Over the course of a long career with DTE Energy in Detroit, in which he rose to the position of vice chairman, Dave Meador came to understand the employment barriers facing those with disabilities.
It was an issue with personal resonance for him, given that his now-30-year-old daughter, Belle, is on the autism spectrum.
To help his daughter and others, Meador was instrumental in starting the nonprofit Autism Alliance of Michigan nearly 15 years ago.
Along the way he learned that his colleagues in the business world would, at times, express a willingness to employ people with disabilities, but he realized that willingness alone doesn’t remove barriers to entry.
As it stands, hiring practices are heavily tilted to favor candidates who can drive, who don’t need special accommodations, who can walk or climb with little difficulty, who can communicate effectively, and who excel at concentration and memory skills.
Overall, according to a recent report by the National Disability Institute, 62.5 percent of people with disabilities remain outside the workforce.
In recent years, that reality — combined with advances made possible by technology — have led a growing number of people with disabilities to eschew traditional employment in favor of entrepreneurial opportunities.
“If you can work at home and have your own business, those barriers aren’t there,” Meador says.
The Association for Enterprise Opportunity reports that adults with disabilities are now 1.3 times as likely to become an entrepreneur as those without — with barriers in the traditional workplace being one factor in that difference. The organization reports entrepreneurs with disabilities generated an estimated $493 billion in sales and receipts in 2024, the latest figures available.
Still, the latter report notes that challenges persist for such entrepreneurs, including difficulties in finding role models, a lack of support from family, and the need to make use of available resources. While the number of entrepreneurs with disabilities is growing, the AEO report cites their average total annual revenue is about $61,000, compared with $135,000 for those without disabilities.
Looking to expand the opportunities for disabled adults, upon his retirement from DTE Energy in 2021, Meador — who subsequently took on a part-time role as executive director of the Detroit Regional CEO Group — was determined to take some sort of action to support people with disabilities who wanted to start their own businesses.
He recognized they would have a shot at success creating and selling items of interest if only they had access to a sales platform that would complement their strengths and offer support where needed.
“Part of it is just lived experience,” Meador says. “I had been involved with organizations trying to get adults with autism and other disabilities into employment. We had done good work, but it was always low-scale.”
He recounted an experience in which major corporations, including Ford Motor Co. and DTE Energy, worked with the Autism Alliance to create job opportunities, but in the end, only 10 people landed jobs from the effort.
“At the same time, my daughter (had been) out of high school for 12 years and had been working to get part-time employment,” Meador says. “We were successful at English Gardens, but others we talked to would just apologize and say, ‘We’re sorry, it’s too hard and we don’t know how to do it.’ ”
Meador wasn’t willing to accept that answer, so he poured himself into finding a better solution.
The result of those efforts is Trove Market, a platform similar to Etsy that allows individual sellers to establish accounts and sell goods they create.
Trove Market is uniquely established for people with disabilities, and takes 3 percent of a given company’s sales revenue compared to the 30 percent Etsy takes.
“In our marketing program, we drive buyers to Trove Market who are shopping with their heart,” Meador says. “If someone wanted to do that on Etsy, they couldn’t. The search engine wouldn’t allow it.”
In operation since Thanksgiving Day 2025, Trove Market is the result of two years’ worth of work by Meador, who dealt with everything from the technology to recruiting sellers to getting the word out.
“I think of it as a retail business,” Meador says. “We need to get the shelves full and open the store.”
It’s also essential to get the right leadership in place, and Meador conducted a search for a CEO that resulted in 15 plausible applicants. None of the candidates possessed the appeal of Jayme Powell, who not only had an outstanding corporate background, but also had a personal investment in the mission.
“I approached Dave and asked, ‘If we can make these things happen and have a really good exit strategy, would you consider having me as CEO?’ ” Powell recalls. “I propositioned him.”
Like Meador, Powell has a family member with a disability that hampered employment opportunities. Her 38-year-old sister, Brittany Danzig, has Asperger syndrome, which also falls on the autism spectrum. That, combined with her professional experience, made Powell a clear choice.
Powell, who started last November as Trove Market’s CEO, spent eight of the previous 10 years leading education and workforce strategies for Rocket Cos. in Detroit. In that position, she got to know Meador, given he was involved with helping to build the Rocket Community Fund.
In December 2023, Powell accepted the position of executive director for the Detroit Regional Partnership, which gave her a further opportunity to interact with Meador, who helped to organize the business attraction and economic development group.
When she learned where Meador was going with Trove Market, she realized it would allow her to assist her sister and others facing similar challenges.
“I saw my sister through her educational journey, and she encountered many challenges alongside her Asperger’s diagnosis,” Powell says. “Since graduation, she has had a tremendously difficult time navigating a traditional employment situation.”
While Meador and Powell shared a personal conviction to help those with disabilities take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities, they also shared an understanding that it would require more than simply creating a platform and signing people up to sell goods.
Even the most experienced business professionals find it difficult to start a business. The population being targeted for Trove Market would need help in a variety of different ways — as would the enterprise itself.
That’s where the corporate community stepped in. While many businesses may struggle to employ those with disabilities, other companies have demonstrated a willingness to respond when Trove Market asks for specific types of help.
For example, Detroit-based TechTown has offered to modify some of its training programs to make them more accessible to those with disabilities; TechTown and Trove Market are now working together to create a seller support hub.
Several banks, including Chase, Huntington, Flagstar, Comerica, and Fifth Third have offered to help with financial literacy education.
DTE Energy, Consumers Energy, and Ally Financial have offered to help with training.
Apart from selling goods online, the Meijer location in Royal Oak plans to put some of the products created by Trove Market sellers in the store.
“This is being jump-started by philanthropy,” Meador says. “Fundraising is hard, but walking into these corporations, we end up having these generative conversations where they say, ‘In addition to funding, can we do this or that?’ ”
All the support has helped with Trove Market’s current top priority, which is recruiting sellers and getting supplies lined up. Thanks to the assistance that’s come from the larger community, Trove is able to offer a full-scale support system, including a variety of business resources, tutorials, and instructional videos.
The early results suggest that both the concept and the widespread support have set the stage for seller success. Belle Meador did $1,000 in sales her very first week on Trove Market by selling themed cards for birthdays and holidays, as well as colorful slime including pink slime with Axolotl, mint chocolate chip slime, and a dream dragon-themed slime with a white rabbit scent.
“While she was making the cards on her own, she was researching the slime,” Meador says. “A week ago she figured out how to make a flexible dragon.”
One key to Belle Meador’s success is the opportunity Trove Market offers to choose a particular passion or interest and turn it into items for sale.
“There will be a subset of the community that will be starting at that level,” Meador says. “We’ll ask, ‘What’s your passion? What’s your interest?’ There’s one high school where students got together and decided to make coffee mugs, keychains, and cookies.”
Other Trove Market entrepreneurs offer their own specialties.
Joseph Peters sells psychedelic art that he says is based on his dreams and nightmares, as well as collages from comics and children’s books. Another company, Soft Spray Studio, uses an airbrushed canvas board to create art with stencils and gentle layers of color, while Jennifer Beilis sells art under the name “Hear I Am & Making Positive Changes.”
Better Detroit Brownie Co., meanwhile, is being run by local special needs and autistic teens who are learning “business, baking, and blessing skills” as they bake sweets and perform community service.
As more entrepreneurs populate the site, Meador expects the movement to catch on.
“We’ll get people and prospects to look at what’s on the website and they’ll say, ‘I can do that,’ and it will become generative and grow,” Meador predicts.
Powell says Trove Market intends to help the process by working with nonprofits to put on workshops for potential sellers. In many ways, Trove Market completes the process some other organizations have begun.
“Many of our organization partners, like Living and Learning (Center) or Judson Center, say they’ve got all the programming and they’re making things, but they don’t have a place to get visibility and sell them online,” Powell says.
Stores need customers, of course, and a number of sources have risen to the occasion to help get the word out. The State of Michigan has been broadcasting information about Trove Market, while partner organizations like Dutton Farm, the Living and Learning Center, and Easterseals are putting information out through social media.
Both Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, meanwhile, have sent word to all their employees about opportunities to buy goods from Trove Market. That’s a base of 20,000 people who now know enough to at least take a look.
Meador and Powell see the potential offered by such widespread corporate support, and they have a plan to continue taking advantage of it.
“We’ll have a marketing program that reaches out to corporations who tell us, ‘We’re happy to blast this out to our employees and let our customers know,’ ” Meador says.
It’s part of a widespread embrace of the Trove Market vision that has Meador and Powell overwhelmed.
“People respond by calling and saying, ‘This is incredible, we know this is a part of the economy that isn’t working and we want to help,’ ” Meador says. “We’re getting universal positive reaction from everyone we reach out to.”
While much of that positive reaction surely comes from a simple interest in seeing the fortunes of people with disabilities improve, there’s also an economic imperative to put more people to work.
The Association for Enterprise Opportunity estimates that simply closing the revenue gap between entrepreneurs with disabilities and those without could cause a positive impact on the national economy of $776 billion.
The same report highlights some of the remaining challenges, including the fact that 59 percent of the entrepreneurs with disabilities who had to close their businesses in recent years did so because of a lack of affordable health insurance — that’s slightly higher than the 51 percent of entrepreneurs without disabilities who did so for the same reason.
AEO also reports 76 percent of entrepreneurs with disabilities have trouble accessing support from outside sources to help operate and grow their respective businesses.
All of this helps to explain why Michigan has 1.7 million people with disabilities who are not currently working.
Fortunately, the early success of Trove Market suggests those who have struggled to find traditional employment might now have a very plausible alternative, and local educators are taking note. Area high schools are playing two critical roles. One is as a source of potential sellers on the platform.
Meador recently heard from a Detroit high school special education teacher who has been looking for ways to get his students part-time work, and asked, “Is there any reason we can’t have a store?”
That dialogue has helped draw the attention of leadership at the Detroit Public Schools Community District, where as many as 1,000 current students are potential sellers.
“It would be a districtwide store and the students would be selling as part of that,” Meador says.
Meanwhile, the Detroit Public Schools have offered to serve as a fulfillment center for the students who will be selling from their store. The nonprofit Goodwill Industries in Detroit also has offered to provide fulfillment support if volume requires it.
In turn, Powell says she has been vigilant as CEO about making sure Trove Market complies with all laws and regulations pertinent to this type of operation. It qualified as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit because its core audience is living far below the poverty line.
“It has to be hyper-compliant, with accessible standards,” Powell says. “And it needs to have holistic support like technical support.”
Powell says one of the rewards of realizing the Trove Market vision is the chance for her sister to see herself in a different way.
“My sister never saw herself as a creator,” Powell says.
That has changed dramatically. Danzig is selling a variety of individually designed business card holders, with themes such as American stars and stripes, pink butterflies, pearl leaves, sunflowers, Hannukah, and curlicue patterns.
It’s even a prominent attribute on her profile.
“With the support of my family, I’m able to learn new skills that help improve my dexterity, learn about business, and do what I love most — to meet people’s wants and needs,” she wrote.
That’s the vision Meador had in mind when he set out, five years ago, to create something different for people wanting to work, but who were hampered by disabilities. “We’re bringing our vision to life,” he says. “We want to raise the profile of Trove Market, so it becomes a household word.”
