Dear neurodivergent professionals, 

What I most want you to know is that you matter, we see you, and we care.  

We are so grateful you are here, just as you are.   

Not the version of you that learned to mask. Not the version that stayed late to re-read the email three times before sending, or rehearsed the small talk before walking into a meeting, or smiled through an open office while every flickering light and overlapping conversation pulled at the edges of your focus. Not the version of you that got really good at adapting.  The real you. The whole you. The one the world has failed to deeply understand and has been slow to make room for.  

I know that many of you have spent years — sometimes decades — trying to fit yourself into systems that were never built with you in mind.  Schools, workplaces, communities designed around a narrow idea of what value and contribution look like.  

I know that some of you have been told, in one way or another, that you are too much. Too intense, too scattered, too quiet, too loud, too sensitive, too slow, too fast. I know that some of you internalized those messages for a very long time. And I know that some of you are still carrying the scars of them. 

I want you to know this: those judgments were never about your worth. They were about the limits of systems and the knowledge around you. 

Our workplaces, and our society at large, have not done enough. We have built professional cultures around a single, narrow view of how a mind is supposed to work, how a leader is supposed to communicate, how focus is supposed to look, how ambition is supposed to present itself. And in doing so, we have failed to see — truly see — what you bring to the table and what we have been missing out on.  

This is not your failure, this is ours. And it is time for change. 

What I see in you

What I know about neurodivergence is not from a textbook, but from the profound privilege of working alongside so many of you: 

I see the ADHD professional who can hyperfocus for six hours on a problem that no one else could crack — whose pattern recognition and creative leaps produce breakthroughs that linear thinkers simply cannot access. I see how the same mind that forgets the meeting time is holding fourteen simultaneous threads of a complex system that no one else has even noticed yet. 

I see the autistic colleague whose attention to detail and organization is extraordinary, whose commitment to fairness and honesty anchors entire teams,  who quietly and intently listens and takes in information from all parties and eloquently summarizes the point in one profound sentence, whose depth of expertise becomes the bedrock that products and organizations are built on — even when those same organizations hesitate or fail to provide basic accommodations that would allow such minds to do their best work.   

I see the person with sensory sensitivities who notices everything — not as a weakness, but as a form of profound attunement to the world. I see the anxious professional whose thoroughness and care are the reason the details get right. I see the quiet genius whose best ideas never made it into the meeting because they could not get a word in. 

The world is missing out. Not in a small way – in a staggering, irreplaceable way, and it’s time for the world to humbly reckon with it.

What can’t be ignored

I also want you to know that I see the very real challenges you face and the misunderstandings you have had to endure. 

I see the exhaustion of masking and making yourself uncomfortable so that others can remain comfortable. I see the grief of jobs lost, and the particular ache of unemployment: the hope of each new application, the silence, the rejection, and the gathering of courage to try again. I see relationships strained by misunderstandings and misinterpretations of your intent, blame for conflict and miscommunication, when the real problem is not you. 

The real problem is us. It is our judgment that blunt and direct speech is somehow impolite rather than honest and necessary. It is our discomfort with differences and nuances that are not familiar to us.  It is our failure to ask: who’s normal are we protecting? 

I know that many of you have traded your mental health for professional success— and that is not a trade anyone should ever have to make. You return home exhausted from hours of smiling, making eye contact, appearing pleasant and unbothered, holding back your thoughts, suppressing the very physical expressions — the stimming, the movement, the self-regulation — that your nervous system needs. None of that is weakness. All of it is labor. Invisible, relentless, uncompensated labor that takes a profound toll on your mental, emotional, and physical health. 

We must do better.

What I had to face within myself

As a neurotypical individual, or a “civilian”, I didn’t come into this knowing without some hard truths I had to see and face within myself and want you to know what you have taught me.   

First, that I needed to get honest about my own limitations. About the ways I, too, have been shaped by a neurotypical lens and the judgments I did not know I was carrying.   And the real kicker was how much I battled with accepting the things my mind simply cannot do (and being ok with it).  This is where I imagine my neurodivergent friends saying “yep, welcome to my life at 8 years old – I’ve always known I can’t do certain things other people can do”.   True advocacy does not begin with expertise — it begins with humility and looking within ourselves, first.  I had to reckon with my innate thought of “well, if I can do it, someone else can, too”.  I know, now, how very untrue that is and how harmful and damaging a thought like that is.   

What I now understand is that the very thing that neurotypical people, like me, need to practice most is the same humbling work that so many of you have been doing your entire lives — entering into another person’s world.  Learning to see through a different mind’s eyes.  Adapting, rather than expecting others to constantly absorb the cost of your comfort and to stop judging what is unfamiliar as unapproachable. 

It’s no surprise, then, that when organizational leaders are willing to join us in this work and learn with an intent to understand from someone else’s perspective, something remarkable happens. They don’t just become better managers of neurodivergent employees, they become better managers, parents, partners, siblings, friends, humans.   Ones that are more curious, more honest, more connected with what’s real.    

Neurodiversity does not just simply teach us how to build better workplace practices (that’s the bonus) — it teaches us what it actually means to intently connect to another person. And that is the answer to something far bigger than inclusion. It is the answer to deeper human connection, more meaningful relationships, and a more honest way of being and relating with one another. 

That is what is at stake. And that is why this work matters so much.

Our commitment to you

I hope this letter and your presence here at the inaugural Slowdown Summit remind you: you are never alone.   

Know that all of us, and our team at NeuroTalent Works, are with you and for you.   

We are committed to partnering with organizations to create conditions where your mind is not accommodated, but genuinely valued and uplifted.   

We are committed to being translators — building meaningful, real connections between the neurodivergent experience and workplace leaders who, together, have the opportunity to shift how things are done.   

We are committed to being creative practitioners of Universal Design, knowing that what is essential for some, is helpful for all.  

We are committed to bringing practical knowledge to leaders, teams, hiring managers, and the people who write job descriptions, lead performance reviews, design offices — so that the systems slowly, surely, begin to change with you in mind.

We are committed to standing alongside you, amplifying your voice, learning from you, accountable to you. 

Your place is here.  May you know just how much you contribute to the world, and that your heart and mind are valuable and needed, just as you are.

With deep respect, admiration, and commitment, 

Jessica Lee 

Co-Founder & Executive Director, NeuroTalent Works