Higher Ed Storytelling University

00:00:00:05 - 00:00:27:23
John Azoni
My guest today is Jamie Hunt. Jamie is a seasoned vice president and chief marketing officer currently serving at Old Dominion University in coastal Virginia with a career spanning nearly two decades. Jamie's expertise encompasses a wide range of areas, including brand strategy, recruitment, marketing, internal and crisis communications issues, management, digital innovation and media relations. Jamie is also the host of Confessions of a Pirate CMO on the Enroll Ify Network.

00:00:28:07 - 00:00:37:23
John Azoni
Today we're talking about something I think is really special and that is that is telling the stories of our students with disabilities and why that's so important. So, Jamie, welcome to the show.

00:00:38:10 - 00:00:39:22
Jaime Hunt
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

00:00:40:18 - 00:00:45:06
John Azoni
So let's start off by having you tell us something that people would be surprised to know about you.

00:00:45:20 - 00:01:06:14
Jaime Hunt
So I thought a little bit about what would this be? Because I'm fairly an open book, but my original college major was biology, and I intended to become a turtle researcher. And my parents made me look through the want ads and find all the turtle related jobs that were in them, and there were zero. So I had to change.

00:01:06:15 - 00:01:26:07
Jaime Hunt
I changed my major went to in journalism, haven't looked back, but a lot of people, I think, think of marketing people as being more the creative and not really they don't really think about the science of marketing. And one of the things I really love about marketing is it blends art and science, which are two things that I'm really passionate about.

00:01:26:07 - 00:01:41:11
Jaime Hunt
So. So that is, that's my thing. Probably if people have been following me for a while, they know about the turtle thing. Literally, my license plate is for turtle. So if you're following me on the highway, you know that I love turtles, but just in case there's listeners who don't know about my obsession.

00:01:41:17 - 00:01:45:04
John Azoni
Interesting. Are you a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

00:01:45:08 - 00:01:49:21
Jaime Hunt
Oh, yes. Yeah. And the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie is amazing.

00:01:50:04 - 00:02:05:21
John Azoni
It is really good. I saw I used to be a big fan when I was a kid. Obviously had action figures and everything, but it'd been like a long time since I had been part of, you know, like caught up on the franchise or anything like that. But we took our kids to see to see it, and it was really it was cool.

00:02:05:21 - 00:02:07:03
John Azoni
It was like nostalgia.

00:02:08:03 - 00:02:25:19
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, it's super cute. I didn't go in on those like Navy SEAL looking Ninja Turtle movies that they had for a while. I'm like, they're teenagers, but I thought that one really made that. Like they had braces. Like, Yeah, where is the turtle going for the dentist? Getting braces?

00:02:26:00 - 00:02:47:14
John Azoni
Those are just the creative license. They they expect to just kind of go over your head. Most people said, except we pay attention to that stuff. All right. So we're talking about telling stories of people with disabilities. So this is a cool topic. I was excited when you and I chatted last week about about this. And so tell us about why is this an important topic for you?

00:02:48:08 - 00:03:15:06
Jaime Hunt
Well, I just think that we talk a lot about diversity and inclusion and higher education and a lot of times I think we focus in on that being primarily racial or ethnicity. And for me, I think about about one in four of our students reports having a disability, and that is 25% of the folks on our campus having some sort of disability.

00:03:15:16 - 00:03:45:10
Jaime Hunt
And we're not having those conversations. We're not having the conversations about how we can better support them, encourage them, help them to see how they can thrive at our institutions. I was looking at some statistics this morning that really look at what the rate is of those students dropping out and actually like accomplishing their degree. And it's like less than 40%, I think, according to the beginning.

00:03:45:10 - 00:03:58:05
Jaime Hunt
Post-Secondary Students Longitudinal study, which is a mouthful, but 23% of undergraduate students reported a disability or who reported a disability actually earned a degree in five years.

00:03:58:17 - 00:03:59:03
John Azoni
Wow.

00:03:59:12 - 00:04:30:20
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. So I think that if you want to look at just a business case for supporting students with disabilities right there, you know, if you can move the needle a little bit on that or a lot bit on that, suddenly are having a big impact on your graduation rates. Right. But I mean, hopefully people listening also understand a moral imperative to do things in a way that supports everyone and to look at diversity and inclusion as being something that doesn't need a business purpose.

00:04:30:20 - 00:04:53:01
Jaime Hunt
But there definitely is a business purpose for supporting students with disabilities. So I'm really passionate about this. I have an invisible disability. Um, I am aware of a lot of people in my life who have both visible and invisible disabilities, and I think there's a personal passion for it for me that as well.

00:04:53:14 - 00:05:23:02
John Azoni
Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I love what you said about, you know, diversity isn't just, you know, racial or gender diversity, but, you know, it's it's all of it's all of like, you know, there are so many different types of people in the world with different hurdles and things like that. And that's what, you know, diversity inclusion is is really about not just like getting the right mix of, you know, races in our content or, you know, religious affiliation.

00:05:23:02 - 00:05:39:18
John Azoni
But it's it's, it's all of it. And yeah, I would think like you know, you said you mentioned having invisible disability I have one as well. And I would argue that like on some level, probably everybody has something.

00:05:40:10 - 00:06:10:03
Jaime Hunt
Right, right. Yeah. Well, and the sheer number of adults that are figuring out in adulthood that they are on the autism spectrum or they have ADHD or some other form of, um, neurodiversity. And I suspect the number is way, way higher than even we think it is. And when you think about it's 25% that report having a disability.

00:06:10:05 - 00:06:35:04
Jaime Hunt
Right. I mean that means there's probably tons of people who aren't reporting it or, you know, like in the case of my disability, it doesn't impact me every single day. And so that makes it a little bit easier for me to forget to report it, if that makes sense, because I don't currently need accommodations for it. I have other points in my life.

00:06:35:13 - 00:06:59:00
Jaime Hunt
Um, and so if you don't need accommodations for your disability or if there's a stigma attached to whatever that disability is, I think then you're less likely to report that. But that's based on, you know, my gut instinct and not any sort of science, but I know that for me, reporting my disability was there was like a moment of No, but you're able.

00:06:59:00 - 00:07:04:11
Jaime Hunt
Right. Mm hmm. But no, you have this real thing that can sometimes limit you a little bit.

00:07:05:03 - 00:07:30:12
John Azoni
Yeah. I remember the first time I reported my mental health stuff. I was a long time ago. I was applying for for a job. And they're like, Do you have a disability? Like, you know, And I'm like, really had to think about, like, do I desc? Is it really a disability? Like, do I disclose that? Is it going to affect, you know, how they are they going to make all sorts of assumptions about me?

00:07:30:19 - 00:07:48:06
John Azoni
Yeah. So yeah, it's just very it's like a very real thing and yeah, 20, 25%. And I think like, you know, a lot of times they're like, you know, I'll update my website and people, you know, have different like if you're in like e-commerce or something like that, all alt text and all that kind of stuff is like it's there.

00:07:48:06 - 00:08:13:21
John Azoni
And for me it's so tempting to be like, that's an afterthought. Like, I'm like, I'm like, so driven to like, get whatever the basic thing is up in life that I'm like, I'll, I'll just type in some, some random stuff. I've, like lately been really, really focused on that. I have a, an assistant that actually has started helping me like kind of go back and do all the alt text like properly.

00:08:15:03 - 00:08:23:14
John Azoni
But I think, I mean, it's just sort of like a symptom of like we don't think about it and we're kind of like, well, how many blind people really do I know, you know?

00:08:23:20 - 00:09:00:15
Jaime Hunt
Right, Right. When I was at a previous institution, there was a blind faculty member that would call our helpdesk any time somebody sent an email or it was just a jpeg with no text and no accompanying text, and she would have them read it and then they would call me because I was this passionate guru for this. And then I went and created a policy and got it through our cabinet and through our board that required that we couldn't You had to have alt text, you know, this is when everybody knew better.

00:09:00:18 - 00:09:33:06
Jaime Hunt
This is like 2010, but people weren't as I think, conscious of it. And then any time one came through, I saw it as an opportunity for me to do an educational moment, but that faculty member would call every single time. So even if you just have one person on your campus who isn't getting your messages because you're sending them as an image that they can't read, that's one human being that is feeling left out and feeling uninformed and may not know some critical piece of information.

00:09:33:16 - 00:09:34:12
John Azoni
And right.

00:09:34:15 - 00:09:36:22
Jaime Hunt
One must be enough to do it the right way.

00:09:37:12 - 00:10:05:08
John Azoni
Yeah, I used to work in a call center at United Way and we had you were a two on one. It was like you call for like information, referral resources. And I every time I come across an opportunity to include alt text, I think of my coworker Rhonda, who had I forget what her disabilities was. She was in a wheelchair, had some mobility issues, but also she had like it was like read everything to her.

00:10:05:20 - 00:10:29:16
John Azoni
And I also was always just so amazed. I'm like, I can't believe like you've figured out a way to up to like, navigate an entire database of health and human services resources working around the struggles that you have. But I always think about like, could Rhonda read this picture? Like, would she could she read this email? No, know what this was about or this Web page or whatever.

00:10:30:00 - 00:10:31:05
John Azoni
So that's always stuck with me.

00:10:32:07 - 00:10:46:00
Jaime Hunt
The hardest thing is, is charts like, how do you translate a chart with the text? But and you need to try and you need to do it but images that's that's not that difficult. Just describe with the images, right You know.

00:10:46:08 - 00:10:46:20
John Azoni
Yeah for.

00:10:46:20 - 00:10:47:14
Jaime Hunt
Sure hanging fruit.

00:10:49:02 - 00:11:05:21
John Azoni
So you talked about how this kind of B became a focus for you. Was there kind of a turning point where it sounds like you've kind of always kind of had this this passion, but was there a turning point where you started to get more serious about talking about in this issue and teaching people about it?

00:11:06:08 - 00:11:38:21
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. So honestly, that faculty member, that was when I was that rad for you to her. See, I was talking to that faculty member and having developing a sense of what her challenges were and how just this simple thing was impacting her that I suddenly kind of realized that if I'm not seeing anybody advocate for that for this person, then I need to be advocating for her and you can lead from wherever you are.

00:11:38:21 - 00:12:09:12
Jaime Hunt
I was in a vice president in that role. You use your influence to try to get the things done and to, you know, have this policy that's drafted and and put into practice and and all of that. And it was in part because she talked about how frustrated she was to be missing critical information. And she had to assume that every single email that didn't have content in it, but there was a potential that one of those could be, hey, you need to enroll in benefits by the end of the month or.

00:12:09:14 - 00:12:10:04
John Azoni
Right.

00:12:10:09 - 00:12:40:02
Jaime Hunt
You know what? Fill in the blank. And so having that conversation was a big tipping point. And that's when, you know, we installed kiosks all over campus. That was my job there. That job had a lot of different kind of crazy components. But wayfinding kiosks were part of my responsibility. And I worked with a company to make Braille signs for those that would direct people to be able to contact someone if they needed to use some of the services that were on the kiosk.

00:12:40:11 - 00:13:02:11
Jaime Hunt
Um, and like I said, people knew when they'd get an email from me saying, Hey, you're sending this out in a really inaccessible way, what can we do? But then I needed to have a moment of realizing not only do I need to advocate for students with disabilities or our campus community in general with disabilities, but needs to do a better job of telling their stories.

00:13:02:11 - 00:13:15:23
Jaime Hunt
And so that that was something that takes a little bit more effort to figure out how to do in a way that doesn't tokenize people. Right? But that that piece is really important to me.

00:13:16:17 - 00:13:36:08
John Azoni
Yeah, the tokenize thing, that's that's something that it's a really fine line to be like. I had a student I was interviewing for our college. We were doing a video on her and she was had a great sense of humor. She was super funny and she was African-American. And she's like, you know, before we started rolling, she's like, I know why they picked me because I'm black.

00:13:36:17 - 00:13:37:05
Jaime Hunt
You know?

00:13:37:23 - 00:13:44:09
John Azoni
And it's kind of like it was funny, but it's like, you don't want to make someone with disability actually feel that way.

00:13:44:18 - 00:14:10:11
Jaime Hunt
Right? Right, right. This is like our, you know, token person in a wheelchair or whatever. Right. That said, though, I have a stack of books on my desk right now. Like other schools, few books. I'm willing to bet that I find zero pictures of someone in a wheelchair or with an assistive device or a cane, you know, things that dog, a service dog at.

00:14:10:11 - 00:14:30:20
Jaime Hunt
We just don't include people in our checking of the boxes for how diverse our materials look. That's one population that is just, I feel like incredibly invisible to us as marketers. And we're not thinking about enough and that's just it's just really sad.

00:14:31:10 - 00:15:00:05
John Azoni
Yeah. And diversity is constantly brought up in meetings about like preproduction for videos or planning marketing campaigns. It's always, always I can't think of a project where that diversity wasn't something of importance that we had to consider as we were going about, you know, the video making process and what what really one thing that really changed me I was casting for worked for a previous production company.

00:15:00:05 - 00:15:25:22
John Azoni
We were casting for a a commercial or something about I think is about vaccines or something like that. And posted on Facebook about it, like, Hey, we're casting kids, you know, to be in this video. And my friend reached out to me privately and she was like, Hey, her her son has Down's syndrome. And she's like, you really need to think about like diversity being, you know, also like neurodiversity.

00:15:25:22 - 00:16:04:10
John Azoni
Like, have you considered diversity beyond just, you know, skin color and things like that? And I think about that all the time now, like when I'm like, what would it look like? Because we always try to like, there's some weird thing with like front facing marketing where it's like, well, let's find the ideal specimen of a person. Let's find people who are attractive and represent the, the look that we want and, and we need to, but we really need to like, expand beyond that and think like there's there's so many people that are looking at your piece of content and going, can I see myself in that?

00:16:05:09 - 00:16:13:17
John Azoni
And if all we're doing is just limiting it to this very narrow profile of what, you know, beauty is or whatever, then we're missing so many people.

00:16:14:09 - 00:16:42:00
Jaime Hunt
Oh, absolutely. I remember working with another vice president, not mine, but another vice president at Radford who very much wanted me to only to attractive people. So when I had a photo for the homepage that had a girl that was probably possibly not conventionally attractive in his opinion, you know, he's like, we really need to focus on just the good looking kids.

00:16:42:02 - 00:16:47:02
Jaime Hunt
Like that's just so icky. Yes.

00:16:47:10 - 00:17:06:00
John Azoni
It's rampant in churches to like even even in churches like these a lot of these megachurches. I know a lot of the staff that have worked at these places. And that's just a common thing. Let's put all the pretty people in the front, you know, five rows. And it's just like that's taking.

00:17:06:00 - 00:17:10:22
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. Especially at a church that's super icky. I don't love that. I No.

00:17:10:23 - 00:17:32:22
John Azoni
Seriously. Yeah. So anyway, but yeah, those are those are good thoughts. I wanted to ask like, so as marketers, you know, when we're thinking about these things, like we often think about like when we think about prospective students, we're often thinking about like, what questions are they asking? What problems are they having? And we think about, you know, the obvious things would be like, okay, what's they might be wondering what's what's the academic experience like?

00:17:32:22 - 00:17:48:03
John Azoni
What's campus life like? Will they fit in? What does it cost? Like those kind of those kind of like basic things. But like from your perspective, talk about like, what are some concerns that students with disabilities might be wondering about that we might not be thinking about as content creators?

00:17:48:15 - 00:18:15:06
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. So at the AMA conference in 2022, there was a panel discussion with a group of I think they were all rising seniors. They were seniors because it was in their senior year and they were talking about, you know, what were they were looking for in a college and such, etc.. And I think there was maybe eight or ten students and several of them mentioned specifically looking for information as it related to their disability.

00:18:15:13 - 00:18:47:07
Jaime Hunt
So one was low vision and I believe she used a cane and she said that she if it took her more than three clicks to try to find information about reasonable accommodations and all of that, And she just went off the website and marked that one off her list. Um, and another student who had some mobility challenges such that she did those like Google Street View tours and campus tours as much as she could to try to figure out is are there going to be a lot of elevation changes on campus?

00:18:48:00 - 00:19:14:04
Jaime Hunt
Am I going to have any challenges accessing buildings if I'm on crutches or whatever? And so they were looking for how navigable is the campus. And then that first student I mentioned was looking for how navigable are the resources for us to be able to get the support that we need as a student with disabilities. So I think it's really those basic things.

00:19:14:10 - 00:19:35:02
Jaime Hunt
How can I do what I need to do as a student here, whether it's online or on campus? Have you stuck your disabilities office in some dark corner? I was on a campus once where I was like, You have to take steps down to get into the disability office and there isn't an elevator like this. Makes no sense.

00:19:35:02 - 00:20:08:20
Jaime Hunt
Like why? Yeah, how is this going to work? But you know, how much resources are you putting towards supporting the students? We also hear a lot from students who are looking specifically for mental health information. And I know that's something that you had mentioned and that's something I think is really, really important to students, that we have resources to be able to continue their care if they need it from a mental health perspective or are we a culture where the faculty are going to embrace and accept those reasonable accommodations that they're asked for?

00:20:09:04 - 00:20:17:19
Jaime Hunt
And how can we showcase in our marketing that we are that kind of place? And there's this a lot of a lot of layers there.

00:20:18:04 - 00:20:51:18
John Azoni
Josie Alquist has a recent episode on her podcast. Josie and the podcast just came out the other day and it's with Rachel Putman, who I forget what school she she works for, but she she was talking about how she works with her students, you know, on campus and building these like sort of student marketing teams. And one of the things they did was an Instagram campaign where they posted like a story or something where you can kind of like type in a response or like slide the slider to the happy face or the sad face.

00:20:51:18 - 00:20:53:19
John Azoni
And it was really just like, How are you doing?

00:20:54:03 - 00:20:54:07
Jaime Hunt
Yeah.

00:20:54:08 - 00:21:19:16
John Azoni
And, and people would slide and if anyone slid it towards the sad face, they would like directly follow up with that person and make sure that they had access to, you know, mental health resources or whatever. And I just thought that was so cool. So like, yeah, like when your social media team is not just you're not just about getting likes and ideas, vanity metrics and engagement and stuff like that, but like taking the students that are already there.

00:21:20:01 - 00:21:27:02
John Azoni
How can you use social media to actually improve their lives and give them a place to say, Hey, I'm not I'm not okay today?

00:21:27:02 - 00:21:27:13
Jaime Hunt
Yeah.

00:21:28:07 - 00:21:31:06
John Azoni
You know, and I just thought that was a really cool campaign idea.

00:21:31:20 - 00:22:05:14
Jaime Hunt
I love that. I love that. And I think we have so many students that are really struggling with anxiety and mental health challenges, and I don't have the statistic in front of me. But AMA, this past year we had a speaker in the senior leadership portion talking about, I want to say it was something like over 30% of adults between 18 and 24 say that they have had many days where they don't feel able to function because of their mental health.

00:22:06:03 - 00:22:15:10
Jaime Hunt
And it's like that's just sad and and it's a reality. Like you can't just tell somebody, don't be sad. I wish that worked. That doesn't work.

00:22:15:19 - 00:22:25:04
John Azoni
Anyone that says that has never experienced any mental health crisis, you would have to know to know, you know.

00:22:25:19 - 00:22:27:02
Jaime Hunt
Right, right, right.

00:22:28:07 - 00:22:48:14
John Azoni
Yeah. It's just yeah, I think I think about that often. Sometimes it's like, you know, when you're when you have a friend or a spouse or family member that's dealing with mental health, it's like they can't just think differently. You know, you can't think your way out of a mental health crisis.

00:22:48:14 - 00:23:17:09
Jaime Hunt
No, no, you can't. And I'm a big believer in therapy and I'm a big believer in meditation. And I think meditation can help reduce stress and anxiety levels. But it's not a magic bullet and it's something that doesn't take a ton of practice to get good at. I started doing meditation because I was a chronic pain sufferer and I was able to meditate to alleviate pain.

00:23:17:09 - 00:23:34:05
Jaime Hunt
And it's so helpful if you're at the doctor's office because you spend your ankle to be able to meditate and not necessarily feel the pain for a little bit. But you know, that's a ton of practice to get to that point. Oh yeah. You can't just be like, okay, just go. And now you're happy. It works. Awesome.

00:23:34:10 - 00:23:57:19
John Azoni
You're right. It takes a lot of practice. I used to see a therapist who is big anxiety meditation, kind of influencer, and she runs these meditation sessions and she was telling me she's like, We have people who are undergoing like literal surgery who are using meditation instead of anesthesia.

00:23:58:16 - 00:23:59:01
Jaime Hunt
Oh.

00:23:59:13 - 00:24:26:20
John Azoni
And she's like, amazing. She's like working with these people to do like these breathing and hypnosis exercises. And it's just really interesting how how effective that is. And that's something that I think it's a tool that that needs to be taught and it's something that people have to practice because it's it's probably like people would probably just bounce from that activity so easily when they sit down to meditate and they can't focus for the first couple of times and they think about other things and they go, I didn't get anything out of that.

00:24:26:20 - 00:24:36:08
John Azoni
But like, what would it look like for a school, you know, to be like, Hey, while you're here on campus, we're going to teach you these tools, you know as well to kind of get through, you know, daily life and things like that.

00:24:37:02 - 00:25:19:18
Jaime Hunt
The first university I work for, Northwestern Health Sciences University, had a lot of alternative medicine programs, and we had wellness programs that were geared toward that topic, like, how do you how can you meditate to reduce stress? That's why I was first introduced to the concept of being able to meditate for pain relief. Um, you know, they had all sorts of wellness workshops and yoga workshops and all, you know, cranial psychotherapy workshops and all this stuff, because I think that it's more of was more of an Eastern medicine type of approach, which I think in a lot of ways is a lot more holistic to us as human beings than than Western medicine can be.

00:25:20:06 - 00:25:46:15
John Azoni
Yeah. So shifting gears a little bit, you sent me a couple examples of storytelling. You sent me an example of Radford and then Old Dominion College short videos. Let's talk about those a little bit. Like tell me how those came about and what are your thoughts about them. Just explain them to me. I posted a poll last week on LinkedIn about do people actually watch the video of this or do they just listen?

00:25:46:15 - 00:25:52:01
John Azoni
And it's like overwhelmingly people listen. So it made me think like, okay, we have to explain these videos.

00:25:52:18 - 00:26:24:13
Jaime Hunt
I totally get it. So the first video of the video with at Radford University is a graduation profile, and we showcase these father and son humor graduating one. The son was a legally blind. I think he had like a very slight amount of vision but use a cane. And his dad had a heart condition that made exercise and and that sort of thing really difficult for him.

00:26:25:00 - 00:26:47:06
Jaime Hunt
And when his son, the son went to college, he was having some challenges with navigating campus with a cane, which I can't even imagine going through life in that situation, really. And so his father started going with him and then decided he might as well enroll. He might as well get a degree if he's going to all the same classes.

00:26:47:06 - 00:27:13:05
Jaime Hunt
So they would get the same class schedule and the father wasn't able to really carry his backpack and equipment. And so the son carried his stuff and the father navigated them around campus. And it was just a really beautiful story. And if anybody watched it and didn't cry, they don't have a soul. They they're clearly sociopaths. But that was a really cool story to be able to show that they thrived.

00:27:13:05 - 00:27:36:09
Jaime Hunt
They were going to go to graduate school after completing their their bachelors degree, and they were just absolutely thrived on campus. And I thought it was really important to show that it's not just an inspirational story, but it's a story that showcases that, you know, two people who had physical challenges were able to make college work and to graduate.

00:27:36:14 - 00:27:39:20
Jaime Hunt
And I think they even did it in four years. But I can't swear to that.

00:27:40:06 - 00:28:04:11
John Azoni
Yeah, what I noticed about it was like, so you think like someone who's blind and is walking with a cane when you think disabilities, that's probably one, maybe one that comes to mind. But like the heart issue and he can't even carry his, his books. Like that's a that's one that's probably goes under the radar that I thought that the video did a good job of like you know bringing to light.

00:28:04:11 - 00:28:10:18
John Azoni
It's like, you know, what does it look like for someone that physically can't, you know, get around?

00:28:10:18 - 00:28:33:00
Jaime Hunt
Right. And you wouldn't necessarily know it by looking at him. It's it's one of those invisible disabilities again, where the situation is something that you as a casual observer wouldn't know that he had that challenge. Mm. So that was great. The other example I sent to you was actually one of a couple that we had in our college tour.

00:28:33:00 - 00:29:10:05
Jaime Hunt
So we're working with the college tour to have a 30 minute episode that actually we just got my last week and we showcased actually two students that dealt with disabilities during their time. So was ten total students profiled and two of them specifically spoke about their, um, their disabilities in their video. The first is the, the part of the episode that opens to the full episode, and she talks about the mental health issues that she has and how she got support for that on our campus.

00:29:10:05 - 00:29:45:02
Jaime Hunt
And the second person was somebody who was a disabled veteran who was taking advantage of the resources available to him as a veteran and as a disabled veteran. And I thought it was really, really important to have those pieces of their stories be in that video, in that episode. It's, you know, having about 20% of the the cast of the episode being people that speak about their disabilities is somewhat almost exactly representative of what our student body looks like in terms of reported disabilities.

00:29:46:05 - 00:30:18:13
Jaime Hunt
I also wanted to have somebody who was talking about more of an invisible disability, like the mental health challenges that that Hadley spoke about, and then to have someone who had some physical disability that that he spoke about in his portion of the episode. And I just think that having these stories in there, it's just a matter of fact, it's not Disability Awareness Month, it's not, you know, fill in the Blank Autism Awareness Month, whatever.

00:30:18:13 - 00:30:43:23
Jaime Hunt
It's just part of the fabric of our episode is that people talk candidly about, you know, their their challenges. And so it was important to me that we consider that as we consider the overall diversity of the episode. And I'm really grateful in the casting process that we had multiple students and we had some others, in fact, that ultimately weren't selected.

00:30:43:23 - 00:31:02:22
Jaime Hunt
But we had a number of students that wished to talk about their disability, that that was part of their story and part of who they are as people. And as someone in my forties, I don't who's still like not out. I'm putting that in air quotes, but I'm not completely out about my disability with everybody that I encounter.

00:31:02:22 - 00:31:29:21
Jaime Hunt
I don't think I think there's like a stigma attached to it. Um, I'm really grateful that these young people are willing to share their stories and that they do so just in such a matter of fact, way. Hopefully that inspires another prospective student who's looking at these and saying, okay, so this, this student really seems like she has it together and she's seems to be really thriving.

00:31:30:05 - 00:31:39:19
Jaime Hunt
And she talked about the mental health resources. Maybe this is a place for me. Maybe this is a place where I can get the support that I need to get through college the best way that I can.

00:31:40:18 - 00:31:53:14
John Azoni
Yeah. Can you can you talk a little bit more about that casting process, too? Because I think you said that I was like, I bet that's just an interesting I would just be curious to hear like how you handle that with sensitivity and stuff like that.

00:31:54:01 - 00:32:31:04
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. So I tell people honestly, it's the most stressed. I have been at a job in years, three years since COVID for sure. So we put out a casting call. I think we had about 44 students apply for ten spots. And the reason it was kind of stressful was I had to create a matrix that looked at, you know, diversity of gender and ethnicity and race, but then make sure we had a representative of undergraduate masters and doctoral, and then to make sure we had a representative for every college and then make sure that we had representatives that could speak to disability.

00:32:31:19 - 00:33:02:23
Jaime Hunt
So we asked the students to put together just a little, I think we said the the max length was 90 seconds, but a little video shot on your iPhone or whatever. It did not have to be highly produced that where you just told your story. Like what? What's your odds story? So then, you know, looking at that matrix of of all these categories, we needed to fill, then going in and seeing who had really cool stories that we could slot into those spots.

00:33:03:20 - 00:33:30:00
Jaime Hunt
We also wanted to have international students. I think we ended up with quite a few international students in it actually. But yeah, it was, it was exhaustive. Um, we ended up with a wonderful cast. Usually I've done this twice. Um, we did an episode when I was at Miami University, and usually you end up with one person, no shows or goes you or it doesn't get their script in.

00:33:30:07 - 00:33:32:22
Jaime Hunt
We had, we had none of that. Everybody was amazing.

00:33:33:22 - 00:33:56:09
John Azoni
That's great. Yeah, I find in the stories that, that my company tells that people are generally pretty excited to be chosen that you were even on the college's radar. But yeah, the whole casting thing that that could be like really stressful when you're managing all those variables, I imagine. I know you're like a a, I proponent or whatever.

00:33:56:21 - 00:34:07:21
John Azoni
I imagine that would be a good, a good challenge for I like here's all the transcripts from everyone's permission videos and here are all the variables like tell me what's missing or who goes where.

00:34:08:20 - 00:34:33:07
Jaime Hunt
That would have been released. It honestly didn't occur to me, but that would have been really smart. I could have had a spreadsheet that was like, This is tell me who to pick. But there is obviously a human element that I for sure can't make is the person engaging on camera, right? Is their tone of voice interesting and compelling, or are they like nervous and or dry or whatever?

00:34:33:07 - 00:34:45:09
Jaime Hunt
Fill in the blanks. But you you learn who the weirdos are on campus too. Like some some submit videos where you're like you let your fake fly and I love you for it. Yeah, yeah.

00:34:45:22 - 00:34:58:01
John Azoni
That's awesome. Yeah, I think and I think one of the things that that we look for is and I would, I would assume that that applies to, you know, finding people with disabilities just like how open are they to being vulnerable.

00:34:58:07 - 00:34:58:14
Jaime Hunt
Yeah.

00:34:59:05 - 00:35:19:07
John Azoni
Because to me what makes a good story is not just kind of flying over high level, Like, here's here's the problem I was having. Here's how the school helped me and here's what I'm doing now. Like, that's a good basic structure, but like, there's so much under that iceberg that's like whatever's under that is really power is like where the meat of the emotion is.

00:35:19:15 - 00:35:48:10
John Azoni
And, you know, I was working with one college and we were we were pre interviewing ten or 12 people who are all data scientists. So they're all they're all very analytical. And after like the fourth pre-interview I went to, my client was like, hey, we got to we got to shift these questions a little bit. Like because these are just they're they will be fine videos, but they are very just like to the point analytical, like, here's the question I asked.

00:35:48:10 - 00:35:49:07
John Azoni
Here's your answer.

00:35:50:03 - 00:35:51:11
Jaime Hunt
I love it.

00:35:51:11 - 00:36:05:02
John Azoni
Yeah. So that's that's really something that is yeah. I can't really detect like that doesn't have the empathy yet right so like is that can is this person going to give me anything more than what I'm asking for?

00:36:06:02 - 00:36:34:14
Jaime Hunt
When I was a journalist, it was you had sometimes ran into people that you'd interview and they'd give you one word, answers like that. We want people who are going to light up for what people are going to you want to listen to because their face is just animated. And yeah, there was a couple of people that were very charismatic that we didn't end up picking because we needed somebody in a more specific category that we've now reached out to them for other projects because it's like, you can't take your eyes off of them once.

00:36:34:16 - 00:36:36:14
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, that's great. And that's who you want.

00:36:36:23 - 00:36:55:02
John Azoni
Right? Oh, the most stressful interview I ever did was this high schooler who was giving me one word answers, and it was so stressful because I'm already like a pretty introverted guy, and I don't I don't like small talk. Like, I'm really bad at it. Like.

00:36:55:15 - 00:36:57:00
Jaime Hunt
So yeah, me too.

00:36:58:01 - 00:37:12:11
John Azoni
So I'm like, I quickly ran out of steam on, like, tactics to get him to open up. I ended up having to. Thankfully, he, he had a mentor with him and I had to interview her to get, like, the meat of the nerd.

00:37:13:00 - 00:37:13:14
Jaime Hunt
Oh, my God.

00:37:13:14 - 00:37:15:21
John Azoni
Oh, so difficult, so stressful.

00:37:17:01 - 00:37:23:02
Jaime Hunt
I totally feel you on that. And then you're trying figure out how am I going to turn this into something like that?

00:37:23:17 - 00:37:24:03
John Azoni
Yeah.

00:37:24:14 - 00:37:26:11
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, yeah. It's tricky.

00:37:26:19 - 00:37:51:04
John Azoni
Yeah. Speaking of I. So I incorporate I into this podcast a little bit. So I affectionately, I had this question list and I put it into Clod and I said, you know, here's, here's what I'm talking to Jamey about today. What, what would be other questions to ask. So here's, here's for our final four questions. Our final three questions that are coming from the robots here.

00:37:51:11 - 00:37:55:21
Jaime Hunt
All right. I look forward to the robot overlords. Yeah.

00:37:57:05 - 00:38:03:01
John Azoni
What biases or misconceptions still exist around disabilities that these stories can help challenge?

00:38:03:07 - 00:38:26:03
Jaime Hunt
Mm hmm. I mean, I think that, like, there's still a lot of stigma around certain illnesses and certain mental health issues, and that I think that we get into this mindset sometimes where it's like, we don't even want to ask someone to tell their story because we think that they're not going to want to because there's a stigma around what they are dealing with.

00:38:26:16 - 00:38:49:12
Jaime Hunt
And I think that's something we just have to shake loose. And I think once you start telling the stories and see the people, then you're not dragging it out of people. Right. Like the video that I sent you of Hadley talking about her experience, like she's just talking about it. Matter of fact. Yeah. I think that can help make others see that maybe don't have a mental health disability or any other disability.

00:38:49:20 - 00:39:00:07
Jaime Hunt
See that you don't have to be afraid to ask somebody to share their story. Yeah, because not everybody shares that viewpoint or about the stigma.

00:39:01:06 - 00:39:04:03
John Azoni
Yeah, that's good. Good answer to that surprise.

00:39:04:09 - 00:39:05:06
Jaime Hunt
For the robots and.

00:39:05:09 - 00:39:23:01
John Azoni
The robot question. The robots applauding right now. Next question. Have there been any instances in real life or in content you've consumed where your views were challenged about people with disabilities? If so, how did that affect oh, to use market strategy in any way?

00:39:23:19 - 00:39:52:10
Jaime Hunt
That's an excellent question. I am a donor to special books for special kids, which sounds like it's about books, but it's not at all. They produce many, many documentaries or many, many basically interviews where the the guy who does them sits with someone, many of them with profound physical or mental disabilities. And he just has a conversation with them or talks about what they deal with.

00:39:52:18 - 00:40:19:02
Jaime Hunt
And that for me, seeing how people with profound disabilities light up when they get to tell their story, when somebody shows an actual interest in them as a human being and seeing the way that he didn't shy away from asking tricky questions or talking about some of the biggest challenges, that for me was like a tipping point in terms of my ability.

00:40:19:02 - 00:40:45:14
Jaime Hunt
See that a lot of times people were not asking are hungry to tell their story. And I think we as marketers have an opportunity to be the person that shines a light on someone. Mm hmm. That's what we do. And everything we do is shine a light on someone or something. And so I think, you know, telling the stories of people with disability can really, really shine a bright light on what they are and who they, who they are as people.

00:40:46:05 - 00:41:08:05
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. And looking beyond just the this isn't a story about, let's say he's interviewing, you know, Jamie Hunt who has some some disability. It's not just this is the disability he would dig into Who's Jamie as a person? What are her passions and her hobbies and interests? And so it just goes beyond educational content being really inspirational.

00:41:08:05 - 00:41:26:12
John Azoni
Yeah, Yeah. That's important. And that's one thing I noticed about Hadley's story that you sent me is I was expecting it to be more about the struggles that she was having, but it really was just like, This is part of who I am. But really here's like all this other stuff that I did and and you know, where I found my place on campus and things like that.

00:41:26:12 - 00:41:37:01
John Azoni
So I thought that that's a good I almost like breezed over it. Oh, I was listening. I had to like, go back and be like, Oh, there she talks about like struggles. And it was so normal, you know, it was just sort of like you just naturally absorb it.

00:41:37:10 - 00:41:58:18
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. And that that's kind of the goal. And I think that if if people are listening to this, who wants to do a better job of telling the stories of people with disability, keep that in mind. Like you're telling the story of the whole person, right? And their disability isn't their whole identity and it's not the only thing that's interesting about them.

00:41:59:06 - 00:42:07:18
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, compelling about them. Tell the story of the person. We are all interesting people. Yeah, we're all more than what we can or can't do.

00:42:08:18 - 00:42:29:08
John Azoni
And you mentioned earlier and I think we breezed over it a little bit, but like the tokenization of Yeah, of people disabilities and our content, What are some ways that you would suggest that we be sensitive to? Like how can we avoid someone feeling like the token person in a wheelchair or something like that?

00:42:29:14 - 00:42:57:08
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, I think the good news for marketers is that there's so little of it happening that I don't know that someone in a wheelchair would immediately jump to. I'm the token person with a disability and the way that I think particularly like maybe 15 years ago or so, it was like we have the same African-American student in every shot because, yeah, we want to look diverse, but we aren't yet or whatever.

00:42:57:17 - 00:43:19:05
Jaime Hunt
But I think again, keeping in mind showcasing them as a person, if you're talking about somebody in a wheelchair or with some other assisted assistive device, is the focus on the device or on the person? Is it is the story about the device or is the story about the person using it? So I think that that's one way.

00:43:19:11 - 00:43:48:02
Jaime Hunt
Another thing is, you know, don't just call your disability service office and say, can you send me some people in a wheelchair? So, you know, like, I want somebody who has an interesting and compelling story. I thought maybe you would know somebody who maybe has overcome some sort of challenge, be open to invisible disabilities and needing to tell that story in a different way rather than through photos, because they have a, you know, a assistive dog or other assistive device.

00:43:49:09 - 00:44:18:01
Jaime Hunt
And I think letting people give you honest feedback might be the most important thing. I would suggest if you're new at doing this, potentially looking at producing the story and then soliciting the feedback of the subject before you publish it, which is not something we do all the time with every single thing that we create. But it gives you a chance to kind of learn, Oh, you know what?

00:44:18:01 - 00:44:22:07
Jaime Hunt
We don't use that kind of language around this disability so that you can fix that.

00:44:22:18 - 00:44:23:09
John Azoni
Yes.

00:44:23:09 - 00:44:41:05
Jaime Hunt
Or, you know, like people first language, it's not an autistic person. It's a person who has autism or whatever. Fill in the blank there. But getting that giving them that opportunity to give you feedback as you learn how to tell stories in a more authentic and less tokenized sort of way.

00:44:42:03 - 00:45:06:02
John Azoni
Yeah, it it reminds me of my aunt growing up had a she was a little person and she had was this rare genetic disorder. So she had some other disabilities as well. But just like I always got to be the one that like pushed her in the wheelchair because I was like the smoothest over like so I felt very like that was always like John's job was like, John gets to push Emily.

00:45:07:09 - 00:45:25:05
John Azoni
But I remember just feeling so defensive of her, like out in public and stuff like that and, and seeing how like, careless use of words really hurt her. Like when people said midget, for instance.

00:45:25:05 - 00:45:25:19
Jaime Hunt
Like, yeah.

00:45:25:22 - 00:45:55:22
John Azoni
It's like such a I don't think people realize that that's a hurtful way to say it. It's just in, in pop culture like that's just what is said and it's just one of these those types of people that it's like they're, they're typecast into roles specifically for that. And what, what just grinds my gears is like the fact that they're typecast into a role that pokes fun, like their only purpose is to be made fun of in the narrative, you know?

00:45:55:22 - 00:46:17:15
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, yeah. It's really you don't see a lot of film or TV about little people where it's not about the fact that they are a little person, right? Like, it's not about it's just like, oh, by the way, they also have this condition. It's like, that's the central fact of who they are.

00:46:18:00 - 00:46:44:02
John Azoni
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I am constantly growing in my use of like, words like that. And my wife is very good at like saying, oh no, you can't say that anymore. So she's taught me a lot as a social worker. But, but yeah, I think getting feedback is great is, is a great suggestion because I think that we don't we don't realize how we come off.

00:46:44:02 - 00:47:07:00
John Azoni
I think we all need that feedback in a non-judgmental way to know that like we're all we're all learning and the language is always shifting, Like it's always I used to do homeless outreach that was like the my primary role at United Way and now I had a guest on my show who I used to work with, work with, and she was referring to, you know, what we used to do to other as unhoused people.

00:47:07:00 - 00:47:20:09
John Azoni
I was like, Oh, that's new since I was so tired, since I was always homeless when I was working in it. So it's always shifting and it's always important to to have people in your corner that can give you some of that feedback.

00:47:20:19 - 00:47:43:23
Jaime Hunt
100%. Another great resource for that feedback is your Disability services office that they can even in your casting, if you're like, I want to cast, can you help me do it in the most sensitive way possible? You know, they have that expertise and I have found that they are hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry to use it. They want to hear from us.

00:47:43:23 - 00:48:04:10
Jaime Hunt
They want to be thought about by our marketing officers, to be thought about in our communications and on our website. So, you know, call that person up and get a cup of coffee and befriend them so that you can get their input on and things like, this is how I want to cast. This is this is the type of students I'm looking for, that kind of thing.

00:48:04:11 - 00:48:07:05
Jaime Hunt
They can make that more sensitive.

00:48:07:05 - 00:48:17:03
John Azoni
Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. My third A.I. question we actually already covered talk about how diversity isn't just skin color, so I think we're good there unless you have any other.

00:48:17:10 - 00:48:18:16
Jaime Hunt
The benefits are smart.

00:48:18:21 - 00:48:44:03
John Azoni
They're very smart. I love it so much and I volley between chat gpg and clod and I find that they are kind of just helpful in different ways. But Claude is like I'm working on a presentation right now on how cloud helps me be a better storyteller and a better interviewer, and it's just it's become just instrumental to, to my workflow.

00:48:44:20 - 00:48:49:07
Jaime Hunt
I have not played around much with Claude. I might have to dive back in and explore.

00:48:49:18 - 00:49:10:21
John Azoni
It's great there. The the benefit of Claude. So we're going out tangent here on this episode, but I think it's welcome. We all, we've done episodes on here before, but Claude does a great job and actually Bart Kaylor from the Higher Ed Marketer podcast turned me on to it. It does a much better job than chatbots at analyzing long text documents.

00:49:10:21 - 00:49:29:13
John Azoni
Oh, so what I use it for in this podcast is I will take this whole episode with you, Jamie, and get to get the transcript made, put it into Claude and then have it write my show notes, have it right, pull out like what? Our emotional kind of like good snippets for social media. It'll give me the time codes and the transcript.

00:49:29:13 - 00:49:48:15
John Azoni
It's like it's the entire thing. Like podcasting is a is a very tedious can be a very tedious process, as you know. Yeah. And that's why like so many people drop off, you know, like the third episode, 6% of people drop off at the third episode because it's so much you think it's just like, Oh, I'll interview some people and put it up.

00:49:48:16 - 00:50:04:09
John Azoni
It was like, No, you got to write show notes. You got to find the links, you got to find the guests, you got to do, you know, like all of this stuff. So yeah, Claude has been an amazing storyteller. Help and I and I use it kind of in conjunction with, with chat, CBT, chat. CBT is kind of kind of more my like have.

00:50:04:09 - 00:50:12:02
John Azoni
Question Can you give me an answer about this or can you help me idea about this? But Claude's a little more like, analyze this big long thing and let's pull out insights from it.

00:50:12:12 - 00:50:29:22
Jaime Hunt
I hope I absolutely hate writing my show notes. Like you don't know my producer, but it's just format to me. I don't know why it is, and I've been trying to use chat CBT, but it doesn't analyze my full transcripts. My my episodes are like an hour long and it's like, this is too long.

00:50:29:22 - 00:50:30:08
John Azoni
For too.

00:50:30:08 - 00:50:35:13
Jaime Hunt
Long. Do anything with that? Yeah. Cool. Cool. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah.

00:50:35:22 - 00:50:56:21
John Azoni
I know. I got so excited when I found Claude and I was like, Oh my gosh, like the first time it spit out show notes for me with links to the person's, to the person's LinkedIn profile, their email, everything they mentioned, their Twitter. If they mention their Twitter handle links to the episode that I'm posting this Wednesday, it was just me talking.

00:50:56:21 - 00:51:07:14
John Azoni
So episode I did. I mentioned a few different case studies. It pulled up the links for those YouTube videos without me going to find it. Now granted all the links were bad.

00:51:08:08 - 00:51:10:07
Jaime Hunt
So.

00:51:10:07 - 00:51:25:18
John Azoni
So I you know it's a it's getting there but the but but what it actually did help me do was go oh I forgot I talked about this thing that I need a link for. And that's what's super hard about writing show notes is you don't remember all the details of the conversation.

00:51:26:03 - 00:51:32:08
Jaime Hunt
No, no, it's it's painful. It's my least favorite part of being a podcast. Yes, this is it.

00:51:32:19 - 00:51:49:00
John Azoni
I would say like 50% of the time it gets it gets the the like. Though the social media handle links. Right? But it at least give you a format to go like, here's all the things you need to say in your show notes and here's at least placeholder links that you can.

00:51:49:12 - 00:51:52:22
Jaime Hunt
That's I'm checking this out tonight. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.

00:51:53:04 - 00:51:56:16
John Azoni
Yeah. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm like super passionate about it.

00:51:57:11 - 00:52:04:23
Jaime Hunt
I have five episodes I'm recording in the next three weeks, so I need I need help. I can't do all of these short it.

00:52:06:11 - 00:52:11:03
John Azoni
Okay, well, we'll get a lot of task. Your Where can people connect with you at?

00:52:11:10 - 00:52:11:20
Jaime Hunt
Yeah.

00:52:12:04 - 00:52:12:22
John Azoni
That's your link. Right.

00:52:13:02 - 00:52:33:18
Jaime Hunt
Okay. So I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn now. Jamie Hunt's my, my parents blessed me with the unusual spelling of Jamie. So it's Jamie. So I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter at Jamie Hunt. I am C.J., I am there as well. I'm still calling it Twitter because I refuse.

00:52:34:19 - 00:52:40:06
John Azoni
And then I haven't had anyone on this show that that doesn't refuse to call it Twitter. No one no one actually sells it.

00:52:40:06 - 00:52:49:10
Jaime Hunt
Ex I'm not here for it. And then I started a TikTok, the higher ed CMO So you can find me there as well.

00:52:50:03 - 00:53:04:10
John Azoni
Awesome. Well, this has been amazing. Feel free people listening to reach out to Jamie. If you have questions about anything related to what we talked about today or just to connect. But Jamie, thanks so much for being here. Is honored to have you on the show.

00:53:04:19 - 00:53:06:20
Jaime Hunt
Thank you so much. It was great talking with you.