Photo by Craig Sherod

Karae Lisle (MBA 1998) has watched firsthand the struggles of homeless, with a close family member living on the streets and in shelters in Florida, on and off, for years. His personal struggles limited the family’s ability to help, so Lisle, based in Palo Alto, California, placed her hopes in the nonprofits and social services organizations whose staffs had the skills to help, and plotted a different way to give back. “My thinking was, if I were to help people here in California,” she recalls, “that would pay it forward for someone helping my family member in Florida.”

The idea was to take her business know-how—revenue generation and growth in the private sector—and apply it to nonprofits rooted in social services. She was brought aboard to assist San Mateo–based Shelter Network implement a merger with another homelessness service provider, InnVision, in Santa Clara.

In January 2019, Lisle became CEO of Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, a nonprofit that offers evaluation, counseling, training, and education for the visually impaired. Like any CEO, she jumped in quickly and learned the challenges the nonprofit faces, immediately identifying an area for growth: technology. “Technology companies are acknowledging that they can play a major role in assisting the underserved and the disabled,” she says. “They understand that their work can help create independence, which enables dignity and self-respect.”

And thank goodness, she says, that tech companies are exploring the ways they can be more inclusive. “I think the we have to start with the premise that people with a physical challenge can do anything that a nondisabled person can do, anything that a person with two hands or full sight can do. It may take longer, and you may have to use different tools, but we’re at a point in the world where we all believe that that's possible.”

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