Rebecca Prejean was laid off with a decent severance. She had a choice: go back to corporate and keep doing what she’d always done, or build something that served the purpose she actually wanted — creating accessible learning environments for the neurodivergent employees her son Ethan represented.
Ethan was born with autism and hydrocephalus. Doctors told her he wouldn’t walk, wouldn’t talk, would have seizures his entire life. He is now a walking, talking, running, opinionated nine-year-old who defied every prediction. The years Rebecca spent fighting for resources, finding believers, and advocating for him in a world that wasn’t built for how he thinks became the lens through which she saw her corporate learning and development work differently — and ultimately, the origin of EBGC.
She shared the story on the Unscripted Small Business Podcast. It’s one of the clearest examples we’ve heard of what the entrepreneur resource hub on our Training page describes as getting up off the couch — taking the restlessness that precedes a calling and turning it into a business that exists because you’re the only person positioned to build it.
The Moment the Corporate Work Changed
Rebecca had spent over a decade building e-learning and corporate training content. She was good at it. But it wasn’t until she looked at the employees who “couldn’t get it” in her training rooms — disengaged, confused, checked out — and recognized them as people like Ethan that everything shifted.
The behavior (confusion, disengagement) was the symptom. The inaccessible content was the cause. The same employees who were written off as difficult in training were the same people she was fighting for at home. She knew how to fix it. Nobody else in the room did.
That’s the specific kind of insight that turns a layoff into a launch. Not a generic business opportunity someone else could have spotted, but a problem you’re uniquely equipped to solve because of what you’ve lived. If you’re sitting on a similar intersection, the business model consulting at the Collaborative is a direct way to work through what it looks like as a real business.
Reframing Accessibility Without the DEI Label
The current environment has made DEI language a liability in some corporate contexts. Rebecca’s adaptation: stop leading with people and start leading with productivity and retention. Neurodivergent employees are fully capable of contributing — but only if they have the tools to do so. Accessible content reduces retraining costs, improves retention, and strengthens the bottom line.
This reframing isn’t a compromise of values — it’s a more effective argument in the rooms where decisions get made. Understanding how to speak to your client’s actual concerns, rather than the concern you think they should have, is a skill every entrepreneur needs. The ADA provides a legal floor for accessibility, but Rebecca’s work goes far beyond compliance — into genuine communication design that works for the 15–20% of any workforce that is neurodivergent.
Simple Changes That Work Immediately
Rebecca’s list of zero-to-low-cost changes any employer or business owner can make this week:
- Send a meeting agenda before the call — reduces anxiety, helps people prepare, gives structure to the conversation
- Share your presentation deck before the meeting — lets people process at their own pace
- Add captions to all video content — human-accurate SRT files cost a few dollars per video and improve comprehension for everyone
- Build breathing room into deadlines — don’t sandwich key deliverables between competing demands
- Send a follow-up summary after the meeting — creates a processing touchpoint for people who absorb information in different ways
None of these are special accommodations. They’re better practice for everyone — and the business that figures that out early earns the loyalty of a workforce most of its competitors are pushing away.
Why She Targets Large Corporations, Not Nonprofits
Rebecca’s counterintuitive client choice: Fortune 500s and law firms over nonprofits. Nonprofits tend to already have inclusive thinking baked in. The people hurting most are at organizations with zero process in place. That’s where change matters most and where her skills have the highest impact.
The lesson for any entrepreneur: don’t just serve the people who already agree with you. The clients who need you most are often the ones who’ve never thought about what you do. Identify where the gap is widest — and go there. The free entrepreneur resources on our Training page cover this principle through several different lenses, including strategic clarity and niche discovery.
“Just advocating in your own space can create a lot of change without even realizing it — and it helps the people that come behind you.” — Rebecca Prejean
The Takeaway
Rebecca’s business exists because she was the only person who could build it. The intersection of 10+ years in corporate learning and development, years of advocacy for a neurodivergent child, and a layoff that created the space to act — that’s not something anyone could have manufactured. It’s a calling that came from lived experience, aimed at a problem that genuinely needed solving.
If you’re sitting on a similar intersection — expertise plus personal experience plus a gap nobody else is filling — the Collaborative’s entrepreneur blog and training resources are a good starting point. A direct session with Jeremy Rivera is the fastest way to get honest about what it actually takes to build it.
Hear Rebecca’s full story on the Unscripted Small Business Podcast.
Ready to Build Something With Real Purpose?
Jeremy Rivera works directly with entrepreneurs through the Digital Christian Collaborative — helping Cookeville business owners get honest about where they are and clear on what to build next. $100/hr consulting rate — 30-minute foundational session.