not everyone does. That matters to the rest of this story.

Because years later, I became a direct support professional, helping people with intellectual and developmental disabilities learn job skills and accomplish their career dreams. It became the place where I finally felt like I belonged, where people understood that being different wasn't a deficit.

I built a job readiness curriculum. Part of it was helping each participant set up an email address so they could apply for jobs. That's where I started to see it. There were people who hadn't yet connected that the little arrow moving on the screen was tied to the mouse under their hand, that the two moved together.

But that gap wasn't about ability. It was about exposure. It was about years of unequal opportunity, classrooms that never made room for them, chances they were never offered. I had been given every kind of support to push through my gaps, while many of them simply didn't have that privilege.

So I started designing lessons to open those doors, bringing in guest speakers across all kinds of fields, from marketing to retail to fitness to restaurant work, so people could see the range of what was possible and find where their own strengths fit. Because everyone has strengths. It's just that not everyone gets the chance to use them.

That experience changed the direction of my life. It's why Embrace Access exists.

I started Embrace Access on a simple belief: digital accessibility is a human right. So much of life happens online now, and when a website, a post, or a document isn't accessible, people are excluded. And exclusion has a cost. It's a path toward isolation, judgment, and being left out. Everyone deserves to be part of what makes them feel strong, heard, and included.

That belief is the whole reason Embrace Access is a marketing company. Marketing is how organizations reach people, and too often it reaches right past the ones who were already being left out. Inclusive digital marketing means no one gets left out of the message.

It's also where the things I was actually good at finally mattered: art, creativity, connecting with people, and noticing the gaps. The strengths that covered that fifth grade desk are the ones I get to build a career on now.

So that's the work. Embrace Access helps people and organizations make sure everyone can participate online. We do it three ways:

We create marketing content that's accessible from the start, so no one is an afterthought.

We teach others how to do it themselves, so they're independent and sustainable in their accessibility initiatives.

We test and fix what already exists, finding the barriers in your current content and clearing them.

Underneath all of it is the same thing that pulled me into this work in the first place: everyone deserves to belong, to be understood, and to be heard.

That belief is where everything here begins. I'm glad you're here.