Jon Mohr
Briefly describe your daily job duties.
For Honda, I use historical and present data to determine how to send inventory throughout Honda’s network of warehouses and part centers across the U.S. For composing, I compose and produce cinematic music for films/video games/TV shows. I also create online content to share my work and workflows with others.
As a person who stutters, share the most challenging part of your job.
The most challenging part of my job with Honda is phone calls. They aren’t frequent, but they can be somewhat challenging to take sometimes, especially if a request is extremely urgent.
Online meetings are a frequent part of the industry when I’m composing, especially meetings with people I’m not very familiar with and haven’t met in person. These are always enjoyable meetings, but they can be considerably intimidating.
What are your long-term career aspirations?
I would like to improve my skills at data analysis and logical thinking with Honda to deploy inventory in more strategic and beneficial ways to improve customer satisfaction and reduce backorders (I know how it feels to not be able to use your car because you have to wait weeks for a part to come in!)
With my composing, I aspire to have my music featured on trailers for large franchises like Marvel, and to be able to work with live orchestras and musicians more frequently.
Did you self-disclose your stuttering during the job hiring process? If so, how did you do it and how do you currently disclose your stuttering to unsuspecting co-workers, clients and or customers?
With my work at Honda I disclosed. I waited until I had a few blockages while I was answering questions and then very briefly mentioned, “if my cadence seems off, I have a speech impediment, it’s no biggie.” The office I work isn’t super uptight so that makes it much easier too. For co-workers I don’t know yet, I don’t tend to disclose it. I’m usually able to manage it for brief interactions, but for longer interactions with people I don’t know, I’m likely to bring it up in a similar way to my interview.
I don’t find myself in many “interview” positions in y composing work, but for my online content, I created 1 post in March of 2023 that talked about my stutter and the work I have to put in to my videos to keep them within Instagram Reels’ minute and a half length limit. For general meetings with people I don’t know well, I usually briefly mention the stutter via email/messages before the meeting and crack a little joke like, “if it seems like the call is frozen, it’s not. haha!” That also starts each meeting off on a lighter note too which also makes me stutter less!
What is your proudest moment at your current company?
I automated complex business processes to save loads of time with Honda! I taught myself Excel VBA and quickly realized that just about ANYTHING you do in Excel can be automated, so it’s saved me tons of time at the office and has improved my logical thinking.
In my composition work it was working on a track from scratch with a composer from Atlanta, GA, preparing the sheet music for it, getting it recorded remotely by an orchestra in Budapest (and getting vocals recorded by a singer in Germany), and then releasing it in December 2023. We had a TON of meetings for this project–almost once a week–and also had to provide real-time input for the orchestra during the recording session over Zoom. I love ambitious projects like this.
Describe how stuttering makes you a better, more valued contributor at work.
Stuttering has given me a lot of patience at work. When I’m training someone new, or when I’m explaining my thought process to someone, I take things slow and speak as clearly as possible. I take a calm approach to every situation and am never quick to infuriate. Because of this, my stutter is less severe than it usually is and I am also a relaxed person a majority of the time. It’s a positive feedback loop.
What’s your best advice for people who stutter just entering the workplace and for those in a career striving to achieve greater success?
Your stutter does not define you. People will encourage you to be the best version of yourself no matter what, and they won’t look down on you for having a stutter. The most important part of being a good worker is to work smarter not harder, improve yourself, and contribute what you can to every situation. People will see your true value, even if you struggle to see it yourself.
