VARC Quarterly Newsletter | 2026 - Q3
QUARTER 3 | Fall 2024 | ISSUE NO. 20
Your Portal to VARC's Quarterly Updates
Message from the President & CEO
VARC Leadership is in Service to Others
Leadership is often associated with titles, authority or recognition. At VARC, we believe leadership begins somewhere else: with service.
Our approach to servant leadership is grounded in a simple idea: the leader serves the success of the people, the work and the mission. That means listening before assuming, removing barriers, helping others grow, sharing ownership and balancing empathy with accountability.
Servant leadership is something we have intentionally invested in throughout VARC. We create opportunities for people to strengthen their leadership skills and put those principles into practice every day. Because leadership does not begin or end with a title. It can be demonstrated at every level of our organization.
Recently, we have had two wonderful opportunities to see that leadership recognized.
Kelly Dersham, Assistant Director of Transition & Adult Services, received the Emerging Leader Award at the DSPN Conference. Kelly has consistently demonstrated a commitment to quality services, strong relationships, thoughtful problem-solving and the development of the people around her.
Shelby Neubauer, Senior Director of Transition & Adult Services, was selected as a 2026 Rising Star Under 40, recognizing her leadership and contributions within our region.
These are individual accomplishments worth celebrating. But what makes me especially proud is seeing leadership rooted in service recognized beyond our organization.
At its best, servant leadership creates a ripple effect. When leaders help others grow, those individuals are better equipped to strengthen their teams, serve their communities and advance the mission we all share.
Congratulations, Kelly and Shelby. Your recognition is well deserved, but even more meaningful is the way you continue to put leadership into practice in service to others.
Elizabeth Filter
President & CEO of VARC
Discovering What You're Capable Of, with SparkForce
Appleton, WI— Sometimes the biggest discovery during career exploration isn’t a job. It’s realizing you can do something you weren’t sure was possible. SparkForce supported 11 clients learn what was possible.
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Sometimes, the first step toward meaningful employment is simply having the opportunity to try.
This summer, VARC hosted the SparkForce Inclusive Manufacturing Camp, a four-week program offered through SparkForce, The FMA Foundation. The program combines hands-on manufacturing experience with workplace-readiness training and exposure to local employers.
At VARC’s Appleton campus, this year’s group worked on production lines, learned to use riveting and notching equipment, practiced palletizing and shrink-wrapping, and helped build insulated containers used to ship MRI equipment. They also developed skills in communication, teamwork, interviewing and other workplace expectations.
For program lead Ashley Milhaupt, one of the most meaningful moments came from watching a member of the group who was initially unsure what would be possible physically. With practice and the opportunity to work through challenges, that individual found ways to successfully complete tasks that had once seemed difficult.
Ashley summed up the program’s value simply: people may be capable of more than they realize, but they need opportunities to test and develop those abilities.
That’s what meaningful career exploration can offer. It isn’t about deciding what someone can or cannot do. It’s about giving people the opportunity to discover their strengths, build new skills and begin imagining where those abilities might take them.
Sometimes discovering the right career starts with discovering what you’re capable of.
🥀Oh, the intrigue!
Our Mystery Masquerade Dinner is next week. Get your tickets and don't miss Viroqua's most mysterious night out this fall!
🥩Meat your chance to win!
The ORC Meat Raffle is coming October 21! Tune in on Facebook Live for your chance to stock the freezer while supporting a great cause.
Meaningful Work, Real Work - with WI Senator Keyeski
Reedsburg, WI — What does inclusion actually look like when the work is real, the expectations are real and businesses are counting on the result? A visit to VARC’s production floor offered a powerful answer.
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When Wisconsin State Senator Sarah Keyeski visited VARC’s Reedsburg campus, one of the most meaningful moments happened on the production floor.
Production staff were assembling sports tape for a VARC business customer. Like many manufacturing processes, the work moved through stages. Rolls were shrink-wrapped, sorted by size and sent to individual labeling stations, where the appropriate labels were applied by hand.
What caught the senator’s attention wasn’t simply what was being produced. It was how the work allows people with different abilities to contribute to the production process.
At VARC, a complex production process can be broken into smaller, repeatable steps. Workstations can be configured around an individual’s abilities, allowing production staff and pre-vocational participants to contribute to specific stages while maintaining the quality and efficiency expected by VARC’s business customers.
It demonstrates something important about disability employment services: inclusion can be part of a productive, successful business operation.
This is real work. Businesses depend on VARC to help produce, assemble, package and distribute their products. The people doing that work are part of that responsibility and part of its success.
And there is something beautifully ordinary about that.
Meaningful work does not give someone dignity. Dignity is inherent. What work can offer is the opportunity to contribute, to be counted on and to know that your effort matters to something larger than yourself.
That is something worth seeing firsthand.
For policymakers and community leaders shaping the future of disability services, our invitation is simple: come visit.
Come onto the production floor. See inclusion in practice. And, most importantly, meet the people who want what so many of us want from adulthood: the opportunity to participate, contribute and be part of their community.
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Tossing for Inclusion: Competing as Peers
Appleton, WI.—The high-fives were plentiful. The competition was friendly. Until the semifinals. 😏 VPI, Powered by VARC celebrated our 4th Tossing for Inclusion.
Read what happened...
There were plenty of high-fives, hugs and words of encouragement at this year’s Tossing for Inclusion. But by the time the tournament reached the semifinals, one thing was also abundantly clear:
People came to compete.
That combination is part of what makes Tossing for Inclusion special.
The event was built around a simple idea: create an activity where people of different ages, abilities and experience levels can participate together. Bag toss provides that common ground. You don’t have to be the fastest, strongest or most athletic person in the room to step up to the boards and play.
And this year, people showed up.
Forty-eight teams participated alongside volunteers, sponsors, community members and people supported by VARC. Throughout the day, competition mixed naturally with connection. Teammates encouraged each other. Competitors celebrated good throws. People who may not otherwise have met found themselves sharing the same courts, the same rules and the same desire to land that next bag on the board.
That is inclusion in a wonderfully ordinary form.
It isn’t about creating a separate experience or lowering expectations. It’s about creating opportunities for people to participate as peers, bringing different capabilities to the same experience and being fully part of the community around them.
Tossing for Inclusion also raised $27,390 in support of VARC’s mission. But the greatest measure of the day was harder to count.
It was in the high-fives. The encouragement. The competition. The connections.
Because sometimes belonging looks a lot like simply getting to play.
Celebrating Client Successes: Let's review the numbers
