Challenge the status quo, build community, create purpose, and ensure inclusion. Those are the four core values of The Kennedy Collective. For the past 75 years, it has created communities that empower and employ people with disabilities in Connecticut.
WSHU: I'm Randy Kay with WSHU Public Radio and the host of Good at Heart, and I'm so excited about this interview today. So let's start with your name and what you do.
Rick Sebastian: Hi, Randy. Thank you. I'm Rick Sebastian. I'm the president and CEO of The Kennedy Collective, headquartered in Trumbull. We're in our 75th year. We started in Bridgeport, and we now serve throughout the state of Connecticut. We also employ people with disabilities in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and New York on federal contracts.
Amanda Carlson: My name is Amanda. I am with the Autism Health and Fitness Center, powered by The Kennedy Collective, which is on Race Brook in Orange.
WSHU: Okay, so full disclosure: I have had a history with The Kennedy Collective, formerly known as The Kennedy Center, which was very confusing for the entire performing theater world. I'm no longer on the board. I'm no longer connected. But of course, I have a soft spot for what you do. So, my first question on Good at Heart is: Who do you help, and how? So, Rick, I'll start with you.
RS: The simple answer is - the most vulnerable people in our communities, wherever our communities are, and the most vulnerable people are people with disabilities. The Kennedy Collective Kennedy Center started supporting people with intellectual disability, and through the years we've expanded to serve people with mental health disabilities, with physical disabilities, and now the newest disability community, the autism community, which makes up an even broader base of disability.
WSHU: Right, it's quite a spectrum. So, 75 years-you've just celebrated your 75th anniversary. Tell the origin story as briefly as you can.
RS: So, Evelyn and a group of 12 other families. Evelyn lived on Palm Avenue here in Bridgeport. I haven't had the opportunity to meet Evelyn. I arrived in 2018 as the new CEO, and Evelyn had passed before then. But in the records and in researching our rebrand and researching our 75th anniversary, we found documentation that someone in that group of Evelyn and 12 families described the 12 families as Evelyn and her 12 apostles. At the time, in the late '40s and the early '50s, when Evelyn's son Brian was born, and we continue to support Brian today. Brian lives in his own apartment in Bridgeport…
WSHU: And he was on the board for a long time.
RS: …and was on the board. Was employed. Receives a pension through his employment. Loves people, and that was the nature of Evelyn's story. She loved her son, obviously as a mother. She was told by the treating professionals at the time to essentially abandon him and send him elsewhere. Send him to an institution where his needs could be met. And she said, "I'll have none of that. And continued to lobby and continued to advocate in Hartford for services long before we had Public Law 94-142 giving kids with disabilities a right to an education in the early 1970s. And so Evelyn was a groundbreaker in many, many respects. When the 12 apostles got together, they thought about where our kids are going to live, where they're going to spend their day, how many of our children, when they're adults, can work. And so that story that Evelyn created in 1951, when we became incorporated, still is very much alive today. I use the phrase, since I've arrived here, that even those of us who didn't meet Evelyn without meeting Evelyn- Evelyn made a promise for each of us to be here. She made a promise for Rick Sebastian to be here without ever meeting Rick Sebastian. She made a promise for Amanda Carlson to be here without ever meeting, because that promise lives in people who want to support another human being and make that other human being's life better.
WSHU: Amanda, anything to add to that? Since you work in this specific area of the Kennedy Collective, the question again is, who do you help and how?
AC: You know, we're here for such a time as this. When I see implementing change on a grand scale, sometimes that looks like the little details. Where if you have, for example, someone like me who has a brother with autism who's 26 now, who during COVID had their day-to-day with workforce transition programs through high school completely shut down, and then when turning 23 and COVID started kind of dissipating a little bit, and community started getting back together, there was nothing for him in Illinois. No programs, not really any resources. Places like The Kennedy Collective changed that narrative for them to where there is opportunity for not just occupational therapy, speech, ABA, but now fitness, wellness, social-emotional programming, and that's what we're doing here at the Autism Health Fitness Center. Think of it as whole-person adaptive wellness.
WSHU: I love that we had a while back an organization called Move to Heal. They had people with addiction, anybody really, but addiction, mental health issues, disabilities come together. They partnered with many gyms for people to come together for a free rock climbing class or free fitness class, and they found that after being together and moving together for an hour, at AA meetings, wellness meetings, there was a camaraderie that came with physical motion. So I think that's wonderful. So that's who do you help and how? And Amanda, I'm going to stay with you because I think you started to answer this question: Why you? Why did you choose the field that you're in?
AC: So I actually had a little bit of education here at SHU. I did the prereq program for speech-language pathology online through Sacred Heart University because I was interested in speech. I had a biomedical chemistry and French undergrad background and wanted to really help people with autism. And speech was one idea. I have a lot of interns from Sacred Heart that come in through the gym that are either looking to do occupational therapy or physical therapy, or are exercise science interns, and one of the things that I really love about what I do and why me is I'm a developer of people or systems, or, you know, it's a teacher's heart in a way where I want to have that individualized impact, and that's like a childlike almost impact that I want to make on a person-to-person basis. But I want to do that for the most people, and having a powered by the Kennedy Collective format, now that the gym has been associated for about a year now, and we're on the 24th of October, we're going to have a little celebration, Fall Fest, to kind of commemorate that one year. It's those little things where in the details and in the doing, you're you're making an impact for so many more people than you know.
WSHU: I love that. Can you briefly describe a day at the gym?
AC: So that could look different depending on if it's Monday through Friday or Saturday Sunday. All week we are open, and Monday through Friday, if it's during a school year, we could be working at a school or another entity doing an adaptive fitness program for them, and then it may be where we're working on workforce development, having different individuals come in and clean as part of their job training. Then there's the training clients that'll come in, and that could be to answer your who, is really anyone that needs a safe, sensory, adaptable space where it's not the loud music. It's not…
WSHU: …people grunting in the corner.
AC: Intense... it's not the intensity. Yeah, yeah. Yet they work so hard. So they could have cerebral palsy, visual impairment. They could have seizure disorders. So autism is really just one aspect that we serve.
WSHU: Wow, that sounds amazing. You know, just being in the community of people who get it without having to explain yourself every two seconds must be such a relief, Rick. So why you and what brought you? From my time on the board, I know there was a real search for a new president, and you came in from another state. So, what drew you to do this line of work?
RS: I often answer by saying that this line of work drew me to it. I was born an idealist, and I was born impoverished, and I lived in poverty. Our family was homeless for a time period, and I was the kid in school who had an attraction to kids with disabilities. I started school in the '60s, and kids with disabilities went to a different school, and it wasn't known as a school in the state of New York. It was a vocational center, and then in 1972, '73. Congress passed the law that allowed all kids to come to school, all kids with disabilities, regardless of their ability to do what I did as a kid without a disability. And I had a cousin; he had an intellectual disability, severe intellectual disability. He did everything we did, except he couldn't read as fast as we could. I don't think he could do numbers. He couldn't do some of the cognitive, intellectual things that you do when you're going through elementary school and you're learning all of your basics. But he taught me that relationships are important. Here's a kid that is being told by the world, " You can't, you won't, you shouldn't. And that didn't stick with me. And then I became a high school student and playing football, playing basketball, playing baseball, and we had a kid in our school. He was the son of a farming family, a multi-generation farming family. His name is Randy. Randy had a seizure disorder. Randy had a mild intellectual disability, and Randy was one of the nicest, most relatable human beings that you could meet, and he was also a bulldog, and so he was a linebacker on our football team. Randy also had a seizure disorder, and I was the only kid in the school, the only kid on the football team that wasn't afraid when Randy had a seizure, and we were playing a game when we were both seniors, and this was in 1977, the fall of '77, and Randy had a seizure during a game, and I was the captain of the team, and Randy's family wasn't there, and so I rode in the ambulance to the hospital with him, 17 year old kid, and it was at that moment that I said to myself on this ambulance ride, I think I could do something with people like Randy and people like my cousin Benny, and I think I could make a living at that, and I think I could make a difference. And that idealism that I was born with then came to fruition, and I got my undergraduate degree all focused on people with disabilities. Got my graduate degree as a pastoral counselor, so that I could counsel people. Started my career as a therapist on the adolescent unit at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, and had a year of my time at Hopkins at a place called the Kennedy Institute for Handicapped Children; it was the neurological arm of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
WSHU: And that was down in Baltimore?
RS: That was in Baltimore.
WSHU: Okay, okay, wow. So it's kind of like a calling that came to you. It sounds like. Often I hear that there's a moment or a family member or something, and so when the search was on for a new president. You were a great fit.
RS: And like Amanda, Randy, I have a family member. I'm the dad of a now 47-year-old daughter who has multiple disabilities, severe mental illness, and physical disabilities. And so the Sebastian family lives and breathes disability, and we advocate for functional opportunity. And I'm focusing on the word functional because every person has something to offer to all of us and all of our communities from a functional standpoint. Whether it's a social friend, whether it's a volunteer at a local house of worship, whether it's an employee working on behalf of state government, city government, federal government-in our case- or commercial, every one of us, regardless of our law, has something to offer, and we've got a functional willingness to be part of that at The Kennedy Collective
WSHU: And help to create opportunities. I know that part of it is not just to keep them busy, but, you know, to get a paycheck, feel useful, feel purposeful. I know you know I've shared with you and listeners know I have a son with a disability as well, and I always say that he does best when he has community, purpose, structure, and treatment. So purpose is a huge part of that. We all need to feel purpose, and that's at the heart of the mission of The Kennedy Collective right now. So I'm going to get back in a minute to how people can help you and what the next 75 years might look like. But personally, since we're talking about our stories, is there a particular? Maybe you've already answered this, but is there a particular inspiration that you live by, or a quote that you live by, or one particular person who inspired you, other than what you've already shared, Amanda?
AC: There's this quote, and I don't know. It's kind of, “If not now, when? If not you, who?” And I think being a world changer requires you to be able to be willing to change yourself, and to look at the landscape of emotions and thoughts. And the abstract and reality of everything as a holistic viewpoint. If you have a trajectory that you're on, don't resist it. Go with that flow because a lot of times it's like water that will carve mountains and pathways; over time, it'll just, like neuroscience. You're building new neural pathways, and it gets stronger and stronger. And so, if you feel called to something, if you feel like there's something that
WSHU: I love that. Sometimes life shows you where to go. Rick, particular philosophy or quote or inspiration?
RS: Absolutely. It's pretty close to Amanda, and it's taking a stand, and taking a stand for those who haven't had a voice? It's easy to take a stand for something that we're going to receive. But taking a stand means, regardless of the circumstances that come your way, you don't falter, and you plant your flag. And I learned that from a young girl, a young adolescent girl named Beth, on the adolescent unit at Johns Hopkins; she came in to us on the Friday before Memorial Day of 1985 with bruises all over her body, and ultimately was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. And for the next 14 months of her life, she unfortunately passed away in September of 1986. She lived most of that life in an isolation unit at the children's center, and her entire philosophy, her entire way of living as a teenager with this terminal disease at the time, was I'm standing for being alive, and look at me, and look at how I see life as sacred. And so I tell all new employees. I meet new employees during our new employee orientation. I'll see employees in any of our group homes or day programs or employment sites. It's the sanctity of life. What we do at the Kennedy Collective is sacred. We don't have a spiritual connection to that. We don't have a religious connection to that. But being alive is sacred, and my job, my role, my function as the CEO is to ensure that those impacts that people like Amanda and her team can make, and the impacts that her members at the gym can make after they leave the gym and go back to their communities, to the other part of their community, that all of that is sacred and all of that is held in this thing that we stand for.
WSHU: Wonderful, thank you. How can people help you now? How can people help the Kennedy Collective?
RS: See us. The disability community for 75 years has been essentially invisible, and we're invisible to public policymakers. Be an advocate. Our state of Connecticut has so much wealth, but yet we have so many poor people. We have a disparity, and so see that people with disabilities are people with disabilities. They're people first, and so help us spread their awareness. Help us spread the news that people with disabilities offer value to each of us in our community. We have four core values at the Kennedy Collective: challenge the status quo, build community, create purpose, ensure inclusion. Help us live that. Help us express that in any community, wherever we are.
WSHU: I love that, Amanda. Anything to add?
AS: I would say be an advocate for those without a voice. And to also continue to spread the word, the good news, in a way that there are resources and opportunities that a lot of parents don't even know about, that are accessible, and sometimes even either complimentary or for a low fee, that we can help support their families.
WSHU: You bring up a very important point because sometimes you don't know where to turn. And Kennedy Collective is not a state-run agency; it is a nonprofit. So, what is the website that people can go to for information?
RS: www.thekennedycollective.org.
WSHU: Okay, thank you. And is there a place to donate there if they want to?
RS: There is a donate button at the top of the page.
WSHU: We have one of those on WSH as well.
RS: As you said, we're a nonprofit; we're a 501 (c) (3). If you donate to us, it may be eligible for a charitable contribution as identified by the IRS.
RS: We are unveiling a new website for the Autism Health and Fitness Center within the next several weeks.
WSHU: Wonderful. And will they link to that?
RS: Everything will link to the parent company, The Kennedy Collective.
WSHU: Fantastic, and people can volunteer as well, right?
AC: We have interns and volunteer opportunities here at the Autism Health Fitness Center, and we are definitely ramping up new opportunities as we head into the fall.
WSHU: Wonderful. Before I ask my final question, anything we've left out that you really wanted to say?
RS: Yeah, we are still that Kennedy Center that made a commitment to people to live a better life, regardless of a name change. We changed our name almost four years ago on October six, 2022, because we realized then, and I think we've realized it all along. And this is going back to the Evelyn and the 12 apostles story. None of us can do this alone. A center symbolized a single place. The collective is all of us joining together.
WSHU: A collective effort. A collective effort. So my final question, and I guess Amanda, I'll let you go first on this one. I just love to ask this and never get the same answer twice. Why do you think we're here on Earth?
AC: You know, it's interesting that the last thing we said before this question was that collective. I don't think we're supposed to do this alone, and if we have in this collective those that have, I would call them superpowers, where they have things that maybe they can do that no one else can do, let's not only embrace it but celebrate it and advocate for those things to have the limelight.
WSHU: Thank you, Rick.
RS: I'm specifically here to change the course of what life is like. I I realize that being the dad of a daughter, and our daughter has a son, and so being a papa. I have four children and six grandchildren, and I am convinced that legacy like Evelyn Kennedy left for for me as a CEO without even knowing me, without even knowing that a CEO was needed in in 2026, that we get to change the course of a person's life that is unseen, whether we're talking about people with disabilities in Fairfield County, New Haven County, the state of Connecticut, or whether we're talking about people with disabilities in Cadillac, Andhra Pradesh, India, people are people, and I was put on this earth to recognize that we are one, that we are again back to Amanda and back to our name. That we are a collection of people who are living, and it's up to us to have the stand, to have the power, to have the ability to say we can do this and we can make this better because we are here
WSHU: Together.
RS: Together, absolutely. Together.
