Transcript: Think Neurodivergence: Autistic Pride and Entrepreneurship

Music playing for opening of session: Emerging by Nat Bartsch, album: Hope Renewed.

Athanasia Price: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining our second open learning session for this year. It's part of the Social Enterprise Development Initiative. Today will be convened by Just Gold. These open learning sessions are a space for the Australian social enterprise community to share knowledge, stories, skills and experience with each other.

My name is Athanasia Price and on behalf of Social Enterprise Australia, I'm really excited to welcome our wonderful speakers today. We are in the Zoom Room with Kyriakos Gold, Rebecca McCash, Anita Aherne and Georgia Prattis. 

As you know, because you signed up for it, today's session is Autistic Pride and Entrepreneurship in the Australian Social Enterprise Sector. And I really love that we get the chance to learn from real personal and professional lived experiences here.

I know that there are so many things that we can and should do as social enterprise leaders and learners to create more supportive environments for neurodiverse talents. It's certainly something that I'm continuing to learn about. Before I hand over to this amazing group of people, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the unceded lands from which each of us are joining today.

I'm coming to you from the beautiful lands of the Quandamooka people which you can see in the background behind me. I recognise their continuing connection to the waters, the sky and Country that I have the great privilege of living, playing and working on.

I honour the living knowledges of elders, past and present and thank them for the strength, wisdom and power they share with future generations of knowledge and culture holders. I also pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants joining today. I recognise that your presence here holds over 65,000 years of systems thinking and relational care for people and planet. Thank you. 

Now it is a pleasure to hand over to Kyriakos Gold and his co-collaborators Rebecca, Anita and Georgia.

Kyriakos Gold: Thank you, Athanasia – your name in Greek means the immortal one - the translation of your name. Thank you for having us here and thank you to Social Enterprise Australia (SEA) for allowing us to have the conversation about autistic entrepreneurship, a topic that is very close to our hearts and a topic that unfortunately doesn't get the necessary attention in policy as yet.

But we are very optimistic now with a strategy in the federal space – an autistic national strategy - to see some changes being implemented and hopefully this will be the first of many conversations in our sector outside the bubble of the autistic community.

This is a first for our team. Normally we have autistic entrepreneurship conferences that all the speakers are autistic or family or strong Allies. This is a first step to talking to the whole sector.

So really appreciative of the opportunity. 

I'm Kyriakos - founder and CEO of Just Gold. Just Gold is Australia's first management consultancy and creative agency that is an accredited social enterprise. We are Social Traders certified and People and Planet First accredited and we've been around for six years.

Throughout our journey we've always been autistic-owned and led but we were not ‘out of the closet’. So, the last couple of years we've been talking to our community a bit more and our impact has been structured around our community and supporting autistic entrepreneurs.

With me today I have the fabulous Rebecca McCash who is the founder and CEO of FutureTech Australia and a member of our Autistic Initiatives Advisory Group. 

Thank you for joining us, Rebecca.

We have Anita Aherne. She's extraordinary. She is behind Australia's only directory for autistic and neurodivergence initiatives - Living on the spectrum - also part of our Autistic Initiatives Advisory Group. 

Anita, very privileged to have you with us. Thank you for stepping in with all the challenges that life throws at us over the last few weeks. 

And Georgia Prattis, a strong business partner and personal friend. Georgia is one of the principal consultants at Myriad Kofkin Global, home to Australia's best and best known and most credible intersectionality consultants.

We work with them really closely and to give you the level of the work that Georgia produces, we recently completed the intersectionality framework for the Australian Sports Commission which will help change the face of sport nationally over the next few years.

Georgia, thank you for being here today. 

This format for today’s session is slightly different. We wanted to cater to the excited minds of the autistic community and our fellow ADHD’ers.

So, we are going to have multiple layers. We're going to cross to videos. First, we’re going to have Dr. Sharon Zivkovic, one of the most brilliant minds of the autistic community. Sharon has seven degrees - I think by now she's going for her eighth. We'll have Christina Chun, also a member of our advisory group and you'll see Anita and Rebecca in the videos as well because those videos were filmed in our most recent Autistic Pride Day conference in Sydney and they have not been published before.

We're very privileged to be sharing it with you. I will go to the first video where we're going to look at some definitions first.

During the video you are all welcome to start conversing with us in the chat. We'll be able to answer live some questions and then some of those questions we'll be able to tackle all together in between sections of the webinar when we cross back to the live conversation.

Video 1: Understanding Neurodivergent Strengths in Social Enterprise [8 mins 15 secs].

Start of Video

Dr Sharon Zivkovic: Autistic cognition. So I think that's just a recognition that autistic people's cognition is different than what is classed as neurotypical and it makes a big difference in business development because business development is usually taking a business planning or a business model canvas type approach.

It's based on prediction. We like control. So it's kind of like you're predicting something and you're kind of like looking at it and thinking, well this doesn't make sense because it's not real, it's not something I can touch. I can't control this. So straight away, with the business development process - because of our cognition - there's a mismatch.

Also the research says that most autistic people are bottom-up thinkers. We're starting with all the datasets from our monotropic interest areas where the business development approach is very top down, everything's framed and you're kind of like filling in the boxes.

For an autistic person, from your interest areas, you’re bottom-up, you're making associations between all of this data that’s come together. We're really good at systematising.

Being able to take those associations and develop products - we can do what's called whole product solutions because we're thinking of it from every angle. There's all these strengths from being autistic but it doesn't match the business process. Our autistic cognition does not match business development as it's traditionally done.

Kyriakos Gold: As you’re saying this, I'm just trying to see if I’m fitting that description and I'm not quite sure I do. But Christina, you are the expert entrepreneur here. Does that make sense to you? Is that your experience? 

Christina Chun: Partially, I would say because we're all different. Yes, to the bottom-up thinking. So, we focus on the problem and we don't get attached to the solution. The solution always evolves. I personally love agile methodology because especially in development it's in two-week sprints, right. So in two weeks we prepare what we want to build in development and we don't change and we just run as intensely as possible and we build. But then underlying that there's actually a roadmap as well as to what you might be building in the next four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. If you've got a bit of burn out, you can also take the next two weeks offline as well.

It really balances the predictability and structure with feedback. And so I think from my perspective, the best thing about the autistic brain is that we're not tied to a solution and we're constantly looking for feedback, addressing customer needs, because it's all listening to what people need and want and then pushing that back into product development.

That's probably what I love most.

Kyriakos Gold: That I think described me - maybe there's some alignment here. Roo, what are your thoughts? 

Roo Harris: So I obviously work with startup founders day in, day out, and to be honest, they've all got pretty brilliant, interesting, exotic brains.

But I will say, certainly autistic and neurodivergent folks are overrepresented in that group, and we know that from the data too. But I would certainly say that the out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to map disparate points and connect them in a way that other people aren't seeing for problem solving is really compelling, but it's also what allows them to manifest, if you like, interesting entrepreneurship kind of pursuits.

And so it's a different kind of creativity that I think comes through. And it's really perfect for entrepreneurship because we need these different thinkers to solve the great problems that we're facing. 

Rebecca McCash: I definitely agree with the idea about getting attached to a problem and not a solution.

I think we spoke about this earlier as well - the constant feedback and constant evolving nature of what we do. At FutureTech, we change every week based on feedback. So I think that's a real asset to be able to constantly evolve like that and respond to challenging situations that are complex and constantly changing themselves.

My brain definitely works in that systems way. For me, actually, FutureTech was a system solution. I saw that the world had lots and lots of challenges and I knew that I alone could not fix all of those challenges. And I knew that people with brains like my brother, could be the ones to fix those challenges.

And so my system solution to all the challenges in the world became FutureTech and uplifting these kids to be able to solve the solutions for us all. But I think it comes with unique challenges as well. For example, it's really, really hard to explain to people what is going on in my head a lot of the time.

And so while I see all of the connections, constantly trying to get that out to other people, out to funders, out to the community can be really difficult. So learning how to talk about things through different lenses has become really important for us at FutureTech.

But it also feels like we don't do justice when we just talk about the outcomes and the outputs and this is going to fix the whole world. 

Dr Sharon Zivkovic: In the social enterprise, social entrepreneurship space, we're comfortable in Australia, we've got a pretty common definition of what social enterprise is. And we're kind of like using the term social entrepreneurship and social enterprise interchangeably. 

But if we go back 45 years ago, when the term social entrepreneurship was first coined, the definition back then had nothing to do with having a business. It was about creating systems change and it was about social innovation. And if you look at the Oxford, the Scholl Centre for Entrepreneurship at Oxford University, they threw out their business planning proposition because they wanted to go back to what the original meaning of social entrepreneurship was.

And if I look at what's happening with Autistic Pride Day, this is social entrepreneurship. You're going for it. Whether it's a business proposition or not, you're going for it because you're creating systems change, you're being entrepreneurial in how you do it.

I think there's a big difference between being an entrepreneur and being a small business owner. 

Kyriakos Gold: What does design justice mean? 

Dr Sharon Zivkovic: There's a whole design justice network. And it actually started off with - I think the book was written by a transgender person who had this difficulty going through airports. And all of a sudden their body shape was not seen as what was supposed to go through the system. And so they were constantly getting picked up. 

The principles of design justice is very much about how do we design for everyone, not for a specific norm sort of thing.

And I think that design justice principles, even with business development, comes back to my concern about divvying up business processes for the neurotypical and the neurodivergent people in an organisation - everything should be designed in a way that more people can be included in all of the processes.

And I think that as someone who was involved in a tech business where the tech that was designed wasn't accommodating for me. Now I'm seeing that, from the first of July next year, to sell into Europe, your web-based solution must satisfy disability guidelines.

So I think, eventually everything is going to be moving to more of a design justice. And I think we're in a really good position to actually look at inclusivity in all of the operations of a business so that we can be inclusive of people who are wanting employment in different aspects of a business as well.

End of video clip

Kyriakos Gold: I apologise on the lagging of the video. The Internet sometimes is not our friend. I also want to acknowledge the amazing Roo Harris on the video, who is leading Scale Investors, a female leading venture capital firm who is also part of our advisory committee on our autistic pride conferences.

Before I go to Rebecca and ask about the unique characteristics of a neurodivergent leader, I wanted to tell you that June 18th is a day where we celebrate autistic pride, and what that means (because a lot of straight people think I'm doing this the autistic bland way).

A lot of straight people think that pride is only for LGBTQIA+ people, but pride is for everyone. And June 18th is a day that autistic people celebrate their autism. Looking at it through a strengths-based approach, we noticed at Just Gold that although it's a day that’s globally recognised, because of the pandemic, it actually stopped being celebrated.

So what we've done is we've created a digital toolkit that is distributed to over 500 people and organizations globally, some of them councils in the UK and Canada, where people can actually use templates in social media every year, similar to what we do on International Women's Day.

That initiative then became our Autistic Pride conference and that conference ended up being our autistic entrepreneurship flagship event where we talk about these things.

Now it's not my turn anymore. Rebecca, what are the distinct characteristics of a neurodivergent leader - the advantages because we'll talk about the challenges later. 

Rebecca McCash: Thanks, Kyriakos.

So I think a lot was covered in that video. I really do believe that we're natural systems thinkers and this can mean that we often get to the root of problems rather than the surface level of what the problems may appear to be.

We can really dig deep and find where within that system the problem is beginning and where we can target to create change. I think we're a little bit tenacious as well. And that helps the idea that we get attached to a problem, not a solution.

I know that I will always be attached to the problem of trying to make the world better for neurodivergent people. How I do that might change over time and evolve, but it means that yes - it's a laser kind of focus.

I also think that there are some unique strengths within leadership for autistic people and autistic leaders. I definitely found with FutureTech, we really set up systems from day one that were supportive of our autistic and neurodivergent team.

We have systems that some larger companies and very experienced companies don't have in place. And we've done that out of necessity because we're all different and we all need a little bit of extra support. But it means that we really set these systems up from the beginning, which I think is really special and helps with that empathy as well.

Kyriakos Gold: I'm going to go to Anita next, but I'll give you an example. 

When we first built Just Gold and we were looking at certification, we were told, ‘okay, these are the three categories. You have to fit in one of them’. I said, ‘but we do all three’. They said,’no, you have to fit in one of these three’. I said, ‘no, we're going to do everything. You put us in whatever category you want’. 

For me it was a matter of everything has to make sense. But in Australia, we live in one of the safest countries in the world. We're so privileged, but at the same time we're so over-regulated, which makes us think not in the way autistic boxes are, but it makes us think in boxes where we don't innovate because we're like, ‘okay, this is all I can do’.

I feel that in my case it was a question of ‘why can't we also do this’? 

Anita, what do you think are the neurodivergent advantages and especially what neurodivergent leaders bring to the social enterprise sector and social enterprise leadership and innovation?

I think the authenticity that comes with our mission and our passions really sets us apart as neurodivergent leaders and entrepreneurs. We can't fake it. We're either in it or we're not.

If we're not in it, we just cannot do what we want to do or we can't do it any justice. And we often fail. And we don't fail in a business sense, we fail with our mental health and we fail with our own well being.

I think as a neurodivergent leader, authenticity is probably our greatest gift, but it's also our greatest downfall, because we put so much pressure on ourselves to fulfil our end goal because, as Sharon said in that first video, we often start from the bottom up.

For myself, I saw that there was no national Autism Directory. Instead of doing what I should have done - a business plan, spoken to people, get some consumer feedback  and done the polls, went straight out and spent the money and built the product. Now, did it work?

Sure, it worked. Is it going wonderfully smooth all the time? Absolutely not. I'm literally figuring it out as we speak. I think if you ask any neurodivergent entrepreneur, we are doing that. I think there comes a wonderful advancement that comes from that freedom of figuring out as we go, because we're not constructing in that conformity.

We're not following that straight line. We sometimes know following the straight line does not work. So veering off and trying all different things is a huge advantage. I think authenticity has to be underlying any good entrepreneurial, neurodivergent leader.

We're building the plane as we're flying it. Is that the right way of putting it? 

Kyriakos Gold: 100%. I've often thought in the activities that I followed at Just Gold, that we were just way ahead of the societal expectation or market appetite.

I'm learning, because we're learning as entrepreneurs and leaders every day, I'm learning to park an idea and fight the autistic urge to just do it now. Like park the registered IP and keep talking to people and the right founder or the right person will come along.

Although, what Just Gold does spend all its profits on is ideas we really love like the autistic conference. Georgia, I'm going to throw you a curveball. You're not expecting this one, but because you are not identifying as autistic in this space I want you to tell me what it is like working with a very autistic person like me. Give me some good and some bad because you work really closely with me. 

Georgia Prattis: You've really put me in the deep end here, Kyriakos.

The good and the challenges. I think your lens is incredible. I’ve always admired the different way of thinking, of looking at things from different perspectives. I think that lends itself so beautifully to innovation. It forces me to look at alternative lenses in the work that we do, and I value that so much.

I'd say the challenge for me is slowing you down. I've heard Rebecca speak about it and Anita as well as - you think of an idea and off you go, rush off. The neurotypical brain says ‘let's slow down a minute’. Finding that balance without shutting down those incredible ideas, and helping it make sense to me, as a neurotypical person, is something that I have learned and I really value in working with you.

Kyriakos Gold: That's a great point. You know, suspending those points of assumption and really listening, Listening intently. That's a really great point. We are going to talk to this. 

We're going to do this like a TV show. We are going to talk about the challenges of an autistic entrepreneur. How do you train yourself? Do you need a translator? Who is your translator? Do you have that trust? How safe is it for both sides of that conversation?

Rebecca, we have a question for you from the chat. Could you give us an example of the processes that you were referring to before? And after that, we'll go to the next two questions. 

Rebecca McCash: I was just answering in the chat, but I'm looking at it and this is a lot of text -I don't know if anyone would want to read it. I will put it there in case people find it helpful. But basically, there are little things that we do.

When we have a new team member coming on, we will send them a visual story. We essentially treat our mentors and our team the same way that we would be supporting our young people and families. We find this is really helpful. 

We also have a bit of an attitude where if someone gets something wrong, I usually look at myself and think, what did I do? Not do? What wasn't clear about this? How can I make it easier, more accessible, more straightforward next time so that people don't make the same mistakes? Rather than expecting people to always fit within our systems, we adapt our systems in response to our people.

That means that we are constantly improving the things that we do. I really like Dr. Green's concept of people do well when they can. So I usually try and look at what can I do to make this easier and better for my people because they're all incredible.

Kyriakos Gold: Thank you Rebecca. In the chat, Sophia says “you will always know where you stand with a neurodivergent leader. Open communication and candid dialogue in relation to problems helps accelerate the process to finding the solutions”.

And Georgia says: ‘he's so blunt. I can't deal with him sometimes’. 

Marian says that “when volunteering over the last five days, I've realised that as a neurodivergent leader I have a superpower that many of my colleagues don't have in emergency management. I'm good at pattern recognition, innovating as the situation changes, allocating people to tasks and bringing the team together in a crisis. I can certainly relate to that”. 

Rebecca and Anita, do you relate to pattern recognition?

Do you identify with pattern recognition? Is that something you do? Because I certainly do.

Anita Aherne: Look, pattern recognition to me really strikes when we talk about pattern recognition in neurodiversity. Everyone goes straight to mathematic recognition rather than people recognition.

I should clarify that I actually cannot find patterns in numbers or systems. I find them very difficult to navigate - almost impossible in fact. And that has been my biggest struggle in business is actually seeing those patterns.

However, I do see patterns in people, people's behaviour and I see patterns in my network, my support groups, my friends, my family in that I can read people.

I think I can read people fairly well and know when people need support and when they don't.  I'm very good at reading situations. I think in that regard I'm very good at pattern recognition. And I think that's not talked about enough in neurodivergent circles in that we can really read the room, so to speak, because sometimes we get things very differently.

We can be blunt and very direct and very rigid in our own thinking. However, we think beyond that and we see patterns in people and our networks rather than only patterns in maths and numbers.

I think if we were all good with numbers, and were in the stock market, we would all be rich then. We're not all IT experts. I can attest to that. Even though I run an online platform, I am no IT expert, nor will I ever be an IT expert.

And I think that's wherein lies a bit of the barrier in those contexts of how we talk about patterns. And this is the stigma as well, because you see us here masking 150% so we can be the smiley people with no anxiety that you are supposed to be in a webinar and inside it's like Dante's Hell.

What society is expecting when they think of an autistic leader - they think of this math genius or this computer nerd. In a lot of social enterprises that have popped up in this space, most of the time, social enterprises that are led by neurotypical people, they focus on autistic people that work well with maths. We're not all that. Some of us are good in art, some of us are good in math, some of us miss a lot of social cues. 

Kyriakos Gold: For me, it’s a constant struggle. I know the pattern that you mentioned in terms of getting to know people and I know that something is wrong in this conversation, but I don't know how to express it in the most linear, simple way that Georgia might.

I'm referring to Georgia because she's often my translator and we've been in very difficult conversations together where, if Georgia wasn't there, it would have been not the desired ending for either party. Autism comes with a lot of strengths, but we're not superheroes.

We are just everyday people with our plus and minuses and life is difficult for everyone. We just have different barriers to overcome. 

I want to go to the next video before we continue this conversation, because we're all talkers here.

Video 2: Creating Inclusive Workplaces and Business Structures [10 mins 42 secs].

Start of video clip

Dr Sharon Zivkovic: I think we've got to separate product development from business development, if we're talking autistic cognition. The product development that associates that coming together, bringing things, being able to systemise, that's very product development.

It's one thing to have a product, it's another thing to have a business. The business development part is difficult for autistic people because you've got to bring a lot of stakeholders together on your journey through this.

And the business development process is the part where traditionally you're making predictions so I'm a big fan of what's called effectuation entrepreneurship, which starts off with what's your bird in hand? What do you have? This is often your monotropic interest, your support system - it's not based on prediction, it's based on what you can control.

It's got a principle of the ‘crazy quilt’ bringing different people together. 

Kyriakos Gold: As an aside, what is monotropic interest? 

Dr Sharon Zivkovic: A monotropic interest - they reckon that autistic people have these passionate interests. The research says you're spending around 26 hours a week on your passions. They're interest areas where we have huge datasets because we're into them so much that we've got so many facts. I'm a fact data kind of thinker. Other people are visual thinkers. But we've got these datasets on our interest areas and we actually make connections between them. So we're starting with that. Often when we're having a business, we've got a passion area. We can see an opportunity. We've got this data set about this, and that's where we're making associations through it. 

Kyriakos Gold: Christina, what are the challenges and opportunities, as far as you're concerned? 

Christina Chun: I could talk on behalf of my experience, lots of challenges with business development, which is why I've got advisors around me that help me either provide support or fill in those gaps.

But direct communication is probably one, whether it's like straightforward remarks or just lots of questions, because I need to really dig down into what the actual problem is. In one instance, I'm happy to do that in an open room because there's transparency and accountability, but it could for some people come across as intimidating or inappropriate.

There's this notion about social norms, which is usually typical behaviours that society deems appropriate at a specific point in time. Right. But when you look at history, societal norms change because we recognise that there's an unjust practice here or something doesn't seem right.

I think when I went through my entrepreneurship journey, I did a lot of training where when you first meet someone, this is how you shake their hand. And I went through that training almost like a BA in business. We fit in because we need to go through pitching.

But there is a thing that you have to go through in order to establish your business, fundraise and then go out and market. I think it got to a certain point where I was like, ‘why is it that I need to shake people's hand’? Because if you start looking from a cultural lens or an autistic lens, there is all this training out there. 

The training is to get us to fit that mould, though not as a starting point to enable people to bring their lenses to say: Is this actually appropriate? To get others to see that it's just a different way of interacting. When people say autistic people are socially not great or they don't have social skills - I challenge that. I just think we come into the situation in an unconventional way that's just different. So that is the thing that I've been struggling with. I know there's a traditional way of going about business development, but it does need to change.

Kyriakos Gold: For me, you hit the nail on the head when you said culture. Noting the intersectionality of things. So imagine. - I'll give our example: Christina on one side and me on the other side - a darker bearded man with a really intense voice.

If we ask the same question, there'll be different levels of intimidation. On my side that might be understood as aggression. From your side, there may also be some gender deafness, so the other person might not even hear you. So that just makes things really, really difficult.

For an autistic person, you say, but why? I don't understand why that's a problem. And no one really answers the why in our journey. And I think it's only now that we're having these conversations and understanding that you're not alone.

Christina Chun: One of the biggest challenges I've had with business development is I value consistency in someone's actions and in aligning to the words that are coming out of their mouth. And when that is not there, I struggle because it's like I don't understand what's going on here.

Kyriakos Gold: What are you trying to communicate – for example – “you said that in that meeting at 5:15”. 

Christina Chun: Autistic people are great with pattern recognition so that consistency, whether it's that situation or across a time period, it really affects trust. It affects how I can actually work with someone. It's never bad intentions from the other person. It's typically just the lack of self awareness. That is something that I've also been tackling as well, knowing that it's not bad intentions. But how do I reconcile this inconsistency in behaviour and work? 

Kyriakos Gold: This is the panel that I want to be a panelist. I struggle, in terms of the notion of accessibility, especially in these leadership positions, because at this point, you are supposed to fit the mould. You're supposed to know exactly what to say when you say it, and you're supposed to be professional because you're labelled as unprofessional if you challenge things. I'm on this board - I think I’m the token autistic because this board's supposed to be super accessible. I've actually been called unprofessional for just being myself. I know I'm not. But the rest of that board does not understand that they're actually an inaccessible environment that is working in a super unprofessional way. How do you deal with that? 

Christina Chun: I sat on three board roles and got diagnosed with autism a year ago and was like, what the hell am I doing in a board role? Chairing a forum? Because being able to pick out cues, manage different personalities, have that kind of politics, and then navigate it is not an autistic person's happy place. Which is why, upon reflection, I was so unhappy. And these were volunteer board roles as well. So I don't have an answer for that. But I can say that I have stepped away from all those board roles because it's not where I want to be spending my time. 

Roo Harris: So I'm going on a slight tangent, which I'm known for doing. But something we do see, not uncommonly, is that the entrepreneur founder gets the backing, they build the business to a certain point. They often have the ‘nutty professor’ stereotype kind of profile. They may be exceptionally gifted academically and they're spearheading some STEM business. At a certain point in time they've had to build a team up to a certain point and then the dynamics of the team and the relationships become really complex and the investors get concerned about is this the person to lead for the next stage of scale up and take this business through to exit effectively.

This applies for neurotypical founders as well. So I want to be really careful about how I frame what I'm saying here. What I do think is really interesting is that with the advent of AI, what we're going to be seeing is billion dollar companies that have a founder and possibly just a couple of team members, like really small teams, and the ability to actually have AI agents who meet your needs in terms of personality qualities.

I don't think that means we don't still need to advocate for enabling environments, accommodations and actually learn to build teams around us that work for us. But it's an interesting kind of thing that we're now on the cusp of facing that we're going to be able to navigate that differently potentially. 

Kyriakos Gold: It's super interesting that you said that because Just Gold is certainly not a billion dollar company. But this is made possible because of AI. It allows me to communicate with different stakeholders in a way that they will make sense of the wickedness of the business plan and just allows us to push things a lot further.

That’s a great point and it's good to know that everyone else is going through it. And also on the data point - trust is really important. I think for my version of autism, when somebody gives you a different fact every time that you talk to them, well, it's actually not a fact. For example, the operational report has these three holes and in the next meeting he's got another four holes. How can I trust you to continue working with you? 

Sharon, I can see you've got something to say here. 

Dr Sharon Zivkovic: I think it was just the difference between entrepreneurship and management - two really different skill sets.

I think autistic people are great entrepreneurs. I would say the management bit - I won't own up to too many things but like the day to day management can be difficult. 

Rebecca McCash: I think that management and leadership are very different.

I think that I am an excellent leader. I actually give myself that pat on the back. The management stuff is really, really hard. It is really hard. Even when you have a team of people who have the same neurotype as you, it's really, really hard to get the balance between supporting people well and getting stuff done.

End of video clip

Kyriakos Gold: In true autistic and ADHD fashion, in eight minutes, we have literally touched on a hundred different topics. I don't know how we've done it. Looking back at this session, I think it was a deep, psychological, reflective conversation in a safe place where we all looked at different mirrors and tried to understand versions of our autism by looking at others.

In my case I can't see my patterns, but I can see them in others. That's one of the benefits of having these conversations. There are not enough fora or forums in Australia that autistic people can feel safe and share and reflect and go back into the businesses and implement that.

Now we are going to go to the intersectionality conversation a little later. I'm going to first step back and ask how can social enterprises move beyond simply accommodating neurodivergence to actively leveraging neurodivergence strengths?

And I'll start with Rebecca, who is indeed a great leader and a great manager. I have seen you do magic. 

Rebecca McCash: Thanks. I appreciate it. It's very different though.

Being a leader and being a manager are very, very different skills. I think it's not really talked about a lot in terms of how social enterprises can support neurodivergent people and really leverage their strengths.

I think it's going to take a really large culture shift. At the moment, a lot of the ways that we see autistic people's strengths are through the lens of what is a strength within the context of a neurotypical dominant world.

And usually that's associated with capitalism as well. Let's be honest.

For example, when we see that autistic people have good pattern recognition, it's good pattern recognition in the context of how we can leverage this for financial gain. Or we'll talk about how autistic people are way more efficient than non-autistic people.

I think while these things may be true, we need to go a little bit deeper if we want to actually leverage the strengths of neurodivergent people. I think that's a bit of an uncomfortable thing for many people because we do like to challenge the status quo.

Ironically, neurotypical people generally don't like change. I know this is hilarious because I don't like change either. But I think that we sometimes come in with a completely different way of seeing something.

I know that in the past I've gotten into trouble because people will say things like my door is always open. I take that very literally - not that I'm barging in at all times of the day, but I will go to managers, to leaders within organisations that I've worked for in the past with my PowerPoint presentation and outline exactly where the problems are within the organisation and exactly what can be done to solve those problems.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time people will interpret that as a challenge to authority or a challenge to that person's place within the hierarchy.

Something I also really struggle with - I don't know why we have to talk to people in completely different ways depending on where they sit in an invisible hierarchy. I think if we do want to start really leveraging those strengths, we all need to work on being okay with and making space for people to come in with different ideas and different ways of seeing things and really, really listen.

Kyriakos Gold: Before I go to Anita, I'm going to tell you some practical things that I've recommended to neurotypical environments. 

I say, ‘if you ever think I'm too blunt or if I raise my voice or if you feel I'm talking too fast, please let me know’.

Most autistic people will not mind if you stop them and say, we need to take a breather. And again, we need to be very mindful of the stigma and the biases that come with the diagnosis. Quite often people say, tell me about your diagnosis.

I shared this really private thing for two reasons. This is a very private thing, your detailed diagnosis, but also it creates stereotypes, like having an autistic person in your team and thinking they're going to be loud or thinking that they're going to be good at math or thinking they're going to be good or bad at this.

That first understanding of asking, ‘what are the practical things that we can do for you’? Is it a different briefing process? 

Also, you need to stay with the autistic person because sometimes we have a delay, some more than others. So when you ask the question for the first time, I might not have the answer for you. I might have it in my dream. I'll wake up the next morning - that's the answer. I have to share it. But I will not be able to do that unless you ask me again and again. That works for me. It might not work for the staff. It’s exactly the same with thinking about every human being. None of us are made the same way. We all have a very different programming, conditioning and understanding of life.

Kyriakos Gold: Georgie, I can see you want to talk to intersectionality. But first I'll go to Anita - what are your views on this? On what we struggle with in traditional business terms? 

Anita Aherne: How can we make more inclusive environments for autistic people and autistic entrepreneurs are two different things, like employees, and managers and bosses. I think as entrepreneurs, traditional business development models often don't suit us. They're often linear and rigid. Right? We find it difficult to move in that way and we find it very hard to move effortlessly through those particular unwritten rules of entrepreneurship.

The socialising, the networking, what we perceive as what we should be doing. What we can do is really embrace what our strengths are. As a neurodivergent entrepreneur, it's really important for us to really look within ourselves and find out what our strengths are and leverage those strengths and ask for help on those things that we aren't very strong with.

I've only recently learned to ask for help because, up until recently, asking for help was obviously an admission of failure. In the business world, if you admit to failure, it's almost as if you're committing business suicide and you can't do that.

I think as we are becoming more vocal and more informed and more educated on how neurodiversity works in business and in entrepreneurship, I think there comes strength with asking for help and for guidance and working on our strengths and I think give ourselves permission that it's okay not to follow those linear lines in business, that we can actually veer off and feed to our strengths.

From an economical viewpoint, business, is s all capitalism, right? None of us are in business because we love it. If we just wanted to earn a living, we'd all be working at Bunnings.

We're all driven by a purpose to make change. But in order to make change, we need to make revenue. And in order to make revenue, we always have to sometimes stick to those societal rigidness and lines because we otherwise get left behind. So there is a huge balance, and I think we need to learn how to balance. When I say we, as a neurodivergent community, these conversations help us acknowledge where those balances lie. When we can ask for help, when we should ask for help, and when it's okay not to follow what we perceive as the given route for business and entrepreneurship.

Kyriakos Gold: So true. And a really great segue to talk about social enterprise because this is a conversation about social and autistic enterprise. And one of the many of the reasons that autistic people are so good at social entrepreneurship is because of our deep passion and purpose for the work that we do.

And research says autistic people that work in their special interest area - in the monotropic thinking, as Sharon would say -  they're actually more successful. It’s a strong pathway to not just employment, but success and independence.

We do have different thinking, which by default is innovative thinking. We are resilient. We don't know any different. A lot of people say, when you talk to people with disability, you're going to find that in your everyday scenarios you go, ‘you're so strong, you're such a hero’. We don't know any different. I went through life for 45 years, I didn't know I was autistic. I just thought everybody goes through the same trouble. You don't have a choice. But yes, you become resilient. And often that bluntness is what brings the authenticity that is absolutely necessary in social enterprise if you do social enterprise the right way. 

I will go to the next video and right after that we'll go to Georgia and talk to intersectionality and bias, circling back into the topics that we most recently covered.

Video 3: Intersectionality and Neurodivergence in Leadership [4 mins 50 secs].

Start of video clip

Kyriakos Gold: I often say that we do need translators. I've often said that. But it's that danger of that relationship breaking down at some point. 

Dr Sharon Zivkovic: I have a few points with regard to neurotypical co-founder relationships. And I think the challenge is not playing it safe and letting the neurotypical person have a lot of say in the establishment of the business and setting up the systems so that you end up with a business that isn't accommodating.

You've got your own business, but it's not accommodating autistic people because you're handing everything over. That can come and bite your control. You're losing control over the business. All of a sudden you can't do that part of the business and you can't do that part of the business because it's been set up by a neurotypical person in a certain way. All of a sudden, you're finding yourself more and more removed 

Kyriakos Gold: Or you become codependent with that person because you've put so much trust into it and you've handed over so much of the business. But when you realise that that's not feasible, then you actually can't control your business. Going back to your first point, that autistic people need that full control, which is just a cycle. Christina, I see you thinking about this really hard. 

Christina Chun: I think it's that diversity and inclusion piece. Like when I did my edtech startup, I had James, who's sitting over there, as an advisor.

I think it depends. If you want a business, it might hit a ceiling because you've developed things in a certain way and it can only scale to a certain point. But if you want it to create systemic change and want it to grow further, you have to involve all and know that everyone has their strengths.

And it might take longer to come to different negotiations and decisions, but it's what's best for the business and the impact you want to create.

Rebecca McCash: On getting support as an autistic entrepreneur. I find that I am at quite a high risk of being taken advantage of in terms of getting advice from external people. For example, going out to an accountant, I had no idea how much I should pay for an accountant. That was completely new to me. So I think autistic people can be at a heightened risk. I trust everyone. I'm like ‘that sounds about right’.

On Boards. Interesting. I'm doing a diploma at the moment on governance, and I actually think that the traditional board governance structure is just the opposite of what autistic people think and understand in terms of how governance should operate.

So you've got these people over here that kind of make all the decisions about the organisation which is here. And the only go-between, between these two groups of people, is the one person. To me that seems ludicrous - it makes no sense whatsoever. So I think one of the things that I've been learning more about is Indigenous governance systems and I think that makes much more sense. It's all about how do we work together, how do we hear everybody's opinions and come up with solutions. Solutions usually take a lot longer, but everyone is heard and usually the solutions are much, much better. 

Kyriakos Gold: In an ideal governance structure, the CEO is not just representing their thoughts. They have a strong consultative process not only through the team but also the client base, and broader stakeholders. But that’s just the understanding that a big business might have and a smaller business or not for profit might not because it's full of community politics and it’s a very different state of play. 

Roo Harris: I think if you step back and acknowledge that autistic entrepreneurs have a very spiky cognitive profile. It's that classic, ‘what are my strengths and what are my weaknesses’?

And then mapping that out within your business and going, all right, so I'm outsourcing this to this person; I'm bringing this person in who has this strength; and working out what your optimum team and support group looks like, based on the fact that you need to know yourself and your brain and your processing style at the first instance, and then work from there to make sure you've got the right group around you.

End of video clip

Kyriakos Gold: Now that we're back, I wanted to go to Georgia and get a brief definition of intersectionality and potentially, if you've got the time, bias, but not too academic.

Georgia Prattis: You sure give me the hard tasks, Kyriakos. Look, I've been reflecting and especially listening to Anita and Rebecca, and a lot of what I'm hearing is that the onus of responsibility around creating those inclusive spaces rests with the person that is neurodivergent.

It’s really reinforcing and highlighting how much our workspaces, as much as any other space we engage in, is defined around those unspoken rules that have been designed by those in power and privilege who have the voice. So intersectionality is about unpacking and dismantling those systemic and structural barriers.

It is a term that has been confused a lot where it's been used a lot of times around adding up different parts of people's identity. That was never the intent. It is actually an analytical framework that helps us understand those intricate structures and systemic roots of oppression that create marginalisation or power and privilege.

It transcends those simplistic notions around diversity. It's not about gender or ability or about ethnic identity. It's about the ‘ism’. How they become embedded in structures that result in exclusion - in ableism, in sexism, in racism.

All of those ‘isms’ that we see play out and which people that sit in those marginalised spaces have to navigate on a daily basis. It becomes a critical tool for dissecting that and scrutinising those social categories because they are socially constructed.

Think of neurodivergence. Why do we call it neurodivergence and then we call other people neurotypical? Because the world has been designed - those systems of power and privilege have been designed - in a way to preference and privilege people who are neurotypical.

So that is as a lens, that's how it works really effectively. It's very hard for me to unpack it in a small amount of time, but it’s not the same as diversity, equity and inclusion. So I don't want it to get confused with that because it actually is a critical tool and calling upon leaders in organisations to really address those power disparities that exist towards that collective vision around justice and equity.

But it's certainly not about ignoring positionally or placing the onus of responsibility on the individual. It really needs to start by those in leadership undertaking that critical reflection that acknowledges privilege, that acknowledges bias.

You know, what are my stereotypes? How have I socially constructed throughout my lived experience what it means to be neurodiverse or what it might mean to be a woman, a trans person, you know, someone that's gender diverse. What does ethnicity mean to me?

What are those racial constructs? Because they're all interrelated. Experiences for a neurodivergent person will not be the same for someone that is visibly a person of colour. There are compounding factors that are systemically and structurally created.

So it's about how do we consider, how are the voices of difference not just represented, but actually heard and informing decision-making around change? That's a very succinct description.

Kyriakos Gold: We have about eight minutes left. So here's the question. Christina was talking before and she talked about the handshake and she said, you add a cultural element to that and it just gets even more confusing. How does intersectionality play in terms of the tags that are applied to you as a leader? 

Why do we train people to fit this mold that again has been constructed by power and privilege – how do we move beyond these neurotypical behaviours around eye contact or handshaking and all of those things you've discussed. Why don't we consider different options - how do we create spaces where people can bring their authentic selves to work rather than, you know, going directly to those expectations?

What does different communications look like rather than complying with those social norms? 

I know we've got people from government in this conversation, right?

As an autistic community, what we're asking as autistic entrepreneurs is specific funding and specific programs for autistic entrepreneurs to run their own programs. Within that, what would be the intersectional component? Would you then break it into autistic women and autistic multicultural - what would be the framework? It would be asking those funders to really unpack their processes and systems.

Where a neurodiverse social enterprise might be asking for funding - what might the application process and interview process look like? Have you considered and looked at alternative ways that actually embrace and support the innovation and the potential that comes with that diversity? Or am I stuck with a structure? This is the way we do it. This is the way applications must be completed. Interview processes - do they take into consideration what people can't see - all of those factors and responses to being in this space, we aren't considering those in the way we put processes and systems and structures in place.

Georgia Prattis: That's the biggest barrier, and that's what intersectionality does. That's why I talk about it as a tool for critical analysis. If people want to know more, I would really encourage people who are on this webinar to take a look at the Australian Sports Commission's intersectionality roadmap. That was work that we completed together, which looks at the sports sector, but it can be applied to other sectors to undertake that critical process of intersectional analysis and unpack systems and structures to think about how they've been designed. 

I see all too often that token representation of the diverse person on our board or our decision-making body. But do we consider how that voice is heard, how that voice contributes to decision making? Do they feel safe to be open and talk about those issues in that space? Often they're not. This really helps to unpack how we go about decision making, how we go about developing policies, systems, system structures.

It goes back to those very systems and structures that put those barriers in place in the first place. So the onus rests with those leadership decisions, with those governance decisions, rather than an individual who ends up facing multiple barriers because systems aren't created for them.

I don't want to see a future where Rebecca or Anita or yourself, Kyriakos, have to navigate and change your nature without being able to bring your whole selves to what you do and having your incredible thinking and innovation recognised instead of having to navigate and try and dismantle those barriers individually.

Kyriakos Gold: I’ve put the [Australian Sports Commission] resource in the chat.

It's a big document, but it's a really strong framework and all the research is there.

More tools are not yet posted online. Please use that resource. Our government has spent money on it. This is where our systems are heading to. You'll understand better what to do to ask for yourselves. Or if you're neurotypical in a position of power, you’ll know what you need to do to set everybody up for success.

We could be talking forever. I want to close with two questions to Rebecca and Anita. This was not in our planning, but this is where the conversation has taken us.

If you were asking someone for reasonable adjustments in your relationship with a boss or someone working for you. What would that be? And if you were asking the government, somebody in a position of power to change the system, what would be the first thing that you'd be asking for?

Rebecca McCash: So accommodations for me. I think flexibility is massive. Why do things need to be done in these very stringent, inflexible formats? Why can't I do it in a way that works for me? If it works for me and it gets the job done, why can't I do it that way? Working from home is huge. It's really huge for me personally. I don't think I would be able to do all the things that I do if I wasn't able to work from home.

Being clear with expectations. Very, very important. Calling it out. If there is something that someone is getting wrong, how can we make that clearer? Simple things like making it clear that it's okay to get people back on track in a meeting at the very beginning, then I don't have to feel guilty about doing that.

That's the expectation. Little things like that can make a big, big difference. Positive feedback is just as important as negative feedback. A lot of the time we are really good at giving negative feedback but not letting people know that they're on track. Especially if I'm learning something new, I really need to be told that I'm on the right track.

Otherwise I feel like I'm just floating in the abyss. I don't know if I'm on the right track or the wrong track. Letting me know - that's great, you're doing a really good job is important for me. The wider system stuff is probably large.

I think the main thing is the idea of self determination. So that's something that I always come back to. I think that autistic people, we, as autistic people, we have the solutions, we have the strategies, we have the different opportunities.

I have such a diverse range of neurodivergent friends who are artists, who are designers, who are programmers in all different areas of society. How can we be supporting neurodivergent autistic people to solve the solutions that autistic people face?

Rather than asking just for our opinions, how can we actually uplift the people that are already there? 

Kyriakos Gold: Thank you, Rebecca. We'll quickly go to Anita because we're running out of time and we're going to take another five minutes to complete this webinar. I hope you can stay and join us. 

Anita Aherne: In my personal life I struggle to read and I have dysgraphia so I struggle to write. I don't think lots of people actually realise the impact that not being able to read and write sufficiently has on just everyday life. I think if my family and friends could accommodate that or my work colleagues could bear that in mind, that has a huge impact on the way that I can access everything in life from filling out forms, doctors, medical, employment, education and also on a personal level, social events.

People will often invite you - they'll come along and say ‘come and hang out with me on the weekend. I'm not doing anything’. I need to know what you're doing, where you're meeting, what you're going to be doing, where we will be eating so I can research the menu. I think those things may seem quite basic and that can have a huge impact on my ability to make those connections in the community and with my friends and family and with government. I have lots. 

I have one thing that I think the government can do straight off the bat that can have a huge impact in everybody's entrepreneurial journey and also their business journey. I believe fundamentally that every person that applies for an ABN should have to do some type of training on neurodiversity - whether that's a simple questionnaire online, or whether that's a short 20 minute webinar. If you are opening a business in Australia, you need to know that there are neurodivergent people who will be working with you and will be your clients and customers. 

I think that one small thing can make a huge impact is that point of this conversation that makes me emotional. Probably people won't understand why it makes me so emotional because it's those little things that can really change our lives. 

Kyriakos Gold: In true autistic fashion, we have given you a lot of examples and theories about what our needs are. If I was to summarise this, I would say don't put us in a box. Don't use terms like high functioning, low functioning because you don't know what's inside. Don't judge a book by its cover.

What we make seem effortless, it is so difficult. Yesterday or two days ago I put an application in for a disability fund project. I can tell you it was brilliant. When it came to uploading the supporting documents I failed -  it was that simple thing that when we ask for reasonable adjustments from government to truly make accessible the programs that are there for us and also autistic enterprise, autistic social entrepreneurship, it's nowhere to be seen in policy or if it's seen there are no programs attached to it.

Self determination, as Rebecca said, if that's what we can leave you with.

Thank you everybody for staying with us and thank you so much to our panel.

Athanasia Price: Thank you all. That was amazing. I've been scribbling notes the whole time. Thank you. If you're watching the video of this, share this with everyone you know. So really, really appreciate this today everybody.

Huge thanks to the Department of Social Services who are supporting the development of these learning communities. In a second you're going to see a survey form pop up. We want these sessions to be crafted by you, by the people who are watching them. Please do share your feedback with us. Thank you. 

Also, I can't forget the Social Enterprise Australia team behind the scenes - everyone working to make these happen. There's Caragh, Megan, Sherryl, Liz, Raylee, Christina, Jess. There are some neurodivergent people in there who I bet are thinking thank goodness the rest of my team has seen that. 

Thank you, really appreciate you all and thank you to everyone who logged on.