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Bitty Wright and Beau Wright.
“I don’t think that our country’s educational system has
come to a point where we are doing the best that we can,”
she says. “We have regressed. But Bitty & Beau’s Coffee is an
example of something that is unheard of and wonderful.”
It also has made an impact in the workforce at PPD,
the Wilmington-based pharmaceutical contract research
organization.
“A few months after Beau’s was up and rolling, I got a call
from PPD and they said, ‘We love what you’re doing there
and we would like to incorporate people with intellectual
developmental disabilities in our workforce,’” Amy says.
It was not a completely new idea to them. At that time,
PPD had at least one person with IDD already on staff. They
wanted to hire five additional individuals with IDD.
“They said, ‘Can you help us?’ Which is exactly why I formed
the nonprofit, because that was my original hope; I would just
kind of be that middleman between people with IDD and busi-nesses
that were looking to hire people,” Amy says. “I already had
a file full of potential employees just here in Wilmington that
were looking for jobs, and so the process began.”
Amy helped place the five employees and PPD reached out
to her again earlier this year with interest in hiring one more.
Matt Dean, 27, is one of the many faces of Bitty & Beau’s
Coffee. He’s a cashier, and the person who often takes cus-tomers’
orders. He is autistic and, while talking and socializ-ing
used to be very challenging for him, he is now gregarious
in his interaction with guests.
“You have to go to Carolina Beach,” he tells a young
woman from Washington, D.C., “to a place called Britt’s
Donuts and you can get a donut for like a dollar and they
haven’t changed a thing since like 1970.”
Kelly Strickland | 910.612.6537 • Wendy McElhinney | 910.515.5495
Susan Snider | 910.622.4394 • Michelle Clark | 910.367.9767 | Larisa Gadalla | 910.777.4882
Linda Woods | 910.233.8900 • Nikki Hawthorne | 910.297.7223
$975,000
1022 Ocean Ridge
ICW views in Landfall
$560,000
1816 Newkirk Road
Quiet area with community dock
$1,375,000
and 28’ boatslip
2220 Moreland Drive
In ground pool and views
of Landfall lake
$825,000
2204 Masons Point Place
Golf and marsh front in Landfall
$1,150,000
231 Ballast Point Road
Wow! Stunning custom home
in Hampstead
$724,900
16 E. Greensboro Street Unit A
Ocean views and rental history on
Wrightsville Beach
As our agent, Michelle demonstrated a strong work ethic, was
always available for consultation, continually updated us with
relevant sales data and supplied us with all the information and
guidance we needed to successfully navigate through a challenging
real estate environment. — Bill and Pat
PHOTO COURTESY OF JILL KNIGHT/WRAL PHOTO COURTESY OF JILL KNIGHT/WRAL
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM