Lawrence Fung MD PhD | Stanford | Assistant Professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences | child and adolescent 10:02
Good morning. Welcome to day two of Stanford neuro diversity summit. We are going to have a very full schedule today. Morning. Welcome to day two of Stanford neuro diversity summit. Sorry, let's we are.
Okay. Let's start over. A little bit of a technical trouble. Welcome to the Stanford neuro diversity summit. This is day two. And we are going to have a full schedule today. After our keynote presentation by Dr. Nancy Doyle, we're going to have an employer session with several businesses. And then we're going to have a winner presentations from the neuro diversity design thinking workshops. And in the afternoon, we are going to have networking sessions. For those that are sign up for networking sessions, please go to your your your your zoom, meeting invitations instead of the webinar invitations, and you will be able to log on to the networking sessions. The afternoon after the networking sessions, we're going to have a mental health session. And then after that, we'll have a neuro diverse employees session. And at the end of the day, between six to seven, we'll have a starting your job search session by Jen Johnston, Tyler. So without further ado, let's actually, maybe I'll also mention that all the sessions are going to be recorded and transcribed. The recordings and transcripts will be available at a later time. We actually have the YouTube videos working. So if you're going to be wanting to view the sessions that you Miss, please check our website. And we may already have the YouTube videos for some of the sessions that you miss. We're doing it in real time. So definitely there's it is going to be an ongoing process. So work with us. There may be some delays sometimes, but the goal is to post our YouTube videos on our website at this point. All the questions from the audience will be submitted through the q&a function at the bottom of your screen. The moderators will try to cover as many questions as possible. Now it is my distinct pleasure to introduce Dr. Nancy Doyle. Dr. Doyle is a friend and she's really wonderful person that has made a big difference for the neuro diverse community for many, many years. Dr. Doyle is an industrial organizational psychologist and founder and owner of genius with me. A social enterprise dedicated to facilitating neuro diversity inclusion through consultancy, talent assessment workshops and coaching for businesses. Dr. Doyle works with customers in finance, technology, defense, as well as the unemployed and incarcerated working towards a future where all neuro minorities are able to maximize their potential and work to their strengths. Dr. Doyle has pioneered the work on positive assessment and is passionate about working towards a future where all neuro minorities will be able to maximize their potential and work to their streams using the organizational science of neuro diversity, evidence based solutions for individuals, teams and professionals. Dr. Doyle helped create and featured in both series of the award winning BBC Two series employable me and syndicated in 2019 In the USA as the employer boasts on end, where she supported a group of extraordinary, extraordinary job seekers to unlock their own unique talents and abilities, in order to secure employment.
Dr. Doyle delivered her trademark positive assessments and employable genius groups coaching with some extraordinary individuals as they search for work. The show has been incredibly successful in showing that neuro diversity should not be a barrier to employment. Dr. Doyle is a research fellow with Birkbeck University of London. Having completed her doctoral research at City University of London. Nancy advises NGOs, international and national civil servants and political groups on how to improve disability inclusion. Last year, she was recognized by the British psycho Psychological Society with an award for her contribution to policy impact, and occupational psychology. Dr. Doyle's keynote presentation is titled, The future of neuro inclusion beyond tokenism and towards a neuro diverse norm. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Doyle.
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 16:37
Thanks, and I'm enjoying the clapping that goes on after that the hand clapping is really good. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to do a screen share. Just tell me if this is working properly. Yeah, that's all working great. Okay, lovely. Hi. That was a very long intro. I feel like that was like my whole CV. My whole resume has just been shared. And didn't mention that I am also a neuro minority myself. I have a diagnosis of ADHD, which happened in my late 30s. Like many women of my generation, ADHD was not an available condition. When I was a teenager, I had a different set of labels that I was allowed to associate with, like anxiety, and my all time favorite, which was school phobia. That was my favorite one. I really enjoyed that label. And yes, God went into my career in psychology, very passionate about inclusion in the workplace, and kind of fell into specializing in neuro diversity and disability, and realized that the ADHD label belonged to me as I progressed in that career, so thank you for that summary of Lawrence. And it's absolutely fabulous to be here. So yeah, so we're going to talk about where neurodiversity needs to go in terms of the the future of work. So I just want to give you a bit of a kind of potted background to how I've got to these conclusions. And and what I think we can do differently to make neurodiversity less stigmatizing in the workplace, and more normal and just more part of the way we do things around here. What I really want to talk about is systemic inclusion, and not so that means not inclusion, because we have to, by law, not inclusion, because we want to do a project, not inclusion, because we think it's a nice thing to do, but just inclusion as the norm, so neuro diversity as the norm, the full range of neuro diversity as norm. And just a little note on
what we're talking about. So we, you know, I noticed that the language is still evolving. And I think lots of people are coming from that from different places in this conference in this conference so far. So I just want to say that for me, the word neuro diversity is applying to the whole of the human species. And when I'm talking about neuro minorities, I tend to be talking about these conditions dyscalculia, dyslexia, ADHD, autistic spectrum condition, and we can also have mental health and acquired neuro diversity within that spectrum, because it's part of normal experience of being a human, though neuro typical, neurotypical, typical ism exists, but all of these things exist alongside neurotypical ism within the neuro diversity spectrum. And I particularly like this Venn diagram, please feel free to reuse it just always reference me and Mary, Callie, Mary Callie wrote the original version of this, but it was all of the all of the deficits. So she did a Venn diagram which I loved showing all of the Oh Relax. But she focused on all of the things which were problematic and associated with those various labels. And so I wrote one that was associated with all of the things that are positive associated with those, then a full list of the skills associated with various conditions is in the reference that's on the bottom left hand corner. So that's what we're talking about. So neuro minorities in terms of the workplace, and in terms of our modern systems, we started talking about neuro minorities around the around the 19th, to 20th century. So neuro minority as a thing, as kind of kept up with industrialization, when we became industrialized as our societies, we started noticing that not everybody could fit into that modern structure of how to work and learn. We started talking about things called Word blindness, which is what we used to call dyslexia. And the idea that some people just were blind to words, this very odd thing. What we didn't do is ask ourselves, is it normal to use 2d symbols to communicate? And actually, other people that are blind at least using 2d symbols to communicate, label to communicate using verbal comp, comprehension or body language or song? I mean, obviously, yes. So what we did is we started pathologizing people by the ways in which they couldn't fit in to our industrialized norms that as the industrialized norm became more and more fixed, so did the way that we were categorizing people that didn't fit into that their hyperkinetic child is one that can't sit still, for six hours a day, and nobody's going normal to sit down for six hours a day. Is that a normal thing? Is it well do we need to expect that of everybody. And then as we went into the mid to late 20th century, we got, we got clever about what we were calling people, we were still labeling people by the things that they couldn't do in relation to our industrialized norms. But we were, you know, we were making up lots and lots of science about it. One of the papers that I'm just in the middle of writing and publishing is a kind of look at the evidence base around all of these, these these these different conditions, with very excited about putting people into brain scanners and finding the bits that are broken, basically, that 62% of neurodiversity research is, is some form of neuro imaging, let's find the bits of the brain that are broken. We're assuming that if people don't fit into the industrialized norm, that they must be broken. And so we're looking for those broken bits. And that's when we get sort of more particular about talking about, you know, attention hyperactivity deficits, autism, and dyspraxia turning into developmental coordination disorder, and we're kind of you know, moving the language around a lot, but it's still very focused on on negatives. But what we're just at the cusp of right now in research, and it's really quite an exciting time to be in this field of research is just at the cusp of going well, actually, no, actually no, why is it normal for people to only communicate using 2d strings of symbols to only communicate whilst sitting down and utterly century out? And also, why is it normal for people to have to communicate in loud busy environments, and we're starting to realize that the social model of neuro diversity, and mirror minority is a thing. And we're starting to catch up with that in our research. So now in the 21st century, we talk about neuro diversity neuro divergence, neuro minority, we're looking at the brain in a slightly different way. So instead of trying to find locations of pieces that may be not quite working right or working differently, we're now kind of understanding the role of communication across a brain regions. The role of neurotransmitters like dopamine, noradrenaline, cortisol, and actually some of the most contemporary brain imaging studies are indicating that there's very, very little difference between what a what an ADHD and an autistic brain look like. And actually all of these things that we are currently calling conditions might be sort of symptom clusters. And within a neurological picture that is less about this bit doesn't work. And that bit doesn't work and is more about hypersensitivity. overspeed brains that are over sensitive brains that are under sensitive brains that are hyper connected brains that are less well connected. So we are in a massive flux of how we understand neurodiversity. And that's going to affect the way we do inclusion of work. And it's going to it's actually part of a huge paradigm shift around the way that we work and live anyway. So the other thing that I want to draw your attention to before we go into thinking about inclusion. So yeah, so just to summarize that point, and we've moving on from looking for things for things that are broken, and we're starting to understand that actually, the systems of normality that we've set are inflexible and we everyone has to stick to those might be the things that are odd, not necessarily the brains that don't quite work well in that environment. One of the most fascinating pieces of research that I ever came across was an imaging study, where they looked at Chinese dyslexic brains and English speaking dyslexic brains. And they found that completely different parts of the brain were implicated. Because of course they are, because you need completely different parts of the brain to process the Chinese language to the English language. One is an almost exclusively visual structure. And one is sort of quite badly phonetic. And by badly phonetic, I mean, let's just think about the word phonetic and the letter F. Not quite right as it. So you know, that's where we've got this thing around, you know, actually, we've got a certain type of brain that doesn't fit into a certain type of structure around it. So we're looking much more at the structures. And when we start to look much more structures in which neurodiversity sits, as well as kind of being in this switch between the medical model and the social model, understanding, as well as looking at misdiagnosis and how overlap between conditions is actually the norm, not the exception. And autistic people are very likely to have traits that are associated with developmental coordination disorder. And actually, lots of around 60% of people with Tourette Syndrome also are clinically diagnosed with ADHD. So we've got all of these different overlaps. And what are we actually talking about here. So that's one thing that's happening, there's a sort of, you know, overlapping influences within the field. But we've also really started to get better about our understanding of gender, and how race and ethnicity affect diagnosis rates. And I was so so pleased to see that the session yesterday, if you didn't see it, you absolutely have to catch up on video, when it comes out in a few weeks time. It was phenomenal. It was such a deep understanding of how people of color people from communities marginalized by color, and race, and poverty are missing diagnosed. diagnosis. And I think that's a really, really important point. Because what it means is that having a diagnosis of a neuro minority condition is a diagnosis of privilege. So people who already have privilege are getting the diagnosis, people who do not have privilege are not getting the diagnosis. And this obviously affects gender as well. And it can affect both. So when we come to think of levels of inclusion, that you're operating in society right now, we start with the idea of exclusion. And lots of people spoke yesterday about this about the employment rates for autistic people, the employment about the Disability Employment gap in general. And we know that we have a huge current picture of exclusion, we are currently living in an exclusive society, something or somewhere around the region of 25 to 50% of the prison population have ADHD. And depending on which country are in, there aren't enough good studies of how many of the of how much of the prison population also would classify as as autistic. But we're getting there. And at least 50% of the prison population are illiterate. So we know that exclusion is the norm. And we know that that exclusion is reinforced by intersectional, structural forces that will have affected whether or not you've got diagnosed or whether or not you actually just got told you how to conduct disorder, or an anxiety disorder, or whether your behavior was assumed to be willful, and some sort of moral character deficit, as opposed to a cognitive difference that was your ability to communicate, concentrate or learn. That's it. That's it that I mean that To be honest, I'm still there, I'm still in that space of working in that space. You know, 50 50% of what genius within does, is around improving employment outcomes for people who are marginalized and from marginalized communities. And we do a really good job of that, you know, we break all the all of the contract targets for how many people were supposed to be getting into work. But until we've changed the system around that, that job is not going anywhere. So the next level of inclusion is the kind of compliance level it's when people are aware that there are some legal things that they have to do differently. So we're aware that we've got these school and work systems that are demanding a very specific type of communication. And what we're saying is if you don't fit into that specific type of communication, we will make an allowance for you. We know we have to because you have a disabling condition. So we know we have to make an allowance for you. We'll make an accommodation or an adjustment. We might let you have some assistive technology. We might let you have a bit of coaching. We We might let you come late or avoid rush hour, we might let you do a bit of flexible working. But what we're not going to do is change our systems. So we're assuming that the systems are fixed, and that the individual can be flexible around this, I'm supporting a friend with them an educational plan for her autistic child. And the, their plan was written about kind of, you know, the teachers have to make sure he doesn't have sensory overwhelm. And it's like, right, well, how are they actually going to do that? in a class of 30? People? Well, he has to learn how to cope with those environments. Does he? Does he chili as an adult? Is he going to have to put himself in those environments for the whole of his working week? No, he is not. But the idea that you could let a child not come into school, does not compute, does not compute. So that the compliance level is when we fix, we fix the problem around the individual. And we don't look at ourselves. This is what we're doing at the moment. It I think we're doing deliberate inclusion. And I think what neuro diversity at work movements have done so far is, is excellent. So this is this is the paradigm shift starting this is the beginning of the autism at work program, where instead of saying, right, well, we can see you a little bit broken. So we'll help you with the broken things. We said, Oh, okay, oh, there might be some benefits to having a neuro minority condition, or some people have really good strengths, that have neuro minority conditions, I wonder if we could sort of, you know, deliberately bring in people who have those things would be awesome. Let's do that. And so then we've got these kind of deliberate inclusion programs. But we're still kind of keeping people segregated from the rest of the business. It's not full inclusion yet. And I will explain more about that. And I think when we where we should be heading and what we all should be focused on as a community is how do we get systemic inclusion for all the neuro neuro diversity movement doesn't stand alone, it's not the only thing changing about our society right now. Technology is changing the way that we live, work, and communicate and learn. And the pandemic has changed a whole bunch of stuff, our financial systems are in flux are our systems of professional status are in flux, there's more universal access to knowledge than there has ever been before. The lots of our systems are breaking down. And as we're breaking and remaking these systems, how can we build them so that there is inclusion for all and we don't have to make a special request if we need something slightly different.
So just to focus on this to focus on the deliberate inclusion thing for a moment, I think it's time we move this paradigm on. And one of the reasons that I think that is that we already know that if you have an autism diagnosis, that is a diagnosis of privilege. So it feels to me. And I'm in the middle of doing some research to find out whether this hunches, evidence based, or whether it's just me having a rant. But one of the things I'm noticing is that a lot of the autism at work programs focus on quite male dominated roles, and for quite well resourced people. And what I'm wondering is, how do we Co Op them to make them more intersectional? How do we co OPT the idea of deliberate inclusion so that we deliver, really go out to communities that have been marginalized, rather than kind of up slicing, and I've done quite a bit of exploring around different diversity and inclusion obviously, is much wider than neuro diversity in it, you know, there's huge amounts of work effort, research, energy, pouring into things like gender equity and racial equity in the workplace. And so I've been kind of digging around in those research fields, to find nuggets of information that I could bought a portable principle that I could borrow. And I'm not finding systemic inclusion, I'm still not finding it. There's this kind of sense of, there's this sense that, you know, what we need to do is put some mentoring programs in place, and we'll do some unconscious bias training so that people's awareness is better of what's of what can you know, what might be going on for people, but those things aren't really working. They've been around for almost as long as disability legislation, and they're not working either. I think that all DNI is still in the compliance space. It's not in the systemic space. And we might be having deliberate inclusion programs in that space as well. We might have a specific attempt to, to, you know, recruit a certain type of person, but we haven't got systemic inclusion. Somebody's microphone is on that isn't mine. I'm not sure whose that is. And, okay.
So the thing that no one will do is change the exam. So this cartoon here is a bird, a monkey, a penguin, an elephant, fish sale a dog. And they are all having to take the same exam, which is to climb that tree. And this is the thing that we're not doing in our workplaces, in our education systems, we're giving people help to climb the trace was saying, alright, so you need to climb the trees, what we'll do is we'll build a little ramp, and then the penguin and the sail can get up there. And we'll build a little step process so that the dog can get up there. And we'll make a raising platform so that the elephant can get up. So we're doing these things. But what we're not saying is, is the tree climbing exam, the right thing? How do we know that the tree climbing exam will actually create good employees? We don't know that. We don't know that the tree climbing exam will make good employees. In fact, we've got lots of evidence to suggest the opposite. So when we have autism at work programs, the reason we have them is because autistic people aren't getting through the standard recruitment exercises that we've put in place in large companies. But the kind of people that are on the Autism at work programs are the kind of people that would apply anyway, a lot of the companies that work in that field, employ people with degrees and experience. So they already have the right skills for that field is just that they can't do interviews. And so because we can't do interviews, we've made a special program for them. But surely what that special program actually says, because now they're in the job, they're doing the job, and they're doing it well. So surely the lesson should be our recruitment processes were rubbish. Our recruitment processes meant that we kept getting people that we thought would be good at the job. But actually, we were missing a whole bunch of people with thought will be good at the job. So let's say that the job of this cartoon is to get apples stopped to climb the trees to get apples. So I can think of other ways you can get apples, the elephant might be really, really good at it, it might not the whole tree down all the apples fall down, that the elephant might be better and quicker and more efficient than the monkey. But because we've set up this climb the tree barrier, we're actually slightly far away from measuring the performance that we actually need to measure. And as a result, we've created a systemic barrier. So what I'm going to do now is I'm gonna play a little video, and I often denied about playing this video because it's actually an advert for genius within which is, I should just say genius within as a social enterprise. We are 60% disabled is within and on our board, we only have one neurotypical and we are asked to total neurotypical and we allow her to have mentoring, just spiffs specific mentoring programs for being a neurotypical. And we're a social enterprise and we do pro bono work. So that's my kind of argument for doing a little bit of a salesy thing and kind of talking to you about what genius within does. But I want to show you the video because the animation makes the point that I'm trying to make. I'm going to press play, and hopefully the technology will not fail us. Enjoy.
Unknown Speaker 38:10
Our passion is neurodiversity. What's next, the neuro diversity inclusion at work adds genius within. We want to help you evolve your business processes to match your aspirations and neuro diverse talent potential.
Unknown Speaker 38:23
Many leading companies have started to recruit near minorities and disabled people for specific jobs, hiring groups of autistic coders or telephone operatives with sight loss. were recognizing the value of specialists thinkers on cognitive diversity. This is awesome, but it's just the start,
Unknown Speaker 38:41
we need to make sure that we create the effect of scaffold that do our legal duties and break down hidden barriers that make all their new recruits bank. To date, businesses have invested in disability support as an individual level delivered to one person at a time over and over again. Oftentimes, we wait for people to fail. And then we are planning to fix but the conditions that created the problem in the first place are not changed
Unknown Speaker 39:06
a genius with him. We want to flip the system and create an inclusive approach so that everyone can work at their best. Our solutions allow you to analyze pinch points, themes and obstacles, making sure that if you clear a path for one, you open the way for everybody. We call this next level neurodiversity. We know
Unknown Speaker 39:27
that the right adjustments make the difference between unleashing neuro talent and failed token projects. Our tools build strength and progress into performance management, making it easier to achieve jobs quick and deliver these systemically without reliance on time consuming and expensive assessments.
Unknown Speaker 39:47
We know that inclusion isn't a one size fits all approach, but there are actually a lot of common issues which you can resolve at the company level. Over 10 years. We have built up a deep knowledge and have evaluated 1000s of data points that are clear cost benefits to next level, our clients typically experienced 25% drop in adjustment costs in the first year.
Unknown Speaker 40:11
But there are also huge savings that come with, there were staff turnover, or reduction in conflict, less time off sick, improved well being higher levels of employee engagement, and greater productivity.
Unknown Speaker 40:25
In short, there is a clear economic and competitive advantage to introducing systemic inclusion, genius within can deliver evidence based solutions that are both universal in design and inclusive and approach. And now we invite you to join us at the next level.
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 40:45
Okay, so I've been called militant recently for saying this. So what I'm trying to say is that we've been approaching this all the wrong way, we've been approaching this at the individual level, and we need to approach it at the system level. So in the course of running these programs and working in the compliance based field, what we've been noticing over the last the last few years is that the problems people have are the same over and over and over again. And they're not related to the condition that they have. So some of the latest research from the Cambridge cognition and Bryant Brain Sciences unit has found that, that what people are diagnosed within the labor they have is kind of irrelevant when you then look at their cognitive ability profile and what they can do and not do. And so again, so just as we're kind of losing the labels, scientifically, I think we need to start losing the labels in the workplace as well. Because in the workplace, what we should really be focusing on is how can we support you to work at your best irrelevant of what labor you have? Or don't have? How can we make sure that the recruitment huge routes that we use are direction you are directing people into the right roles? How can we make sure that the roles we've got are designed to, to accommodate to to create the best final performance, right in the workplace will support you if you've got a golden ticket, you need a golden ticket, and your golden ticket is is a diagnosis that you can wave around, that means that we are allowed to be flexible for you, but we're not going to be flexible for anybody else. And actually, that doesn't really work. And that's not systemic and it's not inclusive, it means that only the people with the golden ticket, get the help they need. And actually lots of people could benefit from a more flexible way, same child that I mentioned earlier, you know, in this educational plan, this child's goal, he's got goals of learning to wear a tie and goals of learning to get engaged in a classroom and goals, that hygiene It must be a non negotiable factor. And no one is kind of looking at what all behavior is communication, what could be going on for this individual who actually is incredibly bright, and a published poet, but is failing every single class because simply cannot learn in a large environment and is never going to have to work in one. So given that he never has to work in one. Why does he have to learn to study in one doesn't make any sense to me at all. So the stuff that is new? To me, the stuff that I'm just working on at the moment, is the idea of universal design. So universal design is a set of principles created by technology developers. It's what they go through when they're developing technology, they think, right? How do we make this universally designed? It's actually also a point of law. So the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which is the basis for disability legislation in most developed economies, including the USA, Australia, and the UK, talks about two things, it talks about making accommodations, and it talks about universal design. And I feel like we make accommodations, but we're not doing universal design. So I had a look at what the software engineers do. And they've got these seven principles, equitable use flexibility and use simple intuitive use perceptual perceptual information, tolerance, forever error, low physical effort, space size approach. And what I'm trying to do at the moment is apply those principles to human resources. The How can you have flexibility in your performance management process? How can you have flexibility in your recruitment and all of these images, I was trying to work out the images to go in there and they're all trees because the point is, is that it's not about climbing the tree or even just picking the apples there are a million ways in which we as a species and and in organizations need to praise consider relate to and, and use the tree. So there's, there's a lot of diversity in what we need to do. And we need to allow our processes of finding the right people appointing them, managing them, supporting them, to also be flexible and to build around it. What people need? So so what I always ask myself this question, this is my favorite question. So what? So what?
What are we going to do with this information? And and I just think at the moment, we've got so many gaps in so many opportunities to really make a difference in this space. If I start with what I want to do in the workplace and educate, and eventually education, although I have to be a little bit resistant of working in education, because a workplace specialist, not an educational specialist, and I on my high horse all the time about people working in the workplace without any workplace training. So I need to be careful not to hoist myself by my own petard and go working in education. But the thing we need to start doing is paring down the rules that don't work. Why open plan offices? Why open plan classrooms? Why efficiency are all costs, resources are scarce, not scarce, not money, money doesn't really exist. Money is made up by governments. And actually, if you look at economics right now, you'll see that that's true. The IMF, as reported by the financial times this week, has told all governments to spend their way out of the pandemic, they are literally creating money to fix this problem. So, you know, we've got this and this, this kind of relates to what Judy was saying last night. And the reason I love working with Judy, is because she really challenges me to think about something that has been quite medical, medically dominated within psychology and education, and human resources challenges me to think about it from a political standpoint, and from within this notion of, of capitalism, that the ultimate goal is to be as productive as possible. Why Why is that the ultimate goal? And Is that normal? And is that are there actually other ways of relating to each other as humans, that once we've started to do that in the workplace, which we are doing, you know, it is happening, these, the programs that we see that are deliberate are seeding these ideas, and they are growing and taking root, and it's very awesome. But I think we need to still come back to academia and say, right, what's working? That's the point where we start to evaluate it and say, is it working doing it differently? Or do we have more inclusion as a result? I think that the thing, the counting thing that we do, where we count how many disabled people, and we count how many people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds and we count how many women versus men, you know, those things are not interventions in and of themselves, they are data. But they're the results of what we do in the organization, they're not the thing that we should be targeting as the first incident. So let's pack it back. And actually, if we start to make more flexible human resource systems, and we apply universal design principles, to the way that we set up our processes in workplaces, will we automatically start improving the representation in our employee base?
And then I think academia really still needs to ask itself, where is the bias? I mean, as I said to you, I've got this paper that I'm in the middle of publishing, which indicated that 62% of neuro minority related papers are published in the not in the neuroscience paradigm. The neuroscience paradigm is all very interesting, but it doesn't tell us anything about what to do. You know, we don't know how to fix problems for people who are neuro minority and are currently incarcerated or at risk of incarceration or failing, failing every exam, despite having a verbal IQ of 140. You know, that's, those are the answers we need. And I don't think we're going to get those answers from neuroscience neuroscience, to me is a little bit like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But what neuroscience will tell us over and over and over again, is that the brain is a reflection of the environment that the human lived in. And so we can study the brain all we want, but actually, it's the environments that are making the brain not the brains that are making the environment to a large degree. And so there's an enormous amount of flexibility with those brains. And when we find the right contract contexts in which people can thrive, then what we find is that those brains also you can see that you know, lower cortisol levels and, and generally less stress. So, at the moment, my academic pursuits are linked to the University of London's we're starting a research practice Alliance center. And we're just forming our first studies at the moment. And I'm actually had this weekend a fantastic idea for a new study with a colleague of mine Whitney Isles, who runs a company called Project 507. And she works with communities that are marginalized by systemic violence, and she works in a way that promotes peace, learning and community education. And she herself is an undiagnosed autistic woman. And she's of mixed race. And she and I talk a lot about what difference would it have made having a diagnosis when you were younger? What difference would it make For people to know why they don't fit into those, those standardized systems and to have a kind of rationale for it and the answer. So I think our first project is going to be understanding what's happening for young men and women, in communities marginalized by poverty, who haven't had access to the privilege of diagnosis. And we're going to do a qualitative study, by investing some money and getting diagnoses for the people who need it. And then tracking what happens for their, for their, for their, for their sense of self for their identity. And what I imagine based on my own experience, and the experience of the 1000s of people that we've worked with, that I've worked with, personally, hundreds of people, it'll be around catharsis and vindication around understanding that the reason that you find things difficult is not because you weren't trying hard enough, but it's because literally, your brain doesn't work so fast in that area. And you have a difficulty in this particular aspect of living, but not in that aspect to go and do those things. What I'm hoping that with that catharsis and vindication will come probably a little bit of annoyance, you know, why didn't I know this years ago, it would have been so different if that's a very typical human reaction that I've seen a lot. But what I'm hoping will happen next is the engagement of hope, and ambition. And then we're working at the moment with companies in the UK specifically and hoping to do this more widespread around looking at this specific internship programs that are available, not not because you have a label, but because you come from a community that wouldn't normally have access to your business. And so actually working with those individuals getting the diagnosis, trying to understand the identity transition that occurs, and then putting people in environments where they could thrive, as opposed to roll. So that plan, oops, I've gone on one onto one too far. And so bringing that back to society, bringing that back to the bigger paradigm shift,
that I think we're in, you know, we are, we are in a way, where we've been in society with the Industrial Revolution and modern modernity, and is in this space where environments are fixed, and people are in categories. And we do this everywhere, you know, it's not just neuro minorities, we, you know, has anyone ever had to do the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, you know? Or has anyone ever been told that they're a visual learner or an auditory learner? You know, we get very excited about putting people into categories. And the reality is, is it's way, way, way more nuanced than that. And so just as intersectional theory has come up into, into identity politics, and and what we know about inclusion in that respect, neuro diversity is coming up into what we used to call neurodevelopmental disorders. Technology is changing things so that our experience of knowledge becomes more personalized. And so we're shifting from this kind of fixed categorical way of thinking about things into a more flexible and continuous spectrum where things can move around. And if you look at movements, like personalized medicine, you know, it used to be that the medicine you got was based on what is likely to work for the most people, and you would get the dose that was right for the average person. And now what we're starting to do is personalize treatment protocols according to the individual that we see before them. And when that's happening in medicine, we need to do it in management. So what's wrong with our workplaces in our education is that they're still fixed, these very industrialized norms that the rest of the world is moving on. And I think that the neurodiversity paradigm is a way of pushing and advocating for that more flexible, universal design. And I just want to leave you with this final thought, which is that inclusion is a moral, social, and economic imperative, and we all lose when human potential is squandered. And now I am open for questions. And I believe I'm perfectly on time.
Christy Clark Matta | Program Manager at Stanford University 54:16
Thank you so much, Nancy. And you are perfectly on time. That is correct. So we have some time for questions, which is wonderful. And we have had some active engagement in the q&a. People are quite interested and love your visuals. Right? Yes. Yeah. It's great to put something in, in a visual form the concepts. We had a couple questions about the Chinese in English dyslexia study that you had mentioned. And one question was just, is it possible to get the names of the authors of the study that you had
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 54:55
talked about? Yep. I've just typed it in the thing. I See that one sock is the soil get owl is one of the papers. And Bertram Oh Pitts did the other one. But I can't remember exactly how to spell his name. But if you look for the sign off paper, s I okay. And then OPEX, I think is o p i t Zed. I know he's German. I've met him. I actually borrowed a book from him. And I never got it back to him, he left the country. And we're back to Germany. And I feel very bad about that. So if you're out there, but it's I'm very sorry, I still have your book on repeat repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation. And I also also I haven't read it even worse.
Christy Clark Matta | Program Manager at Stanford University 55:46
Alright. Well, thank you. I hopefully that will help people to find to find that research. And another question on related to that study, is, when you mentioned the brain imaging in the Chinese and English language speakers, are you mainly referring to the processing of written language? And not of spoken language? And are different agents?
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 56:13
Yes, 100%. So what we have to remember, you know, linguists are still arguing about whether or not spoken language is an innate capacity in the same way that walking is, or whether it's a learned behavior. Okay, so we still haven't decided that? Well, what we do know from an evolutionary perspective is that our brains are evolved to speak. So that the idea of the spoken language, we do understand how that happens in the brain, we understand how it's developed, we know that there are very, very specific regions of the brain involved in that. And we know what happens when you lose those regions of the brain or when you don't develop normally in those regions of the brain or they're not stimulated, because your death, you know, those we've got those kinds of things now down. But the written language is new, we've only been doing it for a few 100 years on a really solid basis. You know, if you think about it, 1000 years ago, there were very, very few people who would read and write, reading and writing was the preserve of scholars, and religious leaders, it wasn't something that your everyday person did, that our brains simply aren't evolved for writing and reading written literacy is is new. And, you know, so therefore, in order to do it, we have to borrow other bits of the brain that were involved for different purposes. And there's more than one of those involved, you know, so if you're reading Chinese, it has an orthographic structure, you're looking at images and how they are positioned and how you know the angles of certain lines. Whereas if you're reading English, then you're having to connect an orthographic image to a sound and sound, you know, do sounding out stuff. You know, there's some, there's an argument to say that dyslexia will cease to exist in the next 10 years, because we simply don't need to read and write anymore. We've got entire school systems organized around teaching literacy. But all of us have got smartphones, and I can talk into this phone, and it will start writing what I talk. And also, I can press a button, and it'll start speaking out what's written there. So reading is potentially a transition technology is not something I've been some of you, and it might not be something that we need. It's just a way of storing information.
Christy Clark Matta | Program Manager at Stanford University 58:23
Okay, thank you. Fascinating. So there are some questions related to just some of the policy and and change that you had discussed. So one is thank you so much for your wonderful presentation. I was wondering what needs to change at policy regulation level, besides the convention to facilitate widespread adoption of this approach?
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 58:52
widespread adoption is? Well, I don't think that we know the answer to that yet. Um, yeah. And having won that award for policy impact, I think we should probably try and work that out. You know, I've made lots of policy recommendations not. But but the the things that I would like to work on is the idea of universal design, and flexibility built into our system where we start with, how can we support you to work at your best, as opposed to these are the things that you must learn now go and learn them? You know, we've got to we've got to flip that narrative. That's why I like that, that animation, the reason I want to play it for you, is that particular bit where we flip it upside down. And we start thinking about what we need as a society and what we've got and what we can do, and how we can enable the people within the society to work at their best or to learn at their best and to meet their foot and achieve their full potential rather than, you know, deciding in advance what we're going to need and then and then backfilling it without any new ones.
Christy Clark Matta | Program Manager at Stanford University 59:53
Thank you, and this is a related question. This one is asking for some eggs. Examples of neuro inclusive shifts that you are seeing in the workplace,
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 1:00:04
your inclusive shifts, and well, the fact that we can all work remotely. I say all those of us in in very kind of middle class, professional roles can all work remotely. Now, that's all that's just all changed overnight. I am I write a Forbes column. And my most popular Forbes column to date was called we are all disabled. Now how the social model has held their pandemic has proven the social model of disability. And the so that shift to remote working happened overnight. And for decipher a lot of disabled people, not just neuro minorities who've been asking for remote working as a disability accommodation for the last 20 years. It just revolutionized people's ability to work at their best. Not everybody is a winner in that situation. You know, those of us that are extroverts we like people to bounce ideas off, are struggling. But those of us who are more introverted and prefer to left on our own. I've got a friend who works in one of the tech companies and he's autistic. And he said to me, since no one actually I wish everybody would stop moaning about all of this pandemic stuff. I've been doing it for years, it's really easy. You just work at home and you just get on with it. You said, Yeah, my only trouble now is that my diary is absolutely full of extroverts wanting video calls, you know, will they all just go away and leave me alone? But yeah, so I think that shift working is one of the ways the ubiquitous assistive technology is the other one, you know, I mean, look what's happening right now I'm speaking. And PowerPoint is typing out what I say. That's it. That's amazing. So what Microsoft are doing by building accessibility features into all of their programs, as standard is absolutely top work on the universal design front. How do we need to do that with the way that we relate to each other as well? How do we get more flexible about our about our behavioral norms and our communication norms? You know, the, I like to play a game called making up pathological names for neurotypical issues, you know, like, so it's back on that riff of maybe reading as a transition technology, maybe sitting down to concentrators to, you know, maybe in 10 years time, people are going to be suffering from sensory dependent concentration disorder. So they can only think properly, if they're sitting still. They can't think properly if they're walking between meetings, or on a train or going for a run and like, what's the matter with you, you can only think when you sit down grief, that's really weird. And maybe people will have hyper social creativity deficit, which is that, you know, they can only think of good ideas when they're talking to people, instead of thinking of good ideas on their own, you know, so. So I think these are the things that are starting to shift. And because they're shifting so fast, technologically, they are affecting the workplace really beautifully, and really much more quickly, particularly in certain sectors like finance and finance. But we aren't filtering them down into our schools. So not only are we ensuring that the children who can't flex away from the, you know, the sitting down in a loud environment, creating 2d code to demonstrate everything that you know, those children are not only struggling with their learning, but we're not preparing them for the workplace, because that's not how work places work anymore. Yeah.
Christy Clark Matta | Program Manager at Stanford University 1:03:32
And sort of continuing with this theme of systemic approach. We have a question, what is the reaction of businesses to your systemic change approach?
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 1:03:43
Well, I've as I said, I've been called militant lately. scraped, did quit, that's a genuine thing. You know, someone said, Oh, Nancy, you know, you don't always get invited to conferences, because you can be a bit militant. I'm not okay. And then chatting with my lovely friend Whitney, who I work with, she says, You do realize that you making a joke about that is white privilege, Nancy. So you know, I know. So I'm doing I'm giving it a feminist critique in a kind of, well, actually, half of me is quite happy to be militant. But the reason half of me is happy to be militant is because it's not really slur in my in to the same extent, but the thing I do question is, you know, are there any men who run nonprofit, disabled owned and run and led disability inclusion focused social enterprises who get called militant, when they feel passionately about their ideas and change demand get called militant, when what they're doing is fighting for inclusion and people's rights? Or do they get called empathetic when they're doing that? So there's, you know, I that's why I keep riffing on it because it's, it holds so much the fact that so so yeah, but that's not all of them. You know, I do go to conferences. I go to conferences a lot. This is my third this week. And lots of businesses are genuinely interested in the untapped talent pool, not just associated with certain labels. But generally, and people are also highly motivated by social justice. A lot of the HR people and DNI people that I interact with are really motivated by the idea of social justice, which is awesome. But it's hard to change, you know, we're resistant to change evolution, really, our evolutionary advantage as a species is, is adaptability, we can adapt to all these different climates and, and current conditions, you know, we can live on mountains we can live in, in swamps, we can live in cold places, we can live in hot places, but for some reason, we're stuck with our industrialized, modern norms, and we're finding it quite hard to evolve out of them. But I think we'll get there I genuinely do. I think the neurodiversity movement will help us get there. That's why I'm so excited to be part of it. Because I think it pushes, it pushes those buttons, it forces us to question what we think is normal. I grew up with an American parent and a British parent, half my family from New Jersey. And I like to joke that I don't have ADHD in New Jersey, you know, the only reason I have ADHD at all is because my personality and genetics were raised in the English in English kind of society. And one of the things you learn if you if you come from different continents in different cultures, is that lots of things that people think are the rules actually just made up? So it's not true that when people ask you how you are, you have to say, Fine, it's not true. You don't have to, you can actually tell them how you genuinely are. And, and no one will, no one will fall to pieces when that happens. So but in British society, lots of people think that that is the law. And if you if someone says to you, how are you and you don't say, I'm fine, then you know, that'll be the end of modern, modern life. And so in those two kind of comparisons, what British people call politeness, Americans call insincerity. And British people don't realize that when Americans say Have a nice day, they actually mean it. Usually they're okay Have a nice day, I'm really happy for you go in and go and enjoy yourself. Whereas if a British person said that they would, it would be insincere. So I think, yeah, I've gone off on a tangent because stop, write it back in.
Christy Clark Matta | Program Manager at Stanford University 1:07:23
related to change, though, related to systemic change and large, larger systems, we've we've gone up to cultural systems. One final question. You mentioned appraisal systems. And we've got a question here is, can you say something about how appraisal systems should work for non minority, neuro minority minorities?
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 1:07:46
I think what we should really be asking is how appraisal systems should work. neuro minorities or neurotypicals? I don't think any of you know, I mean, I've, I've been studying industrial organizational psychology since the late 1990s. And yeah, they don't work. So what we know about human motivation and human motivating behavior, is that formal appraisal systems don't do it, they do not do it. Mainly because people don't know how to give and receive feedback properly. And we make value judgments and we make assumptive value judgments. So we'll we'll say that somebody will assume that an area of performance that we feel is weak is a cause that person doesn't care about that bit, or that they're not trying hard enough, or that, you know, they don't, they don't care about it. But actually, they may just not have thought about it like that, or they might not have the skills or they might actually be working really, really, really hard on that. But you don't know. And so, you know, because we base our appraisal of performance management systems on on inferences and interpretations of behavior. They don't work for anyone. So one of the things we do a genius within when we're doing performance management stuff is we come in and we teach everyone to dial it back to what they've actually seen and heard. And there was one case where a guy they were in court and going to court for disability discrimination, and something and we dialed it back and back. But what did you see or hear that let you know that and, okay, so when when you thought that what was actually happening, and I have an example of what that person actually did or said, and what we tracked it back to was a point where this man had lingered in a doorway threateningly. So to an autistic man had lingered in a doorway threateningly, the notice the threateningly so as you guys know, because you're neurodiversity literate, lingering in a doorway and not moving out of the way quickly enough, is a very socially contextualized behavior and That is likely Oh, oh, sorry, did you want to walk past I didn't realize didn't pick up signals that the manager wanted to walk past him. So it didn't move out of the way until expressly asked. But this was considered threatening behavior. Because this person had gone off and done a Google search, and found some nonsense about autism and violence. And this is why we need to start again with the academics of autism just start again. And but because they found some nonsense about that, every thing from that moment on was cast through the shadow of an interpretation or performance or behavior or communication was passed through this shadow. And so what was actually happening was lost an eye all performance management systems need that not just the neuro diverse new minorities, if we can fix it for newer minorities, by telling people we have to because they're protected, legally protected conditions, we might end up fixing it for everybody and making a lot of people very happy.
Christy Clark Matta | Program Manager at Stanford University 1:10:57
Yeah, that's a really compelling example. Thank you so much. We are out of time now. So I'm going to turn it back to Dr. Fung. But this was fascinating. And and thank you so much.
Lawrence Fung MD PhD | Stanford | Assistant Professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences | child and adolescent 1:11:13
Thank you, Nancy. You're a very effective militant in our neuro diversity community. And because of that, we will make progress. Oh, you're always welcome to come back to our conference year after year.
Nancy Doyle PhD | CEO Genius Within | Co Director centre for neurodiverse at work 1:11:34
Thank you very much for having me.
Lawrence Fung MD PhD | Stanford | Assistant Professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences | child and adolescent 1:11:37
And looking forward to more collaborations too. So in the next 15 or 13 minutes, we're going to take a break and at 945 we're going to start to employ a panel. So see you in a few minutes.
Okay mark, we can start Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:08
Welcome to Stanford and your neuro diversity summit. Some of you may have participated all along in the summit. For those of you who just joined in, welcome. We would like to let you know that all sessions are recorded and transcribed. Please check our summit website for YouTube videos. All questions from the audience will be submitted through the q&a function at the bottom of your screen. The moderators will try to cover as many questions as possible. And now I would like to introduce our panelists. First, I would like you to introduce Kathleen Farley Hughes. Kathleen is the founder and executive director of edX cafe. It's a nonprofit social enterprise in Palo Alto with a mission to hire, train, elevate and empower its employees. And plus, it's a really good cafe. Next person who I'd like to introduce is Anna Brunel. Anna is a mentor of coach, a partner and educator and leader. She has 20 plus years of experience in software development and quality assurance and even more in personnel and program management. Next person I'd like to introduce is Rebecca beam. Rebecca is a president of Oregon us driving regional growth for the company domestically. Rebecca his career has included senior leadership roles sourcing and developing human capital with high demand skill sets for the area's leading tech firms, including fortune 500, such as Universal Pictures Warner Brothers and Sony. Next person I'd like to introduce is Bill Morris. Bill is the co founder of Blue Star recyclers in 2009, after discovering people with autism possess innate skill for tasks involved in recycling of electronics. Based in Colorado, Blue Star is an award winning social enterprise with a mission of recycling electronics to create jobs for people with disabilities. Next person who I'd like to introduce is Nish PR. Rick Nash is the CEO and co founder of Wrangham Nash is a collaborator in an inventor and technology architect who develops holistic Workforce Solutions for Wrangham and its customers by aligning their disability and your diversity inclusion strategies with current and future talent acquisition needs. Next person I would like to introduce I'm not sure if brijesh Let's see. Yeah, next. And the last person who I like to introduce is Quraysh. Big ml Harish is the CEO of sangeeth. hareesh has son who was diagnosed with severe nonverbal autism with prognosis of needing to spend his life in this situation by age of phi. The Neve was born in a way to inspire children just like your son to share their unique talents and experience the kind of transformation like his son had had. And now I will introduce you by one by one. And you guys, and you can share your slide. So first I'd like to welcome is Kathleen folly Hughes.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:27
Good morning. I'm Kathleen Foley Hughes. I'm the founder and executive director of aidas Cafe, a social enterprise with a cafe in Palo Alto, and a commercial kitchen in Mountain View, California. It is grew out of two vocational education food service programs that I started as a parent volunteer in the Palo Alto school system, and the mother of four wonderful children. And I've been part of the disability advocacy community for decades. I created the programs at that point because our school district didn't have any on campus vocational education programs for the special day class students. As a chef I saw a need to be filled in addressing the need I wanted the special day class students to both have an opportunity to develop transferable work skills, and to help them connect in a meaningful way to the people on their campus. I also wanted the faculty and staff to experience and appreciate the contributions that the special day class students were able to make. The two cafes I created where the students participated in the production and sale of food and pastries and drinks to the faculty and staff were very well received and accomplished the goals of creating community and elevating the experience and education of those students. Based on the success of the school based programs, I was very excited to expand on the vocational education model of great food, high quality service and compassionate employment and bring it into the larger community as a social enterprise, which became Ava's cafe. Over the past eight years, eight has has generated over $5 million in cafe sales and catering revenue, while employing over 100 mission based employees who have among them a variety of diagnoses, including Down syndrome, traumatic brain injuries, PTSD from war and incarceration, and autism spectrum disorders. We've paid our mission based employees over $1.4 million and livable wages for over 90,000 hours of front of the house customer facing work in the cafe, a catering events and food preparation in our commercial kitchen. As I'm sure this audience knows that in addition to the financial benefits that come from receiving a paycheck, there are significant psychological benefits that come from having a job, especially a job where you're welcomed and encouraged to learn and grow. In a few minutes, I'll speak about some of the challenges that come from managing a large span neuro diversity program. But as the founder and executive director of a this, I've been inspired, I've been exhausted at times. But I'm incredibly proud of the work we're doing in the community of understanding we've created food is indeed a wonderful way to bring people together. As someone who's been dedicated to creating work, education, training and opportunities for a population that is often marginalized. It's been so rewarding to watch the evolution and understanding of what is and isn't a disability. I know that this evolution and understanding is due in large part to this wonderful neuro diversity community. I'm so glad to be here with everyone. So thank you for having me.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:17
Thank you, Kathleen. And now I'd like to introduce and Bruno.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:24
Hello, I'm Anne Brunel, the Chief Technology Officer at a spirit tech. Our technology as quality assurance services and quality Business Solutions provided by neurodiverse employees that we're going to refer to now as neuro minorities love that presentation. We're a mission driven not for profit. 100% of our operations and administrative costs are covered by client revenue. And our donations go toward providing accommodations for our neuro minority employees. Our model is really our secret sauce. We hire candidates with little or no experience. We provide training, continuous learning and professional development. We take a strengths perspective and have individualized accommodations for different learning styles, communication styles, schedules, assignments, task management, working styles, as well as environmental needs, like lighting, sound and stimulation. And we promote from within. We have more than 130 employees and we're growing 85% of our employees are neuro minorities. They are including the people on our administrative staff, our IT systems and networking team, our technical job coaches, our QA leads, and our QA managers, and many of those people also supervise others. We have three full time and two part time employees support specialists who provide wraparound support. They have backgrounds in education, and psychology, counseling, social work, and autism. They directly support our neuro minority employees, and they also train and work with our leads coaches and management in identifying and implementing individualized accommodations. Hiring, training, accommodating and promoting our neurodiverse employees has been really a win for everyone. And it's a testament that meaningful payment for everyone benefits everyone within our communities and across our country. Thank you for being here.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:12
Thank you, Ann, very much. And now I like to welcome Rebecca beam.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:19
Hi, everybody. Thank you so much Lawrence for inviting me to be on this panel. I really appreciate all the hard work you've put into the conference. It's a it's been very successful. So far, I enjoyed yesterday. And I'm just really honored to be part of this panel along with everyone else that's on it. audit con is an international it consultancy. And we focus on hiring individuals on the autism spectrum. And, you know, for our clients, IT projects we have a hybrid on site and off site, team environment, we utilize the cognitive benefits of autism, to help our clients solve complex problems and their technology departments. We have grown all throughout Europe, we now have offices in Canada, we have three offices here in the US now, Los Angeles, Utah, in Ohio. And we're continuing to expand as we hire more and more individuals on the autism spectrum. We also have a training program that trains individuals that do not have an experience in technology in software testing and automation to help them jumpstart their careers in technology, where we're very pleased with the way that we've grown throughout the throughout the world. We're also in Australia now. And I have included a page for a URL page just for this conference. If you'd like to learn more about us, please go to that URL. I welcome you. I'll be doing the networking sessions for the next four days. And I'm looking forward to meeting individuals who might be interested in becoming a team member at audit con.
Unknown Speaker 1:37:17
thank thank you, Rebecca. And now I would like to introduce bill Morris.
Lawrence Fung MD PhD | Stanford | Assistant Professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences | child and adolescent 1:37:33
Sorry, we're going to go with a niche next niche. Okay. I would like to introduce niche niche Burke. Nish. We need to have sound one second. Go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:35
I'm sorry. Are you able to hear me now? Yes. Okay. Sorry. Hello, everyone. My name is Nish for a. I'm a CEO and co founder of Wrangham consultants. Thank you, Dr. Fung, and mark for and the whole team at Stanford putting together this wonderful conference. I drunk on our mission is to promote employment for everyone, everyone, inclusive of individuals or neuro diverse talent individuals on the spectrum and people with disability and in order to, you know, meet our goals and mission. Wrangham has is strongly believer of creating the empathetic culture at workplace and through this empathetic approach. We are constantly building and enhancing our our workforce solutions for our customers. So we are serving fortune 500 companies, and part of our contribution to the autism and neuro diverse diversity community. We've been working on developing different software's and technologies and different programs. Starting with teaching to teach children with autism we develop color scape program. Then we develop new screening technology of our recent addition to our innovation is we are Build a program called source Abel, where I call this web resource scale and sustain Hughley uniquely able untapped talent for our customers. At rangga, we have taken a two prong approach when we talk about the neurodiversity, we hire talent for our own in house staff. And that is in two fold. We hire talent for our recruiting part of the business, as well as we hire talent for our technology development part of the business. In fact, the technology which we have developed every technology, there are individuals who is neuro diverse part of the team. And one of the technology which is so stable, which we have offered, and we'll partner with Dr. Fund and the Stanford neuro diversity project to help them manage this research project to build the resume bank as well as the the the requisition JOB, JOB job bank. Personally, I've been working with children with autism and adults on the spectrum since 2007. And it has been just amazing learning experience and working with some of the great leaders from the neurodiversity community. So thank you. Thank you, Mark.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:29
Thank you, this has been wonderful working with you as well. I learned a lot about technology through you. Moving along, and now I'll introduce brijesh anandan and
Unknown Speaker 1:41:47
brijesh.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:50
rejection is rejection impact intrapreneur and growth architect. He is the co founder and CEO of alternates, a software and the date quality engineering firm with teammates in 24 hours 24 states across the US 75% of whom are on the autism spectrum. takeaway. Rubbish.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:14
Thank you, Mark. Can you hear me okay? Yes, thank you. Great. Well, thanks, Mark. And then thanks to Lawrence and the team at Stanford for hosting this event and having us all here together to share ideas and learn from each other. I, before I start, I do want to also thank my colleague, Marcel campy, who has been with ultra naughts. Gosh, I think five years, and has been the architect of our approach to how we source and talent and how we screen and she'll be on the employee panels speaking later this afternoon, and would encourage you all to join that. She's inspiring human being and a great colleague to work with. Before I spend a minute on giving you a overview of alternatives, I did want to acknowledge a couple of the speakers that shared some really powerful ideas earlier today. And last night, Judy singer, of course, who coined the term that we're all using, talked about commodification. And while I'm not sure I precisely understand the implications of what is a very challenging idea that she presented, I think it's something for all of us to be mindful of as we are with the best of intentions, trying to create workplaces and a society that is more inclusive, where everyone can thrive. And along those lines, Nancy Doyle who spoke this morning, you know, talked about this evolution, that we're all in the midst of moving from a compliance space view of inclusion to systemic inclusion. Now at ultra noughts, we call that designing a universal workplace, we have a name for it. And it's simply the idea that the world we're trying to move towards is one where
Unknown Speaker 1:44:17
no one needs an accommodation because the system the workplace has been designed in a way that it is truly inclusive. And so at ultra knots. We've been on this journey for over seven years, trying to reimagine every aspect of a business from how we recruit talent to how we've managed teams to how we develop careers, and redesigning that entire system, so that everyone can thrive. So we're seven years in my co founder and I started the company with a simple mission to demonstrate that neurodiversity is a competitive advantage for business. We believe we have started to do that. We've been growing at over 50% a year and I At this point, have built a fully virtual 100% remote workplace, with teammates working in 25 states across the US across gosh 45 plus cities and one province in Canada, where three quarters of our teammates across different parts of the company are on the autism spectrum. And that's just not only our engineers and analysts, but also colleagues on the leadership team and colleagues on the recruiting team colleagues like Marcel who architected the approach we're taking to some of the ways we work. And while we are proud of the commercial success we've had where our clients include, you know, AIG, Bloomberg, Bank of New York, Mellon, Berkshire, Hathaway, Cigna, Comcast, Warner media, startups, like Slack, a bunch of earlier stage hyper growth startups in FinTech, inshore tech, and so on. And we've been able to demonstrate that our team's head to head can deliver dramatically better results. In one case, we replace the Capgemini team at AIG, increased coverage of quality in a highly visible in short tech platform by 100x. That's 100x improvement, not 100% 100x. In other case, we have placed an IBM team at Prudential business unit improved quality by 56%. And the reason we're able to do that is not only because of the talent that we're able to attract, but also because we fundamentally believe that our differences as individuals make us better together. And this is a team sport. It's not about the sort of old ideas around heightened abilities and stereotypes and tropes. It's truly about creating an environment that is universal, that's applied those universal design principles that Nancy talked about, to creating a level playing field to creating frets flexible and inclusive systems and processes. So that we can tap into the strengths of all kinds of brain types and thinking styles and information processing models to deliver better value. And so I will just end with this one note, which I'll talk a bit more about later. Because of this idea of creating a universal workplace, not only do we measure some of the typical metrics you might expect of a business like customer Net Promoter Score. And we're proud to have maintained 100 Net Promoter Score, which is rare, because we're delivering value to our clients every day, thanks to our team. But on par with that metric, which is a leading indicator of customer health, we also measure our team's net loneliness score as a leading indicator of our team's well being. And we're super proud that while we are fully distributed from day one, we've been a fully virtual company, everybody works from home, I'm at home. Now it's not just because of COVID. And being incredibly diverse with this wide range of communication styles and learning styles. Fewer than 15% of ultranet report feeling lonely at work, compared to over 40% of the American workforce. And that was before COVID. And so we do believe you can build a truly inclusive, universal workplace that welcomes neuro minorities. And instead of thinking about accommodating teammates who are different, celebrating those differences, and redesigning the system, so that we can truly tap into all of those strengths, build collaborative teams, and create value as a business.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:45
Thank you. Thank you, Rajesh. And it's also wonderful working with you, and hopefully we can match some of our participants.
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