Adventure seeker – at work and play

Scarlet Nishimoto is an adventure seeker. She loves to travel. She goes camping with her family, enjoys hiking, and plays goalball, an adaptive team sport where opponents try to throw a ball into their opponents’ goals.

Scarlet’s newest adventure will be rappelling down a 10-story building in Eye Drop 2022, set for June 10, at the Holiday Inn Lancaster in the downtown area. It is an event sponsored by VisionCorps to raise both awareness – and funding – about blindness and vision-impairments in South Central Pennsylvania.

“I’m so excited to rappel,” said Scarlet. “This is a great way to have fun – and support a wonderful mission.”

Rappelling is one more way that Scarlet, who is blind, finds and participates in new experiences.

An athlete who plays goalball with the Washington, D.C. women’s team, she recently participated in a tournament in Philadelphia. She is a member of the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes (MWABA) and the United States Association of Blind Athletes (USABA).

She also seeks out new experiences in her work.

Scarlet is a contract closeout specialist who works on government contracts for the Contract Management System (CMS) division of VisionCorps. The group works on government military and other contracts. They check to see that the contract is complete, all payments have been received, and remaining funding returned to the government.

It’s a time-consuming process and requires work with several spreadsheets. It’s not the kind of work you might expect from a person trained as a social worker or a person who is blind, but it is a job that Scarlet loves.

“Working for CMS I gained knowledge and understanding of the federal contracting system. It’s also helped me focus on details in filing important documents,” said Scarlet.

She appreciates working VisionCorps, a “company that does not force you to prove your worth as a person with a disability.”

“VisionCorps has experience with accommodation. When I first started working here, my supervisors already had an idea of the accommodations I might need and were ready to hear me out regarding my needs,” said Scarlet.

“I never felt pressured to prove that, even though I have vision loss, I am still a great asset. They already had high expectations for me.”

That’s important to her because she wants to be a successful role model for her daughter, Juniper, who is 17-months-old and vision-impaired.

“I am working hard to provide her with a future with lots of opportunities,” said Scarlet

She appreciates working with colleagues who have similar goals.

“We all work incredibly hard to make our communities a more accepting and accessible place where persons with vision loss can achieve their goals.” See Scarlet talk more about her experiences at work in a new video about VisionCorps produced by the National Industries for the Blind (NIB).

“I am so grateful to work with such an amazing group of dedicated individuals that is CMS,“ said Scarlet. “I’m a social worker and I want to support individuals and communities as they become more empowered.”

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