Like many people with autism, Jonathan Eichenholz has limited job skills and is unlikely to earn a high school diploma. How, his father Jason worried, would he ever get by on his own?
“Recognizing that we have a lifelong journey with Jonathan with autism, what am I going to do with him when I’m gone? That’s the thing that kept me up at night,” Jason Eichenholz said.
As a tech entrepreneur, Eichenholz believed he had the resources to tackle this problem for Jonathan and others like him. In November, he launched the Techtonic Workforce Academy, a Central Florida-based initiative to train people with autism to repair cell phones and other electronic devices so they can become financially independent.
If successful, he hopes to expand it to a broader school curriculum that could train a far greater number of individuals than the academy can handle.
The program is funded in part by a $1 million state appropriation given to Eichenholz’s foundation, the Jonathan’s Landing Foundation, in 2023 to help more adults with autism enter the workforce. That’s a demographic with an unemployment rate of 85%, according to the Autistic Americans Civil Liberties Union.
The academy would be housed in an electronics repair facility in Central Florida, and Eichenholz plans to open it in the spring of 2025. He hasn’t shared the location yet.
In anticipation of the opening of the new facility, Jonathan’s Landing has worked with several community partners to provide hands-on demonstrations to people with autism to gauge their skills and interest in repairing electronics.
If a participant shows interest, the foundation will try to recruit them for the workforce academy.
The demos also give the foundation the opportunity to refine its programme.
For example, during a demo held in November at Opportunity Community Ability, an Orlando company that provides job training and other support for people with autism, some participants had trouble using the tools. Now that has become a problem that group leaders must solve.
“What we’re certainly discovering is, from a fine motor skills perspective, what can we do to adapt some of the aids?” said Kimberly McCarten, acting CEO of the Jonathan’s Landing Foundation. She and her team want to work with a 3D printing company to design special tools.
According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, cell phone repair is a $300 billion industry, with a workforce shortage of about 20,000 technicians.
In addition to housing the academy, Eichenholz’s new facility will be a working cell phone and electronics repair factory where he hopes to eventually employ as many as 5,000 people with autism, he says.
The biggest hurdle to finding jobs for people with autism is convincing employers to hire them, says Margaret Newman Thornton, chief operating officer of Opportunity Community Ability.
“Because there’s a label, they have the idea in their mind that we’re going to send them this five-year-old kid who’s melting down in Wal-Mart,” Thornton said.
Once Techtonic’s repair plant turns a profit, Eichenholz hopes to show employers the value people with autism can bring to a company.
“Success for us means getting someone who has been with us for a year or two a job at Batteries Plus, 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 then have to pay for all the therapies that the public schools provide for free.
“The school system will support them until the semester they turn 22, and then all your occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech, academics, sports, all of that goes away,” Thornton said.
Jonathan Eichenholz, who is 19, still has a few years of such support left, and then his father envisions him training at the academy and working in the factory.
But Jason Eichenholz – co-founder of Luminar Technologies, a successful manufacturer of sensor technology – has even bigger dreams for his next venture. Next to the factory, he hopes to build ‘pocket neighborhoods’, where 500 workers and academy participants can live independently. Profits from the factory would help pay for the therapies and support residents rely on, adding to the financial pressure 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 provide its hands-on demonstrations 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 the spring of 2025 with approximately 20 students with special needs.
“And it will grow from there.” We will design it so that it keeps getting better. The goal would be to have this in every high school,” said Tim Burdette, director of career and technical education for the Osceola County School District.
Currently, the school district serves students with special life skills but limited vocational training.
“Students learn how to do laundry, how to make their bed, how to cook a little. But they’re not really learning the technical skills they need to hold down a job,” Burdette says.
If the partnership proves successful, Jonathan’s Landing hopes to create a curriculum for the district.
Instead of paying an outside company to fix broken laptops and other devices, schools can let students make the repairs.
“It’s no different than when I went to an auto shop in high school and I had to fix the dump trucks in town when they needed a brake job,” Eichenholz said.
And while the school saves money, the student gains a useful skill that can help them gain a degree of autonomy.
“Even if they still live with their parents, at least they take away a little of the burden of the financial part, where the students pay for their money, and give them their self-esteem, the opportunity to work and be part of society. Burdette said.
