Brian Behler, CEO and president of Skils’kin, a nonprofit that provides opportunities for people with disabilities, will retire in June following a 13-year tenure with the organization. 

Behler, 65, is a certified public accountant who founded and built several companies over his nearly 40-year career. A graduate of Washington State University, Behler started his career in Seattle with the public accounting firm Arthur Andersen & Co. After leaving that role in 1989, Behler then spent the next decade starting multiple businesses in the Puget Sound area, including a manufacturing and import company of specialty coffee and a soft drink company specializing in bottled Italian soda. He also was for a short stint a part owner of a 300-foot ship that he sailed to Alaska to process salmon. 

After returning to Eastern Washington in 1999, Behler re-established himself as an accounting and finance professional and joined the board of Skils’kin—then known as the Pre-Vocational Training Center. In 2011, after a few years of growing his firm, BehlerMick PS, he became the president and CEO of Skils’kin. 

During his time leading the nonprofit, Behler rebuilt Skils’kin’s structure and culture and established a second location of Project Search—an internship program for high school seniors with disabilities to gain work experience. In November, the organization announced plans to merge with Skookum, a Bremerton, Washington-based nonprofit that also aims to create opportunities for people with disabilities. The merger will be effective on July 1, after which Skils’kin will become a subsidiary of Skookum. 

The Journal recently sat down with Behler to discuss his entrepreneurial spirit, how Skils’kin became his longest post, and what he is most proud to have achieved. 

How did Skils’kin become the one role that you stayed in longer than your average three-year tenure? 

I’ve had a lot of adventures. They’ve been great. Even though I started as a CPA, I always knew that at some point I wanted to be responsible for other people’s jobs, such as creating jobs or employing people. That was always a driving force for me. During my time as a (Skils’kin) board member, I saw how the disability community does not take having a job for granted.

About 70% of the community doesn’t have access to employment. That was one aspect of my motivation to take this role. The other thing that motivated me was that it is a large enough organization to have all the elements of business. There are all kinds of legislative challenges, operational challenges, and other challenges normally related to business. It has been fulfilling. In my past roles, I would get bored. I’ve never been bored in this job. 

What’s it like for this community to find work? 

One of my board members tells the story of trying to find work. He graduated from Eastern Washington University and was born with cerebral palsy. He says there’s nothing like entering an interview room and seeing the look on the interviewer’s face, wondering if he could speak, let alone think. 

As a society, we tend to be very judgmental very quickly. There’s always a focus on what a person can’t do, rather than what can they do. People try to get jobs, but it’s difficult to compete, even in some entry-level jobs. Employers think they need someone who can do the work, and they assume that an individual can’t do the work. And many of them can’t do it, initially, unless they have support. That’s what Skils’kin does; we work with the employer and employee to make them successful. That’s just what has been super rewarding about this job. 

Do you have a personal connection to this community? 

I guess my empathy for this population started when I was 12 years old. This family moved across the street from us. It was a single mom with five kids, four boys and a girl. Unbeknown to her and her husband, they had a genetic mix that meant there was a 50% chance that the four boys in the group could be born with a genetic disease that would cause their brains to deteriorate when they hit their teenage years. Roger, the oldest, had it, and the youngest boy, Stanley, had it too. 

It was the early 1970s, and we would play out in the streets as kids. Roger was about 18, and his condition had caused him to deteriorate to the point where all he could do was sit on the porch and listen to a boom box. His body functions were starting to fail at the time, and he passed away when he was about 22. I realized that here I am leading a 12-year-old life, and it was just so sad to see how isolated he was. 

You mentioned that this role gave you many challenges that you enjoyed, can you talk about that? 

Building a culture of servant leadership was a really rewarding challenge. There were situational challenges in trying to build programs. I’ve been able to do a lot of advocacy at the federal level. But we’ve also had some very tragic circumstances. When I first started here, there was an act of embezzlement taking place. We had zeroed in on it, but ultimately learned about it via suicide, which was just horribly tragic. 

What prompted you to build a servant-leadership structure at Skils’kin?

I believe in individual potential, and I know that comes from a variety of things. It comes from an individual’s values, their value of work, and their ability to do the work. At WSU, I was older than my peers by about three years and was mentoring the younger students.

Having seen a lot of other business models during my time at Arthur Andersen, I knew the power of culture. What it came down to when building the culture at Skils’kin was creating a shared common language and digging into what our purpose is. Do we want to do things at an individual level or at a societal level? Do we do it because we think the world should be fair or because you get out of work or life what you put into it? And lastly, how do you go about it? 

Answering those questions helped us build the culture. It took about seven years to get the organization to the point where we speak that common language that describes what we do and why we do it. The culture has changed so much that if an individual’s values don’t align with our corporate values, they don’t stay here long. And that’s a good outcome. We want people who want to be here for the right reasons. Creating that culture has been the most amazing thing I’ve done here. 

Is the merger what prompted your retirement? 

The merger brought it on. It’s the right decision to make. The lives of the 200-plus employees here will greatly improve as a result of the merger. They’re looking forward to July 1, or what’s called Skookum Day. There are a handful of other people who won't have jobs, but we did our best to make sure that people feel they are treated with respect and that they’ve been rewarded financially for getting the merger across the finish line. 

Skookum is looking at some tremendous growth over the next two years. They’re currently at $250 million in annual revenue and they could double in size in the next five years. That allows them to provide much better health benefits, not just for the employee but for spouses and children, and a full-fledged tuition-reimbursement program. Each employee will also be supported by a vocational rehab specialist, which really makes a difference and can even be life-changing for our frontline folks.  

As someone who’s had so many career experiences, is there something else you wish you had done?

For those of us who get to this stage in our career, it’s a common reflection. If not this, what else would I have done? I would hope that I might have gone the general contractor route. I like creating stuff. I learned that from my parents and picked up those skills. I like envisioning how a house would look if it were more open, or if this room should be elsewhere. I’ve torn out a lot of walls in my homeowner career. At first, it was because I didn’t have a lot of money, but then I started thinking in terms of improvements I can make to turn it into a masterpiece. The house I live in now is quite modest, but it has a masterpiece outdoor kitchen.  

What are your plans for retirement? 

I’ll admit, it’s been a little bit of an adjustment. Part of it is missing being engaged daily and witnessing people’s successes. But I’m going to exercise the creative part of my brain. I’m in the process of setting up a limited liability company, and next, I’m going to get my general contractor’s license. I want to work on little projects. I like meeting people and helping them solve their problems, so that sounds kind of fun to me. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.