It was sitting in the Catalight waiting room that Brandon Cox first heard about Easterseals Northern California.
A video played in the lobby – Catalight CEO Susan Arminger speaking to the camera about the importance of measuring outcomes, not hours of therapy. The Easterseals Logo emblazoned on a glass door leading to the clinical space. Catalight and Easterseals NorCal’s top values painted on the wall – ‘Bold,’ ‘Community-Centered,’ ‘Equity-Informed,’ ‘Wellbeing-Driven.’
He didn’t know much at the time, but he knew that’s what he wanted for his son.
After a challenging two-year process, Brandon’s head swam with the same questions faced by countless parents around the world: “What’s going to happen to my child in the years to come?”
Brandon and his wife, a physician, first had concerns about delays in their son’s speech and development during the COVID pandemic. What followed were hundreds of questions, doctor visits, advocacy with their health provider and a third party assessment – a difficult process even for two parents with experience in the medical and disability fields. If they were having this much trouble navigating the system, Brandon wondered, how do families without experience make it through?
Eventually, they were referred to Catalight and made their way to that waiting room in Walnut Creek.
This was 2024. Brandon learned about Easterseals NorCal as a parent, not an executive. NorCal would become Catalight’s service provider for his son and Brandon would spend an hour each week at the same office.
It wasn’t for a job that he found Easterseals Northern California. What he found in that waiting room was hope.
“During that time, I got to learn a lot about the clients who come in and their families from sitting there in the same room, recognizing that we’re not alone,” Brandon said. “A lot of people are very similar to us and the challenges that we faced. Then there was the kindness of the staff from Easterseals who very much lived the values on the wall.”
Brandon started as CEO of Easterseals Northern California on Aug. 10, 2026. His son visits the same office today to attend a social skills program.
“I never imagined I’d be CEO of the organization,” Brandon laughed. “I was literally there as a parent – showing up in my t-shirt and shorts after a long day of work. Just coming in, a lot of times you may not really pay attention to what’s going on around you, but the value of what was happening even in the waiting room, you couldn’t ignore it. You couldn’t ignore the impact it was having on people’s lives.”
At the time, he was chief operating officer at LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and wasn’t in a place where he was looking for a new job. A year later, he would step in as interim CEO of LightHouse.
“I think things happened for a reason,” Brandon said. “I think I ended up needing to be in that space for a reason.”
Brandon has worked for nonprofits his entire career and his call to service has been lifelong. Growing up in small town Texas, his mother was a teacher of the visually impaired, who did early intervention and provided special education services. He saw firsthand the joy and the tears that came along with that calling.
Disability services is something of a family business. His mother is still doing the same work 40 years later. Brandon’s sister became director of audiology for a large center for communication disorders in Dallas. At age 15, Brandon started working at camps for blind students along with other disabilities – doing so every summer until he graduated college.
His mission-driven career began when he took on administrative work at Georgetown University, quickly rising to assistant director of finance and administration before moving on to Columbia LightHouse for the Blind in Washington, D.C., where he served in roles as an orientation and mobility specialist, director of rehabilitation services and senior director of rehabilitation and education. After a stop at TCS Access, a technology company for seniors and people with disabilities in Maryland, Brandon spent the next decade at LightHouse in San Francisco.
He opened himself up to other opportunities at the end of 2025 – meeting with a few recruiters and creating a prompt in ChatGPT with parameters set for the mission-driven work he was looking for. Every once in a while, he’d check back in with a question: “Have you found my dream job yet?” Then, one day, Easterseals NorCal popped up – the place where his son had been thriving for more than two years, where he’d spent an hour each week meeting families like his and where he had never considered being CEO.
“My first priority in coming here is listening and learning and really understanding the core of the organization – what it’s done over the past hundred years, how it’s morphed and then recognizing the foundation that we have to build on,” Brandon said, praising the strategic track record of executive and board leadership at Catalight and Easterseals NorCal. “I think that one of the temptations a nonprofit like us can experience is trying to do everything. If you try to do everything, you may not do it all well. We want to focus on what’s going to have the largest impact that most contributes to a person’s holistic wellbeing.”
Under the care of Easterseals Northern California over the years, Brandon’s seen steady growth from his son as well as in himself, the parents in the waiting room and the other kids who receive support with them. Friendships have developed, interactions are common and social skills have taken hold outside the walls of the Walnut Creek office.
The progress may seem slow when it’s happening – a step by step climb up a mountain – but then, in a moment, you look back and see how far you’ve come.
“All of a sudden, he didn’t need scaffolding with an adult to help him walk through a conversation,” Brandon remembers. “He could go start a conversation with one of his friends on the playground, which before was a major barrier. Seeing that progress in his life from the things that he’s learning in a clinical environment has been really exciting.”
Brandon wants the same thing he’s seen in his son for Easterseals Northern California: sustainable growth.
“We need to be strategic about the areas of service that we provide while being realistic in what we’re capable of doing and not growing too quickly,” he said. “And we need to do it with clear targets and measures to make sure that we’re making wise decisions.”
Two years ago, Brandon sat in the Walnut Creek waiting room wondering what the years ahead would hold for his family. Today, he walks into Easterseals Northern California with another responsibility that, in many ways, is actually same one from a mirrored view: honoring the trust of the people who sit in that lobby next or receive care throughout Northern California and giving them reason to look ahead with hope.
“It’s important that we always put people first,” Brandon said, “that we’re always putting the needs of the individuals that we’re serving at the top. Then we also make sure that we’re supporting the people who are providing that service, our employees, because you’re not going to be able to accomplish those two things if you don’t put both of those first.”
