After an emergency diagnosis and surgery for a 2-foot-long blood clot stretching from her foot to her stomach, Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Officer – a tech exec who is profoundly deaf – now had a visible disability. More than 1 billion people live with disabilities and about 70% of those are not immediately apparent, such as deafness. On that level, the clot had shoved Lay-Flurrie into a somewhat different reality.

Lay-Flurrie’s experience only deepened her drive to elevate accessibility from afterthought to foresight, from a corporate novelty once beset by ROI questions to simply smart business. That calling was heard by many across the company, igniting a shared spirit to reshape Microsoft and its products while also influencing change inside industries, near and abroad. This meshed with a new business culture fostered by Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella – a culture that “needed to be about realizing our personal passions and using Microsoft as a platform to pursue that passion.”

To get the full story on Jenny Lay-Flurrie’s journey, please see the full blog post.