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Megan Riggs: The last time we chatted I was working for WellStat which is a document, well it’s a biotech company and I was a document control specialist. And then in 2013 of February I actually got laid off. So I called TransCen to let them know that I was no longer working and what I needed to do to go back on to my disability. And so they set up my Ticket to Work and everything just kind of flowed seamlessly. Yeah, I filled out some paperwork and let them know and I was receiving benefits that month. When I got laid off I saw how easy it was, for me to go back on to it. I didn’t have to fill out a whole bunch of forms, I didn’t have to reapply. It was just like, I called the people that had my Ticket to Work, TransCen, and let them know I’m no longer working and they were like “OK we’ll contact Social Security”.  I think I had to sign maybe one form and then everything was fine.
At TransCen I was assigned Andrea so she’s my Employment Counselor, if you would want to call it that. So she was able to help me when I told her I wanted to start my own business. She helped me like finding some contacts, different things about licensing the business, um, senior centers to contact and uh almost like how to set up cold calling. 
Andrea Cetera Jimes: Megan was one of our first Ticket to Work clients. After a year, Megan’s job came to an end and so there she was; she was out of work. She immediately filed for benefits again through Social Security and because she was involved in the Ticket to Work program she had benefits almost immediately. She was reinstated. 
[Megan instructs Zumba class] 
Megan: I had been teaching Zumba part-time, in the evenings after work. And I uh, let a whole bunch of people know that I was laid off and that I was ready to work during the day. And I just started taking more classes and as I did more classes, and was teaching more, I really fell in love with it even more and decided to actually make it my business. 
Andrea Cetera Jimes: So she gave me a call and said “this is what I wanna do. Can you help me find an attorney and an accountant so that I can start thinking about starting my own business?”
Megan: Andrea was a really big help in helping me, especially with my competitive advantage in my pricing, but also in some of my market research.
Andrea: One of Megan’s sole interests in returning to work was independence. She wanted to become independent. She didn’t want to be on the Social Security rolls. She wanted to earn her own income, she wanted to be on her own. That, that is her drive. And so I believe that the, uh, having her own business gives her that much more independence. It gives her that ability to look back and be proud of what she’s done and what she’s accomplished because in the short period of time, I think she’s done a lot. She’s doing something that she loves to do and I believe that when you love what you do and when you follow your passion, the money follows along. 
Megan: Work has definitely made a difference in my life because I think especially with my disability, if I’m not getting out of the house and meeting with other people, it’s very easy and uh very fast for me to sink back into what I was. 
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Megan: I do have a new person in my life, it’s actually my boyfriend. So we’ve be dating for, it’ll be two years in August 22nd of this year. It’s actually been a really great experience and it’s nice to have a support system.  He’s become another person in my support system.
Ganesh Nadarajasundaram: We met on Match.com about almost a year and a half or maybe close to two years ago. Um, and so we’ve been dating since. From when initially starting this a couple of years ago, to be completely honest maybe because I was a bit skeptical about it, but Megan’s extremely hardworking, extremely determined, and also, in a very good way, she’s also very stubborn. And I think sometimes, um, those characteristics are probably really good characteristics to have when you’re doing something like this. 
Mega: One of the biggest things that I would tell people who are scared to go back to work is that it doesn’t hurt to try and you can keep getting out there and trying lots of different things to find what you want. But there are people there who are gonna support you. They’re not gonna send you out there on your own. You have an employment counselor, you have people that if you’re having problems communicating with the people at work you can go and talk to them and they help you, you know, figure it out and be able to communicate whatever your needs are to the people at work in a way that you can be successful. I would definitely recommend the Ticket to Work program to others. I would say, don’t be afraid to do it, you have really nothing to lose because they only stop it when you’re making too much and you know, who doesn’t want to make a lot? So I say don’t let your fear hold you back and I’m the perfect example of someone who started and who got laid off and nothing bad happened. I still got my money, you know I was still able to go back, it didn’t take long, it wasn’t a hard process, it was very seamless, it was painless almost. 
Choosing work has made a big difference in my life by making me feel useful and being able to contribute to other people. But also choosing to work has let me help myself.
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