Zoom Group

Zoom Group’s president didn’t set out to work with people with disabilities, yet it didn’t take long for her post-graduate job to become a personal passion.

It’s hardly surprising that Annie Rosenberg-Sattich grew up feeling led to help others. Her father and mother met and married while working on civil rights issues, and her father, John Rosenberg, a nationally renowned lawyer, helped found the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky, Inc. (APPALRED) to assist the poor of the state’s Appalachian mountain region.

Annie Rosenberg-Sattich, president of Zoom Group

“My father fled Nazi Germany and came to theU.S., where he joined the air force,” Rosenberg-Sattich recalled. Knowing well what it felt like to suffer discrimination, while in the service, he befriended an African-American man who told him on a train trip that he couldn’t sit with him in the same rail car because his skin color mandated he not ride with whites. “It’s no surprise he dedicated his life to helping people who were being discriminated against or who were disadvantaged.”

Her father’s calling landed the family in Prestonsburg,Ky., where Rosenberg-Sattich grew up rescuing stray dogs, some 70 in all. Knowing their daughter would become attached to the strays if allowed to name them, her parents insisted she identify them only as “visitor puppies.”

“We called them VPs for short,” Rosenberg-Sattich said, laughing. Today, she and husband Steve Sattich, live with three rescue dogs, none of which bear the name VP. “With my parents’ help, of course, I nursed them all and got them adopted out. I guess I just have a passion for pets.”

Rosenberg-Sattich later enrolled at Morehead State University, where she earned a bachelor’s in psychology. For her post-graduate work, she moved to the University of Louisville’s Kent School of Social Work. Upon graduation, her father told a friend, David Tachau, his daughter was looking for a job, and shared her qualifications. A Zoom Group board member, Tachau was aware the firm needed help managing its day program, and recommended Rosenberg-Sattich apply.

“I immediately fell in love with what I did,” she recalled. “When I started here, I worked with significantly disabled clients…people who were genuinely warm and friendly. Their humility and authenticity impressed me, and I thought, ‘There’s a lot I can learn from these guys.’”

Through work, she also met a woman who served in the same program and who, with her husband, had adopted a child who was blind and deaf. After the two women became friends, she introduced Rosenberg-Sattich to her son, “who I later married.”

Not long after, Rosenberg-Sattich was made manager of Zoom Group’s day programs, followed by another promotion to director. She was appointed president of the organization in 2004.

Though the demands of her role are many, she said her motivation to serve in it for many years to come arises from the daily inspiration provided by her clients and staff.

“I try to ask myself regularly, ‘Does this tire me or does it inspire me?’” she said. “My clients inspire me, my team inspires me every day. I come in here and get excited by their dedication and their ideas. That’s not something you can get everywhere you work. There’s a lot of negative in the world, things that really can tire you.”

Such as breast cancer, with which Rosenberg-Sattich was diagnosed in 2010. Yet despite a fairly grave prognosis, she endured extensive treatment to overcome the disease, and is currently cancer-free. Her desire to continue working with Zoom Group, she said, helped motivate her to keep fighting toward recovery.

“When you go through that, you have to really think about what you’re living for,” Rosenberg-Sattich said. “You have your family and your future to think about, and you conclude, ‘This is why I’m going to stick around.’ Coming back to Zoom Group and doing the work was definitely part of what got me through it. There’s no question it helped me recover.”

Rosenberg-Sattich admits her position’s greatest challenge can be maintaining an open mind to solutions required to serve her clients’ ever-changing needs. She said there always are fires to put out, always struggles to balance resources with needs, and that one must be creative to find answers to those unique problems.

“This work requires you to step outside the box and constantly remember there are infinite possibilities in any moment for anything,” she said. “We sometimes see just two to three solutions at a time and then we narrow down our options based on our experience. But there are really usually a lot more options, and we often draw those from our clients.”

When the day-to-day grind begins to distract her from her core mission, Rosenberg-Sattich said she tries to step back and recall Zoom Group’s reason for being: to help people with disabilities.

“Our job is to open doors for our clients and to empower them to walk through those doors to a job, or to living on their own, or to becoming an artist,” she said. “As a leader, I sometimes have to step back from the day to day and be a creative visionary when it’s easier to sit back and be complacent and not change. That’s maybe the biggest challenge of the job, but I’m still inspired by that.”