by Liz Jackson and Rua Williams

In 2017, Caroline Casey “rode 5 weeks across Colombia on horseback from Cartagena to Bogota [and] onto the main stage” of a conference that is “often referred to as junior Davos” where Paul Polman, then CEO of Unilever was in attendance. According to Casey, she did this to “capture his attention because everybody kept me away from him, [and] I’m known to generally eventually get what I need.” 

Casey’s stunt had her intended effect, and Polman became her first “follower.” Leveraging his connections, “Casey succeeded in bringing disability inclusion onto the main stage at DAVOS for the first time ever.” She used the platform to launch a campaign to recruit 500 CEOs to sign a pledge to “end the inclusion delusion that left disability outside the inclusion and diversity agenda.” She called her project the Valuable 500, which got its name when “we picked a number. We said 500 - The Fortune 500, The Valuable 500.” 

There’s a reason why it took them just two years and four months to get 500 CEOs to sign their pledge. According to Valuable 500 CEO Katy Talikowska, “for too long, companies have made empty promises without being held accountable.” It’s a dynamic feminist writer Sara Ahmed writes about, in which commitments have “become a way of not doing something by appearing to do something.” 

To prevent the “commitment to action” from being the CEO’s only action, the Valuable 500 spent two years planning for SYNC25, their “world’s first accountability summit for disability inclusion.” Accountability was supposed to distinguish SYNC25 from what Ahmed calls nonperformativity, which “works because it fails to bring about what it names.” 

Accountability for a company should seemingly involve recognizing how their policies and products have excluded disabled workers and consumers, and also how their policies and products have created disability globally, admitting these failings, and changing their policies and products. But this is not the accountability the Valuable 500 — which “maintains an apolitical, neutral, and industry-agnostic position, engaging with companies solely based on their commitment to ending disability exclusion” — had in mind. 

Their “Guiding Principle” functions as an assurance that the Valuable 500 will do the bidding of its corporate funders. Talikowska attempted to further assuage possible CEO concerns by hiding much of SYNC25 behind closed doors, with “content that we will be capturing and that we’ll be sharing in the spirit of it being available.” She then went even further, stating the accountability at SYNC25 would obscure corporate failures through consolidated and aggregated data while spotlighting successes (or things that can be spun into stories of success) because, according to Casey, “we don’t chastise or demonise anyone who hasn’t, who isn’t particularly progressed.” 

Despite all these protective measures, we can’t find evidence that a single current CEO bothered to show up. Compounding the embarrassment is the egregious claim that the Valuable 500 is a “global community of 500 CEOs,” the “world’s biggest” for disability business inclusion, second only in size and scope to the United Nations. But the only thing that ties those 500 CEOs to the Valuable 500 is their supposed signature on the pledge. Even with that, we don’t know what these CEOs signed, if any simply affirmed their assent, or if any had a delegate sign on their behalf. It is possible, if not likely that there are CEOs in their so-called community who have never heard of the Valuable 500.

This is the essence of parasociality. The Valuable 500 is in a one-sided relationship with what Casey Casey describes as “the most influential people in the world.” The need to do or say whatever it takes to appear in relation to power is not unique to Casey and her acolytes, as it is the very premise of inclusion. What differentiates the Valuable 500 is Casey’s dogged pursuit of those in power due to her fervent belief in their capacity to affect positive change:

“Disability inclusion within business needs a fundamental culture shift, which needs to be led by the leader. Leaders make choices and those choices create culture. The only way we are going to resolve the current “inclusion delusion” is through the support, attention and intention of CEOs.” 

The Parasocial Model of Disability, as we’re calling it, belies an expectation that the parasocial individual will be granted the same power as those they worship. Under this paradigm, individuals and organizations provide absolution to power while packaging it as actionist accountability. Rather than tell a story of rejection that would have resonated with these CEO’s disabled workers, the Valuable 500 instead hyped the midlevel attendees of SYNC25 as “global leaders, trailblazers, and innovators.” The Valuable 500 is invested in maintaining an illusion of linear progress in order to “match the scope” of CEOs who are rewarded for their growth at all costs mindset.

—

A May 18th, 2021 press release celebrating the 500th CEO to sign the Valuable 500 pledge notably left his name – Tim Cook of Apple – absent. For an organization that is prone to gaffes, such as the commitment to “eradicate disability inclusion” headline that remains uncorrected even after six years, the Valuable 500 never misses a chance to name drop. So his omission prompts questions for us about the extent of his commitment to the Valuable 500 way. 

In the press release, Casey claims "today we have broken the silence on disability inclusion." This was something “Caroline would say ending the CEO silence on disability” in an occasional interview. But up until this moment, the Valuable 500 as an entity had not mentioned the existence of a silence and a mission to bring about its end. The mission to end “the CEO silence on disability exclusion” wasn’t realized when Paul Polman became the first “follower” of the Valuable 500. “The CEO silence on disability exclusion” also didn’t end when 498 other CEO’s, from companies including the Valuable 500’s chosen list of Allianz, BBC, BP, The Coca-Cola Company, Daimler, Deloitte, EY, Google, Microsoft, Nestle, P&G, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., Prada, Shell, Sky, Sony, Twitter, Unilever, Virgin Media, Verizon and Vodafone signed the pledge. 

It wasn’t until Cook supposedly added his name that silence had been both named and broken. Did anyone at Apple know he was being signed up for a bait and switch that would erase their own corporate disability inclusion history? What about the 499 other executives that came before? Were they aware Casey was going around claiming “Before Paul Polman, who's the chair of The Valuable 500, we haven't had leaders who stood up and said, ‘You know what? We're going to do this, we're going to do this [...] It's not okay in 2019 actually”? 

The reality is, Cook had a history of speaking out on the topic of disability inclusion. On Global Accessibility Awareness Day in 2017, Tim Cook said of Apple that “we believe very deeply that accessibility's a human right” during an interview with James Rath, a filmmaker who is disabled due to ocular albinism. Rath secured the interview a year after Cook saw a video he uploaded to YouTube detailing “How Apple Saved My Life.” In the video Rath describes bullying throughout his childhood and struggles in school because of the stigmatizing accessibility tools he was provided with. 

—

James Rath shares the same diagnosis as Caroline Casey, though she portrays her childhood as special, but without needs. She grew up “thinking that I saw like any other child” even though “she could and still can read with her nose pressed to a book but couldn’t see the blackboard. How nobody wanted to pick her for the hockey team but it never stopped her believing that she had the potential to be an excellent sportswoman. How her Dad taught her to sail. “I was put in a little Optimist [dinghy] on Lough Derg. Dad said, ‘Do you see that rock?’, and I said ‘Uh, no’, and he would say, ‘Just go in that general direction, feel the wind in your face.’”

Growing up, Rath “always knew I had poor eyesight or low vision that was not correctable,” but he didn’t realize until he was older that his low vision “qualified as legally blind.” Casey also had a realization, but with one hell of a twist. From her 2010 TED Talk:

“on my seventeenth birthday, I accompanied my little sister in complete innocence, as I always had all my life -- my visually impaired sister -- to go to see an eye specialist. Because big sisters are always supposed to support their little sisters [...] I used to get my eyes tested just for fun. And on my seventeenth birthday, after my fake eye exam [...] he turned to my mother, and he said, "You haven't told her yet?" 

Caroline’s TED Talk conveniently omits key details that have emerged over the years. In alternate recountings, Casey says she wore glasses throughout her childhood, casting doubt on her claim that she got fake eye exams for fun. In her TED Talk, she says her parents “decided to tell me that I could see.” But in other tellings, she clarifies she “had no idea that I was at the level of registered blind” which implies a level of awareness of something she has since attributed to “a combination of total denial and lack of acceptance.” When these details are factored in, Casey’s story, in which a child lacked an awareness of a legal classification, becomes strikingly similar to Rath’s. 

—

Casey’s disability origin story fast forwards over a decade to 1999, when she “came out of [the disability] closet” (which is something the queer authors of this piece experience as lateral appropriation, in which “the discursive capital of one marginalized group is usurped by another similarly marginalized group”). That evening, she decided to go for a run. Despite the familiar route, she fell. And when she landed, she apparently hit upon an idea. 

She hurried home to her bookcase, where a book, featuring a shirtless white man who was “determined to have [his] picture expressed in [his] next book sitting upon an elephant” according to the intro. The book, Travels on my Elephant, recalls the time Mark Shand, the “aristocratic playboy” brother of Queen Consort Camilla Parker Bowles bought an elephant and rode her 600 miles across India. 

Casey “made a decision that day that I too would go to India, become a mahout and travel across the country on elephant back.” So she wrote to Shand, and with his help, got her very own elephant, albeit one she intended “only to rent.” But the moment she met Kanchi, she “fell in love and knew she would be mine for good.” How must that encounter have felt to Kanchi? As Casey recalls:

“The entire village had come out to watch this strange spectacle of a blonde girl approaching this massive elephant with all these cameras trailing her. As I walked up to her, we were both silent and looking at each other. I started crying because this was everything I had ever dreamed of. I touched my forehead to her trunk.”

For the next four months, Casey lived out her dream of becoming Mowgli from the Jungle Book, by riding Kanchi, her captive elephant 1,000km across India. Early on, at least, she understood “a lot of people had problems with” a “western woman riding bareback on an elephant.” She also describes one of Kanchi’s mahouts as being skeptical of Caroline’s motivations for wanting to “learn about living and working with elephants.” The skepticism seems to be warranted, as she portrays herself as an exotic white woman, setting foot in a foreign land:

“On the first day of the trek, curious Keralans followed Casey all day. “I was presented with flowers, propositioned — not much I could do with that on an elephant — offered husbands, given bananas to beat the band and caused two schools to come to a complete standstill,” Casey excitedly told reporters after her kickass trek.”

Decades have passed, and the story that has taken hold involves Casey becoming “the first western woman to achieve the status of elephant mahout” upon completing her solo journey across India. A mahout – the ancient trade, dating back to the onset of kingship, where a handler didn’t just train and guide his elephant into battle, but bonded with it for life. These days, the once honorable vocation, built on knowledge that “has always been transferred within families and within a tightly knit community” is now on the brink of extinction. No longer a living wage, mahouts are paid a pittance for a lifetime’s commitment. 

Casey’s solo trek – along with the National Geographic film crew that was documenting it – was led by Indian guides and a mahout. We can’t help but wonder what sort of bearing Shand’s relationship with the monarchy had on their decision to guide her glorified eco-tour. Was he also the intended audience for some sort of ceremony or misunderstanding through which Casey came to believe she was certifiably something she was not?

Honorifics aren’t one way gestures; recipients are expected to be transparent about the title being honorary, so as not to mislead the general public about their qualifications. For example, “it is generally considered improper practice for the recipient of an honorary doctorate to use the formal title of Doctor.” That’s because “Honoris causa degrees are not considered of the same [regard] as substantive degrees earned by the standard academic processes of courses and original research.” 

It seems that etiquette would also apply to an honorary mahout. Unfortunately, Casey has made a spectacle of the title, using it to regale western audiences with her exploits in order to legitimize the fame she sought to generate through this stunt. By qualifying herself as the first western woman, rather than a glorified ecotourist committing animal cruelty, she erases the emergence of Indian women, such as Parbati Barua, who is gaining recognition for her work as a mahout.

Like with so many things it’s a pattern, because it’s not just Casey’s honorary status as a mahout that she uses to inflate her credentials. After receiving honorary degrees from the University of Bath and University College Dublin, she updated her LinkedIN profile to read Dr. Caroline Casey. Both of these degrees cite her elephant trek as being a catalyst in becoming “one so young, that, like Alexander the Great, she has conquered worlds while still in her thirties.” 

Casey claims the idea of riding an elephant originated from her childhood memories of the 1967 animated Disney Jungle Book film. But Mowgli never rode an elephant in the film. In fact, Rudyard Kipling’s actual Jungle Book only mentioned the riding of elephants once in Mowgli’s chapters, when it refers to “the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns.” Disney’s animated rendition coded the jungle animals as black while Mowgli was coded as a white man who would eventually come to rule, leaving us to wonder just how much the role of colonizer appealed to Casey. 

—

When Casey “came off the elephant, [she] started into this work immediately. [She] wanted to be part of ending global exclusion.” It took a few iterations before she landed on the Valuable 500. While she says her focus is “very specifically disability exclusion,” she has taken up the rhetoric of intersectionality. In a speech at the United Nations, Casey made intersectionality into a zero sum game, explaining “the inclusion agenda in business, carves up our humanity into different categories, gender or race, LGBTQ and age - either way, we're carved up and we have to compete against each other for attention and resources. And in that competition, disability has always lost out.” Her “Reality of Intersectional Experience,” begins with disability and then adds on “race, gender, sexuality, class, and countless other aspects of identity that shape how individuals experience both the workplace and the wider world.” 

Dr. Ashlee Christoffersen, author of The Politics of Intersectional Practice, a book that focuses on the different ways UK NGOs interpret intersectional practice, offered some clarity when asked about why it has been so difficult to extrapolate meaning from Casey’s manipulation of intersectional-speak. Women in positions of power have begun to use their newly acquired fluency in intersectionality to obscure their intentions and actions. Christoffersen has also encountered this dynamic in her work and is similarly grappling with how to truly understand what her research participants actually believe. 

A 2023 paper Christoffersen co-authored with Dr. Akwugo Emejulu, a sociologist who studies racial, gender and class inequalities, found that intersectionality projects that focus on disability rather than race tend to speak “to a broader European project of erasing race and putting disability in competition with race.” On one rare occasion when the subject of blackness did arise in an interview, Casey notably dog whistled ‘all lives matter’ rhetoric, saying Black Lives Matter created a “brilliant opportunity” to say “all humanity.” She describes having been in “conversations and heard stuff like, “well, now we're going to focus on the Black community.” And I'm going, but what about the full intersectional lived black experience?” It’s as though she’s using intersectionality to redirect the conversation back to a narrative of disability that can control. 

—

Before intersectionality turned into an “empty gesture that reaffirms white supremacy,” it began as a critique of the discrimination that black women experience being “defined respectively by white women's and Black men's experiences.” The word intersectionality was developed by American civil rights advocate and scholar of critical race theory, Kimberlé Crenshaw. 

Intersectionality was conceived as a justice framework, written for the University of Chicago Legal Forum in 1989 to address “the limitations of antidiscrimination law” with regard to the violence black women face. It’s not just that white women have appropriated a black feminist concept, it’s that their appropriation has subsumed a survival strategy into capitalism. 

Christoffersen and Emejulu have found that white women at the helm of feminist organizations position themselves as “the only true arbiters of intersectionality” when they “universalize themselves and their particular experiences and position themselves as the only legitimate representatives of the group as a whole.” This is where Casey’s omniscience derives: 

“Let me just tell you what intersectionality is. Replace that word with ‘human being’. I am a woman. I have a vision impairment and a disability, and I am proud of both of those. Intersectionality is about not categorizing our humanity into silos, which compete.” 

When Crenshaw is asked about what has come of intersectionality, she says “this is what happens when an idea travels beyond the context and the content.” That’s why it is so important to tie ideas to their originators - something we have found no evidence of Casey doing. Instead she just takes it, depoliticizes it, and uses it to undergird her authority. 

—

During a podcast interview in the lead up to SYNC25, Casey bragged to the host that she has been approached by multiple academic institutions to write a case study, because “we could be writing a new blueprint for social change.” That “missing link” is synchronicity, not only to “prove disability inclusion, but [...] make social change happen.” The podcast host responds; “Brilliant. So good!”

Casey supposedly took ”inspiration from a murmuration, the awe-inspiring phenomenon in which very large groups of birds, fishes or insects move and change direction together.” Some readers may recognize the metaphor of murmurations that arose for Casey in late 2021 from a monthly column for Yes! Media which began earlier that year. The author of that column; the mixed race black feminist and facilitator adrienne maree brown is drawn to murmurations as a metaphor, because there is no “central leader orchestrating” the movement.

Casey fantasizes about orchestrating a “moment, if you can imagine, like you stand 500 people in a field, looking up at the stars and seeing what’s possible.” In many ways, “this ridiculous behavior that I've had” has made Casey into Stewie of corporate disability inclusion, constantly proclaiming “look what I can do.” This time it involves marching 500 of what she perceives as “the most influential people in the world” to a dark field to obey her command.

Casey’s missing link is actually the co-optation of a core principle from brown’s 2017 book Emergent Strategy, which provides a frame to think critically about organizations such as the Valuable 500, that are “structured in ways that reflect the status quo. We have singular charismatic leaders, top down structures, money-driven programs, destructive methods of engaging conflict, unsustainable work cultures, and little to no impact on the issues at hand.”

The Valuable 500 overinflates its value by claiming to represent every single individual who is employed by their partner companies, a whopping 22 million people, few of whom have any idea the Valuable 500 even exists. One CEO for every 44,000 workers is not collective action, but rather a form of elite capture that was described by brown’s mentor, the late social activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs, as “an idea that is progressive at one point can turn into its opposite at a later point.” 

Throughout 2025, as black women and other racialized employees have been disproportionately purged from the workforce as a result of Trump’s Executive Order to dismantle DEI, the Valuable 500 kept mum. Instead, they hosted the “first-ever Valuable 500 Africa Summit on disability inclusion” in, of all places, South Africa. “The Summit achieved its founding ambition: establishing Valuable 500 Africa as an African-led, African-built chapter of our global movement.” The African at the helm of the organization the Valuable 500 partnered with is white. While the handbook for the event is filled cover to cover with stock images of black people, images from the summit predominantly feature white professionals. 

Given all that Casey has taken from black culture, one might presume she would show a marker of solidarity (or tokenization) – such as black team members or advisors to the Valuable 500. But we couldn’t find any. This brings us back to the ways Ahmed”s ‘non-performativity’ serves the interests of the disinterested, because it fails to do what it says. Drawing also on the work of Dr. Jennifer C. Nash, it’s an idea Christoffersen has built upon through intersectionality that “is mobilised in order to not do intersectionality.”

—

According to Boggs, “any group that achieve power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values.” Casey achieved power by “taking a story that resonates [and] layering that with smart marketing strategies and cutting-edge public relations techniques” as corporate disability inclusion blogger Jonathan Kaufman wrote in his Forbes Contributor column in 2019. 

Industry bloggers, podcast hosts, and LinkedIN influencers often build credibility through a form of access churnalism that flatters their subjects by regurgitating their talking points and narratives. They do this to market their own expertise and insider status, typically with the aim of securing consulting and other paid gigs. Their platform, no matter how small, then games SEO to such an extent that what rises to the surface are unchecked claims masquerading as the truth. That’s how Casey has become a singular, charismatic “one woman band” who is “creating a movement,” “building a global movement,” “launch[ing] the movement,” and “ignit[ing] a historic global movement for a new age of business inclusion.”

Casey’s actual impact is one of consolidating an existing, albeit flawed grassroots labor movement, historicizing herself as the center of it, and locating it under her jurisdiction. This happened as more and more workers were finding purpose in advocacy and collective action around disability in the workplace. Needing to quell a movement that was gaining traction, the corporate apparatus outsourced their demands to advocates for disability inclusion in order to ensure whatever could have been will never be. Now, when employees organize to demand more and better, the powers-that-be can simply respond by saying they are addressing workplace accessibility and inclusion issues through their partnership with the Valuable 500. 

Casey’s desire “to be remembered as someone who [...] held themselves to account,” should exist in conflict with, in the words of Kaufman, her “acute awareness that her legacy will far outlast her.” But people are often remembered for things they didn’t do, and forgotten despite things they did do all the time. That’s what this industry attracts and emboldens, and why Kaufman similarly plugs himself in his bio as being “regarded as one of the most profound thinkers and practitioners in” his sentence goes on. A more accurate bio would own up to being a territory marker rather than euphemizing it as a self proclaimed “innovative thought leader.” 

What will likely be forgotten, like so much of our writing, is how Forbes removed Kaufman as a contributor in November 2023 after we reported that he failed to disclose his relationship to another corporate disability organization that he was writing glowingly about. His relationship to the Valuable 500 now reveals this as a pattern, in which Kaufman writes about those he wants to gain access to.

Kaufman’s 2019 article about Casey wasn’t a one off. Instead, it marked the beginning of years of laudatory writing on the Valuable 500, such as this piece in 2021, this piece in 2022, and this one in 2023. Then, in 2024, freshly shorn of his Forbes contributor status, Kaufman started writing directly rather than indirectly for them. The ‘collaboration,’ a white paper called Unlocking Disability-Inclusive Leadership, connected accountability to storytelling in order to render stories of "good intentions" unassailable by any who might contest the realities of those impacts. 

That Kaufman was contracted to conduct this research after facing consequences for his duplicity shows that rather than taking responsibility, accountability becomes a task of identifying which skeletons to bury behind a positive story of corporate success. In Kaufman’s case, he simply altered his resume and moved on, trusting the next churnalist would come along to legitimize it with a little flourish. His resume item as “a regular Forbes contributor for four and a half years” has since evolved to having written “profilically” during his stint. Talking point, flattery, rinse and repeat. 

—

It would be a mistake to assume that just because this particular piece is focusing on Caroline Casey, that she is the only one. This self promotional grift isn’t the work of outliers, it is who this work attracts and emboldens. In 2024, Vladimir Cuk, executive director for the International Disability Alliance resigned after an external review revealed “financial irregularities, and several reported cases of abuse of power and authority” as well as “mismanagement and corrupt behavior” including an “unduly compensated vacation,” bonuses, and fraud. Whether or not he still serves as a strategic partner to the Valuable 500 is unknown. No one has copped to scrapping his plans for “being involved in the progress the campaign will undoubtedly continue to make through phase 2,” i.e. the accountability phase they are now entering full scale.

Cuk’s resignation was brought to the attention of a slightly broader public when an industry newsletter decided “we need to talk.” The author of that newsletter, a consultant named Peter Torres Fremlin, echoed insider fears that the "broader sector could be unfairly tarnished” by Cuk’s offenses. His analysis toggles between reckoning with the faultiness of “a consistent focus on funders and stakeholders rather than openness with the wider movement” while admitting he repugnantly believes “brushing dissent under the rug can be tactically useful.” Cuk didn’t chime in, instead, like Kaufman, he just updated his LinkedIN and moved on. 

In 2025, Grant Stoner, a disabled journalist for IGN published extensive reporting about Mark Barlet, founder of AbleGamers, an organization that promotes accessibility in gaming. Details involve financial mismanagement, sexual harassment, emotional abuse, hostility, bullying, and a megalomania that led him to tell one accessibility advocate “You are a drop in the pond of accessibility. And I own the pond.” Rather than reckon with all he wrought, he issued a victim blaming statement, updated his LinkedIN, and moved on:

“In the early days of AbleGamers [...] I was not willing to be patient or wait my turn. I didn’t seek permission to make change; I simply acted. As a former member of the military, I was mission-focused and driven by objectives, sometimes to a fault. I also recognize that I faced criticism from others because I was achieving success where others were not. I demanded a seat at the table, while many other advocates remained in circles of internal discussion and complaints.” 

Our own writing similarly highlights a rotating cast of corporate disability girlbosses who remain undeterred in their pursuit of power, and believe their capacity to steamroll uniquely equips them to — as Barlet is described — “be the only.” This is what it means to adopt the values of one’s oppressors. It is only when they feel secure with their foothold that they will wax poetic about intersectionality, or collaboration, or whatever virtue they need to render meaningless in order to continue gatekeeping power and resources. 

It is absolutely reasonable to enter into activism with grand ambitions; we are a product of the imperialist, capitalist world we live in. The work of committing oneself to the people and unlearning these urges is painstaking. It’s a process many activists will remain engaged in for the duration of our lives. That’s what makes the Parasocial Model of Disability such an abomination. A select few among us will refuse unlearning, because they feel justified in their conquest – even in 2025. More and more it feels like they are locked in a time warp, still attempting to dominate a world that no longer exists. 

Writing about this rotating cast of characters is a daunting task. While they’re virtually unknown to the broader public, they tend to believe they carry some level of fame. They expect to be lionized as revolutionaries who are effecting the transformational change they are deployed to obstruct. They double speak the language of justice but act upon it in accordance with power. This kind of writing is not just uncomfortable for us and our subjects, it can also be uncomfortable for readers who regard these individuals as private citizens, despite the troves of information they have conceded to the public sphere. But it’s important for all parties to sit with it, because there will always be a next grifter, rearing to hoard movement resources that belong to the many. This brings us to the point of this piece: 

—

In a renowned analysis on the collapse of Enron, Professor Emeritus Colin Boyd pointed to the conflicts of interest created by the emergence of accountancies (accounting firms that also provide consulting services) in the latter part of the twentieth century. As he wrote: 

“An audit allowed an accounting firm to enter the client’s business, and to discover how the client’s various business systems operated. If the accounting firm tangentially detected aspects of the client’s systems that could be improved, then there would be an opportunity for the selling of consulting services to fix the client’s problems.” 

Arthur Andersen was the accountancy firm at the center of the Enron case – and is largely to blame – because the lure of lucrative consultancies incentivized the firm to apply reckless standards to audits. In the wake of the fallout, the United States government has put milquetoast measures in place to prevent this from happening again. Already easily corruptible, there is no way anyone involved considered or cared whether single issue non-for-profits might come to abuse the accountancy way. 

"Activities for the public benefit" is a reporting standard, established by the UK, that ensures a charity is doing what it set out to do, and “is making a difference to its beneficiaries.” According to an annual return submitted in July of 2025, a ‘key initiative’ listed under the Valuable 500 Foundation’s ‘Activities for the Public Benefit’ is their Authentic Representation Tool which allows the Valuable 500 “to enter the client’s business, and to discover how the client’s various business systems operated. If the [Valuable 500] tangentially detected aspects of the client’s systems that could be improved, then there would be an opportunity for [recommending] consulting services to fix the client’s problems.” 

The Authentic Representation Tool wasn’t the only item listed in ‘Activities for the Public Benefit.’ There was also a Reporting Accelerator Series and a Nothing Without Us Awards program. Like accountancies, the Valuable 500 Foundation conducts an audit of a corporation’s disability inclusion programming, which it uses to recommend consultation to "fix" areas where the client lacks. The Valuable 500 Foundation then takes this even further than accountancies ever did by catering best practices to reporting standards that renders their clients eligible for awards that will seal their reputation for inclusivity without ever having to account for complaints lodged by customers or employees. 

These tools and initiatives aren’t just a breach of public trust, they are also extraordinarily expensive when considering the actual costs involved. The Valuable 500 has taken in millions upon millions of dollars that remain virtually unaccounted for. For instance, the Nothing About Us Awards announcement is listed as one of five key initiatives delivered under a £1.5 million foundation budget. But it happened on a stage at Cannes Lions and would have cost the Valuable 500 absolutely nothing. Similarly, Jonathan Kaufman’s white paper was another of the deliverables, but there were only “33 individuals from 30 companies who participated,” and typically corporate research subjects aren’t compensated, especially when the study is being conducted by a non-profit that their company is being burnished by. 

Generation Valuable was listed as another deliverable, but the networking program places the onus on “seasoned executives” to carve out time for “upcoming disabled leaders, creating a dynamic, reciprocal mentoring partnership.” The Valuable 500 puts a cost of between £3,000-£6,000 on one to two Generation Valuable mentees, which corporations are expected to cover. It also assigned a ‘Delivery Partner’, ostensibly to facilitate ‘Learning Events’ and ‘Networking Opportunities’ and uses AI to provide accommodations. An interview with a former Generation Valuable participant does absolutely nothing to reveal any costs the Valuable 500 would have incurred.

Cuk and Barlet show how easy it is for large sums of money intended for the many to land in the pockets of those at the helm. It makes us wonder what Casey might mean when she says “there is no way forward in the battle for inclusion if we allow cancel culture to thrive and ignore people whose intentions are good but who might slip up every now and then.” To be clear, neither Cuk nor Barlet were canceled. They were simply found out and they are now both gainfully back at their grift. The formality of an audit, while informative, isn’t always needed to know what’s really going on – especially when fantastical childhood stories create a formula for fantastical charity stories. 

—

In The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies, authors Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington include “not-for-profit organizations around the world that provide consulting services” among the firms that often “have egregious conflicts of interest themselves.” In The Big Con, ”internal expertise often gets shunned in favor of contracting a global consultancy” because they are “selling legitimacy, not simply knowledge transfer.” 

The Big Con is a hotbed for the Parasocial Model of Disability, which places capitalist frames of profit and growth above social transformation and world building. The Valuable 500 and other advocates for corporate disability inclusion have perfected a practice of masterfully executed ineffectiveness, granting hollowed-out corporations the freedom to do exactly what they want to do.  

Typically, as Mazzucato and Collington point out, most “employees do not know when consultants are at the table.” But because the legitimacy these organizations are selling is announced in press releases and other public materials, a simple search will reveal which organizations are undermining your grassroots, internal, worker-led advocacy. Only then can we begin to address the elephant rider in the board room.