Andy Hibel 0:04
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. I mean, we have all the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of Higher Ed Jobs.

Kelly Cherwin 0:11
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of Editorial Strategy. Today, we are lucky to have Judy Reilly with us. Judy joined the Wirth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Connecticut in May of 2021. Judy was charged with developing a center for new diversity and employment innovation in order to address the significant problem of unemployment for neurodivergent adults, individuals with differences in brain function and behavioral traits who are often blocked from employment opportunities and success have skills and talent to offer employers in creating the center. Judy is driving UConn's mission to be a national leader in creating the knowledge, programs and resources that will decrease these barriers to securing meaningful employment. As director, she leads based on her unique combination of knowledge of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurodivergent conditions and her business education and training. Judy is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts and MBA, and she holds a certificate in special education advocacy from William and Mary Law School. And I might add also that Judy is a former guest on our Higher Ed Careers interview. So thank you so much, Judy, for joining us today. We're happy to have you.

Judy Reilly 1:18
Thank you. Happy to be here again.

Kelly Cherwin 1:20
So, Judy, let's get started. So can you share a little bit more about yourself in your role as the director of the Center for the University and Employment at University of Connecticut?

Judy Reilly 1:27
Yeah, it's so many letters and words. I mean, people are always saying, can you please shorten the title of the center that we run? I'd be happy to. It's a privilege to be the director of the center, which is so unique and one of a kind. UConn wanted to take on the challenge that is seeming to be persistent for neurodivergent individuals. Got to get a little bit into the definition of what that is, but it's anybody who has a difference in their individual brain function or behavioral traits that's blocking them from employment that is commensurate with their talents. And so UConn stepped in and said, you know, we want to we want to take this on on a sort of systemic level and asked me to design and develop that. My background has been in the space of what we call now neurodiversity. But in the time that I was working in this with families and in education, it's technically learning disabilities. I hate the word disability. There's a lot of people who actually find a lot of empowerment in that, and they relate to that, but not everybody does. And I really like to focus on the strengths. But in any event, I was helping individuals as they navigated their development, you know, which 80, 90% of your day as a kid is going to be about school and friendships and are you hitting those milestones? And so I helped families navigate that both from a legal educational rights perspective and also a federal and state policy. And then we move really, it's the same population now, right? We're looking at adulthood, school ends, and you look at how do I launch my life and in what ways is it sort of analogous that the barriers and challenges you were finding in the educational system are also out there in different ways, but also similar ways in the employment system? So I really love that I've been able to take that professional career into the rest of people's lives and setting them up for success.

Kelly Cherwin 3:13
Yeah, sounds like what an honor for you to help design that center and I feel like they picked the right person to do that with your background.

Judy Reilly 3:20
Yeah, I hope so. I like to think so.

Andy Hibel 3:23
And I think just kind of following up just a little bit, obviously, you kind of said it well, there's a lot of words we just put out there. And for folks who are listening to the podcast a short while ago, I would have been one of them. When you start hearing about nerd diversity and you start talking, you mentioned a few things within there. But is there a better way for people to best understand what neurodiversity is, how it presents itself, which I understand is many different ways and just something a little bit more pragmatic for people to best understand what exactly we're talking about.

Judy Reilly 3:59
Absolutely. It's one of the first things that we address whenever we're talking to anyone from an educational aspect. So neurodiversity itself is a it's a noun, and it has to do with every human being on the planet. We all have cognitive differences and uniqueness is just like our our thumbprint, right? Our fingerprints. Now, within that, you're going to have a population that falls on the normal distribution curve to get into statistics. But if you're going to look at people's brains, they're going to say somewhere between 65 and 98% of people are going to perform a certain way, whether that's about how they pay attention, how they use language, their memory, all the different ways our brains function. And so the further you get away from what is called typical in those words can be very charged, normal and typical. But they're not. They're just facts about statistics. The more you behave in a way and think and perceive the world in a way that's just different from how the world is structured, so you become divergent. So neurodiversity has to do with our whole species, and it's a strengths based perspective to say, Hey, we need all of these differences, just like biodiversity exists for a reason. We need all of these brain differences in order to thrive and innovate and evolve as a species. But with neuro divergence, you're going to have to also be considered about how we structure things like in this case, employment hiring practices, managerial practices, retention strategies and all that, so that you're understanding behavioral differences that are not wrong. They they are they're not to be misunderstood. But when people aren't educated, they are they are often misunderstood. So neurodiversity is one concept. Neurodiverse is an adjective, and it refers to a group of people. This conversation has four or five people in it. This is a neurodiverse group, right? Neurodivergent really refers to an individual, and that's to indicate that somebody is falling sort of outside the norm in enough of a way that it's causing some barriers or challenges. It's also creating tremendous strengths and talents and unique biases, and that's what we try to balance out and neurotypical is the fourth word, I will tell you, and you're going to hear that as a way to contrast somebody who isn't falling outside the norm. Is neurotypical probably not going to struggle as much to just sort of cope with the way the world is built as opposed to being neurodivergent. One last thing I'll say here is sometimes people really appreciate just from a learning aspect kinds of labels or diagnoses or cognitive considerations, and so you don't need to know what those are in order to be a good human and understand Neurodivergent But we're talking about, you know, cognitive profiles like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, non-verbal learning, disability, Tourette syndrome. So there's any number of of diagnosable profiles that can fall under the label of Neurodivergent. It really just has to do with the barriers you're finding that block you from a successful adult life.

Kelly Cherwin 6:59
Thank you for that fantastic background. I mean, that that definition or definitions was outstanding. So it sets the stage so well for our conversations.

Andy Hibel 7:09
I don't want to say if you stop listening to the podcast now, you just got something though, because we want you to continue to listen. You know.

Kelly Cherwin 7:16
I think the same thing. If anyone takes away, just listen to that definition right there, that paragraph say.

Judy Reilly 7:21
Well, let's just do it all again and just just repeat the whole time. Exactly. Yeah.

Andy Hibel 7:28
Once again, thank you for that, that wonderful definition. I think as we look further down the conversation, I think a good just a basic question that I'm curious about is within the general population of the United States, how prevalent are are those neurodivergent traits within the general population?

Judy Reilly 7:47
Yeah, that's a great question and it really helps kind of frame up how many people we're talking about. It is safe to say, even though statistics vary and also the research itself is nascent, that one in five people, so that's 20% of our population fits the criteria for a diagnosable neurodivergent condition. I don't know if you want to click condition. I hate saying, you know, disorder or disability, so I generally stick with difference. But in terms of the people who don't have those evaluations, they don't have the privilege of that kind of assessment. We think that the number might be a lot higher. What I like to focus people on is it's really not about whether somebody has a diagnosis or a label or even knows that they're identifying with something that has to do with their brains. Neurodivergent What matters is three pillars of a successful adult life. You need to be able to get and keep a job. How badly are you struggling with that? Despite being average to well above average intelligence, you need to be able to get and keep at least one social connection that's meaningful. All of us do. How badly are you struggling with that and finally being able to live independently aligned with your intelligence and aptitude? How badly are you struggling with that? So we really look at it as a degree of struggle and challenge as indicating how many people are sort of indicative of the problem and the size of the population right now is 15 to 20%.

Andy Hibel 9:14
Thank you. So if you're currently about to head to meeting your department or in your college and there's ten folks in that meeting now, they might meet some of those criteria. Obviously, they have a job. They're living independently, they have social connections. But if you're looking at that, you could have two coworkers that have some neurodiverse traits and how they process information and how they look at the world, some challenges and gathering information and some strengths and gathering information compared to compare to others. That's different than than the other folks. Yep. What would you say to those folks who have now said, Oh, maybe, maybe I need to be more present about this? What's the best way when you're working with a colleague who is neurodivergent to be able to best and effectively work with them?

Judy Reilly 10:08
Oh my gosh, I love that question. The primary behavior that humans who don't know better and haven't become educated about narrative engines do is avoid sometimes judge. And I don't mean that like in a critical way, but you'll label and interpret behaviors a certain way that maybe you find unfamiliar or different. And what we do with unusual is, is like I said, we we avoid or we other and when you become educated. So my action word there is become educated in what is neurodivergent How does it show up? Oh. Huh. That behavior looks like it could be. I don't need to know. I can just leave open the room for the possibility that what I'm seeing is different than what I would normally have a knee jerk response to assuming it is right. So somebody who processes language more slowly or somebody who's using communication in a more abrupt way, those are again, I don't like to paint with a bad broad brush, but somebody who maybe needs extra time getting things done, multiple reminders or tasks that you feel frustrated because you think, well, I already told them how to do it. Why aren't they just doing it in the end, you think lots of sort of frustrating negative things in your mind. If you understand Neurodivergent, you'd say to yourself, Oh shoot, that must that must be hard for that person. How can I help more? And you would just instinctively offer the types of things that would help. So a colleague who's not getting that research paper section done, you might say, Hey, would it help if we did? We wrote during, you know, during the same time, there's all sorts of techniques you could come up with anything that says, Do we need to break that down into smaller chunks or do you need more check ins, whatever the situation is, maybe it's not even something you need to change. It's just a way you need to be more empathic about someone's social behaviors. So it's the education that says to you that you learn, Why are these things showing up the way they show up? And oh, those aren't personality defects. Those are just different kinds of brains. And so it allows you to really be a more empathic and supportive individual.

Kelly Cherwin 12:10
I love that. And I love the fact that you stated that want to be educated. So I know in our Higher Ed Chris interview that we referenced last year, we talked about a lot of how faculty and staff can assist students. I want to use the right word, you know, and be, like you said, more empathetic. But on the flip side of like the leadership or h.r. Or, you know, dealing with colleagues are there there can resources out there. Are there training sessions? Emmanuel you may give like personal examples of like, hey, do you need more time on that? But are there recommendations you have for college and universities to kind of implement another source for this education?

Judy Reilly 12:42
Well, it's funny, I hate to self-promote, I really do. But because there isn't a lot of education, there's a lot of people doing this work and there's a lot of individual consultants. And we could probably provide you all with a list that you can provide listeners so that they can dabble. But really what we've done as a center is found that that's a big gap. And so we've created a curriculum for organizations that really is just that. It is help us as an organization, broadly understand and this this concept of neurodivergent how it's going to show up in the workplace, whether it's an academic institution or a corporation. How is it going to show up, maybe even in our hiring practices, in how we screen people and how we decide who makes or doesn't make it to the interview around? Right. All these ways that you might be misunderstanding someone's talents because you don't understand or divergence. And then we give them the toolkit for saying, okay, here are the things that you can do differently. Sometimes those get audience specific, like, are we talking about as a manager? Or maybe if you're the supervisor in a department and you have a neurodivergent faculty underling, are we talking about staff? You know, it really kind of depends. What you do sort of depends on your role in your relationship to others. But again, it goes back to having the education to say these behaviors are showing up and I no longer have to just assume something uneducated about what that is or how that person's performance is. They're not lazy. They're not negligent. They want the job. They're probably very anxious about telling you that they're struggling in a particular way because generally it's been met with an uneducated response. So we have a curriculum that we have put out now through the center. That's our excellence in neurodiversity curriculum. But I can also share lots of other resources where people can learn about it.

Kelly Cherwin 14:33
Great. Thank you. Again, we'll list those.

Andy Hibel 14:35
You mentioned anxiety. I just wanted to touch a little bit on anxiety and see how much does anxiety play into Neurodivergent.

Judy Reilly 14:43
Listen, I wish I could say it doesn't because it's one of the most challenging aspects of being neurodivergent and it's so embedded in the experience, but it's one of the four behaviors that we talk about with organizations and schools, how it's going to show up. And we talk about four of them and anxiety is one. So I'd love to just sort of couch it in. Those four physical behaviors have to do with things that we're going to see, you know, that might be stimming or it might be tics, it might be a sensory issue. We talk about social communication behaviors, where you're going to have differences in how you're social preferences or the way you talk, or maybe it's written language or verbal language. We talk about something called executive functioning, which is really your ability to take in information and independently execute on a goal. And then finally, we talk about anxiety and emotional regulation. So two pieces to that. There is an innate baseline that is much higher for somebody whose brain is wired differently for having heightened anxiety. So you're already starting with a nervous system that's kind of prone toward anxiety, and then you proceed as a child and then a young adult and then an adult in a world that continues to misunderstand you and judge you and really have a disability deficit lens on your differences, your anxiety goes through the roof because you assume people expect you to fail. You get into a workplace situation. And like I was saying, maybe you're too anxious to bring up how you're struggling because that has just been reinforced in your life. When you enter an environment or a workspace where an organization has gone out of its way to make it known that, hey, no divergence, we understand it, we get it like through messaging, through people being kind and getting educated. It gets normalized. The candidates and the job seekers that we have worked with, it's an incredible relief and it drives their performance so much higher because they can put down so much of that worry. So it's an unfortunate baseline that's made worse by uneducated bias. Really.

Kelly Cherwin 16:44
Gosh, I hope everyone I hope everyone listen to this podcast.

Andy Hibel 16:47
And stop listening after the first 5 minutes and just got that.

Kelly Cherwin 16:51
Yeah. Now I do.

Judy Reilly 16:53
Want to tell them we're giving away cars at the end.

Andy Hibel 16:56
We are not giving away cars. We cannot say.

Judy Reilly 16:58
That.

Kelly Cherwin 17:01
So Judy, you reference candidates who, you know, are looking at institutions that are organizations that might put it out there that they are welcoming and understand that and are trying to be educated about it. So, you know, looking from a job seeker perspective, are there some common questions they should ask? Are there some things that they should look at to determine if that that campus is inclusive and fosters a sense of belonging for neurodivergent individuals as a student.

Judy Reilly 17:25
Or job seeker.

Kelly Cherwin 17:26
From a job seeker?

Judy Reilly 17:28
So just as with almost any type of organization, but certainly college or a campus as well, the best advice we give is that somebody can we always have candidates really come up with their own expression of their narrow divergence in terms of the strengths and also in terms of some of the differences, maybe differences that are going to be challenging that the person is going to experience either in the hiring process or in the role in the job. And we like them to lead with that, regardless of what the interview or the traditional conventional process that the organization has set up, that's fine. But at some point we want them to take that and say, Look, I learn differently. They don't have to talk about diagnoses or labels, but they can just say, I wanted you to know that I learned differently. And here's what that means in the context of this interview, but also in the context of the role I'm about to have. And then they educate them about why that is, you know, and it doesn't have to be because I have OCD. It can be I generally need more time to finish this or I do better on tasks like this, but they have to learn that about themselves first. So all of our work with candidates is them around that self-awareness and that empowerment piece that says, Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. It's not going to sugarcoat it. You do have challenges with X, Y, and Z and you're going to get better with time. If you're in an environment that's patient and understanding and supportive rather than like you mess up your app. So whether that's in an interview or you get the job. So we teach candidates how to communicate their profile and their own uniqueness and differences and strengths approach, and that educates the organization really. We teach them. Watch how the response is. If you say, you know, I struggle with having questions put to me without an ability to review them in advance. And the company says, Well, I'm sorry, that's how we do it. We're always like, That's a red flag, because a lot of companies or organizations or employers will respond very favorably. And you'll see that as a like a green light, you know, So we have them ask for things that are incredibly reasonable and we see what the organization responds to. They say, okay, but you have to go through our formal accommodations process and it's 17 steps, infrastructure, 13 different people, and it's all these, okay, there's that and then there's the Sure, No, that's no problem. Let me check with person one and person two and we'll get that to you. That's what you want is an environment of flexibility because we can't expect an employer to know what they don't know yet. And so we try to enlist the Neurodivergent community to help us with that education piece.

Andy Hibel 19:59
I think that's such an important point just in general for anyone who's applying for a job. Everybody's like, Well, the goal is to get a good job. Well, that is the ultimate goal, but a very big part of that process is not taking the wrong job.

Judy Reilly 20:14
Yeah.

Andy Hibel 20:14
I know there's such a rush to getting a job that appears to be good, which by all measures can be, but it might not be a good job for you. And that seems like that would absolutely be amplified for somebody who is divergent and is looking for the right job for them. And just what we tried to just preach is just patience, patience with yourself, patience with the process. And that statement almost sounds like what you're trying to be as transparent with yourself about what it is that you're looking for and seeing what the reaction is. And will that lead to possibly not getting the job? It perhaps may, but in that situation, that's not a job that you necessarily want it right.

Judy Reilly 20:57
And I completely agree. I think the tough part of that is the reality of not getting that job is too many organizations don't understand or diverge. And so they can't take advantage of that person even when the person's doing that kind of work. So our center really is we're so all over the employer side, whether it's a university or college or whether it's a corporation or a small business, we need them to meet candidates halfway. It is hard to self advocate, but when you're self advocate in to an environment that doesn't care enough to even know about this, much less value it, and then implement changes like we got it. The work is really like 90% on the employer side.

Kelly Cherwin 21:40
So, Judy, I'm going to reference back to the hired careers interview that you did last year for us, and we had a question in there. But for those of the listeners that haven't had a chance to read this, I'll ask it again here because your response was so great. So I want to make sure we get that out there. So why is it that new diversity is often overlooked in college and university DEI efforts? And what are some actions that colleges and universities can do to better serve this population?

Judy Reilly 22:04
Well, I'm really happy to say that since we spoke last year, this has just taken off across campuses and there are more and more neurodiversity initiatives and efforts, whether they have to do with career readiness or just identity or academic support and understanding. What we're finding is we're shifting that narrative away from something to mask and hide into something to be really kind of proud of and empowering. So what can schools do is they need to make it more part of the message in their diversity and inclusion, you know, narratives or branding or activities. Just like in companies, they really have to expand the definition of diversity to include neurodiversity. But again, that kind of is just now bubbling. It's not even just now bubbling up. I feel like it's everywhere right now. And colleges, too, are really the flood of college students who are kind of the groundswell of realizing, I think partly because of things like what UConn's doing, which is empowering them to say, Hey, listen, your diversity, this is an advantage in lots of ways, and it's the first time in their lives they're hearing that. And so really aggregating the students and recent alumni and getting them together, it's just wonderful to be in live events with them where they're like, I can't believe this is happening. Like, this is the first time in my life that I'm being heard and and valued for my differences instead of othered. We do panels regularly with neurodivergent college students and and adults who've been hired by companies who value their neurodiversity and have done things differently because of it. And you just cry every time because it's it's been a long time coming. So I think it needs to be said more. It needs to be part of the, you know, campaigns and just more part of the conversation.

Kelly Cherwin 23:50
I think you referenced earlier that I'm not sure if this was if we were talking about this recording, but it has to be more than just, you know, words on the paper. It has to be truly, you know, more than just, you know, a statement. You have to have actions behind it. So.

Judy Reilly 24:02
Yeah, we probably did. And I will say this also, you're very right on that note, we have a lot of organizations that will come to us and they'll say, okay, we're ready to do this. This sounds like a really good thing to be doing. We're ready to do this. So how do we tap into Neurodivergent candidates? And I was like, okay, well, I love that you want to do this, but you have to actually change some of the things and you have to educate yourself. So you're right. I think campuses to staff and faculty are eager to learn what this means. There's one in 36 and this is not just about autism, although neurodiversity as a term was coined in the 1990s aligned with the autism community, it's no longer that, as we talked about, it's a huge umbrella of neuro differences, but you have to understand value and then make changes in order to really embrace this.

Andy Hibel 24:49
And I think you said earlier that if you're the employer, the university being the employer, if you're starting at zero, 90% of the work ahead is for you to do and obviously 10% is from the employees. However, if you see the value in this, there's such a wonderful resource for your community. If you're able to have your community do that work, and if you do that work, you're going to receive the benefit of what those efforts will have. We'd be remiss because this was also a question from the interview. In early 2023, in higher ed careers, we had asked what is the university Council for Near Diversity Employment that UConn has launched and how can other colleges and universities get involved who may be interested in doing something like this?

Judy Reilly 25:38
Oh, I love that we have had such interest in so many colleges and schools across the country join us. What that is, is a council of universities and colleges who want to work collectively to standardize some of the ways that we can engage and aggregate the populations affiliated with our campus who say I'm neurodivergent right, because it's hard to help and support and deliver opportunity to those who are hiding in the shadows. And so there needs to be this empowerment. And so what we do is with these council schools, we have a candidate network that goes across all schools that any student or recent alumni can join. And that way then we have an audience to whom we can deliver education and empowerment and hey, what does my nerd diversity have to do with the job search anyway? You know, what do I do about my resume? Or like we talked about how do I from a job seeker perspective, you know, what can I do to ask if a campus or an employer is inclusive of me? So all those questions that they have, we work across all these schools so that they are not all reinventing the wheel. So any college or university can go to our website and join our university council and sort of join the practices that we're trying to implement around career readiness, understanding and empowerment. And then the final piece is connecting these candidates with the companies who are doing the work, because that's that's what we want to do, is make sure that we're maximizing that connection.

Andy Hibel 27:05
And how many members of the council do you currently have?

Judy Reilly 27:08
Last I checked, we were either right about at 90 colleges and universities or just over. I can't remember. It changes so freaking every time we do sort of an event where there's schools there, people join us because there's just a lot of resources in terms of what they can have to reinvent. Like just take the council work and implement it at your school or have your students join a meeting that's met students from lots of different schools. It doesn't have to be that you have to host everything individually.

Andy Hibel 27:34
And I would point out when you did the higher ed careers a year ago, that number was 50. And I'd also be remiss I love this from the interview, so I want to make sure we say it exactly. You can't leeds the council because we don't just want to fix things on our campus. We're committed to affecting change across colleges and universities. This is one of those things I think is absolutely part of what makes working at a college or university great is when universities really do care about effecting change within their institution and society. Lots of great things have happened in our world because of that, and it's great to see UConn taking the lead to do that.

Judy Reilly 28:15
So thank you.

Kelly Cherwin 28:16
Yes, kudos.

Andy Hibel 28:18
I want to close with one question because it kind of struck me that if you listen to this entire conversation and you're really interested in learning more and you're engaged, but you may be wondering just a bit, maybe there's parts of my neuro typical makeup that isn't quite what I thought it was, and I'm not quite sure where where I may be. What would your advice be to somebody who might suspect that maybe they've they've lived their lives not always neurotypical and want to learn more about their own neurodiversity.

Judy Reilly 28:50
So there's a couple of answers there. So if somebody is concerned and somebody really they're having some struggles in their life and they're thinking maybe this has to do with the way I've always X or I've always, you know, experience this challenge, they may want to consider a professional evaluation from what we call a neuropsychologist, an education psychologist, as a licensed psychologist who who run them through not just like it's not like a talk therapy session, you really do go through a set of tests of your cognitive functions, which are then, like I said, mapped onto that that bell curve so that you can say, do I fall sort of inside the normal of that function, like maybe it's attention or language or memory or any number of cognitive functions, or am I really actually kind of an outlier? And that would explain so much for me and help me so much. So there's the informal evaluation where you can go to your doctor, you can go and find a psychologist and and get that kind of evaluation done. But in other ways, I think that the beauty of the growing awareness about neurodiversity is just the abundance of information that there is online written by people in the neurodivergent community, for people in the Neurodivergent community. And if you start to recognize yourself there, and if that's an identity that you're feeling like it really resonates with you, and it's more of that piece of things, then I, I recommend that avenue. Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that, you know, if you're in an employment setting and you need an accommodation that's formal, you really do need a formal diagnosis still in order to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. But that's just not always the case that that that's why people want to know sometimes they just want to know to understand themselves better. So there are lots of resources online too. For again, they're not necessarily certified or credentialed, but they can help you. You can take quizzes and tests where you can sort of say, Hey, this really helps me understand myself better. At the end of the day, though, what you're going to want to do is then help others understand you because it's about neurotypical people, not misunderstanding you that really makes or breaks your life. Success and peace, contentment.

Kelly Cherwin 30:56
I think it's a perfect way to summarize the podcast.

Andy Hibel 30:59
So thank you so very much for spending time with us and sharing so, so much. If you have any questions for Judy or for us, please feel free to send us a message on Acts at Higher ed careers or email us at podcast at higher ed jobs dot com.

Kelly Cherwin 31:16
Thanks, Judy.

Judy Reilly 31:17
Thank you.

Andy Hibel 31:18
Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon.