I'm Darien Slayton-Fleming, and thank you for joining me on Get What You Need and Feel Good About It. Do you find it difficult to ask for what you need? Do you frequently feel misunderstood? Do you have a problem or cause that you would like to learn to manage more effectively? What makes it so hard for us to tell each other how we feel, and how do we speak up for ourselves? How do we do this respectfully so that we honor the needs and feelings of others? Together, we'll explore tips, strategies, and resources that when used mindfully and consistently will improve our results and enrich our relationships.

Hello and welcome back to you get what you need and feel good about it. I'm Darien Slayton Fleming, your hostess, and today I am excited to welcome David Fuwakawa, who co-founded a business called Here to There. And this is a really catchy name if you ever are searching it on The internet. It's H-E-A-R, the number two, and there, T-H-E-R-E. So welcome, Dave. How are you doing?

Hi, Darian. Thank you so much for having me. This is this is really great.

Well, I'm excited to interview you and get to know you a little bit better. I will just take some time to. Tell our listeners a little bit about you. Dave is the co-founder and chief experience officer for Here to There. Before he co-founded this business, he was a physical assistant—you might call him a technician—for an optometrist. for over 15 years, but he had to retire from that profession when he himself lost his sight. It's kind of interesting to come— I find it interesting that you come from a profession where you dealt with eyesight and then ended up having your own experience with vision loss?

Yeah, absolutely.

My path is very interesting. I actually was a staff physician assistant, and I worked for the Department of Ophthalmology. I'm an interesting person in that I am 4th-generation Japanese American. My name is David Furukawa. I was born at Tachikawa Air Force Base, Tokyo, Japan. However, the joke is that I was conceived in Charleston, South Carolina, because I am 4th generation Japanese American, meaning that my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents on both sides are of Japanese ancestry. Okay. But yet my parents and my grandparents were all born in California. So when I tell people that I was born in Japan, they go, oh, your English is so good. And, you know, how has it been, you know, in this country? And I'm like, you know, I don't know anything other than being American, and only language I speak is English. But, you know, it's one of those things where you get typecast or stereotyped based on your ethnicity or how you look, right? People kind of put people in boxes. That's the joke is that, you know, my parents were stationed in Charleston, South Carolina. And then about 6 months later, I was born in Japan. So, you know, who would have thought? And it caused me all kinds of grief later as a teenager growing up in South Georgia because people just couldn't quite get a grasp on that, which— was kind of annoying when I was young. Now I don't care, but I think it's kind of a funny, funny little bit. My father was a career navigator in the Air Force, so we traveled all over the world— Japan, Germany. I've lived in numerous states— Ohio, Florida, and Georgia. My father retired in South Georgia, and I grew up in a place called Valdosta, Georgia, which is the last city you go through on I-75 on your way down to Florida, going to Orlando or, you know, Miami. So everybody knows Valdosta because you pass it, you know, when you're on the interstate. But what they don't know is that we're the high school football capital of the world. So we have the National High School Football Hall of Fame because We're one of 2 or 3 high school football programs that has been outstanding for probably 70 or 80 years. To make a long story short, I was planning to go to medical school, and I worked in a hospital as an orderly. And I remember the wet floor signs, those big yellow wet floor signs that you see in the hallways when they're mopping. I would hit every one of those regardless of whether it was on the right or left side of the hallway and knock them over. And one of the nurses says, David, there's something wrong with your eyesight. You need to go get your eyes checked. So I go to the eye doctor. He was an old-timer. And he dilated my eyes 5 times. Now, I knew something was wrong because he had to put so many drops in my eyes that, you know, it wasn't normal. And then he comes into the room with this giant book, and he would not look me in the eyes. So I knew something was terribly wrong. Like, oh my God. Oh my God. He's going to give me the death sentence or something, right? And he goes, he goes, now, son, He goes, uh, you're going to medical school, right? Yes, sir. He says, well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. Well, I said, well, what's the good news? He says, you can become a psychiatrist. And I looked at him like he had 3 heads. I'm like, what? And, and there's nothing against mental health workers, right? I have no, no problem with them at all. But, but regardless, um, I wanted to be a surgeon and I said, so, so then what's the bad news? Well, he goes, you have this blinding eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa, and you're going to probably lose all your eyesight by the time you're, you know, a mid-adult. Um, and that's all he said. And, you know, a lot of doctors are really poor with giving bad news, especially if they don't have any treatment for you.

Right.

And he fell into that category. So, you know, I left and really didn't understand what he had said other than blind and psychiatrist, right? Like, oh my God. So I had to go to the library. And at that time, the internet didn't exist. So I had to go look through microfiche or microfilm. And, you know, a lot of your listeners probably have no clue what that is. I know you do, but—

Yeah.

So I had to look up retinitis pigmentosa, you know, inherited blinding eye condition, no treatment, no cure. Da da da da da. And I was like, OMG, I am so down the tubes. So I thought about it for a while, and then I withdrew from my application from medical school and essentially went on a two-year bender. where I just partied my you-know-what off in Athens, Georgia, which is the home of R.E.M. and the B-52s and all that. And so I just partied and had a good time. And I had a good friend of mine, he was actually my college roommate in undergrad, and he goes, David, he goes, you need to come to the Medical College of Georgia, where I was accepted to medical school. And he goes, you need to go through PA school, physician assistant school.

Oh.

He goes, you can get out, you can graduate in 2 years instead of 4 years, learn as much about medicine as you need to so you can practice medicine and still have a career until your eyesight gets bad, right?

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, I thought about it for about 6 months and, you know, I thought, well, you know what? He's right. Why should I just sit here and just do nothing, put my career and aspirations on hold? So I applied, they accepted me, I went and it was one of the greatest decisions of my life because I worked for Kaiser Permanente in internal medicine for about 2 years. And, I had a panel of over 1,000 patients that I basically— I was their primary care provider. They came to me for everything from a cold to a sprained ankle to high blood pressure, you name it. And so I got really good experience, you know, managing patients' health concerns. But as, you know, life hands you lemons, you know, my eyesight started to decline and I misdiagnosed a melanoma. And for those of you that don't know what that is, that's probably one of the deadliest skin cancers that you can have. But, you know, I couldn't see that well. And that really, really bugged me to the core where I finally just said, you know what, I'm gonna, um, I'm gonna go on disability and, and quit. Um, because I just couldn't handle the fact that, you know, I could have potentially killed this person, even though in reality that's not true. But I felt bad.

Can I just interrupt you for a minute here?

Sure.

Maybe, maybe you're getting to it, but I would like to know, How did that situation resolve itself?

Okay.

Yeah.

So, so I— so essentially what happened was, um, I went on, on disability and felt sorry for myself. And then I went through blind rehab and learned how to use the cane and learn how to use screen readers. And that opened the door for me in terms of, you know, learning how to use adaptive technologies to overcome—

Mm-hmm.

The challenges that we all face when you can't see. And as luck would have it, I went to see the eye doctor at Emory, Emory University, just for an eye check. And he goes, David, he goes, we are looking for someone to do our medical assessments for people having eye surgery. And you would be perfect. And I looked at him like he had 2 heads, not 3 heads, 2 heads, going, why would you want somebody that's half blind doing your medical assessments? And he goes, no, no. He goes, you understand what we're saying. You understand what they're saying. And you also have the, you know, understanding of what it's like losing your eyesight. So you're the perfect bridge.

Mm-hmm.

between the doctor and the patient. And in fact, that is exactly what transpired. And for 17 years, I worked at the Emory Eye Center treating everything from cataract surgeries to retinal detachments to corneal transplants to glaucoma problems and everything in between. I got to see weird stuff, rare stuff, common stuff, you name it. It was so thrilling, so, um, you know, enriching in terms of my professional and educational, um, career. But again, life deals you lemons, and, uh, in 2013, I, uh, was having problems reading the, the charts with my CCTV, and I had all kinds of other adaptive aids like talking Blood pressure cuff, talking thermometer. But anyway, I myself said, you know what? I probably need to back off from this because I don't want to do anything that would potentially put anybody in in a bad situation. So I retired, and that was horrific. You know, I was losing the thing that I loved the most, which was. Seeing patients. And, uh, at the time I had a 4-year-old son, so I was become a house dad, you know, doing housework and, um, taking care of the boy. And, and, you know, and, and while that was fun, it, it just didn't fill the void that I lost from my professional aspects. But, um, so on September 23rd, 2013, I was walking my son to school and a car ran a stop sign. And I remember this very clearly. I was at a 4-way intersection and I asked my son, look both ways, um, and tell me if the, you know, if the street's clear, to trying to teach him good pedestrian safety.

Right.

And he said, it's clear, Dad. So I told my guide dog, Simon, move forward. And we moved forward and we were in the middle of the intersection. And then bang, the dog got hit. I got hit, thrown up onto the windshield. And the car was about to hit my son. And somehow my guide dog, Simon, jumped up and pushed him out of the way and the car did not hit him.

Wow.

The dog ended up dying from his injuries. I had fractures everywhere. I got taken to Grady Hospital, which is one of the big trauma centers here in Atlanta. I mean, it was nothing life-threatening, but I had a fractured elbow, fractured knee, fractured foot, concussion, in the hospital for 2 weeks. Again, thinking, woe is me, my life's over, I'm screwed up, I'm going to be paralyzed, I'm blind.

What's—

what's going to happen, right? And, um, you know, when you get dealt lemons, well, you make lemonade. And my— one of my good friends who was an electrical engineer from Vanderbilt comes to visit me at the hospital and he goes, Dave, we have to come up with some type of technology that provides you with augmented information, descriptive information about the environment where you are traveling so that you understand everything about it so you feel safe, right? And that resonated. It took a few months for us to kind of hash it out, but that's how we created the company. And the original company was called Foresight Augmented Reality. And if you Google that, it's FAR, F-A-R. And For many years, we did all of the use case testing in all the various environments. So whether it was a small business where it would read the menu, whether it was a gym where it would guide you to, you know, the workout areas, tell you, oh, this is where the bicycles, you know, the StairMaster, etc. This is where the men's and women's locker room is. So we tested all these things out— doctors' offices, public transit. That's what you have to do when you're a startup, small companies. You have to prove that what you're doing is, is right and is going to work. And 2 years ago, he and I decided that we had taken the company to the point where we needed help. We needed experience and expertise in the business corporate world. So we hired 2 experienced C-level executives who worked for Intel in the radio frequency industry, aka beacons. And I'll talk about that in a minute. But what ended up transpiring was that We have essentially in the last 2 years launched a national campaign where we're targeting 5 metropolitan cities first to essentially use what's called the smart city model, where we involve all the various sectors of a community. So, you know, a lot of assistive technologies, they only target one particular area or one particular group. But what we want to do is we're hitting the government, we're hitting the education areas, schools, universities, we're hitting healthcare, the hospitals and clinics, we're hitting public transit, so whether that's bus stops, train stations, airports, and then we're hitting retail, so businesses, malls, and then we're also hitting— Entertainment and leisure. So that's like parks and recreation, theaters, you name it. So because the whole point is to make a complete, completely accessible community so that someone like you and I can travel almost anywhere and understand where we're going. Okay.

That's so cool. Just to back up, because this is all so great to hear, and I— and we're going to talk about your business, but I always like to interject some personal stuff because one thing that occurred to me when you were talking is that you and I and other people that I've interviewed and probably some of our listeners Sometimes we fall into positions where we are the right fit because we have sat on both sides of the desk.

Yes.

Just like you did in your, uh, in your ophthalmology work and then losing your sight and then, uh, adjusting. You know, you made the decision With some really great support people that came along at the right time for you. And you decided, I'm not going to let this be a setback that defines me. I'm going to find a way to get myself back. And it just really sounds like you've had some serious challenges that you were able to bounce back from. And I too have been hit by a car and lost 6 months of my work life. And it's pretty scary. And you have been able to bounce back from that. So now what I hear you saying is your business is about wayfinding. Right. It's about helping people understand what's in our environment and providing solutions so that we can be more independent as we navigate inside and out.

Yes. And wayfinding is actually a very kind of I'm not sure exactly what the best way of just saying this is, that it's a misunderstood term in that some people think wayfinding is like GPS, where it tells you turn right, turn left, and you're essentially just working like an automaton and following exactly to the letter what it's telling you till you get to your destination, right? Because GPS is probably one of the greatest things in the world that's happened in the last probably 10, 10 years or so. Because if you think about how many people in the old days had to use a map or an atlas to figure out how to get from point A to point B if they didn't know the area, right? Now, you just say, take me to such and such address, and the app or the computer does it all for you. But what happens with with blind people or visually impaired people is that GPS is not sensitive enough, or it's not— it won't get you close enough to your destination. There's essentially 50 feet from a curb to the entrance of a doorway or to a location. That's what I call no man's land. And that's where you have to kind of figure it out on your own. So GPS is doing it right. You can't say it didn't do what it was supposed to do, but it got you to within the block. But, you know, if the place is across the street, or if the entrance is on the side of the building and not in front, you know, say they've got a patio on the front and there's no way of getting in, you look foolish, or you look like you don't— you know, what is that drunk guy doing out there?

Yeah.

You know, feeling around for like, you know, whatever. And it's embarrassing. And consequently, what we have done in terms of— and we call it spatial orientation or spatial awareness, which wayfinding does fall into that category because we are, as you mentioned, giving you descriptive information. So what we do is we use beacons. And beacons are basically these little microtransmitters that you can place anywhere. So you just basically can stick them on a wall or stick them on a door, stick them on a window. And these beacons transmit a signal to a free smartphone app here to there. It's free for the user. And the smartphone app identifies that signal and then it communicates with our backend data server, which correlates with the information that you have connected with that beacon. So, you know, For instance, that restaurant, it would tell you, you have arrived at Luigi's Italian Restaurant, right? So you know you're close. But then it also has the ability to give you proximity information. So then you can actually hit a button and essentially it'll help you locate. So it'll give you a beeping sound and haptics vibration to tell you if you're getting close. Or if you're moving away, kind of like the hot potato, cold potato, that whole thing. So you kind of at least know I'm getting close to the beacon. So you can get right up to the door because the beacon will get you to within about 3 to 5 feet. And, you know, that's probably close enough for most of us to use our O&M skills and our cane or dog or whatever to locate where the handle to the door is or the entrance. Or at least to the point where someone will see you and hopefully come out and give you assistance. But, but where, where we kind of differ from a lot of other navigation-type apps is once you get there, that beacon can then project augmented reality information to the app. So you can then describe everything about that. setting. So you could describe the interior of the restaurant, you know, the, uh, the, the, um, hostess stand is directly in front, the bathrooms are to the right, the seating area is to the left, and the, you know, the dining area is immediately behind the hostess stand. And that way, you know, because the problem with— again, one of the issues with the blind and visually impaired community is we cannot make— we can't see, um, the environment to make a map in our heads that sighted people do instantaneously, unconsciously, right?

Right.

So what we're doing then is we're actually providing somebody with the information so that they can potentially create a mental map in their head and then at least understand roughly where stuff is, right? And then when you get inside, depending on what areas need more information, you could potentially put beacons at a bathroom. So then you can then identify, oh, this is the men's room and not the women's room. Because I don't know how many times you have, but I have gone into the women's bathroom more than my fair share of times and had people scream at me.

Yep.

You know, thank God you got a white white cane and dark sunglasses, or you got a guide dog so they don't think you're a perv. But, you know, so this, this gives you that information so that you automatically know the women's is on the left and the men's is on the right. And then further from that, it can then give you detailed information about the description of the bathroom. So one of the biggest annoyances for me is where is the trash can?

Yeah.

I don't care about the stall or the urinal or the sink. I can find those things pretty easily by, you know, walking around. But where's the trash can?

I don't ever know.

Sometimes even the paper towels.

Exactly. So the augmented reality information we can also project from the app will tell you the sink is on the right, paper towel dispenser is hanging to the left of the sink. The, you know, soap is on the right side of the sink and the trash can is immediately to the left of the sink. And that way—

How is that information provided? Is that verbal information or is that just where the beacons are?

So the information is transmitted from the app, from your phone or your tablet, and it can be done either in audio descriptive method, audio. It could be done in text mode for those that potentially are blind, um, you know, that, that need potentially to read something. Um, and, uh, you could do it in video format so you could actually see, you know, the video layout of it. Or it could be even done potentially, you know, with if you've got a Braille Right. Display, um, so they printed it out in Braille so you could actually read it that way. So there's various different medias that you can, you can actually receive the information, um, and understand the environment. And what's cool about this whole process is that it's all modifiable. So if something were to change in that space, say for instance you went to an exhibit hall and the exhibit changes, the organizer can then, through a web portal, can change all that information so that it's current.

Wow.

Or if you go to a restaurant, the menu changes, right? We talk about Braille menus. How many places have Braille menus? Very few, right?

Right.

Now, I'm— I, I probably will get flamed for this, but, you know, I don't read Braille. I'm a late bloomer, so I lost my eyesight in my 50s. All my functional— I have no functional vision anymore. So I can see light, dark, movement, some shapes, but nothing— I can't read, I can't see TV, right? So, so consequently, You know, Braille doesn't really have that much value for me, but, you know, if a restaurant has Braille menus and they change the menu, then they then have to get new Braille menus made.

That's right.

And that's cost. So with this type of technology, they can actually go to the web portal and update that information, or they could project specials, 'cause, you know, I know a lot of us like to just go and say, well, what's the specials today? And I'll do that. have to deal with reading the menu and the like. But so anyway, that just shows you the versatility of what our product does, is that you can use it anywhere— inside, outside a park, on a trailhead, you know, in a large federal facility that has hundreds or thousands of office spaces, elevators, staircases. One quick story. I was at a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, and the fire alarm went And I had my guide dog, Samson. My last guide dog passed during COVID which, which is very unfortunate. But Samson and I were at this hotel, and the fire alarm went off. So, you know, I came out of my room, and we went to the elevator, and the elevator was shut down.

Oh, yeah.

As they do when you have fires, because they don't— that's a way that fire can spread. So I told Samson, Samson. So, all right, we're gonna go look for the emergency stairwell. Well, this floor was like a maze, and I could not for the life of me find the emergency stairwell. I tried opening doors and, you know, nope, nope, couldn't find it. I finally just said, you know what, I'm just gonna go back to my room. You know, if it's, if it's a real fire, hopefully somebody's gonna come up here and come get me, you know. Which nobody did. I mean, it was a false alarm, thankfully. But the next day I went downstairs and I asked the manager, I said, well, what's your protocol for emergency management, fire disaster preparedness? And he said, oh, we have this and that. And I said, well, you know, I was stuck in my room and nobody came to check on me and I'm blind. And he was horrified.

Yeah.

You know, he was like, oh my God, you fell between the cracks.

That was a wake-up call for them, I bet.

I think so. And, you know, that just goes to show you that you and I cannot fall between the cracks, right?

Yeah, that could be pretty lethal, falling between those cracks. Um, you just sort of segued into one of my next questions, which is Can you tell us about a personal or professional challenge that you've had? And that was one of them. Did that challenge enter into your decision to start this business?

100%. So, you know, consequently, I was suffering a little bit from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, thinking, I don't want to go outside. You know, I don't want to get on the street. I don't have a guide dog anymore, you know. Oh, what if somebody runs the curb and hits me again? And, you know, I don't want to take my son out, you know. Um, so, you know, having information about what's out there was vital to me feeling reassured, to improve my confidence level, because that's the whole thing, right? It's confidence and—

Right.

And your ability to kind of decide, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to go out anyway.

So how about telling us about a success story, either a personal success story or somebody who uses your technology?

Sure. Well, interestingly, we are about to deploy our technology in a city in California. I won't say which city it is just yet because it hasn't been deployed yet, but it is one of the suburbs of Los Angeles. And the person that we're working with is currently the mayor pro tem of this city, and he is totally blind. So he has been a big champion of utilizing our technology, and he wants to employ it throughout the entire city.

Wow.

So in that smart city rollout, as I was mentioning, how you're going to be having it in all these various sectors of the community. And I think that's the success of what we've been trying to do. People buying into the idea that, yeah, it's great if you put it in a restaurant and it's great if you put it at a bus stop, But it's even greater if you can, quote unquote, have it everywhere.

Well, especially inside, because GPS helped us a lot in our outdoor environment, but I found planning events and, and shopping and doing events, it was still hard to get, find what I wanted in a mall, for example. Oh yes. So now, could you tell people your website address, how to contact you, how to get more information if they want?

Absolutely. So our website is easy to remember. It's www.h2t.com. That was kind of a whole story all in itself for us to get that website address, but it's very easy to remember. And you can contact me at [email protected], or you can, of course, go to the website and hit the link on that. But what I would ask your your listenership to do for me is download the app and just kind of take a look at it and see the functionality. Now, in your area, if there's no beacons, it may not have a lot of value yet, but I'm working on, um, trying to get this spread to every area of the country. So consequently, it's a kind of a grassroots type of growth And I will be calling upon people in various areas to help.

Very cool. And could you repeat the name of your app?

Here2There. And as you mentioned, it's H-E-A-R, number 2, and then T-H-E-R-E. It's free to download. The cost of all of this is on the organization or the business that deploys this information, our technology. So you, the user, don't have to involve any, any you know, subscription or anything. If you go to your places that you frequent and go, hey, you really should be more accessible, and here's a company that can help you.

Right. Okay. As we close, Dave, did you come up with a quote, either your own original or a quote that resonates with you? And could you recite that?

So, you know, I, I have lots of different mantras, and, um, but essentially, um, what, what I think I want people to remember when, when I'm gone is that, you know, the only thing holding you back is yourself. And consequently, what that means is that you can do anything if you put your mind to it and you figure out A way to do it, but it's you yourself, your mind, your spirit. You're the one that's holding yourself back from doing all of those things. And if you, you know, put those things down and just push through it, you'd be amazed at the things you can accomplish. It's truly just Incredible.

And this episode is all— or this entire podcast is called Get What You Need and Feel Good About It.

And I love it.

The concept behind it for me is if you want it, you can't always expect it to come to you, and you have the ability to assert yourself and ask for what you need. And here's another example of Someone encouraging you to have the courage to try and do. Thanks, Dave, for joining us on Get What You Need and Feel Good About It. It's been great talking to you again. And, uh, everyone take care. We'll see you in October for another episode of Get What You Need and Feel Good About It.

This is where home comes.

Hope not hate.

Thank you for joining me today on Get What You Need and Feel Good About It. Remember, when you speak up for yourself assertively, you will get what you need and feel good about it. You will also be showing respect for yourself and for the other people in your life who are important to you. Until next time, try thinking about about it like Stephanie LaHart says it.

When compassion is all—

Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean.

Before it gets too late. And the only way to do this is with hope, not hate. Yes, the only way to do this is with hope, not hate.