disability fi tness
CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
Caroline Casey is the founder of Kanchi, a social enterprise working with businesses to create change around disability. Legally blind from birth – with a condition she likens to ‘having Vaseline over her eyes’ – she talks to Julie Cramer about her life challenges, the importance of health and fitness, and taking her business ambitions out of her native Ireland and onto a global stage
Is it true you didn’t realise you were blind until your late teens? It may seem incomprehensible, but I didn’t fi nd out I was legally blind until my 17th birthday. The same day I received a much longed-for gift of a driving lesson, I also visited the doctor with my younger sister – who also has the condition known as ocular albinism – and it was then I was told. My parents made the decision to
bring me up as sighted from birth – not to put a label on me and create a drama around my vision. It was easily reinforced because people with my condition often look quite normal – there’s nothing distinctive about our eyes. Also, as a child, if you’re made to feel that you can do anything, it’s very easy to believe.
You’ve had an eclectic career path. Where do you get your drive? That’s true – I’ve worked as an archaeologist, a sports masseuse, a
horticulturist, a management consultant and, for over a decade, a social entrepreneur in the disability arena. My parents brought me up to be very
resilient and not to be limited in what I felt I could do. I always knew that I wanted to work for myself and be free. I’m a bit of a dreamer – I wanted to be a biker chick or a racing car driver. When I realised I wasn’t going to be able to do that for a living, I looked for the next big adventurous thing.
After years of travelling the world, you ended up working in a corporate environment in your late 20s – why did you choose that? Landing a job at a global consulting fi rm like Accenture is one of those great jobs everyone is supposed to want, and I had a fantastic few years there, receiving brilliant training for what I do now. But after two years, my whole vision temporarily went
and I wasn’t managing well or asking for help. Eventually I had to tumble out of the disability closet – I couldn’t have sustained being in that environment for much longer. But from that very low point in my life I embarked on an exciting new chapter.
And that chapter involved an elephant and a charity trek around India in 2001… Yes. She was called Kanchi and I rode her solo and bareback for three months in extreme humidity around southern India. You have a lot of time to think on an elephant – and a lot of things came out of that trip. When you’re confronted with
disability in your life and work, you realise there’s a huge amount of discrimination around it – a lack of opportunity and a high level of unemployment. I didn’t have the answers for why that was, but I knew I wanted to be part of the solution.
Setting the standards: Aura Sports and Leisure Management won the overall private sector Ability Award in 2007 42 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital june 2012 © cybertrek 2012
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