[Title slide: A white background with blue CAI Neurodiverse Solutions logo appears in the middle of the screen. Below the logo is the title of the webinar: "Behind the possible: How neurodiversity fits in the equity equation." Below that text is the webiste www.cai.io]
[All four speakers are shown in four individual boxes with their names in the bottom left hand corner of their box.]
00:00:07 - 00:01:09
Anthony Pacilio
Welcome everyone to today's LinkedIn live event, Behind the Possible How Neurodiversity fits in the equity equation. My name's Anthony Pacilio, vice President of Neurodiverse Solutions at CAI. A little bit about me. My responsibilities here are to help organizations build neurodiversity programs and to lead our global expansion efforts of CAI Neurodiverse Solutions. My expertise lies in managing neurodiverse recruiting efforts, developing candidate pipelines, and also ensuring best practices for onboarding support, training, and organizational success. I am also neurodivergent myself. I have extreme social anxiety disorder and depression. So it's always fun to do these things when you have extreme social anxiety. But it's awesome. I get to talk about amazing things. And today you're going to hear from three individuals that are amazing in themselves. But before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to let you know that we're recording this session today for future viewing.
00:01:10 - 00:02:09
Anthony
All right, let's get started. Our discussion today will be in recognition of October's National Disability Employment Awareness Month, also known as NDEAM. NDEAM embraces the important role people with disabilities play in a diverse and inclusive workforce. A strong workforce is a sum of many parts with disability being a key part of that equation. And our neurodivergent associates prove this daily by increasing productivity, improving the quality of work at their organizations, and behind that success, you're going to find CAI Neurodiverse certified team leads who mentor, advocate for, and support their neurodivergent associates as they develop their careers. And their collaborative work allows us to power the possible and truly make a difference. In today's 30 minute discussion, we're going to talk about the value of an inclusive workforce with three CAI team leads who I talked about before, who have seen firsthand the difference neurodiversity can make in an organization.
00:02:10 - 00:02:36
Anthony
So let's go ahead and introduce them. First, meet Tommy Bower. Tommy's an operational team leader for Neurodiverse Solutions at CAI. And starting back in May of this year working with a neurodiverse team at a financial services company. He's also an experienced contract manager certified in financial statement analysis, with a strong background in government compliance, insurance regulatory oversight, financial oversight, and auditing. Welcome Tommy.
00:02:37 - 00:03:08
Anthony
And next up, let's meet Karen Gibbs. Karen started with CAI back in April of 2021 as a technical team leader for Neurodiverse Solutions. She brings 40 plus years of experience in software firmware development and testing, project management solutions, architecture, diversity inclusion management, and quality assurance. That is a mouthful. Karen leads seven CAI Neurodiverse Solutions Associates at our client company in the areas of QA automation and AWS cloud policy compliance. So welcome Karen.
00:03:09 - 00:03:27
Anthony
And lastly, meet Michael Kulik. Michael is a technical team leader for Neurodiverse Solutions. He has 15 years of experience in the IT field, having worked in mostly healthcare environments. Michael also worked with neurodivergent children prior to his IT career. Welcome Michael.
00:03:28 - 00:03:43
Anthony
And thank you all for being here with us today. Now let's get started. Tommy, we're going to kick things off with you. Can you begin our conversation by describing the working relationship between CAI team leads and neurodivergent associates?
00:03:44 - 00:04:30
Tommy Bower
Yeah, absolutely. I'd be happy to. I would describe the working relationship between CAI team leads and neurodivergent associates as a team-based support model that allows the associate to feel comfortable to bring their whole self to work every day and then continuously develop professionally and gain confidence in whatever their chosen field is going to be. And as a neurodiversity certified team lead, what we're doing is providing the essential education, the support, the coaching, the consulting to both CAI and our client teams. And in this working relationship, CAI team leads provide the associates with leadership, mentorship, on the job training and continuous professional development to ensure that the integration and the program effectiveness is going to be a long-term effect.
00:04:31 - 00:05:08
Tommy
And as a team lead, it's extremely important that we create that work environment and a working relationship that values the associates' contributions and supports their needs. My associates tell me, this kind of sums up how I feel like the working relationship is, a proud moment for me is my associates tell me that I'm the one who takes their anxiety away when they're stressed about a project or when there's a task that is overwhelming. And I truly believe that that is what we're there for is the support and the mentoring and the coaching. And that working relationship just continues to flourish as we work together and gain each other's trust.
00:05:09 - 00:05:33
Anthony
Yeah, I think you touched upon anxiety. I'm going to throw a curve ball here. And I think with most people starting a new job, whether you're neurotypical or neurodivergent, there's a lot of anxiety. And have you seen, does it take a long time for the trust factor to go into reduce some of that anxiety or kind of kicking it right off the bat, everybody's kind of in a good space?
00:05:34 - 00:06:22
Tommy
Yeah, actually I think that when you come in with my particular field of government compliance and auditing that sometimes that there's so much thrown at you that it feels like you are drinking out of a fire hydrant and you're overwhelmed and your anxiety kicks in. But what's so great about this program is that CAI has hired me to be a team lead and I have over a decade of experience with government compliance and auditing. So I'm there to come along and be right by their side. So whatever they need, I'm their support system. And so it really doesn't take that long to get that trust because I think that they know after they go through our program and they've hired on, that we are their biggest fan and all we want is for them to be successful.
00:06:23 - 00:06:42
Anthony
That's great. And I'm going to kind of flip to Karen here. So with your experience working with our associates, seven of them, I'm sure you've seen growth as the team has mastered their goals. Can you share with us a little more on watching these associates grow and thrive in their roles?
00:06:43 - 00:07:19
Karen Gibbs
Yes, thank you. I have seven associates, as you said. Two of them work in the AWS cloud compliance space. One of them exhibits more anxiety than the other in terms of needing more support, but has just exploded in success in attacking the violation analysis for the policies that they review in the cloud and coming up with his own playbooks that help him be more comfortable with how he is attacking the work and just a huge explosion in his self-confidence.
00:07:20 - 00:07:52
Karen
The other one is a self-taught programmer who actually within the first two months had identified a bug in one of the tools, provided a third party source tool where the documentation had said there was an integer, but it was a float. And he had found that and actually was helping to move the process along for automating some of the violation analysis. And all of the processes have been manual and they are in the process of actually automating the identification and creation of the issues back to the non-compliant team. So it's just huge growth on that side.
00:07:53 - 00:08:30
Karen
On the other side, the QA automation team came in, one of them straight out of college, one doing a career change, one who had actually been programming since he was 13 and had a couple of companies of his own, one of them a nonprofit, but actually wanted more steady stable income. So that's why after finding CAI. Decided that this would be the right direction for him. That team within two months had actually rewritten a peer review of automation script process that was adopted company-wide because it was an insufficient process before that.
00:08:31 - 00:09:10
Karen
Also, the team together has collaboratively identified a number of areas to improve reusability and modularization of the automation scripts, reducing the time and speed and number of lines in the code that are being used to automate the programs. Because of that success, we had a fourth QA automation team member joined in December of last year, and a fifth one joined in February of this year with various backgrounds in development and in databasing and just huge, huge, tremendous growth in all of them, just contributing to the team.
00:09:11 - 00:09:42
Anthony
And we're going to get to business value in a little bit, but I think you've described some of that business value just in those individuals that you were just speaking of. So I'm going to come back to that in a moment or two. Michael, we know you have experience in IT and in also working with neurodivergent children. You have an interesting point of view, though. What benefits have you seen the neurodivergent associates gain from being in the workforce?
00:09:43 - 00:10:50
Michael Kulik
Hey, Anthony. So of course being the workforce benefits, not just neurodiverse people, but neurotypical as well, there's obviously benefits like income and just having a routine and a schedule. But I think in my experience, just our associates sometimes they also have social anxieties. And at least at our client's site, we have to interact with people on the phone, in person, consistently. So even if that might be a challenge to them, they have to work through it. They have to overcome it. And from what I've seen they do and they do it very well and they get used to it. And I think overall it will help them, not just now, but in the future. I had an associate who wanted to be a CIO and he was very shy, very quiet. But I told him, "If you want to be in that position or director or some kind of leadership position, you have to speak, you have to communicate, you have to conduct meetings." So it opened his mind to, yeah, that is a skill I need to develop. So I think there's tons of benefits to be had with it.
00:10:51 - 00:11:46
Anthony
Hey, listen, having or wanting to be a C I O is obviously a great goal to have. I think what we're trying to do at Neurodiverse Solutions is ensure that we give them the right tools, skillsets. Some of that mentorship that we talked about earlier comes into play. And this is where team leaders like yourself, Michael, Tommy, and Karen, come into play to provide that growth pattern. So I definitely appreciate that. And Tommy, in your time as a team lead, how would you describe the journey of growth you've seen on the neurodiverse teams? And sharing some more context into maybe the obstacles or challenges our associates are overcoming? Oh, we're going to grab you off of mute, Tommy. But that's okay.
00:11:47 - 00:12:19
Tommy
Sorry guys. The journey's been amazing, not just for the neurodiverse team, but also for myself. I am neurodivergent and this has been such a rewarding experience for me to lead these amazing people in this career choice that they've made. And I would say that the challenges, Anthony, that you face, we talked about initially, I think the human nature is the anxiety and the overwhelming feeling of I don't know how to do this work.
00:12:20 - 00:13:31
Tommy
But that challenge is met with the team lead that comes in and gives them the fundamentals and the basics that they need to go into that position with that client and feel absolutely confident on the first day that they can do meaningful work and produce something that's purposeful for them. The context between the obstacles, you have obstacles because sometimes the position like the auditing and government compliance and regulation that we're doing is very hard to do if you're just working with one single laptop. And so the client gave the associates a laptop and I'm very proud to say CAI team leadership and the neurodiverse team decided that it would be best for us to go ahead and get them the equipment they need, and they all have the monitors and docking stations. And so it's just proof of how we can be there for whatever obstacle there may be, even on the client side that we're there as the liaison to help make this a seamless, smooth transition for them.
00:13:32 - 00:13:58
Anthony
And I think you touched briefly, if CAI is providing some of that software, technology monitors, whatever it may be, those are simple accommodations that we're able to provide. And that does take some of the angst out of it. But it also provides that return on investment as well because they're going to have the tools that they need to do their job day in and day out.
00:13:59 - 00:14:57
Anthony
And I think when we're talking with clients, we're asking those questions upfront, all right, do you have X, Y, and Z? For example, Bobby or Sally may need a lower light level or not be near X, Y, and Z in the room. We can provide those as a mechanism to help them succeed. So I think when we talk about obstacles and challenges, those are some of the easy ones that we can take away. Obviously there's things that come up that sometimes are just out of left field. But as team leaders you're versed in how to handle that, talk about that, and be that conduit between our associates and the client. So I can tell you that I'm appreciative of your efforts on a day in and day out basis.
00:14:58 - 00:15:24
Anthony
So Karen, we talked about business value. I said I'd get to it in a second or two. What's the true business value of neurodiversity hiring for organizations who may be considering integrating a neurodiverse team? We're going to go with the mute button one more time.
00:15:25 - 00:15:51
Karen
Cost savings. Right off the bat, cost savings that are all derived from a reduced time to release process improvements, less lines of code with improved coverage of requirements, and test scenarios, the quality of the code, reusability and modularization of the code, that all of that adds up to cost savings and improved quality for the business.
00:15:52 - 00:17:08
Karen
But there's also the aspect of just the personal interactions both for the team when they have blended teams. We've got some blended teams now, neurodiverse and neurotypical. And they really leverage off of each other's skill sets. And the support is just amazing, both directions. But those cost savings are real. Speed of the processes that these team comes up with for improving how they identify the violations in the cloud. The automation that came in unexpectedly early. There was a plan to try to get more automation in the cloud compliance space, but the recognition that we could start to realize that sooner. All of the projects that the QA automation team were on were completed in half the expected planned time. And as a result, our third project that they're rolling into is more in the system test initiative space where they want to drive the processes that we've come up with as the standard for how all the applications will be automating and using the tool sets, that we've come up with, utilities and capabilities.
00:17:09 - 00:17:44
Anthony
And you touched on something. You talked about the blended team. And I know we can do metrics all day long, productivity, whatever it may be. I'm going to throw you a curve ball now too. The neurotypical and neurodivergent, we would all love for it to be just people working. The other piece of a business value sometimes is the culture shifts. Have you seen any of that culture change with some of the clients that you're working with?
00:17:45 - 00:18:46
Karen
Absolutely. The culture shift to more open communications, more transparency. Our automation team has been labeled disruptors, but they're good disruptors because they suggest ideas that are outside the box in terms of how to approach some of the script automation. On the AWS side, we've just had a couple of neurotypical engineers join the team. They were just our team. But the one gentleman who has been writing some of these automations is considered a subject matter expert. He is the SME, training these new engineers in how to approach and execute using the tools to identify the violations. So that's all going to be automated rather than previously, it has just been a giant Excel spreadsheet that just listed all of the violations that our other associate had been chunking through while we were putting in place some of these automations.
00:18:47 - 00:18:57
Anthony
Yeah, I love the disruptor piece there. I think that's a very important part of people who think differently, bringing in new ideas, new ways to do things and new thought processes.
00:18:58 - 00:19:00
Karen
And those have been embraced by the client.
00:19:01 - 00:19:27
Anthony
Absolutely. Why wouldn't they be, right? So that that's part of that business value as well in the return on investment. And so I'm going to switch quickly to Michael, as the team lead. Part of your role is to advocate for and mentor the associates as they grow in their careers. How would you describe that role of advocacy and mentorship? And how does it play in the careers?
00:19:28 - 00:20:05
Michael
Yeah, for sure. So as Tommy touched on, there's simple accommodations sometimes with the lights overhead, the fluorescent lights cause an issue, and just eliminating that can help their efficiency and productivity that much more. But also sometimes just our day and our client site can get overwhelming. There is a lot of work to be done and sometimes just being there to talk with them to just have them vent helps them get through the day and get through the week and all that. But I do personally care in their current career and their future career.
00:20:06 - 00:20:38
Michael
And from week one, I told my associates, "If you have any issues, any problems whatsoever, feel free to reach out. I don't care if it's after hours, if it's on the weekends, just let me know what's going on. I am here for you guys and I want to make sure that you're taken care of." So obviously, if they're feeling comfortable, if they feel like they have what they need and they have a resource like myself to reach out to, to make their productivity a hundred percent, then that's what I'm here for. And as long as they have that and they can do the work, then I think everyone's better for it.
00:20:39 - 00:21:57
Anthony
And I think what we try to describe is that the team leaders, it's not an eight to five type of job. You all are here for our associates. And whether that call comes at 5:01 or it comes at 11:00 PM at night, you're still advocating for looking to resolve potential challenges, but also the advocate and the mentor, but ensuring that the next day when an associate comes in, he or she feels that the issue is resolved or they've talked to you. That's a comforting feeling to know that somebody is on your side 24/7. So it's great that we have that. But it's great that all three of you take that on personally to make sure that our associates are getting whatever they need to do their job each day. So I think I'm going to go to the last question. It's for all three of you. And Karen, I'm going to start with you because when I'm looking at the screen, you're in the top left. What's your favorite memory from your time working with your teams?
00:21:58 - 00:23:13
Karen
Oh, it's an inspirational memory. I have an associate who, prior to working at CAI, was leveraging a lot of governmental supplement programs, occupational support programs, coaching support programs. And he, after about six months, said he was reaching out to them to say, "I don't need your services anymore." His self-confidence has just exploded. It just warms my heart. And he actually has been written up in one of our CAI programs, CAI Success Stories. So if you have a way to link into that, there's a number of CAI success stories out in the ether. So I think that he just really inspirational to me. I've had three of my seven associates since I've worked here move out of their homes and have their own independent living arrangements, and he's in the process of doing that. So it's just amazing to see that self-confidence and their ability to just really transition into what they believe was what they were missing in normal life.
00:23:14 - 00:23:43
Anthony
Yeah, and that's a huge step for most people. And sometimes neurodiverse individuals, they have a little bit more of a challenge getting that independence. So I think it's wonderful that we're providing long-term, rewarding, meaningful careers, but it's also giving them the confidence and then bringing on more responsibility in the day-to-day lives. And Tommy, I'm going to go to you next. Same question.
00:23:44 - 00:24:27
Tommy
Yeah. I'd have to say my most rewarding memory piggybacks on what Karen was saying is to see the confidence level and the way that they thrive. I have an example. My favorite memory was meeting with the client and some of their top level people who were training our associates on the actual auditing procedures for the government position that we were working, the government project we were working on. And a couple of the team members went to a specific team and they were very anxious. Very qualified, but just very anxious and overwhelmed, were very meek and very timid at first.
00:24:28 - 00:24:53
Tommy
I had a meeting with the client executive and he said that those two candidates were in the top 10 percentile of the 400 people he's trained on this program. He said they were absolutely incredible at picking everything up, engaged, responsive. And so it's just amazing to hear those things from a client executive that wow, what we're doing is making a difference.
00:24:54 - 00:25:23
Anthony
And I think that's a big piece of this untapped talent pool, right? So we're missing individuals who do those things wonderfully and quickly and amazingly, all the -lys. And I think we just need to try to encourage more and do different things to make sure that we can bring those individuals into the talent pool. And Michael, favorite memory?
00:25:24 - 00:26:01
Michael
Yeah, it's tough to pin it on just one thing. But one definite highlight is one of my associates, so we're at a law firm, one of the largest law firms in the world. And it can be a tough environment. We are migrating end user devices, laptops, computers to newer machines. And one of my associates, he took on a migration for one of their VIP partners. And this guy literally wrote the book on mergers and acquisitions. In his office, he has pictures with himself and all the presidents going back several decades. So he's a big player here.
00:26:02 - 00:26:32
Michael
And my associate handled his migration from beginning to end without any issue. He put in the time, was very meticulous. And I think even the texts that were here in the client site that work here, they were kind of nervous about it, but he handled it. The only involvement I had was just being aware of it. He took care of everything else and there were no issues after that. And I've heard consistently positive feedback from the directors and managers here and the clients themselves, the partners and whatnot of just positive experiences and good work being done.
00:26:33 - 00:27:04
Anthony
And that's a wonderful way to end our discussion today with all of the positive impacts that our neurodivergent associates are having each and every day on the businesses, but the impact on lives as well. And unfortunately though, our time today is over and it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with each of you today, especially during NDEAM. I'd also like to thank our audience for your attention and participation.
[Closing remarks: A black square box in the bottom left corner reading "Learn more at www.cai.io"]
00:27:05 - 00:27:38
Anthony
And later we're going to be sending everyone that attended a recording of this to share with your colleagues or peers. And in the meantime, if you're interested in learning more about CAI Neurodiverse Solutions or know someone that is, please visit our website at cai.io and fill out our contact form. Or you can even contact one of our team members via LinkedIn. I'd like to thank you all and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
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In recognition of National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), we recognize the important role people with disabilities play in a diverse and inclusive workforce. Watch our October Disability Awareness Month-focused LinkedIn Live Event replay to learn from 3 CAI team leads as they discuss the value of an inclusive workforce based on their first-hand experiences working with neurodiverse teams.
If your company is interested in working with CAI Neurodiverse Solutions, contact us today.
