Like many individuals with autism, Jonathan Eichenholz has limited job skills and is unlikely to receive a high school diploma. How, his father Jason worried, would he ever get by on his own?
“Realizing we’ve got a lifelong journey with Jonathan with autism, what am I going to do with him after I’m gone? That’s the thing that used to keep me up at night,” Jason Eichenholz said.
As a tech entrepreneur, Eichenholz believed he had the wherewithal to address this problem for Jonathan and others like him. In November he launched Techtonic Workforce Academy, a Central Florida-based initiative to train people with autism to repair cellphones and other electronic devices so they can become financially independent.
If it succeeds, he hopes to expand it into a broader school curriculum that can train a much larger number of individuals than the academy can handle.
The program is partly funded by a $1 million state appropriation given to Eichenholz’s foundation, the Jonathan’s Landing Foundation, in 2023 to get more adults with autism into the workforce. That’s a demographic that has an unemployment rate of 85%, according to the Autistic Americans Civil Liberties Union.
The academy would be housed inside an electronics repair factory in Central Florida, and Eichenholz plans to open it by spring 2025. He has not yet shared the location.
While waiting for the new facility to open, Jonathan’s Landing has teamed up with several community partners to give hands-on demos to people with autism, in order to gauge their ability and interest in electronics repair.
If a participant shows interest, the foundation will look to recruit them into the workforce academy.
The demos also give the foundation an opportunity to fine-tune its program.
For example: At a demo held in November at Opportunity Community Ability, an Orlando company that provides vocational training and other supports to people with autism, some of the participants had trouble using the tools. Now that’s become a problem for group leaders to solve.
“What we’re definitely finding is, from a fine motor skills standpoint, what is it that we can do to adapt some of the tools?” said Kimberly McCarten, acting CEO of the Jonathan’s Landing Foundation. She and her team are looking to partner with a company that does 3D printing to design special tools.
Cellphone repair is a $300 billion industry with a labor shortage of about 20,000 technicians, according to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
In addition to housing the academy, Eichenholz’s new facility will be a working cellphone and electronics repair factory, where he hopes ultimately to employ up to 5,000 people with autism, he says.
The biggest hurdle to finding a job for people with autism is convincing employers to hire them, said Margaret Newman Thornton, COO of Opportunity Community Ability.
“Because there’s a label, they have this idea in their mind that we’re going to send them this 5-year-old child that’s melting down in Wal-Mart,” Thornton said.
Once Techtonic’s repair factory turns a profit, Eichenholz hopes it’ll show employers the value people with autism can bring to a company.
“Success for us is taking an individual who spent a year or two with us and getting them a job at Batteries Plus or uBreakiFix or the Apple Store,” Eichenholz said.
Adults with autism can be a financial burden on families, especially after they leave high school and their caregivers must then pay for all the therapies the public schools provide for free.
“The school system will support them until the semester that they turn 22, and then all of your occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech, academics, sports, all of that goes away,” Thornton said.
Jonathan Eichenholz, who is 19, has a few more years of such support left, and then his dad foresees him training at the academy and working at the factory.
But Jason Eichenholz — who was the co-founder of Luminar Technologies, a successful lmanufacturer of sensor technology — has even bigger dreams for his next venture. Alongside the factory, he hopes to construct “pocket neighborhoods,” where 500 workers and academy participants could live independently. Profits from the factory would help pay for the therapies and supports residents rely on, helping to elevate the financial strain put on their families.
“So, basically, a place for Jonathan and 499 of his closest friends to live,” Eichenholz said.
Jonathan’s Landing is working on a partnership with the Osceola County School District, in which it will bring its hands-on demos to high school students with autism and other developmental delays.
The foundation hopes to roll out its first demo at St. Cloud High School in spring 2025 with about 20 students with special needs.
“And it’ll grow from there. We’ll design it to get better and better. The goal would be to have it in every high school,” said Tim Burdette, executive director of career and technical education for the Osceola County School District.
Currently, the school district offers students with special needs life skills but limited vocational training.
“Students learn how to do their laundry, how to make their bed, how to do some small cooking. But they really don’t learn the technical trades that they need to be able to sustain a job,” Burdette said.
If the partnership proves successful, Jonathan’s Landing hopes to build a curriculum for the district.
Then, instead of paying an outside company to fix broken laptops and other devices, schools can have students do the repairs.
“It’s no different than when I took auto shop in high school, and I had to fix the town dump trucks when they needed a brake job,” Eichenholz said.
And while the school is saving money, the student is picking up an employable skill which could help them gain some measure of autonomy.
“Even if they still live with their parents, at least they take a little bit of the burden of the financial part away, with student paying their way, and gives them self-worth, being able to work and be a part of society,” Burdette said.