 Jim Pierce is vice president of corporate administration at the Plano-based Fortune 500 company.
“I really do feel like this is an untapped labor market,” he says.
Alliance Data has hired nearly a dozen people with cognitive disabilities such as autism. And Pierce says this isn’t a charity case.
“We’ve got this one guy, his productivity is three times as productive as the person doing his job who did not have cognitive disabilities before him, Pierce says. “And his error rate is 2 percent. He is 98 percent accurate. He’s a phenomenal worker.”
Pierce thinks it won’t be long before more national companies realize what they’re missing. In the meantime, the software company nonPareil is trying to keep up with growing demand here in Texas. It’s looking to build more campuses in Fort Worth and other cities across the state.