START UP INTERVIEW SERIES: Meet Lachi at RAMPD
Kicking off October as National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month, meet Lachi at RAMPD! A recording artist, songwriter, touring performer, author, and entrepreneur, Lachi uses her platform to amplify the voices of people with disabilities in the music industry.
It was an honor to sit down with Lachi to listen to her story and experience starting RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities) and turning it from a panel with the Recording Academy into a global network of working music creators and professionals with disabilities, neurodivergences and other chronic conditions. Preaching the importance of trusting your path and never giving up, Lachi tells a story that is hard to tear away from.
WIN
We would love to start off by hearing you introduce yourself a little bit, and the story behind RAMPD.
Lachi
My name is Lachi. I am a recording artist, songwriter, and touring performer. I identify as blind and neurodivergent. This disability and divergence are part of my lived experience. I have hosted a PBS series. I am a globally touring artist who's worked with household names. I am a fashionista. I am a disabilities advocate. I sit on the Grammy's Board of Trustees, and I am the CEO and founder of RAMPD, which stands for Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities. Essentially I use my pop culture platform to advocate for disability culture to eradicate the stigma and erasure of the disability identity. Really to let folks know that there's nothing to be afraid of and to have this conversation.
WIN
How do you identify as a woman in innovation?
Lachi
Really, my innovative spirit comes from what I do with RAMPD. So RAMPD is a consultancy group as well as a global network. We equip the music industry with disability inclusive tools, solutions and resources needed to support and empower music creators and professionals with disabilities, neurodivergence, chronic conditions and mental health conditions. We do that through training, consulting, throwing mixers, partnerships and sponsorships with some of the biggest music giants. Everyone from Netflix to the Recording Academy to Live Nation to the CMAS.
We also cultivate and support a growing global network of music creators and professionals. If you are a working or established music creator or professional, you are peer vetted, and you can join our global network. You have to identify as a person with a disability, chronic condition or neurodivergence, who works anywhere in the music ecology. Once you're a part of our global network, we do all sorts of things on your behalf, everything from getting folks paid career opportunities, leadership development opportunities to build community network visibility and to integrate as much as possible with their non disabled peers within the music industry. This includes everything from songwriting retreats to mentorship to programs we call music industry accelerators, where folks can have their resumes reviewed and their music/social media presence critiqued.
We also have a program called ambassadors on deck where we help folks to take advantage of opportunities through funding. We have some great funders and partnerships, and we're always out on the lookout for new partners and funders, but also for new folks who identify in this way. We're only going to be as great as our network and so we're always on the lookout for amazing folks with neurodivergences and disabilities to join our network.
WIN
So tell us a little bit about the process of starting RAMPD.
Lachi
I am a New Yorker and an artist before being an executive and entrepreneur. And being an artist and a New Yorker, I'm all about that hustle spirit. When I was young, I got signed to a pretty hefty record deal. And I was young and dumb, and just signed on the line thinking “Yay, I'm going to be famous”. We ended up putting out a great record but they were marketing me as the blind singer. I had a band, and they were friends that I met at a camp for folks who had vision disabilities. So they called us a blind band, and I didn't like that.
Today people get confused because I talk about my disability all the time. But today I'm saying it from a place of power and empowerment. Then they were saying it from a charity model and place of exploitation, and I didn't like that. I ended up leaving that record deal and the music industry for some time, and struggled with my own identity. Do I even want to do music? That type of thing. I ended up getting signed to a management deal as a songwriter and I really liked it. I enjoyed writing songs and collecting checks. I was writing songs for bigger names, and I had gotten to a point where my manager at the time was like, we need to start getting you into bigger rooms, because you're really good. I started going to these great recording studios and music sessions. But when I would go, I would have accessibility issues. I would trip on wires, or I would bump into the recording booth, or the engineer would have their computer monitor displayed on the big screen, and I wouldn't be able to see it because of my vision disability. But I was hiding it. I wouldn't say anything. I would start to lose opportunities because I wasn't doing my best work. Honestly, I was hiding and masking, and I really needed to drop that, frankly, for my own career so that I could continue to be in these great rooms and do my best work.
I started standing up for myself. It was very small things like, acknowledging that I have a vision disability. And I was so afraid to do that, but when I did, nobody really cared that much. They wanted me to do my best work, and I was able to. That was the beginning. As I started talking to bigger entities, I would get a little bit of pushback and I realized that when I was no longer advocating for myself but for the general concept of being accessible or more inclusive of people with disabilities. People would be like, “Oh, well, it's only you and Stevie Wonder out here.” And I thought to myself, that can't be true. I'm out here masking, pretending I'm not blind. I can't be the only one. And I think that was that first spark.
At the time, I had joined the Recording Academy. I remember I was in a meeting, and everybody was introducing themselves. Finally, somebody gave me the mic, and I started talking about disability in the music industry. I was trying to see if other people were interested in this and it turned out they were. They were entranced by what I was saying, and obsessed with my lived experience.
After the conversation, the Grammys leadership wanted to have a panel about disability and accessibility in the music industry. To set the scene, this is April 2021. People were tearing their hair out because they're so bored over covid. In the music industry, everybody stopped touring, no one's really putting out albums. This panel blows up. I started getting DMs and emails from people in the industry asking to be a part of the movement. And I was just thinking to myself, movement, organization? I'm just a singer that got an opportunity to talk to the Grammy's leadership about this stuff, but my inbox got so flooded that I had to do something. All of a sudden I'm putting together these zooms with 15 people, then 30 people, then 45 people, and it just keeps growing. We're asking what we want to do in the music industry? It's a very grassroots sort of growing movement and the Grammys are watching. The National Independent Venue Association, women in music, all these organizations are watching us, wanting to be a part of it. By January of 2022, less than a year since we started, we launched. That same month was the Grammys, and they were our first partner. They brought us on to consult on how to make the Grammys more accessible. We helped them bring on sign language interpreters to their red carpet, advocate for an accessible stage, for audio description for blind viewers and captioning. Because the Grammys are our first client, we took off from there.
I came up with this acronym RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities and that's how I knew that this whole thing was real. It was kind of God going here's an acronym and a url that hasn't been bought, you have to start this organization. That's pretty much it. With all that visibility came more partnerships, more memberships, a global platform, and we started getting money. And that's how RAMPD was formed.
WIN
How did it feel to turn over this rock and see that there's this whole community of people who were behind you? What did that feel like for you?
Lachi
I think other entrepreneurs will say the same thing. You start building this helicopter while it's already in the air, then there's this rush of momentum. There are people that are all saying the same thing you're saying. They're saying you're absolutely right. I have been masking. I have a disability, but I am as competitive as my counterparts, and I want a voice. To have that come from folks you've respected in the industry, people you didn't even know had disabilities, that you looked up to was exhilarating. Now, don't get me wrong, there was a lot of fear. There was a lot of, oh my god, what am I doing? But now I have a voice. You get this feeling of exhilaration, but at the same time there is this kind of deep rooted and deep seated feeling that this was waiting for me. And that's how you know that you're on the right track. There'll be times when you think of the perfect solution. But there are other times where the solution is already made and it just needed someone to uncover it. And that's what this was.
WIN
If you could go back and change anything about the process of how RAMPD has grown, is there anything that you would change? And what would it be?
Lachi
That's so funny that you asked that. I don't think I've ever been asked that question. I guess one of the things I may change is part of RAMPD’s structure. The global member network is self governed so that the members can say what they want. We're so nuanced and we represent the disability and neurodivergence community: a community that has been so marginalized for so long. We want to make sure that what we're doing is in harmony with the actual lived experience and that we don't veer too far away from that. It's like you’re not going to go to a women's clinic that was run all by men, right?
The thing that I would change, is when we first started it we just hurried up and got leadership together but not everyone is born to be a leader. I will never discount those who stepped up, because to step up and say, I want to lead this thing takes bravery and they did that. But to be an artist and be bogged down with all the deadlines you have already, trying to juggle this movement can feel like a speeding rocket. It would have been a better idea for us to kind of slow down and ask who's going to lead the member network side and put some folks in place that could be well purposed for that.
However, on the counter to that, the fact that it was people that were genuine music professionals and artists that just had the passion and the heart to start it, was also a beautiful thing. I don't actually know if I would change it because it really brought the grit and depth of what our issues are. That kind of integration is only going to come from those who are experiencing stuff on the ground, instead of folks who are so used to leadership and are looking at it from a place of what's worked for other organizations. It's a pro and a con. It's the first thing that came to mind about what I would change, but I don't know. RAMPD is in such a beautiful place today that I think it needed that ruckus to really get to where it is now.
WIN
Looking back on when everything first started to blow up, is there anything that you wish you knew at the time, or was it truly just keep putting one foot in front of the other and see what happens?
Lachi
I started around 2021 and was not a disability advocate in any way back then. I was just a singer, a songwriter, and my career hadn't taken off in the same way. I didn't have a lot of knowledge as to what the disability community needed, what the neurodivergence community needed, and honestly, what I needed as a person who identified in those ways. I was hearing the issues and solving them at the same time, instead of hearing the issues and imbibing them first and then seeing how they fit into my life.
In January 2026 I am releasing my first non-fiction book called “I Identify as Blind: A Brazen Celebration of Disability Culture, Identity and Power.” I wrote that book because I got to a point where I was ready to tell my story. I was ready to tell the stories of other people I interviewed for the book, public figures, celebrities, politicians, etc.. And I really wanted to use that narrative to talk about disability in a way that is not charity ridden, that is not pathologized, that is not medicalized, and that's fun. I dive into pop culture histories while sprinkling in rap bars and a bunch of dad jokes. (Click HERE to preorder the book now!)
Pre Covid, I looked at disability and neurodivergence through a charity lens, a pathologized lens, a medical lens, and through what I call a grievance lens. Today, I recognize that disability, culture and identity is full of drive, determination, innovation, creativity, problem solving; and it all comes from navigating the world differently. The world wasn’t built for folks like myself, frankly, our world wasn’t built for anyone, but everyone fits somewhere under the disability identity. Whether it is chronic pain, depression, asthma, ADHD, anxiety or just something that is not permanent, everyone interfaces with disability today. And all of that knowledge is not necessarily something I had in 2020 but something I developed while putting RAMPD together; stepping into the spotlight as a leader and a voice in this space. The way I learned through music, community, pop culture, and fashion was one of the best ways to learn it. I got to learn it in this fun way, through pop culture, through gigs and through a deep rooted spirit of visionary and that's what I'm doing with my book. To share that with others so they don't have to spend six years finding the beauty, pleasure and fun, and they can see it right now for themselves.
WIN
I'm just curious, for somebody who might just be starting out, what would be your number one piece of advice?
Lachi
No one can ever defeat someone who hasn't given up. And as long as you've got that dream in front of you and you're working towards it, you are not defeated. I think a lot of folks start some things and then they fail once, or twice, and decide it isn't for them. But I always say, if it's not crazy, you're not doing it right. If people don't go like, “that is never going to happen. What are you going to be the first?” Yeah, you can be the first. You can do the crazy thing. You can do the things that the normal, average person would think is ludicrous. They think it's ludicrous because they're a normal, average person. But you know that you can do it because you are a visionary.
I remember listening to Lauryn Hill and Alicia Keys when I was younger. I thought those women were out there doing the most amazing things: they're being their boldest self. I could never be that because I couldn't see myself at the top of the vision board. I didn't see a blind, woman of color doing stuff like that. Neither did my parents, my friends, or my teachers. But I had that dream, that fire, that spark. And now today, I'm out here trending and going viral for my music, rapping and singing, strutting through the city with my glam canes, and then being supported by folks like Alicia Keys and SZA, because the dream never died. So like I said, you can never be defeated if you don't give up.