Entrepreneur of the Year: What Alison Schuback Wants

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In October, the principals were a few weeks away from their first advisory board meeting, at which much would be decided. But Fagin and Giordano speculated on the new venture's mechanics. Probably the Invisibib will be sold over the Web, through Bed Bath and other retailers, and to nursing homes and assisted-living chains. The Invisibib will be customized for other markets, including versions for children's art classes, commuters who slurp coffee behind the wheel, and -- Schuback's favorite application -- brides anxious to protect their dresses during makeup refreshes. The company will seek bank loans and lease offices and warehouse space near the HIA. And it will enlist the United (NYSE:UPS) Parcel Service to create workflow processes friendly to people with cognitive and physical limitations.

The timeline will be dictated by Everyday Edisons's design and manufacturing schedule, but Fagin hopes to see Invisibibs in stores by fall. Feinstein, meanwhile, is big-picturing the start-up. "If the Invisibib becomes a success, similar things can be repeated in different areas," he says. "I hope other businesses will come along that can be handled by head-injured men and women."

To get an idea what such businesses might look like, I arrange to visit the Head Injury Association. At lunchtime, the main activity area is nearly deserted. A woman sits at a desk outside the computer room, munching Cheerios and studying a workbook on how to tell time. Beside her, a blind man picks out a number on a phone. The cafeteria, by contrast, is swarming with activity. Rolling in wheelchairs and clacking past with walkers, the residents line up for their plates of chicken parmesan. Some are chipper, others somnolent. The damage is evident in their twisted limbs or in their features, or sometimes lurking just behind their eyes. Traumatic brain injury is not a disease, and because of that it is not predictable. What these people have in common -- and what they share with Alison -- is a diminution of horizons, a piece of themselves gone missing.

Some of these people hold part-time jobs outside the HIA, which they perform with accommodations from their employers and, usually, the aid of a job coach. The Invisibib venture will be different. In some sense, it will be theirs; brain trauma survivors will fill roles from labeling and packing to customer service to sales and marketing. "I have more people who are capable of employment than employment opportunities initially, but we will probably put around 75 to work at first," Giordano says. "All of them have said they're interested. Everybody wants to be involved."

One especially eager candidate is Linda Archipolo. In 1982, Archipolo was a high school senior working at a Burger King in the food court of a mall. A workman in the restaurant next door fired a nail gun; the nail passed through the wall and into Archipolo's forehead.

You are you. Take a breath, and you are someone else.

"I think I could do sales," says Archipolo, a dark-haired extrovert. "I could go out and demonstrate what the bib is for. You can tell by my shirt. I just had tomato sauce for lunch, and I had the bib on. Can you tell? I don't have any sauce on me."

"Alison is fantastic," says Adriana Deliguori, who was a pedestrian injured in a car accident in Buenos Aires. She met the Schubacks when Alison gave a speech here in September. "Always I was thinking I could do something, but it never came on my mind I could do something like this. I would love to work for her."

Schuback, for her part, would love to be worked for. "I think I can be a very good, strong leader," she says. "I think I have the capabilities, and I'll only get better with time." Meanwhile, she waits in Dallas while the Long Island component incorporates and finalizes arrangements with Everyday Edisons.

Soon, she will be under the wing of Fagin and Bed Bath's vice president of marketing, who will mentor her long distance, with periodic visits to company headquarters. She is sorting through her old ideas from Independent Empowerment, evaluating which might take off in the new business. And she continues to rack up personal milestones. In August, she made it around the block for the first time using her walker. It took her more than an hour. But Alison Schuback is patience personified.

"Just showing up for the audition was so far-fetched -- whoever could imagine this?" she says. "All people like me get are the jobs no one else wants. That my product could employ all these people in jobs that really use them…" She pauses and folds her hands in her lap. The smile is swift and beatific. "Well, that would be immeasurable if I could do that."

Leigh Buchanan is an editor-at-large for the magazine.

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."

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