This is a recap of the session at the AMA Marketing and Public Policy Conference 2024 in Washington DC
Unfortunately, there are a few technical issues at the start of the audio and video recording.
For your convenience, we also provide an edited transcript below.
Edited Transcript
Josephine Go Jefferies: [speaking about accessibility: recording, closed captioning and transcription.] Okay, we also will be using an interactive whiteboard which we hope you’ll be able to access using your smartphones.
And again, it it may well be that you require some mental processing time, because there’s going to be a lot of information covered in the session. So we’ll leave the Padlet open for the the next few days, so that you can add your reflections. Okay?
Okay. So when Meredith and I started thinking about this, you know, think Tank term, focusing this opportunity to be super-Washington, DC-type-idea on neurodiversity.
[disruption from echoing audio]
I had to Google, what is a Think Tank exactly. We’ve heard of it but how do we make it happen? A Think Tank is a body of experts providing advice and ideas on a specific political economic problem or problems, which then becomes a foundation for further research, policy and advocacy.
And so just thinking about, putting that in mind we have brought together a constellation of experts and they are illustrious indeed, as you can see, many of them are joining us remotely. Eric Garcia, I hope, will be… he’s just joined us in person, walking into the room. So we also have Eric Garcia, autistic journalist and author of “we are not broken: changing the autism conversation”, and specifically, thinking about autism and masculinity, also, is a late, actually perfectly timed arrival
in the room. So I have asked each of our presenters to introduce themselves.
So this is the format for our 75 min session. We’ve got 4 themes, that are going to be taken by each of the 1st 4 panelists.
And they’re going to raise 3 specific issues from their perspective and a call to action, thinking about marketers and public policy people in the audience. And then we’ve got an opportunity to ask the panel questions because we’ve been very parsimonious with allowing them to show off their knowledge and what they would like to share with us.
And then we’ll move into a reflective interactive session using the [online] Padlet, but also, you know, feel free to speak amongst yourselves, to think about this topic of now that you’ve been listening to a lot of different perspectives on your diversity and coming at it. Whatever position you began thinking about [it]… what it [neurodiversity] will be like in 10 years time.
And then we’re going to have 4 more of our panelists linking back to the themes. That’s why they’re organized in themes. You know, to to reflect and sort of wrap on, and also maybe add additional perspectives related to the 4 themes. And then Meredith will bring bring the session to a close. Okay?
It’s important that we sort of begin by making sure that we’re all more or less on the same page, because I know that based on some of the early registration. Some of the interests that bring you to the topic of neurodiversity are very different.
So defining what it is is something which, as I think, you’ll come to know, throughout through the duration of the session is something which is still being established. But hopefully, there are academics who are working in the neurodiversity space recognize that it can be a contentious issue with a lot of different uses of of language. And so we thought it would be useful to draw on some definitions provided by Dr. Nick Walker. To clarify that what neurodiversity is and isn’t.
Neurodiversity is a biological fact.
Okay, it’s not it’s not a myth. It is defined as the diversity of human minds in the infinite variation and neuro cognitive functioning within our human species.
It is not a trait that any individual possesses or can possess.
When an individual or group of individuals diverge from dominant societal standards of normal neurocognitive functioning, they’re neurodivergent.
Neurodiversity is not per se a perspective, an approach, a belief, a political position or a paradigm. There is such thing as a neurodiversity paradigm which, as people who are interested in research, will be interesting for you to think about. And there’s more about that on the next slide.
Similarly, some of you may have come across neurodiversity, maybe on social media. And it’s spoken about in reference to a movement, a neurodiversity movement.
Well, that, again, is something different. And it’s not neurodiversity itself.
The term neurodiversity evolved from the autism community in the 1990s when people with autism began to assert their voice and sort of push back against the medical model which saw autism, ADHD, dyslexia, as something which is broken, wrong, diseased, disordered, a dysfunction, a deficit.
And a lot of that pushback [against a deficit approach] comes from the diversity discourse, valuing diversity generally. Thinking about diversity as a good thing, like biodiversity.
But also trying to suggest that neurodiversity is value neutral. If you think about it, it’s not
as it is sometimes portrayed, a superpower. Nor is it something which is negative.
So a lot of the definition and and scholarship around neurodiversity really reflects the social model of disability. Right? So you’re moving away from blaming an individual for their differences and thinking about how their social and natural environment may be disadvantaging them.
And so if that social model of disability suggests that disability rights need to focus on changing that social environmental context to be more enabling rather than disabling.
For those of you who are interested again, in the language of neurodiversity, which I think many people do get drawn into it…It really focuses… You need to think about how difference relies on a normative reference. You, if you are asserting that something is different. You are suggesting that there is some regular occurrence which makes difference stand out, and diversity means variety and shape, in human cognitive variation in the same vein as gender variation, racial variation, etc.
as something which exists and is value neutral. It’s only the social environment which imposes some sort of value based structure on that.
And so that’s why the neurodiversity paradigm is particularly interesting. If you want to think about doing some research in marketing or public policy and what it means for the assumptions and the definitions that would be most helpful.
And also particularly for attendees of this conference, thinking about the activism and the social justice angles, and how you need to sort of differentiate your language at least conceptually, but also thinking about the background and the historical evolution of where it is that that work can be best positioned.
So I think one of the key drivers of making sure that we make the most of this opportunity is to make sure that when marketing scholars enter into the realm of neurodiversity [as a working concept], that you’re not stepping into minefields, because there has been a lot of really interesting scholarly work and debate ongoing on in this particular area.
So a few stats, 15 to 20% of the global population exhibits some form of neurodivergence.
To a marketing audience that’s a big market share, an under-served market share
Neurodiversity is understood to be driven by genetic as well as environmental factors.
So it’s that nature and nurture issue, and by environmental, many of the participants are going to be talking about some social structures which are part and parcel of the environment in which neurodiversity either can be helped or harmed.
Okay, so the the the main idea is to ask us all, how can marketing and public policy be neuro-inclusive?
So without further ado, I’m going to be handing over to our first 4 panelists.
Okay, Tim, are you able to share your screen.
Tim Vogus: Let me try to do that right now.
There we go.
Alright. Thanks for having a management professor interloper amongst esteemed marketing and public policy folks. So I’m Tim Vogus. I’m a professor at the Owen Graduate School of Management. I’m also the deputy director of the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University, and a lot of my research right now is around neurodiversities with a more particular focus on on autism and kind of management practices.
So you’ll get a sense of that with what I talk about today. And I’m really excited that Eric Garcia is in the room, too, because everything I’m going to say he says much better in his book which you should all buy. And if you’re somebody who has fled from Twitter in recent months and the recent years you should go back just to follow Eric Garcia on Twitter. That’s one of the reasons why I stay on board
So I’m gonna talk a little bit about neurodiversity and employment. It is going to have a little bit of a focus on autism, because that’s where more of my research is. But it applies more broadly, and so kind of the starting point for the work I do. And what I’m going to be talking about for the next 4 min or so is that there are massive levels of under- and unemployment for autistic adults.
Even those with college and advanced degrees, some depending on what numbers you listen to up upwards of 70%, even of college graduates who are under and unemployed. So my research, what I’ve tried to do in it and think about is, why is that the case?
And you know we might think about that as as Josephine was saying, that it’s something about the job candidates or the employees themselves. But what I have found in my own work, and what I’m gonna try to introduce here is that maybe it’s something about the context that people are operating in the way they’re managed, and how we might rethink some of that.
So I think what explains a lot of these observed problems and on and under employment is what’s called the double empathy problem. So historically and inaccurately, there was a view that, for example, autistic adults lack empathy, and that turns out not to be true at all. And instead, what is going on? Why, there might be disconnects across neurotypes and interactions in the workplace in generally is because, autistic and non autistic folks, for example, have attention and communication differences that impede that cross-neurotype understanding. And more recent research suggests that those same things are not observed within neurotype. So what does that create challenges for in the workplace, obviously challenges in navigating interviews, recruitment materials like, how do I successfully apply for a job, or workplace interactions? And that necessitates yes, individual adaptations, to be sure, but also organizational action.
And if we think about this double empathy problem, how can we think about it? So let’s say, a prototypical interaction between an autistic, person neurotypical person.
So a autistic person may struggle to communicate with neurotypical people. And on the flip side, neurotypical folks might frequently misinterpret the communication of autistic people. Sometimes you hear comments of neurotypical managers and research saying that autistic people are too blunt. And that’s a misinterpretation of communication style.
An autistic person might have successful interactions with other autistic people. Neurotypical, same thing, successful within-neurotype interactions. Autistic people often feel extreme pressure to mask or pass as neurotypical in the workplace. A neurotypical person might assume that a autistic person lacks social skills because it might present differently than neurotypical expectations.
An autistic person might feel socially isolated in neurotypical settings and a neurotypical person might benefit from a society that rewards neurotypical social skills. So what this is saying is, some of the challenges that we observe in the workplace and employment are really about disconnects and social interaction that are bi-directional understanding. Another neurotype social interactions is not just the responsibility at all of the of the person who’s being
minoritized and stigmatized. In this case of this example, interaction the autistic person.
So what can we do about it as as scholars, as management practitioners, and where we can change our mindset a little bit. So a lot of times the ways in which hiring and promotion and rewards are allocated inside organizations is about people who quote unquote fit the organization.
So you know, we hire based on fit, cultural fit, you know. And oftentimes that’s: do people share the same hobbies? Do they talk in the same kind of way? Are they similar to me in some kind of fundamental way? And I would say, we might need to move on from this idea of cultural fit. And instead, think about what do people uniquely bring to an organization and create more space for more different types of people, more different ways of being and seeing and thinking.
So thinking a little bit more about, how does somebody contribute to a culture and evolve a culture and add to it rather than just fit into it.
We can rethink some fundamental practices like interviewing, so we can move away from some of the bizarre, quite frankly bizarre questions that characterize most companies’ interviews, and avoid asking these questions, and we can ask more questions that are more concrete and specific, avoiding hypotheticals.
If people get stuck on an interview question, maybe prompt for more detail, help people along so you can get a sense of what people actually know, rather than whether they can guess what what you’re unclear question really means. You can probably provide people interview questions beforehand.
Allow people processing and sensory breaks to kind of think it through. Minimize, creating an environment that minimizes interruptions. Consider work-related tasks or other kind of alternate means of assessment versus interviews where we know there are barriers for neurodivergent candidates, allot some time for maybe people providing examples of prior work. And obviously all these things are about, you know, a kind of a typical workplace, but it would certainly apply to an academic environment where we tend to do all these things very poorly. We can rethink onboarding. So when people join an organization, how do we, you know, kind of socialize people to what’s going on in the organization.
One way you might think about it is to have people prepare a personal user manual. So if you’re joining a new team, people can just share explicitly: What’s my style? What do I value? How do I? How you can best communicate with me, how to help me, what I, what I might struggle with what people misunderstand about me.
So, taking all the tacit knowledge that we might be expected to just figure out over time, and instead make it explicit, make it exchangeable, make it discussable, and have people figuring out a way. What’s the best way we can work together with a real knowledge of our own preferences and and affording legitimacy to those preferences.
We can also rethink if we’re managers or peers, how do we communicate and give feedback to each other? Because that’s a big part of workplace interactions. So being clear about expectations and outcomes, keeping interactions focused, avoiding more ambiguous language, reinforcing things with visual queues, making feedback, frequent, direct, behavioral, actionable. So something people can do something with it. Here’s what I want you to change. Here’s why I encourage question asking to make sure there’s that sense of a the understanding. So you bridge that double empathy divide and then give time to process information and check for understanding. So that is a whirlwind tour of maybe some management practices one might apply to thinking about and managing for neuro-inclusion and neurodiversity.
So that’s my time.
JGJ: Amazing. Thank you so much. Okay, Alicia, are you ready?
Alicia Broderick: Yes, I think so. So I’m going to share in just one moment. My name is Alicia Broderick. I’m a critical autism study scholar and a critical neurodiversity studies scholar. So, Tim, if you felt like an interloper as a management professor, I’m a professor of education at Montclair State in New Jersey. I’m also the author of “The Autism Industrial Complex: How branding, marketing, and capital investment turn autism into big business” which I think, is why
people might think that I’m contributing to this conversation.
And I’m currently developing interdisciplinary certificate programs in neuro inclusive practice and leadership at my university in partnership with folks in the management program.
Actually, and I’m working to develop an institute for neurodivergent innovation and leadership at Montclair, so I think maybe Tim and I should probably talk a little more later.
And I’m going to now figure out how to share my slides with you. Forgive me. I’ve had vanishingly little sleep. So I do apologize.
Okay. Now, what I think I ought to have done was enter it into Slideshow view before I did that.
There we go. Okay. So I am gonna talk for…. and I’m gonna set my timer because I’m sure I’ve already used up more time since I didn’t start it at the beginning. I’m here to talk about the commodification of neurodiversity and therefore of neurodivergent people. And thank you for everything you just said, Tim, in your whirlwind management study. That’s also similar work that I’m engaged in. And I’m not gonna talk about any of that. So thank you so much for putting that all on the table.
I wanted to present 3, I was asked to present 3 provocative issues. The 1st one I’m going to bring up is the question that I would love if management people and folks that run management initiatives and campaigns would maybe ask themselves, are you engaging in what’s called “neurodiversity light”?
It’s pretty easy test to figure out if you are. Are you using the term neurodiversity as a buzzword? As a way to broaden or expand a commercial market? A for profit market? Right, without necessarily any regard to supporting either the neurodiversity movement as a human rights campaign, right? And without necessarily working from within the neurodiversity paradigm but still working from within the pathology paradigm, as was articulated in that initial slide that Josephine went over, reviewing a very brief nutshell of some of Nick Walker’s work right?
So if, in fact, you are perhaps substituting the word autism for neurodiversity as a lot of folks tend to do, thinking it’s oh, current, new word, broader, you know, more current, sexy word. We’re gonna say neurodiversity instead of autism. But if you’re saying, if you’re still doing things like saying “neurodiverse people” or “people with neurodiversity”. Or one of my favorites is “people with neurodivergent conditions”, right? That’s that’s that’s pathology paradigm thinking? And so one of the things that you might ask yourself is, how am I using this term?
Because within the autistic community, [if what you’re doing can be labelled] neurodiversity light… [it’s] Not a compliment. So think about whether you can, either or both would be preferable, allow your work with neurodiversity movement activism, and or preferably both. Align your paradigmatic thinking within the neurodiversity paradigm, and work to dump the pathology, paradigm and as a lots of autistic folk like to say, neurodiversity is not a marketing campaign. It’s a human rights campaign.
However, I know we’re here to talk about marketing and what I will say is that autism and therefore neurodiversity doesn’t exist outside of capitalism, right? They exist within capitalism always. And so we can say, Oh, it’s not that. It’s this, right? It’s not a marketing campaign, it’s a human rights campaign. Well, yes, it is a human rights campaign.
However, my work centers, as Tim mentioned about his a little bit as well, primarily around autism, but is extrapolated, easily extrapolated to the broader neurodiversity movement. Autism does not exist and has not ever existed outside of capitalism. So, too, with neurodiversity. But issue number 2 to understand is recognizing the history of … that this may be something that has come up on your radar in the last 5 to maybe 10 years as a thing you need to pay attention to. We’re gonna talk about marketing for neurodiversity. But understand that there’s 80 years of history…. more, much more than that, actually. But I’m gonna go with 80 or so years of history building the autism industrial, complex, and the neurodiversity industrial complex is fundamentally grounded within that infrastructure. And the AIC, what I call it for short is actually grounded, not in serving autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people as consumers. Right? It is fundamentally grounded in the industrial scale commodification of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people. So within autism commerce, autistic people — and that includes very young children, toddlers, right? Have but functioned as raw materials for the very profitable, highly lucrative, booming, and ever diversifying autism and neurodiversity industries right, including the ABA industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and others there.
So the AIC, the autism industrial complex has been producing these very, very lucrative markets for years. Right? And we have to ask ourselves, is the… is our work on neurodiversity going down that same path? Or are we potentially, hopefully working to disrupt that commodification process a little bit because human commodification is problematic when it’s not voluntary. Right?
Provocative issue number 3. Oh dear, I’m done [with my allotted time]. Okay. So I will wrap very quickly. But a question I like to ask, I follow Rajan’s work, who is an anthropologist, And he talks about certain words being what he calls “double jointed words” and value is one of those having meaning or salience within both an ethics discourse as well as a market discourse, right, an economic discourse. So ask yourselves, while you’re busy valuing neurodiversity: Does your valuing campaign actually value neurodivergent people? Or is it primarily valuing them as commodities to animate the market that you’re working to capture right?
As an example, I recently, two weeks ago, there was a neurodiversity day fundraiser at a local elementary school. They had a DJ. They had a bouncy castles, food trucks. It was a nightmare for all of the neurodivergent children present, who let me just say didn’t matter. It was Celebrate Neurodiversity Day. And they brought in all these great, big, loud, horrible things. And the funds went to support the ABA program that was working to change those students from their very happy neurodivergent selves into appearing to be less neurodivergent or less autistic. Right?
So you can only actually value neurodiversity, which is, by the way, all of us, not just neurodivergent folk among us, but you can only actually value human neurodiversity if you would dump the assumption that neurodivergence is fundamentally pathological.
So my call to action is that since we’re not, we’re not going to get outside of capitalists, and you guys have jobs to do, and you are marketers. Right?
Seek interest convergence, please.
Treat autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people as untapped consumer markets all you like. There is actually vast untapped potential there. Remember, back before somebody realized that there was actually a market for things like tagless T-shirts and seamless underwear. Thank you, by the way, for those of you who figured that out. There are markets there to serve people right. but serve people as consumers do not treat autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people as commodities to animate adjacent interventionist markets. And if your neurodiversity campaign isn’t led at least co-ed by neurodivergent people. You are probably actually commodifying neurodivergent people at some level, even if they may be your own children.
So sorry. I went over a tiny bit. Thank you so much.
JGJ: Fantastic. Thank you. Now, Margaux, are you able to share your screen? Yes.
Margaux Joffe: Okay, I’m off the mute.
Good morning, everybody. My name is Margaux Joffe. I use she/her pronouns, and thank you for the invitation to participate in this Think Tank alongside leaders in the field.
This is a topic that matters to me personally as a neurodivergent woman and professionally as a board certified cognitive specialist, a certified accessibility professional and the founder of Minds of All Kinds, a neurodiversity education and empowerment company. I’m a global neurodiversity advocate speaker and consultant. I have led and contributed to numerous corporate and community based initiatives to empower neurodivergent people and improve the outcomes for our lives.
Like too many neurodivergent women. I went undiagnosed for years and struggled with depression, anxiety, and self-harming behaviors before getting the information and support that I needed.
Through my work I’ve had the privilege to speak with and learn from hundreds of people about their lived experiences, including my dear friend who’s in the room Eric Garcia, and I’ve seen firsthand the struggles that many neurodivergent individuals face.
So here are 3 issues I’d like to raise and highlight for our session today.
It was very difficult to condense everything down into 5 min.
Number one. There are significant health and employment disparities.
Neurodivergent individuals face significant barriers when it comes to accessing care.
Over 70% of adults with ADHD experience, depression and or anxiety.
Suicide is the leading cause, the second leading cause of death for autistic people. Autistic women are 13 times more likely to die by suicide than non-autistic women.
This is a public health crisis that needs to be addressed.
We also heard from Tim about employment issues. We know this. Over 80% of autistic folks are under employed, people with ADHD are 60% more likely to be fired from their jobs, and 70% more likely to be incarcerated.
Nearly one in 4 are neurodivergent. In a recent study by understood.org that was just published a couple of weeks ago. Nearly one in 4 neurodivergent adults reported being fired or demoted after requesting accommodations. This is not okay, and it’s against the law.
So this is something I work with, with companies doing trainings and education to try to make workplaces more inclusive. There’s some great progress happening. There’s a long way to go.
That leads to number 2: representation matters, and it’s not enough. And Alicia spoke so wonderfully to this.
We know representation is crucial because you can’t be what you can’t see.
Having neurodivergent individuals visible in workplaces. And media can empower others and break down barriers. And we do, we need to educate marketers, policy makers, and the general public about neurodiversity and the importance of cognitive accessibility to reduce stigma and improve access. And this is something. As a former marketer. I’ve done a lot of work around changing the way disability is represented in Media.
But, as Alicia said, we need to be cautious of turning neurodiversity into another commodified identity to sell products.
Sometimes companies use neurodiversity as a buzzword and launch superficial initiatives or check the box efforts that prioritize corporate branding and PR headlines over meaningful change. This is harmful.
We need to beware of marketing only superpowers, which puts neurodivergent folks on a pedestal without support.
We have inherent worth beyond our productivity. We need to think critically about how we’re measuring success of our efforts.
Productivity cannot be the only measure of success.
Let’s question capitalist culture that encourages competition for survival, resulting in wealth, accumulation for some at the expense of others.
and number 3: fragmented advocacy efforts.
I think the neurodiversity community is not as unified as we could be.
There’s a number of reasons. But this reduces our effectiveness and collective advocacy efforts. Ableism divides us. I’ve seen too many advocates who proclaim neurodivergence as a superpower and distance themselves from the disability community which reinforces ableism.
We need to move away from functioning labels and embrace a disability justice framework that reminds us that all bodies and minds are unique and essential. Everyone has strengths and needs that must be met. No body or mind can be left behind.
Misinformation also fragments advocacy efforts; misinformation on social media is rampant. More than half of popular Tiktok videos on ADHD contain misinformation. According to a 2022 study in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry we need greater collaboration between experts and content creators to bring accurate, engaging, and accessible content to the public.
We need to come together, prioritizing intersectionality and work in collaboration to make sure the needs of multiple marginalized neurodivergent people are included in advocacy efforts. We need a unified intersectional approach to amplify our voices and drive real change
which leads me to the call to action.
unifying our advocacy efforts and centering the leadership of neurodivergent people.
Let’s please unify our advocacy efforts prioritizing the leadership and lived experience of neurodivergent people, bringing their expertise to the forefront. This Think Tank, is a great start.
Please make sure that neurodivergent people are involved in creating and running programs that affect them and pay them fairly for their contributions. Compensate them, do not put undue emotional labor on neurodivergent people In exchange for exposure.
We need to pay and support neurodivergent people that we’re asking to help us by involving neurodivergent leaders in the development of policies and marketing initiatives. We can create better solutions that benefit everyone. Because neurodivergent people deserve to thrive, not just survive. And together with the help of marketers and policy makers, we can make that a reality.
Thank you.
JGJ: Okay. And, Jean, are you able to share your screen? Then.
Jean Hewitt UK Buro Happold: Let me just have a go.
I am sharing …apologies for this. Is that working? Is that full screen? I hope it is.
Okay, thank you. So this is me, Jean Hewitt. So I’m from the UK. Absolutely delighted to be here. I’ve been an access and inclusion specialist for over 20 years. But the main reason I’m here today is because I authored this document [as] Technical author for this PAS 6463 Neurodiversity in the Built Environment back in 2022 working with the steering group of experts, with both lived and professional experience in neurodiversity as a whole.
So this is what it’s about. It’s a guidance document on buildings and the built environments. It could be open space as well.
And it although we’ve put neurodiversity in the title, a lot of people think it’s only about the people who experience neurodivergence. But but it’s not. It’s about everyone. Because at some point in our lives we will all experience some of the things that we’re trying to to correct in the environments that we build and and design.
So it’s for, I would say, it’s for everyone and anyone. And it’s for inside and outside of buildings, and it’s very beneficial for a broad spectrum of neurological, sensory processing differences, whatever they may be. So sensory-friendly design is a term we quite often use in a short hand of that and it’s free to download, so I hope people will, and have a little dip into it.
When we were looking at this at the outset, we had… There was some prior research as to what affected people most, and this issue of hyper sensitivity to the environment around us was a big issue believed to affect over 70% of people with diagnosed neurodivergent conditions. There are others who might be hyposensitive, and they’re under sensitive, so perhaps will have a need for seeking out sensory stimulation.
You know, for example, as if, as an adult, I was hypersensitive. I might wear fidget jewelry, or as held a stimming device, or headphones for music — all manner of ways I might do that. But it’s very much can be as an adult under my control.
Whereas when you are hypersensitive, and you have this very extreme physical sensitivity to the world around you, and it can make you feel quite ill. So sensory overload was a key issue, and how buildings can bombard us with noise and color and pattern, and flashing lights, and bright lights, and so on, and it can cause all manner of things that push us into fight or flight mode, if you like, so it can affect a heart rate, and our breathing affect a blood pressure and so on. So this is what we’re trying to aim with. trying to fix really, or to make better with this document.
And you can see here that we followed the normal way that you would approach a building from concept right through to how you get in, move around, the the items that you place in the building, but also how you escape in emergency and places where you might go to get some space and some peace.
So I don’t know that these are provocative, but we’re looking for 3 key calls to action. So for clarity of the building, so is the building logical? Can we understand it? Can we have some advance information, because that’s really reassuring for a lot of people. What can you do to help us with wayfinding? Because that is a key issue that becomes very, very challenging for some your cognitive profiles and creating places that are easy to interpret, look familiar or comfortable, and operate generally how you expect them to. So they’re not startling, and they don’t have horrible patterns and things like that.
The second point was to give users control and some choice sometimes over the places that they go to. So if you think of a typical office you would have some some spaces that are great for focused work that require [to be] uninterrupted, etc, whereas others might be more collaborative, buzzy type spaces, recognizing we’re all different. So trying to give people back some control either, and where they sit or where they choose to go, or that offer some adjustments within the environment itself. So you can turn lighting down, or or you can in some way close the door and
and stop the noise that effects you, and so on, and also to add, the obviously people may be hypersensitive to some things, and hypo sensitive to others. So it’s a very complex mix that can happen. So we need to be quite open minded about how we’re doing this and accept, everyone can be different.
And then the 3rd and really, I think most important thing was to create spaces that are for calm and so quiet restorative spaces, and these can be little rooms, and we are putting them in and seeing them go in successfully to lots of buildings, whether it’s a shopping center, football stadia, a museum, an office, etc, even a hospital — dedicated small spaces you can go to when it becomes too much.
And in those spaces. We really do focus and do a deep dive into what the it, how it should be designed with muted colors, used biophilic patterns because they’re much more calming rather than kind of linear or or checkerboard, bright patterns.
Carefully designed acoustics, adjustable, lighting, looking at the color temperature of lighting and making sure you’re not getting any flicker. Having furniture that is soft. It flexes, perhaps gives you a little bit of movement. Maybe some bean bags things like that are grounding and items, perhaps, in a tidy cupboard that you can use for sensory stimulation, if you need that as well.
Just having that space available for users, sends an enormously strong message to building users that this is a place where I can belong.
So we had a project recently where they didn’t even know that they had anyone that consider themselves to be neurodivergent, they popped in a quiet room. They took some considered design advice around what they do with the main spaces at a quiet floor and a busy floor, and almost immediately had people coming forward and saying, “I feel I belong here now, and never could tell anyone before. But you know this is made such a difference to me. It makes it possible for me to come to work now”. So it could be such a huge, strong message. What you do with your building.
So my final point was, we’re trying to design for sensory inclusion so that we can all flourish, not just survive in the buildings that we create. So those 3 points of clarity control and calm are my calls to action, if you can do those.
And I’ve shown a picture here of some beautiful flowers. But they’re all different. They’re different types, and they will have different watering regimes and different soil types, and some like the shade, and some like the sun and so forth. And you know, and some need to be fed occasionally as well.
So why would we think that’s just plants? Why would we think humans would be any different, of course, very diverse. And because of that we cannot make a One Size Fits All built environment in in which we will all flourish.
Thank you.
JGJ: So that was such a wonderful start. Thank you, All. So now we’ve got some time for questions to the to the panelists.
Audience: Thank you very much. I’m really glad to be here, Eric Garcia. This one is, for I mean Tim and Margaux immediately kind of mind to get to see my my good friends, and a pleasure to speak to some hopefully new friends.
The you know there are these, there, you know. So Alicia’s point: neurodiversity is becoming a buzz word you’re seeing in a lot of corporate corporate initiatives. But what we saw there, you know, we’re, you know. There was a study, that there was some news reports to show that last week for the 4th anniversary of George Floyd’s killing a lot of corporate initiatives and corporate efforts for investment, for racial diversity have dried up and then there was kind of a cash grab among different DEI initiatives. How do you encourage long term, lasting investment for these kind of neurodiversity initiatives — that doesn’t just, you know, become a buzz word? So it goes beyond it being a buzz word so that neurodivergent employees can thrive, can live, can move up and and and have enjoyable, you know, fulfilling careers and lives.
Tim Vogus: So wait. So, Margaux, do you want to answer? Do you want me? Because I, Eric, you were addressing it to us? Right to me and Margaux as a starting point, or anybody can go in.
Audience: Anyway you like, but
JGJ: okay. Well, if if if I can start with Cinthia, whose hand is up, and then we’ll go to Tim, and then to Margaux.
Tim Vogus: Oops. My bad. Okay. Sorry.
Cinthia B. Satornino (UNH Marketing): Hi, I’m Cinthia Satornino. Now I’m a marketing faculty at the University of New Hampshire.
Josephine asked us to introduce ourselves when we first talk. So I’ll do it now. I’m also the research director for the UNH Sales Center and the Co-Chair of the Neurodiversity Center Task force at UNH, where we’re seeking to establish a NeuroDiversity Center and doing some multi disciplinary research with some of my colleagues in STEM and communication disorders that I’ll talk about later.
I started my path down the neurodiversity space because I was traveling on the journey for my own neurodivergence and trying to understand my own neurodivergent brain and that of my oldest son. And at the same time I was simultaneously doing research on the Dive Triad, if you have not seen the JM article that came out last year, please look at it, please check it out.
And I was reading a lot about empathy and some of the stereotypes that Tim mentioned in his presentation, and Alicia mentioned in her presentation, around empathy and neurodivergent individuals led me down a path to study neurodivergence a little bit closer.
And, Eric, your question, so getting to your question, your question really hits home. You’re you’re stealing my thunder for what I’ll talk about a little bit later. But I think that one of the
strengths – so Alicia pointed out some of the weaknesses marketers experience in or in the way that marketers engage with neurodiversity, the neurodiversity paradigm, the neurodiversity movement and neurodivergence and neurodiversity in general.
But one of the powers that we have is that we understand what it means to plan strategically. Business scholars in particular understand how to engage with strategic planning. And the idea of strategic planning is to develop long-term sustainable entities, right?
And we create products and services and institutions that are intended to last and have an impact. And so sometimes marketing could seem like a dirty word. But there’s a lot of… it’s a neutral… it’s a tool. It’s a neutral tool to pursue an agenda.
We have to check ourselves that our agenda is not falling prey to some of the weaknesses that Alicia mentioned in her presentation, but we can use those tools to create strong, lasting organizations, and so one of the things I’ll talk about a little bit in my wrap up of Tim’s setup, for institutional settings, is how to use the strategic planning process to develop those strong institutions.
So, sorry for that long answer, but I wanted to say: we know how to do that. As marketers, we know how to establish sustainable initiatives. It’s about applying that to this, because sometimes we treat our social initiatives and our DEI efforts as something different than what we do as a business. And they’re not. They are just as mission and purpose driven.
And we need to make sure they stay mission and purpose driven. But I think we can do that. We’re in the best position to do that. Thank you.
JGJ: Tim, and then Margo.
Tim Vogus: Unsurprising that you would ask a great and hard question, Eric. But so I think one of the things that we should stop doing is kind of like these launching of these separate, targeted hiring initiatives which just reinforces, I think, a very segregation and kind of niche-oriented mindset. So I think that’s a i mean cause that’s part of the kind of like “fake embrace” of some of this stuff like, Hey, let’s hire people, and let’s also hire them for the least appealing jobs for which we can hire no one else and say, “Oh, they’ll be happy to have it because [their] unemployment rate’s 80%.”
So I think, stopping that and kind of reframing the overall mindset but inside organizations around neurodiversity, and a range of different minds are in our organizations, and we should be thinking about how we can kind of broaden the base of who we’re bringing into our organizations through the front door. Not through all these kind of little side doors, and I think that puts some much more responsibility on… so, I’m glad Alicia is doing this work. We’re starting to do this work at Vandy [Vanderbilt]. We got them. We’re gonna try to bring some folks together to design some stuff around rethinking business education around curriculum and in the core courses, whether it be in MBA programs, undergraduate business education, custom, executive education, LinkedIn, whatever those kind of things are — to give people more understanding, but also to give a set of tools. So in my presentation, I just outlined some really basic things which is just rethinking the things you’re doing already. But do it with a sensitivity and an orientation toward neurodiversity, to say what is better practice that can work for everybody.
And and starting with that kind of mindset. So I think that’s some of the things like a bigger infusion across a wider array of people who might be a managerial and organizational decision-making kind of roles to think about neurodiversity in a different kind of way.
Margaux Joffe: I’ll just add, briefly, I agree with Tim’s point about we need to move away from segregated initiatives.
I’m not neurodivergent today, a woman tomorrow, and queer on Monday, like, these are all aspects of who I are, who, who, I can’t even talk … or use the right grammar … who I am, who I are. That’s not a thing.
And also seeing cognitive accessibility as an important lens to everything that we do. It’s not like a initiative over here on the side. One in 5 people are estimated to be neurodivergent.
One in 3 households, one in 3 US households have at least one family member with a disability. This is not a niche issue. We’re talking about one in 3 of our households, at least in the United States.
So we need to go beyond compliance
to seeing accessibility and inclusion as just something that we need to be thinking about, and everything that we’re doing as a business both for our employees and our customers.
Alicia Broderick: And I’ll just add a thought real quick. And I wanna second everything that’s already been said. Thanks for this.
Thanks for the question, Eric. I also think that to go back to this question of interest convergence, and the points that that Margaux was making in her 5 min presentation. Right? This can’t be something that non-neurodivergent folk do for neurodivergent folk, thinking that I’m doing it for neurodiversity. Right? This is… doing all of this well is predicated on a whole set of dominoes. The stuff that Tim talked about hiring practices, stop with neuro-bigotry in the hiring practices, right? Going back to Jean’s work, making actual places of employment, neuroinclusive, so that people can not only be hired but retained and promoted and enter into leadership roles. Right? All of these dominoes are really, really connected.
But the other piece that I will just say is that I, and again, I don’t know much of anything about marketing, right, except what I observe really as a consumer and as a social scientist, but a lot of what I see as marketing, I don’t think is necessarily a formal marketing campaign. It’s about, to me, marketing is manufacturing desire and manufacturing need for services products, what have you.
And a lot of that manufacture of both desire and of need that happens through media consumption, right? And so there’s also a role to play in terms of media consumption.
And if what people are largely consuming continues to be stereotype representations and pathologizing representations, then that is going to continue to fuel these boom and bust problematic markets where they will pop up and grift every last penny we can get out of this cultural moment, right?
Rather than this strategic long term thing that I think we’re all talking about. I don’t think there’s any stopping the other, but I think we can work together more strategically to Cinthia’s point.
JGJ: Are there any other questions?
Oh, Jean! Oh, that’s why I didn’t! I missed your hand, Jean.
Jean Hewitt UK Buro Happold: That’s okay. I’ve just put it up. I just wondered if I could jump in and say that since finishing the work on the Neurodiversity PAS. I was then asked to get involved with one on menopause and menstrual health and the overlaps in hypersensitivity is considerable, that even if you’re neurotypical at certain times in your life, with hormonal change, whether that’s through IVF treatment, monthly peri-menopause, or or even gender transitioning it, it changes your sensitivity to the environment around you.
And I think the bigger that we make this about everybody, the more chance it will have that long-term lasting investment attraction.
Audience: so much. Yeah. Good morning. I’m interested in the scope of neurodiversity.
So Josephine’s opening slide described it as neurocognitive diversity. And then later, somebody pointed out that it’s sensory pro… differences in sensory processing. And so we’ve got cognitive processing, sensory processing.
So what about other kinds of diversity that are related to the mind like emotional diversity, psychological diversity, is that within the scope of neurodiversity?
Alicia Broderick: May I offer up what I hope is a simple answer, and the answer is, yes, in terms of thinking about neurodiversity. Literally, it’s it’s, it’s all human neurological diversity. And and within our nervous systems within our neurology, that our neurology is… what our neurology is the hardware, right, if you will, and the software through which we are able to cognate, right, through which we feel, through which we move through which we, you know, do all other sorts of kinds of things.
This, you know, there’s a… it’s there’s not really a distinction between body and mind right? Because mind is embodied. And so neurodiversity is literally all of it and all of us. And the the question becomes one of of salience.
When I tell people that I study neurodiversity, I usually focus on I actually spend more time studying neuronormativity which is the assumption that neurotypicality which happens to be, you know, a style or type of neurocognitive, cognitive functioning that is most closely aligned with, say, the built environment and social and cultural norms and mores. Right?
If you’re neurotypical, it simply means that more folks with your similar neurotype probably worked to build the environment for oneself. Right? So thinking about, you know, studying you know.normativity is is part of neurodiversity. Right? Our socially constructed ideas of normal, and Just Think, that might be “job one” to get us toward that question of, we’re all in this together.
Audience: Thanks. I’m curious to the rest of you. Yes. Would you say that? Neurodiversity encompasses psychological differences, the things that we consider to be mental illnesses?
Cinthia B. Satornino (UNH Marketing): I’ll jump in and say that you are tapping into one of the great debate debates in the Neurodiversity movement and space is one of the things that we discuss on a regular basis, with very different views, I think across the panel, as you listened to the perspectives across the panel, you yourself identified different ways of classifying or defining neurodiversity.
And I think that is… the space we’re in now, as people are moving forward in my understanding, and again my humble opinion, and because they’re experts in this room that are much more well versed with this. But in diving into this, I’m probably more closer to where you are than closer to where Jean is, in terms of so I’m exploring all these definitions, and they’re so
broad, and the scope is so broad and so I think that that’s one of the key things you have to address when you’re thinking about. This is, how are you defining this? Because people have very strong feelings.
Margaux, I’ll pass it over to you.
Margaux Joffe: This is Margaux.
So my relation to this work is more in the practical, like every day working with
neurodivergent folks and working in company. So typically, I like to point to the neurodiversity umbrella idea, neurodiversity, or sorry neurodivergence being an umbrella term that encompasses many different, you know, conditions or labels that — folks that
think, learn, communicate, behave in way, process sensory information in ways that are different from what is considered typical in our society and mental health conditions can be included under that. And also it’s important. i i i just think that we should spend less time debating over like what counts as what and more time focusing on making sure people are getting their needs met.
So I think that’s maybe a better way to focus our energy. But also at the end of the day there’s such a high rate of co morbidity, or you could say, co-occuring, co-occurrence between
neurodivergent….
Well, okay, well, now, I’m learning I’m not supposed to say neurodivergent conditions. But people who are autistic.
Alicia Broderick: [it’s tricky?] Yeah.
Margaux Joffe: have such a high rate of co-occurrence with depression, anxiety, and mental health conditions. So it’s it’s all connected. So I I think. Let’s focus on making sure people get their needs met. But the neurodiversity umbrella is a helpful framework to look at.
Cinthia B. Satornino (UNH Marketing): To underscore Margaux’s point. I think that that is the point of thinking from a neuroinclusive perspective, is that, irrespective of your particular
neurotype, the world is designed in such a way that you can function in it to the your highest potential.
So I think that if you are approaching things from a neuroinclusive perspective, it’s going to encompass a lot of that. And I think in Jean’s work on design. You know the design of spaces and areas where we walk through with the idea. And and Tim’s points about how we hire, how we interview these daily interactions that we need to engage in in these daily spaces that we need to walk through, regardless of your neurotype needs to be designed in such a way that everyone can be at their best.
And so I think that Margaux makes a great point that we need to focus on — also that it’s an important point — but we need to focus on if we accommodate everyone, then we’re able to… we don’t have to define it, because if we’re looking … designing for everyone in mind in the same way that we talk about traditional diversity issues, right? Where, if we are… the the goal of DEI is not to have DEI. Because if we’re creating truly inclusive spaces, we don’t have to think about creating policies around making sure that everything is equitable because everything is designed to be equitable.
Audience: Thank you.
JGJ: I’m going to, I’m going to bring us further along our program towards the wrap up, because because with the best intention in the world….It’s been so great to be able to interact [with the audience].
I think that the panelists as well as to let you raise things in response to each other’s presentations.
So I would like us now. I don’t even think we have time for the Time machine activity, but I would like you to think about what some issues for your research might be. And well, certainly. I hope you’re finding this as rich as as possible.
Cinthia. I hope you’re alright with us…. Just making sure. Sorry, Cinthia, I’m going to make sure that Kristen Essex, who is here from the Organization for Autism Research, is able to give some of her some of her thoughts.
And then because I know we’re not kicked out of the room until 9:30, when the next presentation starts, so we can have a little bit of over spill. So, Cinthia, I’ll let you go, but very quickly, and then and then I’ll invite Meredith to close, and I will just, I’ll back out of it.
So Kristen we’ve got a bit of a technical limitation. So if you could sit here for for your presentation, that would be fine and let me. Let me get us out stuck in screen sharing.
Kristen Essex: So I was asked to kind of reflect and wrap up on advocacy. And we’ve heard a lot of things today about advocacy, and how so much about neurodiversity and making change is doing that from… for everybody. And how do we make that sustainable? So I’m Kristen from the Organization for Autism Research. So we are an organization whose mission is to apply research to the challenges of autism.
So one of the things that we come across where advocacy has impacted us a lot is in the research community and community based participatory research, so predominantly in the autism community especially, there is a push to really make sure that autistic individuals are represented in all stages of research.
So that comes from developing our RPs. For when we put out proposals for research, marketing those RPs, the proposals themselves. And then the research. So that’s a little bit about how we’ve come back to those themes today about how we need autistic individuals and neurodivergent individuals involved in every aspect of what we do.
We talked a little bit about employment. One of the key things there is universal design, which is becoming more and more popular in workplaces and schools.
It’s not about making it easier for people to ask for accommodations. It’s about making it so that it’s not necessary that they need to, so that they can, you know, start at a new workplace and the flexibility is already there to accommodate their needs.
And that’s something that I think is very important. And I think it’s it goes back to what we’ve all been discussing — about making sure that there’s representation at all aspects, and that we are just making it easier for everybody to get their needs met.
Change comes from systematic change. You know, we need to make it from the ground up. We need to make it throughout all organizational policies, you know.
For marketing especially you need to have neurodivergent people on your marketing teams to make sure when you’re creating marketing policies and branding, that you are taking into account, you know, is your website too busy? You know. Is there too much going on? Are colors working for visually impaired people? Things like that.
So it’s it’s really about creating that change from the ground up and including everybody, making sure everybody has a seat at the table.
So [presenting a] little off book in trying to get that done quickly.
Meredith Rhoads Thomas: So your organization funds researchers, right? from many different fields. So can you tell us just a little bit about that, because I know hopefully, some people have ideas percolating or projects already in process. But tell us a little bit how OAR could…
Kristen Essex: So we fund applied research studies. We fund pilot studies of up to $50,000 a year, for 1- 2 year studies.
And they are…. there’s no biomedical. There’s no [research into the] cause, no cure for autism, but they are, they’re topics of, you know, helping autistic individuals live better lives today. We recently funded a feeding study on feeding interventions because autistic individuals are 5 times more likely to have feeding issues than neurotypical kids.
We are doing… we’re testing out a rideshare training program to help autistic individuals have more independent lives using rideshare to get around so talking about their transportation issues. So things like that. So really ways to improve people’s lives and just help them, you know, exist in society better, easier.
JGJ: Okay. Cinthia, be strict with your timing, please. Okay. Here we go.
Cinthia B. Satornino (UNH Marketing): I will be strict with my timing. I promise.
So I was asked to wrap up the institutional setting discussion that Tim kicked off, and I wanted to talk about 3 major points, the institutional initiatives, how to how to launch an into institutional initiative with the right mindset. Talk about multi disciplinary scholarship, give the perspective on the state of research in the business field, which ties nicely into what Kristen supports. So I will move very, very quickly.
First of all, I wanted to just recall our expertise in the area of strategic planning, particularly for those of you who work in public policy or work in marketing management or marketing strategy. We’re very familiar with the concept of strategic planning.
And that is as I answered the question Eric asked, the very insightful question about how to create institutions and initiatives. That last. This is the foundational process. One of the important things is making sure that you’re talking about a shared language. You you’re using the same shared language so that everybody is able to get behind the strategic plan.
Several of the panelists talked about the dangers of partial representation. Thinking about who you’re serving is such an important consideration as you start an institutional initiative. I provided some prompts to think about as you develop a a a definition, and also develop a vision for your institutional initiative.
I urge you to create internal or to conduct internal resource audits. There are many, particularly if you’re talking about developing a setting an institute or center within your organization.
There are a lot of internal resources and a lot of people doing great work that can serve as partnerships for developing an initiative that can help your neuro, create a neuroinclusive environment in institutional settings.
And keep in mind that the vision that you have is something that is recursive. You have to revisit it continuously.
In the end, ultimately, when you’re working in the space you’re trying to create an environment where each individual, regardless of neurotype, can reach their full potential, and that is, should be the guiding mantra for any institution that you are or any initiative that you’re trying to institute. As I. I’m not gonna talk about my work at the UNH Neurodiversity Center taskforce.
But just know that going through that strategic purpose helps you take these sort of generic goals and create actionable steps for creating that. And I’m happy to share this in detail, the slides with anyone who’s interested.
I wanna talk about the multi disciplinary approach to neurodiversity, scholarship. One of the best things about multi disciplinary research is the idea of extracting all these different perspectives. You’ve heard different perspectives across this panel you are able to really extract the best way forward by not talking within the silos that we’re so used to talking. I can’t wait to talk to you, Alicia about some of her perspective in terms of how she views marketing from an external perspective, and seeing how that can inform my research. I’m currently working on a multi disciplinary project with my colleagues from STEM and the communication disorders area.
And our goal is to create best practices, for a STEM lab managers to support neurodivergent researchers. And so we’ve discussed things and had major disagreements around how we view neurodiversity.
But in the end one of the things that you want in a strong and functional team is to have some conflict, to have healthy, respectful debate around issues, because that’s when you’re able to really extract the best, possible, most inclusive sort of work. So I urge you not to shy away from multidisciplinary research and to embrace the idea of conflict and different functional conflict and different perspectives.
And then, finally, my last point, business perspective on neurodiversity research as part of that multi disciplinary grant funded research. I’ve spent a lot of time diving into the research in specifically published in high tier business journals, and there are very few articles that have been published in this space in the top tier. But journals are starting to pay attention, as all of you mentioned how important this and how big this issue is, how much it impacts so many people.
That one in 3 households have somebody with disabilities, as Margaux mentioned, that one in 4 that experience, are somehow connected to neurodiversity. So this is something that is important to our readership, and our audiences.
And managers need to figure out how to navigate this as well as Tim pointed out. And so the what I wanna leave you with is the management and marketing field is very ripe for publishing. I’m not gonna talk.
We did an extensive systematic review of the literature, and extracted some themes. I’m happy to share those with you, but I wanted to leave you with examples of future research.
So for those of you who sat in the room. And we’re like, I’m really interested in this. I wanna move forward. There are several, there are many gaps in the literature when it comes to practical application, whether from a policy perspective, or more, or in my space, more of the managerial implications of managing and hiring, coaching and managing a neuroinclusive workforce or a neurodivergent…neurodiverse workforce.
So here are some potential ideas hopefully that help seed some research and hopefully reach out to people also that are working in the space in your institutions and outside of it, that are not in the business world. Thank you so much.
That was super fast, so I’m happy to share the slides with anyone who’s interested. Thank you.
JGJ: That was super fast. Super Good. Okay. So I’m going to skip my section. I’m going to put the slide up for the Padlet so that people can put it on their phones to be able to input their reflections on what neurodiversity will look like in in 10 years.
That is the QR Code and I will invite my co-chair Meredith to wrap up alright.
Meredith Rhoads Thomas: Everyone has their phones out. That’s good. That’s what we want to have happen.
So all I wanted to say. Well, first of all, thank you so much to our panel members who joined us today. They represented so many amazing perspectives. And we just feel really lucky that people are willing to come together to do this, thanks to Kristen for joining us. Thanks to Eric for joining us, and most of all, thanks to Josephine, because she put this all together, and the only reason I’m up here right now is like kicked this whole idea off.
But, like other than that, I’m just in awe of all of these people, and Josephine did all the heavy lifting and hard work. We were crunched for time, and I think that’s indicative of how rich this area is for inquiry, for research, or there’s so much opportunity to make the world a more neuroinclusive place. And I have a lot to learn, but I hope that this has planted a seed for some of you, or or has further invigorated your interest in this area.
So yes, we have this QR code feel free to contribute, but also fill out the registration because we wanna keep this dialogue going. So if you’d like to stay in touch about these issues, we’re hoping that this is just the beginning of this process. One more thing I was thinking, we you know, we have a lot of authors on this panel. And I was thinking we could put together a reading list that we could send to the group, too. So if you register, you can get that as well, anyway. Thank you so much for joining us. Sorry we ran over.
Margaux Joffe: What are the instructions for this? This QR code?
JGJ: : Oh, that is that that is for just feeding in some ideas about future of neurodiversity. And I will feed back to all of you after post event. I thank you so much for your participation, for everything. It’s been absolutely wonderful.