[Navy blue CAI Neurodiverse Solutions logo appears on screen with white background, with www.cai.io below in black.] [The following text is shown in order: Webinar On-Demand: Cross-industry collaboration: Fueling innovation with autism employment: the navy blue CAI Neurodiverse Solutions logo.] [The full screen is Anthony Pacilio, wearing black rimmed glasses and a navy blue vest. In the bottom left-hand corner, there is a nametag that says "Anthony Pacilio | CAI Neurodiverse Solutions" and a white CAI Neurodiverse Solutions logo in the bottom right-hand corner.] 00:00:08 - 00:01:01 Anthony Pacilio Welcome everyone to today's LinkedIn Live Event, Cross-Industry Collaboration, Fueling Innovation with Autism Employment. My name's Anthony Pacilio, vice president of Neurodiverse Solutions at CAI, and a little bit about me. My responsibilities here are to help organizations build neurodiversity programs and help lead our efforts of CAI Neurodiverse Solutions. And my expertise lies in managing neurodiversity recruiting efforts, developing Canada pipelines, and ensuring best practices for onboarding, support, training, and organizational success. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to let you know that we are recording the session today for future viewing. And if you have any questions throughout today's discussion, please feel free to add it in the chat, and we're going to follow up accordingly to the questions after the event. 00:01:02 - 00:01:59 Anthony So let's start by talking a bit about today's topic. So in the workplace, autism employment is increasingly recognized as a valuable asset across various industries, fostering innovation, increasing productivity, all those great things. And according to Harvard Business Review and the International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards, that's a long one, individuals with autism spectrum disorder possess a wide range of skill sets that can solve complex business challenges, tending to do well in analyzing data, pattern recognition, creative thinking, innovation, and attention to detail among other skills. So, across all sectors, embracing neurodiversity not only drives business success but it also promotes an inclusive environment that values the unique strengths of every single employee, including individuals with ASD. 00:02:00 - 00:02:49 Anthony Industries are realizing autism employment is a competitive advantage that brings measurable financial benefits as well as improved workplace culture, making it a focus of major global corporations. So in this 30-minute discussion, you're going to hear from experts, awesome experts, as they share their insight on the impact of cross-industry collaboration when it comes to neurodiversity in the workplace, as well as ways neurodiverse [inaudible 00:02:26] talent can drive innovation and tech industry through software development and data analysis, the contributions of neurodivergent professionals in the healthcare space to enhance patient care and medical research, and how neurodivergent individuals can offer fresh approaches and financial services, and the role of educators in creating more dynamic and inclusive learning environments to cater to all learning styles. 00:02:50 - 00:02:55 Anthony So, without further ado, let's go ahead and meet our guests. We're going to begin with Joe Riddle. [Anthony's screen becomes a bit smaller and moves to the left. Joe Riddle's screen shows up on the right-hand side. His nametag in this screen's bottom left-hand corner reads "Joe Riddle | Neurodiversity in the Workplace". Anthony's nametag disappears, and Joe's enlarges in the bottom left-hand corner for a brief few moments as he's introduced and reads as "Joe Riddle, Director, Neurodiversity in the Workplace".] 00:02:56 - 00:03:28 Anthony Joe leads Neurodiversity in the Workplace nonprofit consultancy, which is responsible for many of the corporate neurodiversity hiring programs in existence and serves as the director of that. Joe and his team work to create partnerships with businesses from across the globe to diversify the workforce to include and support neurodiverse talent. And he's built partnerships surrounding neurodiversity inclusion initiatives with companies such as SAP, Dell, Bank of America, Walgreens, and many more. You could probably add to that. So thanks for joining us, Joe. I appreciate you being here. 00:03:29 - 00:03:31 Joe Riddle Thank you for having me. Excited to talk about this topic. 00:03:32 - 00:03:35 Anthony It's going to be awesome. And next up, let's meet Jordan Snetman. [Anthony's screen moves to the upper left-hand corner. Joe's screen moves to the upper right-hand corner. Jordan Snetman's screen pops up in the bottom middle area of the screen. Her name tag reads "Jordan Snetman | Comcast". All nametags disappear except for Jordan's, which enlarges in the bottom left-hand corner for a brief few moments as she's introduced and reads as "Jordan Snetman, Sr. Program Manager, DEI Talent Integration, Comcast NBCUniversal".] Jordan is part of the DE&I talent integration team at Comcast. Based out of Philly, she leads enterprise-wide DE&I partnerships and programs within talent and learning. Jordan has a background in talent acquisition, strategic partnership engagement, and program management. She's passionate about disability inclusion and inclusivity at Comcast. And thanks for joining us, Jordan. We appreciate the inclusivity piece as well. 00:04:03 - 00:04:04 Jordan Snetman Great to be here. 00:04:05 - 00:04:23 Anthony All right, it's going to be a great discussion. We all know each other, so we're going to get started with this, and I'm going to task my friend Joe here with the first one. So just share a little bit about your role as director of Neurodiversity in the Workplace and some more about the organization's mission. 00:04:24 - 00:04:40 Joe Yeah. So what we do and what I do in making sure that we carry out this mission is that we want to make neuroinclusion a central part of our partners' strategy for how the workplace operates. We want the future of work to be as neuroinclusive and neurodiverse as possible. 00:04:41 - 00:05:00 Joe And so we want to enable companies and our partners that we work with to do that with all the strategies that we've learned in our continuing to learn. So we look for new ways of doing that all the time and are eager to talk about things like how different industries can start working on this and expand that reach. 00:05:01 - 00:05:23 Anthony Awesome. And we're going to get into a lot of the intricacies of what you do and how we kind of cross-promote and cross-pollinate, how we bring neurodiversity in the workplace a little bit later in the show here. So Jordan, could you share with us what your role is and what you do day to day at Comcast? 00:05:24 - 00:05:44 Jordan Yeah, definitely. Well, thanks for having me. Excited to be a part of this conversation today. As Anthony said, my name's Jordan. I've been at Comcast for a little over 6 years and have actually had the opportunity to work with Anthony and Joe closely through our partnership of how we're discussing neurodiversity at Comcast. 00:05:45 - 00:06:20 Jordan In my current role, though, I work in a team that works across Comcast and into NBCUniversal, and how we talk about diversity in the talent space. And so this could anything from working with different organizations to figure out how we can bring the best talent to the company, but also working with our employees to make sure they have the support to grow their careers, but keeping all employees in mind. And so it's an ever-evolving space, and always great to talk with people who are doing similar things to collaborate. 00:06:21 - 00:06:53 Anthony Yeah. And I appreciate the mobility piece to your talking point right there. That's kind of a huge thing of neurodiversity in the workplace. We want to make sure that individuals have the opportunity to move and groove, so to speak, up the ladder, obviously recognizing the talents and the skill sets that they all have. And we'll talk some more about that in a bit as well. So, Joe, you get the really the first meaty question and it's a two-part- 00:06:54 - 00:06:54 Jordan Great. 00:06:54 - 00:07:14 Anthony Question, so I apologize in advance for the two-part question. So discuss a little bit the role of cross-sector collaboration in kind of growing employment opportunities for neurodivergent individuals for different industries. That's the first part. Do you want me to go with the second question, or do you want to answer the first one? I'll get to the second one. 00:07:15 - 00:07:16 Joe Go second, and then I'll [unintelligible 00:07:17] 00:07:17 - 00:07:35 Anthony All right. Cool. All right. So the second is, how might the cognitive strengths of individuals with autism spectrum disorders, such as pattern recognition, attention to detail, enhance areas like medical research and data analysis? 00:07:36 - 00:08:16 Joe Yeah. So great questions and I think looking at the history of this movement towards companies employing people in the workplace who identify as neurodivergent, we have seen a wide range of approaches. And some of the earliest approaches were, let's look at STEM fields. And part of that was influenced by just a general interest from those places and getting more talent. And we created kind of this accidental niche of STEM is the best place to start to do this. What we realized over the years, though, is that neurodivergent people are already in so many different fields. In every field. 00:08:17 - 00:08:45 Joe There's some estimates estimate up to 20% of the population is neurodivergent. And what we quickly realized by starting some partnerships with colleges and universities in medical research specifically that it was widely prevalent. But one of the things that was challenging that space is that the support systems, the identity, the recognition of neurodivergence wasn't there. Those people were. They were there, but the support systems weren't in place, the recognition. 00:08:46 - 00:09:17 Joe And so what tends to happen is that if people don't have those support systems, those recognition that you can come and get help for how you operate in your day, you can come and get guidance, or your teams can get guidance on how to understand how people think, learn, socialize, experience the world differently. We all think, learn, socialize, experience the world differently, and if we can create some support systems and some recognition of that, it allows people, no matter what space they're in, to thrive. 00:09:18 - 00:09:47 Joe And so by doing that, we saw a number of different leaders within the medical research field come forward and say, "We've recognized that we have neurodivergent people on our team. We didn't recognize this before." But because of some of the work of some of the earlier STEM companies that we're talking about, neuroinclusion, they said, "We need to do this too. We need to enable this." Doing that has actually enabled people to advance further because they said, "You're already here. Here's some of the support systems that we can provide." 00:09:48 - 00:10:24 Joe Or they start to re-examine the interview process, re-examine how they bring people in the first place. And so all of those things we're seeing just a very rapid expansion within the medical field, within the pharmaceutical industry of neuroinclusion being recognized for the first time or for a continual advancement towards that goal of neuroinclusion and the support's finally making their way to individuals. So it's an exciting cross-industry event that's happening. 00:10:25 - 00:11:00 Anthony Yeah. And I think in CAI Neurodiverse Solutions works with some insurance medical firms, and I think what we see is, let's say that we have even fraud positions, claims, all that, the pinpoint accuracy, the attention to detail to find minute pieces of data and be able to pull that out and be able to show their manager and maybe rectify or help a customer on the backend where maybe it was missed previously or was... 00:11:01 - 00:11:31 Anthony Those are the things, and those are some of the intricacies. I can say that on a Wednesday, that kind of build upon why it's important to be able to understand why neurodiversity in the workplace is important in the first part, right. To your point, we already know people are sitting there, the support mechanisms. How have you built that? Have you built that? Whatever that may be. 00:11:32 - 00:12:09 Anthony But then recognizing exactly what they bring to the table on a day-to-day basis that can have an ROI, you know, return on investment, from a profitability standpoint, right. You might be able to get some money back here, or you'd be profitable there. But it's also that recognition of the ROI for person as well, right. They're having a great employment opportunity. They're doing something, hopefully, that they love and that they hadn't had a chance to do it before because Joe and Jordan and myself and others are building that ecosystem for them to be able to thrive in. 00:12:10 - 00:12:11 Joe Yeah. And if I could add on. I think that- 00:12:12 - 00:12:13 Anthony Yeah. Yeah. 00:12:14 - 00:12:35 Joe One of the exciting parts is when we allow teams to identify what skills are needed. By describing those skills and allowing people to pursue that specific skill, we allow people to really specialize and thrive in what they're interested in and what they want to do. And we see such a world of change and difference when we say, "Here's what we're enabling your job to be. 00:12:36 - 00:13:03 Joe Here's what the specialization. Here's what your job requires, the skills that are needed, then we can find the neurodivergent talent who really wants to do that specifically. And for so long in our workplace, we just kind of consider every role a generalist and every role just does a little bit of everything. And we often lose out on some specific interest and some specific abilities that people bring to the table. And when we can better define them, we can actually utilize them, which is useful. 00:13:04 - 00:13:09 Anthony Yeah, absolutely. And so, Jordan, I will turn to you. How do you approach the- 00:13:10 - 00:13:11 Jordan [Unintelligible 00:13:11]. 00:13:10 - 00:13:16 Anthony Integration of neurodiverse talent, what impact has this had on the teams and in your company as a whole? 00:13:17 - 00:13:45 Jordan Yeah, it's a great question. I think Joe kind of touched on so many pieces of things that we're discussing day to day. And I think a lot of it is meeting your company where you're at, but also meeting your team where you're at. I think speaking on a company that's of the size of Comcast, but like so many other companies, there's so many nuances of culture and community and things based on where you work and live and just so many nuances of everyone's day-to-day life. 00:13:46 - 00:14:13 Jordan I think neurodiversity and employment as such is an aspect of someone's life. And so, how can we create teams in a culture where people feel like they can have those conversations with their managers, whether they want to disclose that they're neurodiverse or if that's something they want to discuss at all? I think it's really something that we're seeing is just creating safe places for teammates to be their authentic self. 00:14:14 - 00:14:46 Jordan And it kind of sounds silly in some sense, but I think so much of it, especially in a atmosphere where teams might be virtual, they might be in person, so many ways of working now that we're seeing, maybe even pre-pandemic, which seems like a while ago, but I think it's still kind of creating that culture where we're meeting our companies where we're at, and our teams where we're at, and the changing ways of work so that it just becomes a way of inclusivity in general at our company. 00:14:47 - 00:14:48 Anthony So I'm going to throw a curveball at you, Jordan. 00:14:48 - 00:14:48 Jordan Yeah. 00:14:48 - 00:15:15 Anthony Right. So Comcast, we think television technology, but Comcast is vast, right. There's more than just that piece of it. So I mean, spread throughout Comcast, I'm assuming that neurodivergent individuals are permeated and the financial piece, your HR piece. Am I going down the right path? 00:15:16 - 00:15:43 Jordan Of course. Yeah. And I think so much of it... Neurodiversity is a spectrum, and so I think so much of it is people identifying and wanting to be themselves in the workplace where you might have a colleague, or you might be neurodiverse, whether you share that with your team or you want... Whatever you're looking [inaudible 00:15:36], however, you're wanting to discuss that in the workplace, I think the... we have neurodiverse teammates and employees across the company. 00:15:44 - 00:16:11 Jordan So I think it's providing... What we try to do is provide those resources where neurodiversity is a part of our workplace. We want... It's creating a culture where everyone feels like they have a voice and a place so that if you're neurodiverse, if you're anyone, this is a place and a team that's for you, and your skills are unique to you, just like every person has their unique skills and identity and how that can just play a part in your team. 00:16:12 - 00:16:39 Anthony Absolutely. I appreciate that. And Joe, let's talk about one of our faves, the financial firms, right. So how, Joe, can neurodiversity initiatives lead to increased representation of neurodivergent individuals in let's talk about leadership roles and what impact this might have on company culture and decision-making. 00:16:40 - 00:17:22 Joe Yeah, when we can see leader step forward and identify clearly as neurodivergent, it's such a powerful thing for any financial firm to be able to experience. We all want to see something of ourselves emulated in our leaders. We want to see some part of us that they can represent and kind of advance the mission of what everyone's working towards right. And I think that in having someone identify as neurodivergent in a leadership role it's such a fantastic enhancement for that culture because, again, if we look at the definition of neurodiversity, it's how we all have different ways of thinking, learning, socializing, experiencing the world. 00:17:23 - 00:18:00 Joe We shouldn't pretend that we all fit into one neat little box in how we operate, but yet, at the same time, when we see a lot of traditional financial firms, we see kind of sometimes a box being formed, and we want to break that box and think outside of that box. And we want to do that by emulating through a leadership position how that's done, how people can think differently, can socialize differently, and experience everything differently. And that kind of leads to this cycle that we see repeated because, oftentimes, when we go to a firm, people ask the question, "Well, how many neurodivergent people are working for us right now?" 00:18:01 - 00:18:27 Joe And that's a difficult question because there's still a lot of stigma associated with neurodivergence in the workplace because we're trying to emulate that box of, "Here's how we should be," which might not be neuroinclusive. So if we can show leaders to do that, we can encourage more people to say, "Hey, I identify as neuroinclusive." And that encourages a company to build out more supports, to build out more recognition, to just allow people to identify more openly. 00:18:28 - 00:18:58 Joe And that could be a really, really powerful thing because that leads to things like people disagreeing in a constructive way, leads to new ideas, leads to new ways of experiencing that don't come at a toll, that don't have people be forced to think in one way, which can be really taxing if you can only think of a solution within one narrow set of parameters, because that's how the solution is always approached. If we can widen that, if we can show that leadership supports, that it's kind of a win-win for everyone. 00:18:59 - 00:19:07 Anthony Yes. And I just, you're giving ideas for another webinar, right. Leadership neurodiversity. 00:19:08 - 00:19:09 Joe That'd be fun. Yeah. 00:19:09 - 00:19:46 Anthony Yeah. You may, in fact, see that coming from us soon. And as we talk about leaders in spaces in, so Jordan, Joe, myself, and others, we talk about this all the time at different panel events, I mean, till we're blue in the face about leadership within any industry, the representation of neurodivergent individuals and people being able to be who they are and to recognize that neurodivergent individual is already there, they may not have disclosed. 00:19:47 - 00:20:27 Anthony But to your point, Joe, if we can kind of build that Kumbaya, that collaboration of individuals saying, "Yeah, listen, I have ASD, or I have anxiety disorder, which I do have, and I'm open about it." I let people know not so that they're scared or they're like, "Oh my gosh, I don't want to say anything wrong." I let them know because I'm open and that I want them to be just as open. But showing them that we're able to manage people, we're able to manage an organization regardless of the fact that we have ASD or anxiety or whatever it may be. 00:20:28 - 00:21:15 Anthony I just think that... We talked about the stigma, but I just think that we haven't really turned the corner, so to speak, with the leadership abilities and talking more about that. So soapbox item for Anthony, but it's definitely an important topic that we need to explore more. All right, so Jordan, sorry, we're going off there. Let's talk about strategies. So what can be done to implement or to enhance collaboration between neurodiversion, neuro-typical team members to foster that innovation? And especially if you can talk to maybe within tech projects, and it can be broader than that as well. 00:21:16 - 00:21:55 Jordan Yeah, definitely. Well, I think kind of goes back to what you were just talking about from a leadership perspective. I found so much of those conversations of how people and projects are becoming more efficient is leaders having those conversations. And I think we have employee resource groups, we have a group called My Abilities, and I think that has made a special culture of people at all levels in their career in all different places in the tech space, in HR, in marketing, whatever it may be, to come together and with shared identity or allies or the same people who want to talk about and create that culture on their team. 00:21:56 - 00:22:38 Jordan So I think where technology's evolving just as quickly as some of these conversations and ever-changing, we're getting new tools and technologies to make it easier and more accessible for people with all... with disabilities of all backgrounds to be able to communicate effectively with each other. But I think as technology continues to be there, the human aspect of it is really a part that's never going to change, and it's going to all start with leaders creating that space. And so I think conversations like this are what help propel those conversations moving forward from a leadership but also peer-to-peer on your team. 00:22:39 - 00:23:17 Jordan You might... I think realizing that whether someone outwardly, as you said, wants to share and that takes a lot of courage and whether someone has that on their team to be able to come forward now or 6 months or a year or 2 years or 10 years into their career, you might be working with someone for a while and they might not disclose a while into knowing them and be like, "Oh, that makes sense," why they like those meetings to come earlier because that all connects. So I think, as people feel safe disclosing, it creates more efficient ways of working. 00:23:18 - 00:23:54 Anthony Yeah. And I think, and Joe, you can chime in here too, we talk about teams and blended teams, and I don't even know what that means at this point because they're already blended, especially in the tech sector. Obviously, there is talent shortage here and there, developers, software engineers, all this other stuff. We're looking for talent pools that can explore beyond what the norm is from a tech space, right. 00:23:55 - 00:24:22 Anthony And so having neurodivergent individuals and neurotypical individuals working on the same team, it's always been there, but now we're trying to make sure, culturally, inclusively, that we are there to, and we've said it a thousand times, but support those individuals, but make sure that we're fostering a dialogue between people, right. It can't always be silent, especially in the tech space. 00:24:23 - 00:24:58 Anthony You're doing your thing, and I'm doing my thing, and at the end, they all kind of converge and merge, but we need to know how Sally does her job, and how she likes to be approached, and the communication style. If we just ask simple questions of each other like, "Hey, do you enjoy this, or do you appreciate this or should I tell you this before..." Simple questions kind of just will create a good culture in a community. So I don't know if you had anything on that one, Joe, but... 00:24:59 - 00:25:34 Joe Yeah. No, I think that, yes... One thing that we see as such an easy thing for a leader within an organization to do is to just better understand how their team prefers and best operates across things like, what's your preferred style of meeting and communication? Are you going to absorb that information in a email block with that information processed in a written format, or do you want to have a face-to-face conversation? We all have different ways of absorbing that information. Are you an auditory processor, and everyone can experience this? 00:25:35 - 00:26:08 Joe Are you the person who reads the book, the physical copy, or you, the audit audiobook person like me who wants to absorb it? We all have different ways of doing that. We need to bring that into our meeting styles, into our work styles, and our work preferences and understand that because that just relieves the pressure. If I'm always kind of converting something into my own process, my own way of absorbing, then it can get exhausting, and you're wasting some of that potential productivity on that conversion to the better process, the better system for each individual. 00:26:09 - 00:26:58 Anthony Yeah. So and I think as we kind of wind down here, I know we've got a couple of minutes left before we go, a question to you both and not something that we've discussed in the past is with all of the industries that we have kind of in this world, from technology to finance to healthcare, even in the education space, what do we to do? What's the call to action... I'm going to give each of you a minute to do this. What's the call to action for those industries? Joe, give it a shot, and we'll end with Jordan. 00:26:59 - 00:27:19 Joe Yeah, I think that a simple call to action would be, and this is maybe vague, but for every solution that we have, for every product that we're aiming to develop, it's really helpful to not have a set outcome established, to allow people to approach it in their own style and way, especially in the process of approaching that. 00:27:20 - 00:27:43 Joe I think when leaders can do that on teams, when we can say, "We know the direction we want to go, but we don't have a clear solution in mind," and it allows a lot more innovation to happen and for people who have different ways of thinking, learning, socializing, experiencing the world to contribute better. And so that's kind of a simple idea of when we can define the skill sets, define the direction, but leave the process and the- 00:27:44 - 00:27:44 Anthony Sure. 00:27:44 - 00:27:46 Joe End result, we get more neuroinclusion. 00:27:47 - 00:27:52 Anthony All right, Jordan, I'll leave you with 30 seconds. 00:27:53 - 00:27:53 Joe If I could react to that- 00:27:53 - 00:27:53 Anthony Yeah. 00:27:53 - 00:28:02 Jordan And [unintelligible 00:27:53] that on a message, I would. I think that's spot on. So echo everything Joe just said. I think another piece of, just to kind of end this is, this world, everything is moving so quickly. 00:28:03 - 00:28:29 Jordan I think in the technology space, we're seeing technology so quickly evolving and I think these conversations are something that need to keep up with the speed of technology, and that's going to come from kind of taking a step back from the fast pace and slowing things down to be a little bit more mindful and present to say, what do my people need? What do I need? And how is that going to lead to the best outcome? 00:28:30 - 00:28:30 Anthony That's awesome. 00:28:30 - 00:28:31 Jordan And so I'm going to just leave it there. 00:28:31 - 00:28:48 Anthony That's awesome. That is a good way to end it. Unfortunately, our time here today is over. I'd like to thank Joe and Jordan for joining us and sharing their insights with us. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you both. I had also like to thank our audience for your attention. [All speaker videos become a bit smaller and the following copy is enlarged in the bottom left-hand corner: "Learn more at www.cai.io".] 00:28:49 - 00:28:59 Anthony And participation in coming to today's LinkedIn Live Event. Later, we're going to be sending everyone that attended a recording of this event to share with your colleagues or peers. 00:29:00 - 00:29:30 Anthony In addition, we're going to be sharing a post-event survey for you to share with us about your thoughts on today's event and please fill that out and share back with us. Thank you in advance for that. And in the meantime, if you're interested in learning more about CAI and Neurodiverse Solutions or know someone that is, visit our website at cai.io and fill out our contact form. Thank you for joining us today, and please have a great rest of your day. [Navy blue CAI Neurodiverse Solutions logo appears on screen with white background, with www.cai.io below in black.]

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