Israel Bolivar, an employee at NIB associated nonprofit agency Vibrant Works in San Antonio, Texas, is NIB’s 2025 Peter J. Salmon Employee of the Year.
Nominees for the Peter J. Salmon Award are people who are blind and currently employed in a direct labor manufacturing or service operation in an NIB associated nonprofit agency. They are evaluated for the award based on job performance and positive activities in both the workplace and in their communities.
Originally from Columbia Israel, 38, is doubly disabled. He lost his vision and both his hands in early 1993, just before his sixth birthday, when he was playing hide-and-go seek and found a neighbor’s homemade grenade. Not knowing it was dangerous, Israel picked it up, hid under a bed, unwrapped it, and pulled the pin. He subsequently spent nine months in a coma and underwent several surgeries.
But Israel hasn’t let his disabilities slow him down. He moved to Florida in 1999, attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, and eventually went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Florida International University.
Winning NIB’s Salmon Award was a surprise.
“Being announced as Employee of the Year, I wasn’t expecting it. It feels amazing, and it’s an honor,” Israel said.
Israel made the difficult decision to leave his home, where he lived with his parents, and move to San Antonio in 2019 after he learned about Vibrant Works from a fellow employee who was also visually impaired and encouraged Israel to relocate. It took a lot of contemplation, though. Israel had a job at his family fitness center, managing the front desk and engaging with customers.
“I’d go, ‘Moving from Miami, from my parents, it’s gonna make it tough.’ That went on for about a year until I decided, you know, it’s time for me to move on and make a future for me and my wife,” Israel recalled.
While his parents worried about him moving cross country, it also wasn’t the first time he’d branched out on his own. “I said, ‘If I don’t try, I’m never gonna know.’”
He encourages other people with disabilities to take chances, too.
“I tell people, come out from under your parents’ wings or your family’s wings and fly,” Israel said. “We have to make our own family and make our own future. Don’t be afraid of experimenting. If you don’t experiment, you don’t know if you’re going to succeed or you’re going to fail.”
At Vibrant Works, Israel is definitely succeeding. There, he works as a full-time sander on an 11-person team in the Tinker Department, sanding and finishing floorboards for the KC-135 aircraft. Israel sands by hand and also runs the sanding machine, in addition to helping painters prepare to prime and paint the boards. He calls it a real team effort.
“Everything has to be in line, and it goes from one hand to another,” Israel said. “When a certain part of that line doesn’t work, the other part of the line is there to push them forward, or say ‘Let me help you, this is how you do it’.”
Israel has coworkers with a variety of disabilities, and accommodations have been made to help them all. “At stations where we work here, we have people who are in wheelchairs, who have to move the sewing machines with their hands, and people who are deaf or blind,” he said. “We’re not incapable of doing stuff, we’re capable. And sometimes even more capable than somebody who is sighted.”
Israel also mentors new department staff.
“They have me teach them and show them how it’s done, how they need to be careful so they don’t get hurt, or cut themselves, or drop a board on their toes,” he said.
Natalie Bobadilla, Vibrant Works vice president of communications, said everyone at the agency praises Israel’s optimism.
“He’s such a great role model, and his positivity really shines through every day. He has this analogy he uses: ‘Your life is like a bank account, and the more positivity you deposit into it, the more you’re in the green.’ Every time I see him, I’m like, ‘I’m in the green.’ He always has that great smile, and you just can’t have a bad day when you talk to Israel. He’s wonderful, and we’re so proud of him.”
Israel is incredibly grateful for the life he has built, and credits Vibrant Works for much of his success. He said the NPA provides people with disabilities “the opportunity of becoming somebody: Having a future, providing for their families, for themselves, to be more independent.”
Ultimately, Israel said he wants others to understand that a disability doesn’t make you who you are. “You make yourself who you are for the abilities you have, not the disabilities,” he said. “Just because you’re blind, or you’ve got no hands, or you’re not able to walk or use a wheelchair, it doesn’t mean that you’re not normal. You just have something that prevents you from doing things at the same pace as a person who is able to see, that has their hearing, or has their legs.
“Vibrant Works gives us that opportunity to be somebody, be somebody in the world, and show the world that is sighted that, just because we have a disability, it doesn’t mean that we’re not capable of being somebody.”
Israel, along with the other 2025 Employee of the Year nominees and the Milton J. Samuelson Career Achievement Award winner, will be honored during the NIB/NAEPB Conference and Expo in February 2026. He’s already looking forward to attending.
“I want to say thank you to my team and to Vibrant Works for helping me, not letting me give up because of my double disability. They were actually pushing me more and more,” he said. “Receiving this prestigious award, out of 42 other nominees it feels amazing. I’m representing them as well.”