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Entrepreneur, founder, author and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. At March Forward, Marc and his partners and associates think out of the box to partner with their clients in regards to their visions for their lives, their businesses and their legacies. And through his innovative work with the Forward Focus Forums, Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that help to fuel their success. Founders’ Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, revealing the stories behind their successes, and the lessons they’ve learned. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a bit of fun! Now, let’s dive in...

Judith Creed’s Unusual Career Path

Marc Bernstein 0:52

Good morning, America. How are you? It's so nice to be here with you today in this beautiful day in Philadelphia. We're on the radio at WWDB 860 AM. And we're also, you're most likely, good chance you're listening to us on a podcast on your favorite streaming service. And uh we are here every week talking to founders of businesses and also sometimes founders of nonprofits. And today we'll be doing that. And I usually start out with a thought for the day, but I think I'm going to skip that today because we have a lot to talk about with our guests today, and I don't want to run out of time. So I'm going to introduce to you right now, I usually wait till after the thought for the day, Judith Creed, M-A-C-C-C-SLP, who is board chair and founding member of Judith Creed Horizons for Achieving Independence. Right?

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 1:51

Right.

Marc Bernstein 1:52

And uh Judith was, and I'll be calling her Judy also, she also goes by Judy, but Judith was director of speech language pathology at Moss McGee rehab facility for many years until she left that field after having had three children, one of whom was born with a serious developmental disability. The doctors told her to put Jonah into an institution, believe it or not, because he was severely retarded and would never want to walk or talk. She didn't listen to them. She kept Jonah home and used her SLP skills, which we'll talk about what that is, and taught him herself. She then started and ran her own film production company Dupertuis.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 2:34

DuPertis Creed Productions produced.

Marc Bernstein 2:37

Sorry about that. I was trying to be French about it. Which created TV commercials and documentaries. After about 10 years, Judith went back into the world of speech language pathology, where she used her video knowledge and developed and got a patent for video medical device that evaluated swallowing disorders bedside instead of using barium. I've taken that barium. That's a horrible test I have to take. So that's thank you for inventing that. Swallow Vision was Judy's second business as opposed to her medical profession. As opposed to medical professional enterprise. She licensed her patent to Pentax Corp, which then hired her to vent ENT and GI physician physicians' medical inventions as well as sell medical equipment. Pentax was the camera company, too, right?

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 3:24

That's right. It's the cameras that go up your nose and your other orifices.

Marc Bernstein 3:29

Makes sense. So during that time, Judith was raising her children, all while raising her children, including she had one that needed a lot of attention, and doing volunteer philanthropy. She helped found the Linda Creed Breast Cancer Foundation, which is very, very uh famous around Philadelphia and I think around the country. Um, and the Philadelphia chapter of Operation Smile, and then her legacy, which is JCHAI. That's a lot. That's why I didn't do a thought for the day, because we have a lot to talk about. So uh so first of all, we were talking I so I I first of all I have to tell you how I met Judith, Judy walking dogs in Margate on New Year's Day this past year. And she was very friendly, and she she convinced me to let Arlo off the leash because I said he'll run away, and she said, No, no, no, he'll be fine, and he was fine. She was right. I can tell she so I could tell she had a lot of patience and a lot of sensitivity. And that I think all that tells you about where she's come today. So I want to talk to you because we just really talked this morning about because you've done a lot of entrepreneurial type things, and this is a show about entrepreneurs and founders, and I always wonder where that came from. And I found

The Father Who Modeled Entrepreneurship

Marc Bernstein 4:44

out. So tell me tell me where you got that.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 4:46

So it's very simple. I got it from my father. And my father was Fernand Creed, and he owned Philly Stampin' Coin Company.

Marc Bernstein 4:55

He was a really well known around Philadelphia.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 4:58

Yeah. And and in the day, uh, collecting stamps and coins for young boys was a really big thing.

Marc Bernstein 5:06

Right. Um I was one of them at one time. Did you? In fact, I'm moving, and I just found my stamp collection. I have no idea what my coin collection is.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 5:15

So I remember one time I was sitting in my living room and one of my teenage male friends came over with his book of stamps because he really wanted to buy a car. And my father patiently sat at the dining room table going over pages and pages of stamps, and then he closes them up and he looks at them and he says, Mm-hmm. You can buy yourself windshield wipers.

Marc Bernstein 5:43

I had a feeling that was coming. I didn't know how he was going to say it.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 5:46

So my father was a gregarious, outgoing Frenchman. He was born in Paris, one of thirteen, and the whole family was business oriented. Their father was a businessman. And um people thought they were a little crazy because they didn't quite Americanize, and they were loud and uh feisty and didn't necessarily obey the rules and the laws, but they were my idols.

Marc Bernstein 6:19

But you didn't inherit any of that.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 6:21

No, uh no, not me. And my mother was her mother was from Russia, and my mother's father died when she was very young, and uh she was very quiet. So um it was really my father who uh I idolized, and I was more like him than her in terms of my personality, which was outgoing and kind of fearless, and it made my mother very nervous. Anyway, that was me as a child growing up. I played with the boys, I was athletic, etc. And then um college came and I uh went to Penn State, and then my parents didn't like who I was dating, because in those days, if a Jewish girl doesn't be with a Jewish boy, they get very upset. So, of course, I wasn't with a Jewish boy. And so my Jewish boyfriends, friends would on visiting day would come and make pretend they were my boyfriend. So but my parents finally found out, dragged me home, sent me to temple, uh, had me live at home where they could watch over me. So anyway, that was the kind of background I grew up with. And then I uh went to Stanford for graduate school, and I was a fish out of water because that's in the 60s. And we uh marijuana hadn't even come across yet. So they were jumping off Hoyt Tower with LSD. I didn't last long there.

Jonah And The Choice To Fight

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 8:03

So I came back home, got married, and had three kids, and my second child had a severe disability, and as Marc mentioned, um I was told that he should be put away by the chief of CHOP.

Marc Bernstein 8:22

In those days, you have to understand I'm eighty-three now, and so this you would never know it if you s if you could if you saw her anyway.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 8:33

Thank you. So i you know, that was many years ago. It was like my son now is fifty-five. Fifty-five years ago, that's what people did with people with disabilities. They hid them away. So there was really nothing.

Marc Bernstein 8:49

So I I had a cousin like that who was institutionalized her whole life and died a young person.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 8:56

Yeah, because they're not given a chance to thrive. Right. So I worked hard on Jonah. I was a trained speech and language pathologist, and it I made it my business to work with him very hard every day to prove that he he was viable, that he'd become something. And he really became the focus of my life, even though it caused a lot of turmoil at home. And so I got divorced when my kids were little and um got married again and got divorced again. So my my life was hectic.

Marc Bernstein 9:41

Um when Jonah And by the way, you were you were raising Jonah and focusing on him while you because you've raised two other very successful children as well.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 9:51

So Yes. So my daughter is Jennifer Selber. She's general counsel to Governor Shapiro.

Marc Bernstein 9:57

And my youngest She runs the largest law office in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 10:01

That's right. She's head of all the uh Pennsylvania lawyers that work for the government. Right. Um and she's a very good manager and she's very smart, and she's very even. She's not as uh volatile, let's say, as I am.

Marc Bernstein 10:17

Gregarious is the word.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 10:18

Well, you no, she is gregarious. She follows rules better than I do. She's a lawyer.

Marc Bernstein 10:23

Right, right, right, right. And then my some lawyers follow the rules. So she follows the rules. She's an honest one. I understand. Right.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 10:31

So then my youngest son, Jesse Selber, Dr. Jesse Selber, umicrovascular plastic surgeon who's developed robotic techniques for um reconstructing uh breasts um with minor uh invasiveness. And he started a whole robotic thing. So then there was Jonah in the middle of all this, who actually didn't know there was anything wrong with him because how do people know there's something wrong with them until you tell them? So unfortunately, it's the parents' job to say, no, my dear, you'll probably never drive. No, my dear, well, dear, you can get married if you want, but you'll have to be able to have a job and support them. Anyway, when he was 13 or 14, I sent him to a special school called Pathway School in Norristown. And that allowed him to see that it it it really helped him define himself. Otherwise, we didn't know what to do. So then he graduated and there was nothing. And um I remember going watching the Barbara Walther show, Baba Wawa, you'll remember Barbara Wawa, sure. Um and she talked about something that was in Chicago for people with disabilities. So I said, Jonah, let's go. We're going on a road trip. And we went on a road trip and we saw this place that was isolated. It was in the middle of nowhere, and it it gave me the creeps. And, you know, they had their own store and they were bragging because these people worked behind the counter. But it it it it wasn't where I could see my son thriving. Right. It was a place that you stuck them, you know.

Parents Build JCHAI From Scratch

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 12:28

So anyway, me and a and a group of parents uh got together and put an ad in the um Um You say you and a group of parents got together.

Marc Bernstein 12:40

You got the group of parents together, I'm sure. No, there was actually somebody else who got the parents together.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 12:47

Um it was Jonah's Stanley Steinberg, I think, who had a child older than my Jonah who started this group. But we all knew knew each other because the people in Lower Marion, that's where I raised my children, right who had disabilities, found each other, but there was nothing for them. So we put an ad in the paper, and if are you looking for a place for your child, and and like more than a hundred people showed up. But like anything else, it boiled down to maybe ten of us who did the work.

Marc Bernstein 13:22

Right.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 13:22

And the reason the organization is named after me is because what happened was that I I became the board chair early on and and raised the organization from nothing. And I had a lot of support from my husband, my third husband, uh Robert Schwartz.

Marc Bernstein 13:46

Your current husband.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 13:48

My current husband. And um so we had some support and and for a while, I mean, when we were only like we had a group home, we bought a group home because that's how long ago was this, by the way? About 35 years ago.

Marc Bernstein 14:06

Oh wow, okay.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 14:08

So all we knew was like group homes. What we didn't know anything else. Right. So we there were six families, and we put we we bought a home, we went we went to zoning, people didn't want us in their neighborhood, and um we had eggs thrown at us, you know. It was but then we became the best neighbors, and everybody loved us and baked us cookies and so on. And that was the beginning of Jey High. But it languished there for a long time with this.

Marc Bernstein 14:39

That neighborhood is in uh Winwood. It was Winwood outside of Philadelphia, yeah.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 14:43

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein 14:44

People that don't know.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 14:45

Right.

Marc Bernstein 14:46

Interesting. Um, this is a very good place to take a break. We're gonna take a very quick break and hear a quick commercial about Jigh, and we'll be right back on Founders Forum.

Announcer 14:58

At JCHAI, there are no limits on what a person can achieve. For nearly 40 years, JCHAI has been a leader and innovator in helping adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities envision, and build meaningful, independent lives. We combine a growth mindset, personalized support tailored to each person’s goals, and a community of experienced professionals and peers that feels like family. Guided by their own aspirations, our members learn, build careers, volunteer, and lead — strengthening our workplaces, enriching our communities, and redefining what's possible. Whether you're seeking services, looking for dependable, dedicated employees, interested in volunteering alongside our members, or wanting to invest in a stronger, more inclusive community, we invite you to join us. Learn more at JCHAI.org. That’s J-C-H-A-I dot org.

Marc Bernstein 15:54

We are back on Founders Forum. I'm Marc Bernstein, and I'm with our guest today, Judith Creed. By the way, I have to comment real quick on your last name. Famous name around Philadelphia because Linda Creed was your first cousin, who's a very I know because I came from the music business, very famous songwriter. And by the way, independently of us doing the show, I looked her up recently just to refresh on her history, came up somewhere. I saw it. And she she was quite an accomplished.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 16:22

She wrote The Greatest Love of All.

Marc Bernstein 16:23

I know. For people who don't know that, one of the biggest songs of all time. Right. It's amazing.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 16:28

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein 16:28

So and you through her, you have a cousin who's famous in the movies, Apollo Creed. Tell that story real quick.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 16:37

So uh Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, and Linda Creed shared baby nurses. So, and he was uh a consultant to the movie, and he loved Linda. And Linda was this little white Jewish girl who wrote all black music. She wrote for the the Temptations and the Four Tops, and the she did all the And she was married to Epi, by the way, who is a friend of a friend of mine. Yes, yes, yes. So she lived in the world uh of music and black artists, and that's how Cassius Clay got to know her through that. And then when he was consulting on the movie and they needed a name for Apollo, he loved Linda, so he said, I know Creed. We'll call him Apollo Creed. So I always say he's my cousin.

Marc Bernstein 17:28

That's great.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 17:28

That's a

From Group Homes To Inclusive Living

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 17:29

great story.

Marc Bernstein 17:29

Anyway, back to the you started the community.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 17:33

So we started the community with one group home, um, and uh we hired a professional and soon found that people when you with uh developmental disabilities, when you take them out of their nuclear family and and train them, they do so much more. For instance, my son Jonah, I tried to teach him to cross the street. And when I would have him look both ways, he would look up and he would look down and then forge across the street. It was terrifying. He spent three weeks in this group home with a professional that we hired, that I hired. And in three weeks he was crossing City Line Avenue by himself. And now Jonah takes transportation all over the city. He can he goes to work every day at Jefferson, and it's really all because of J.

Marc Bernstein 18:30

What kind of work does he do?

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 18:31

So Jonah does IT work, he says. Uh-huh. He hooks up um phones and computers and um he does delivery. He's worked at Thomas Jefferson for over thirty years. He'd been in the they call him the mayor there.

Marc Bernstein 18:47

And uh the person that should have been institutionalized, according to the so-called experts.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 18:52

That's right. And he goes to work every day. Uh and that's the other thing I want to tell you, as long as we're talking about work. It's not how we operate. We quickly learned that it wasn't necessary. It was overkill. And it was expensive to run. And when you have people who have to be there overnight, it's difficult to staff. So w during my presidency, um I said, let's try apartments. And even people in J High were like, oh no, no, we can't give up our group homes. And I said, I think we can. And one of the things about being an entrepreneur, Marc, is you really have to see no is the beginning of go. It sounds like a joke, but it's really true. If you listen to the no's, then you never break through. You never go to the next level.

Marc Bernstein 19:53

So I'm gonna break through walls, yeah. And and the w there's there are always walls and you've got to break through them.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 19:58

There are. There are. So anyway, we got started doing an apartment program at the presidential, and um and and and it was going great, but we were only like 18 people at that point.

Marc Bernstein 20:15

So is it one specific building or one floor?

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 20:18

It was that's a good question. It was on many floors.

Marc Bernstein 20:21

Okay.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 20:22

Uh you can't have by the by government standards, you can't institutionalize people. So they can't even be next door to each other. So they were all over the building. But you know, they took over the building. They would run around like a dorm.

Marc Bernstein 20:37

Okay. Interesting. And is that still the model today?

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 20:41

The model's even less restrictive than that.

Marc Bernstein 20:44

Really? Okay.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 20:45

So the model now is we realize that people don't people see J High as an apartment program-based thing. It's not. It's services built. So we now have a model where people live wherever they want. And we have a roving group of social workers who go out and provide whatever services are necessary. It's total integration, it's total inclusion. We do not believe, like what I saw in in Chicago, in separating people out and not having them part of society. That's been our model now for a long, long time. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Marc Bernstein 21:34

But the individuals that live in the community um obviously uh commune together.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 21:40

They they they're So we we keep people to we know. So anybody who comes to J High gets a thorough evaluation, psychological, w whatever their capabilities are. So we know their strengths and weaknesses. And every one of our people that come in gets what we call An IEP. Right. So our social workers know what their strengths are in the same way.

Marc Bernstein 22:05

That's like an IEP in the school.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 22:07

In the school, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So our people are always training them. So they could be out, you know, in Northeast Philly, they could be in South Philly. Our people are taking care of them, and then we have these group events at at our building in Bala, and we bring people together for classes.

Marc Bernstein 22:26

So your people, your staff, what do they do exactly? They are are they like guides or they're they teach.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 22:32

I mean it's a teaching organization. So we hire teachers and social workers basically who go out and teach the skills of daily living, you know, how to cook, how to manage money.

Marc Bernstein 22:45

Um do they also organize group meetings or their classes to get bring everyone together? Yes, yes.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 22:51

So J High has a lot of group programming. Um and we how now serve over three hundred people.

Marc Bernstein 23:01

That's amazing.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 23:02

We started with that group home of six people.

Marc Bernstein 23:05

Yeah.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 23:06

We serve over three hundred. And what you have to remember, Marc, is that for each person that we serve, we bring up an entire family.

Marc Bernstein 23:15

Oh, yes, that's amazing.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 23:16

So the parents are no longer hovering and worrying because they know they have Jay High who's taking care of it.

Capacity Waitlist And Legacy

Marc Bernstein 23:25

How uh to what uh extent of the disability uh can people come into the program? Meaning you know, there are some people that are very severely autistic as an example, maybe and I don't know, it's believed that they can't function in society.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 23:41

That's a very good question, Marc. And that's what we do to evaluate. The very, very severe um are not the people that we serve, but we uh serve people who are lower functioning than you would imagine uh could be trained and learn to live independently. Um but we go all the way up into the very highest functioning. We have people in college that we do executive function with. So it's a large range. But there is there are people we will not accept. People have to be ambulatory, people have to be able to learn. Um we don't accept uh mental health as the primary diagnosis. Right. So but there's like six thousand people on our waiting list. So it's not like we're running out of people because there's certain groups of people that we don't treat.

Marc Bernstein 24:41

What do you have a future plan for how to accommodate those six thousand people? I would imagine you you're thinking about it, I'm sure.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 24:49

I we do think about it. I don't think we'll ever be able to handle six thousand people. But um we're what we're doing is so I've been board chair for like 35, 40 years now, and I have recently as of July 1st handed over the chairmanship. It's a big transition for me, to John Zuckerman, who's in his forties.

Marc Bernstein 25:13

Wow.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 25:14

So he's bringing in a younger group, and he's business oriented, and um I I feel good. Jay High has legs.

Marc Bernstein 25:24

So you remain as an advisor or oh yeah, absolutely.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 25:28

I'm I'm not going anywhere.

Marc Bernstein 25:30

By the way, I have to ask you real quick. So Jay, I say Jai, which is Hebrew for life, right? Um I'm guessing that's not an accident, or because it happens to stand for Judith Creed Horizons for Achieving Independence.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 25:41

Was that an accident that it worked out the Jay High or uh Jay Hai existed before Judith Creed. That was uh it was Besher that my initials and Jay High. Right.

Marc Bernstein 25:54

That means faith.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 25:56

Yeah, yeah.

Marc Bernstein 25:57

Oh got it. Oh really? So it just worked out that way. It just worked out that way. It was just very interesting.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 26:02

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein 26:02

Um real quickly, we only have about uh less than two minutes left, believe it or not. Time flies when you're having fun.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 26:09

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein 26:09

Um what are your thoughts about your legacy? Obviously, this kind of um has a lot to do with it, I would I would think.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 26:15

I think J High is my legacy. Um when mothers come up to me and say, You saved my life, thank you for all that you've done. I mean, that's really meaningful.

Marc Bernstein 26:30

That's amazing.

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 26:31

So uh, you know, I'm very invested in it continuing. We're starting an endowment program now. Um we have really wonderful people that run J High. We have a fabulous CEO, we have a great uh strategy chief of strategy. What we don't have is marketing. You know, we don't spend money on that.

Marc Bernstein 26:58

Uh it it is interesting because I see a lot of nonprofits, and I see some that are, you know, for a long time are run by the founders and they kind of just struggle along. And it usually changes things when they bring in professional management. But I think you did that pretty early on, didn't you?

Judith Creed, MA, CCC-SLP 27:13

Well, professional management was our CEO is a lawyer, and she had a brother with a disability. So she just happens to be very smart and and you know, figured things out. Um we never handed it over to professional management the way you're saying.

Marc Bernstein 27:33

Gotcha, I gotcha. Well, anyway, we ran out of time, but thanks so much. It's a great story, and congratulations on all the great work you've done. Thank you for being here, Judy Creed. Judith Creed Forum today.

Announcer 27:44

Thank you all for listening, and we look forward to talking to you next week on Founders Forum.com.

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