Neurodiversity in the Workforce: Alan Thomalla Of ABC Resources On Why It’s Important To Include Neurodiverse Employees & How To Make Your Workplace More Neuro-Inclusive
An Interview With Eric Pines
Most people want to hang out with people with whom they feel a kindred spirit or with whom they have things in common. For example, high level managers tend to be more similar than different. Another way to approach this, however, is to include people by developing a team spirit that celebrates our differences. Celebration of diversity becomes our kindred spirit and the things we build in common are tolerance and appreciation of those differences. Leadership drives our kindred spirit and managers must develop the things and experiences we hold in common by building up and supporting everyone on the team.
Research suggests that up to 15–20% of the U.S. population is neurodivergent. There has been a slow but vitally important rise in companies embracing neurodiversity. How can companies support neurodiversity in the workplace? What are some benefits of including neurodiverse employees? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about “Neurodiversity in the Workforce”. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Alan Thomalla.
Dr. Anthony Alan Thomalla, Ph.D., HSPP is a graduate of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He is a licensed psychologist in multiple states and has a thriving private practice. Although, a diplomate in clinical forensic psychology, his private practice tends to gravitate towards marriage and family therapy, LGBTQ+ issues, and the assessment and treatment of individuals on the autism spectrum.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are?
I had worked most of my career in and around Chicago, mostly in northwest Indiana. Go Notre Dame! I was a mid-west, Bulls loving, boy through and through. Then, about ten years ago I had the opportunity to work as a locums psychologist in Lander, Wyoming, which is this beautiful little tourist community situated right at the foot of the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains, between Denver and Yellowstone. I had never lived in a climate quite like that before and it was fascinating.
Well, I went all in. I did the contract work at the facility, stayed on as an employee, spent my weekends up in the mountains hunting and shooting the cornucopia of wildlife out in the wilderness with my trusty Nikon. I just fell in love: Pronghorn, big horned sheep, moose, mule deer, grizzly bears, sandhill cranes, indigo buntings, just everything. I even decided to open an art gallery right there in Lander in November of 2019. I was obsessed. We weren’t even in the tourist season yet and the first month was amazing. So much business! December was remarkable, January was rock solid, so I decided to tender my resignation and went guns-a-blazing with the gallery. As soon as I did this though, you started hearing these little echoes about this thing called COVID. How it was really bad. How it was fundamentally and frightfully different than SARS from a few years earlier. People were literally starting to panic. February business dropped off significantly. March was like crickets and business was like falling off a cliff. I got really scared. I just quit my job and there was no end to this COVID thing in sight. Yes, there was talk of a vaccine almost immediately but, working in healthcare, I knew vaccines took, on average, six years to develop.
My leaving a good job before I had a private practice fully developed, was based upon income projections from the gallery for the equivalent of one full non-tourist season quarter. That was great! But that was then and this was a whole new different now. I was now staring down the barrel of an all-new reality where people were staying home in droves and buying survival provisions, not art. There were some family health concerns cropping up too and I needed to find a job. Fast. With the blessing of my landlord, I closed down the gallery and called some fabulous people at the Columbus Organization, a healthcare staffing firm, who immediately were able to place me in a new job back in Indiana. I packed up the gallery, packed up my house, and started driving across the country just as the stay-at-home orders were being issued. I even got stopped outside of Chicago and was questioned why I was out driving on I-80/90 during a stay-at-home order. When they realized I was moving and did not currently have a home, they sent me on my way. It probably helped that I was headed away from Chicago. Ultimately, I have found coming home to Indiana to be quite refreshing. Wyoming was great but probably fosters more rough individualism than is good for me and Indiana has a better sense of community.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
You could probably get a psychologist to talk for a few hours about traits versus habits, but that would be boring reading. Let me just say, there are a few operating principles that I think have been important in shaping who I am as a leader and as a person. Principle One: don’t give up on a good idea. I have told my employees and my own children that I have often made up in persistence what I lack in brilliance. You may not know how to manage a thing and may fail. That’s OK. That’s how we learn. If you have a positive belief about something, however, just keep coming back to it and try again. Eventually, it will work out if you keep addressing the problems.
Secondly, we all procrastinate and avoid things sometimes. Be that as it may, maximize the process. Principle Two: Don’t allow procrastination to be an excuse to do nothing or waste time. If you are going to avoid something replace it with something else that needs to get done. I have told people that I learned to compose music by avoiding trigonometry. There is probably more truth in that statement than I’d like to admit! As it turns out, learning expressive arts served me better at that time in my life. Still, principle one applies, I eventually, did learn how to glean missing information from triangles.
Finally, the lesson that took me the longest to learn in my life is that I don’t have to do everything myself to be successful. Principle Three: Knowing your own strengths and limitations so you know when to tap people more talented in something than you. This does not show weakness, it shows confidence and leads to better success.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work-related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
Well, I have not yet shared this yet, but there is no time like the present, so let me just share now that I have always swum in the shallow end of the autism spectrum pool. I think about things differently than most people which is generally a good thing. It’s a net positive. I do not see my own neurodiversity as a disability as much as I see it as just being differently abled. Somehow, people think of neurodifferences as being fundamentally different, but they are not. If I would struggle to fling my body around parallel bars like Shilese Jones no one would say I am disabled, just not an Olympic athlete. On the other hand, if I struggle with something along the lines of dyscalculia, which often occurs with autism, people are rushing in to discuss my disability as opposed to saying I am just not a mathematician.
I discovered that I had a form of dyslexia that only affects numbers when I was in college. In high school I avoided mathematical offerings like Trig because I was just not good at math, but I did not know why. In college I learned why I struggled with math while visiting the university counseling center but now I had a reason to avoid math. Ha! When I got into graduate school, however, I could no longer avoid math because I had to make it through several tiers of statistics. Think Principle Two. The emergence of digital calculators helped tremendously while doing homework but not during tests. When I would explain that I struggled with dyscalculia to some professors and showed them that if you rearranged the digits in my answers, they were always the right answers. Other professors would say too bad, it’s the wrong answer and we can’t have psychologists with learning disabilities in the field. Seriously?! I taught myself some self-checking strategies, though, and was able to move beyond elementary statistics into multiple analysis of variance, regression, and meta-analysis without a hitch. Think Principle One.
As I entered the field of psychology as a practitioner, I continued to struggle with dyscalculia. It was less frequent, because I was not crunching high-end statistics everyday as I did in graduate school, but the stakes were higher. The numbers I was now dealing with directly affected the patients that I was serving and accuracy was critical. I decided I needed help. Think Principle Three. I discussed my challenge with an old professor Dr. Wayne Kassera who asked me, “As a psychologist, what are you good at?” I told him that I was good at problem solving and helping people find unique solutions to on-going problems. His response was, “Well, then, there you go.” This struck me as so painfully obvious that it was hilarious. I then turned my attention to my own problem and studied it like I would any patient with whom I worked. I started gathering data and found some patterns in my process. I never scrambled two or three digit numbers, only four digit numbers or higher. It also became apparent that I did not really scramble digits in a random fashion but rather did so in a specific pattern. The first digit is unphased, but I switched the two middle digits. Let’s say if I was given a phone number such as 877–1494, which is mine by the way, I would write down 877–1944. The patterns were a bit more complicated than just what I have outlined here but you get the idea. I was ultimately able to develop an algorithm that I auto applied while writing down numbers that helped me to overcome my dyscalculia in the same manner auto correct in a word-processing app helps other people spell better.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
For the past few years, I have been doing assessments with children whose families are seeking services subsequent to challenges with behavior, socialization, and communication. It is very rewarding helping kids get the types of services that are most appropriate for them. Some children are found to be on the autism spectrum and require ABA services. Some kids struggle with ADHD and need strategies for focus and concentration. Other children struggle with depression or anxiety and benefit from play therapy or other services. I am also very excited about working on a musical project entitled Neurodiversity. It is a musical about autism, ADHD, and OCD’s contribution to the arts. If you are interested in a tale about the challenges of someone being on the autism spectrum and their subsequent disability you will be disappointed in this story. Neurodiversity is a celebration of triumph.
Fantastic. Let’s now shift to our discussion about neurodiversity in the workforce. Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience working with initiatives to include neurodiverse employees? Can you share a story with us?
Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a broader approach to this question. Let me first challenge your readers to ask themselves, “what is neurodiversity?” Under what circumstances would it be beneficial to have someone in your orbit who thinks about things differently than you do? How about a partner who knows you well and will call you out on your shit when it gets out of hand? How about someone who knows how to set your product in front of people and make them not only open to purchasing it, but dying to pay you more than its worth to have the opportunity to have it? These people not only have skills but a different way of processing information that you do not possess. You could, however, benefit from their cognitive differences. You cannot have managers in an organization who are threatened by people who do not think as they do. That creates divisiveness and creates victims. Think about this: In our country’s early history we were mostly an agricultural society. Children who were up at the crack of dawn, getting into this project and then that project, and running around the farm taking in everything all at once, were highly valued. They were hands-on-everywhere-at-once workers. It was only when we wanted children to sit in chairs eight hours a day that we decided these behaviors were a disorder and called it ADHD. People want to work and are drawn to certain kinds of activities. To have an initiative to hire 20% more neurodiverse employees is misguided. Rather we need managers who are confident to allow people to play with and explore the whole farm and not just politely sit in a chair eight hours a day. Think Principle Three. The initiatives that I have promoted involve first, educating organizations, especially managers, about the need for neurodiversity in the workplace, and secondly, creating environments that promote and support workplace diversity in general.
This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have an inclusive work culture?
Well, let me paint you a picture. I knew a psychiatrist who had a colleague who grew-up in a small village high in the Alps of Bavaria. She said that the boys in this village were smart and strong. They were very confident and when they were called off to war during WWI they all had dreams of victorious returns to their community to be heralded as brave heroes. Instead, every last one of them died within a year. Not because of injuries sustained in fighting but because they died of infection. Living in the clean mountain air made them strong for sure but their immune systems were not prepared for the onslaught of viruses, bacteria, and disease that awaited them down in the crowded valleys and trenches below. They lacked exposure to different elements that made their valley counterparts stronger over time. Exposure to diversity of all kinds, including neurodiversity, make for stronger teams that can adapt to changing conditions, to survive, and to thrive.
Can you share a few examples of ideas that were implemented at your workplace to help include neurodiverse employees? Can you share with us how the work culture was affected as a result?
Again, I would like to step back and answer this question from a broader perspective. In the United States I think the inklings of openness to neurodiversity started with American Literature in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Authors like Hunter Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, George Orwell, Mark Twain, and Harriett Beecher Stow paved the way for readers to question conventional thought. They were only able to reach people who could read, of course, and were not thought of as neurally diverse. They were just seen as morally driven, unique geniuses, or perhaps just members of the tortured poets department. The next stage of tolerance of neurodiversity came in the mid 1900’s conjointly through music and comedy. Musicians like David Byrne, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Little Richard, along with comics like Rosanne Barr, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Lenny Bruce again questioned conventional thought and offered alternative perspectives. These artists appeared to bring tolerance of multiple diversities to more of the common folk making people feel “they are talking about me in all my beautiful weirdness.” In the process many of these artists were tagged as members of the counter culture and actively opposed by conventional systems. I believe the next bump for understanding and accepting neurodiversity came with the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, spearheaded by Bob Dole and signed into law by George Bush. This law essentially stated that if an individual has a disability but can perform a work task with reasonable accommodation then the employer is obligated to make such accommodation. The goal was to get people off of Social Security Disability and other supportive systems by supporting them to be able to work. Despite this law often focusing on physical disabilities it has paved the way for more neurodiversity in the American workplace. Mind you, despite building a more diverse workforce it came at the cost of receiving accommodation only by proclaiming to your employer that you are disabled. Personally, I will not endorse a disability on a job application. I do not accept that I have a disability. I will not feel comfortable doing so until people who do not identify as neurodiverse are forced to say that because of their racism, sexism, and patriarchal perspectives they require reasonable accommodation for all low-wage exploitive positions. With each of the aforesaid cultural developments we always tend to take two steps forward and one step back. We are better off than we were a hundred years ago but will not be a healthy society until all people identify as being on the neurodiversity spectrum and reasonable accommodation is just part of daily business that leads to more diversity and stronger teams. I spend a great deal of time in the UK and, regardless of any other dynamic, they seem to be far ahead of us on this issue.
What are some of the challenges or obstacles to including neurodivergent employees? What needs to be done to address those obstacles?
Wow. I have to tell you I cringe at that word. Neurodivergent? How is it that if we talked about racialtypical and racialdivergent people it would start a riot but it’s OK to talk about neurotypical and neurodivergent people? Most of the people on the autism spectrum that I work with hate being called “neurodivergent,” “divergents,” or “neurodives” and will often retaliate by referring to annoying “neurotypical” people as “neurotyps” or “typicals” as in “that was stupid…that was typical.” Think of neurodiversity as the color wheel. It’s not linear and its not dualistic. There are no typical or divergent colors and the best pictures generally have a broad range of color. Get over the notion that you are doing a good deed or doing someone a favor by allowing them to work for you if they do not think as you do. Most people want to work at something they feel passionate about. Think of having neurodiversity in your workforce as an effort to be a stronger more adaptive team. Don’t think of it as, “Hey we got a few token ‘neurodivergents’ down on the third floor, would you like to see them?” You will never have an effective team if you think of neurodiversity means having neurodivergents hanging around just to solve the hard tech problems or for researching case law. Hire people who are good at needed tasks not people who fit your stereotype of what “neurodivergents” should look and act like. Once you hire anyone, invest in their success by making them feel valued and comfortable. It’s really that simple.
How do you and your organization educate yourselves and your teams on the concept of neurodiversity and the needs of neurodivergent employees? Are there any resources, training, or workshops that you have found particularly helpful?
I typically have people read a synopsis of the Americans with Disabilities Act. If there are people who need reasonable accommodation in your workplace, I encourage them to just do it. Beyond that, people tend to not do things that they do not see as directly benefiting them or their brands. As such, in addition to reading about laws and policies regarding things they are obligated to do, I have them learn about things to help them understand the benefits of building a neurodiverse workforce. I have articles and presentations about how Seiko revolutionized the watch industry for two decades in the 1970’s and 1980’s and dethroned the great Swiss watch makers by changing their thinking about what a timepiece was. I have similar materials about how Temple Grandin single handedly changed the food industry forever by looking at production and handling from a different perspective. I have them explore how Steve Jobs changed the computer, music, and animation industries by changing how designers and consumers thought about products. You cannot just hire someone on the autism spectrum and expect to revolutionize your industry and increase profitability. If you have broad neurodiversity, which typically goes hand in hand with general diversity, you will have a better chance, however, of fostering the innovative thinking that builds revolutionary brands and profitability.
Can you please share five best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people who are neurodivergent?
1 . If you want to make your business feel welcoming to people who think differently from you, please, remove the term neurodivergent from your vocabulary. Neurodiversity, like the term racial diversity, is a valid concept. The only way the term neurodivergent can exist, however, is for there to be a neurotypical standard to which it is compared. There is not. Using the term reinforces the idea that there are right and wrong ways to think. There are not. Most people who struggle with ADHD, OCD, or are on the autism spectrum like to think of neurodiversity as being similar to the chromatic scale. There are no typical notes, no divergent notes, and the best songs celebrate all the sharps and flats. Composing a good team is all about harmoniously connecting a variety individuals with a compelling theme. Or, think of building a wall. If you want to build a weak wall, find stones that are alike and stack them in symmetrical columns. Don’t blame me when it crumbles. If you want to build a strong wall, alternate how the stones are stacked. If you want an even stronger wall, alternate the stacking of different sized stones with the heaviest and widest on the bottom and the smallest and lightest towards the top. Not every stone is identical and each stone plays to its own unique strength in relation to wall building. Team building can be weak or strong too.
2 . I think it is important to understand that most effective teams already have neurodiversity. It just often goes to waste. People recognize that some organizations have prescribed social norms and variance is discouraged. Workers must expend time, energy, and resources to appear cast in the desired mold to keep their jobs or to get ahead. If you truly want neurodiversity among your employees, first recognize that it already exists, encourage its expression, and foster it to flourish. Nothing says I support neurodiversity like actually supporting neurodiversity.
3 . People seeking a reasonable accommodation at work need to claim and document a disability as prescribed by the the Americans With Disabilities Act. Generally, the provision costs the business very little. Imagine how much diversity we could build on teams at all levels if we offered accommodation simply based on basic needs and preferences. Some companies fear variation amongst their staff because, if Sally gets X then, sure enough, John is going to also want X. OK. This is really a simple matter to address. If accommodation is requested, document and track it along with performance. If the accommodation is used and goals are met, sweet! Who cares? If it is not used or goals are not met, it goes away. Simple.
4 . As far as diversity goes, I have seen great companies doing terrible things because they rely on faulty automation. It’s the technology! A prejudice is an automatic thought that is based on faulty information. Systematic prejudice is an automated technology based on faulty information. Most performance tracking systems, for example, leave employees feeling unappreciated and managers feeling overwhelmed. Everyone is generating senseless verbiage into performance feedback systems because they have meaningless generic goals superimposed over strict deadlines. Most companies have managers and managing systems that cannot adapt to the reality of the goods, services, or structures of their business. There are good managerial trainings and AI assisted management systems available. Everyone is simply clinging to the status quo, however, just to keep the boat afloat when we could be building submarines. We need consultants, policy, and trained managers who understand these issues, the dynamics of their business, and implement the needed tools. When this happens businesses provide more accommodation, employees are satisfied, teams are stronger, and businesses profit.
5 . Most people want to hang out with people with whom they feel a kindred spirit or with whom they have things in common. For example, high level managers tend to be more similar than different. Another way to approach this, however, is to include people by developing a team spirit that celebrates our differences. Celebration of diversity becomes our kindred spirit and the things we build in common are tolerance and appreciation of those differences. Leadership drives our kindred spirit and managers must develop the things and experiences we hold in common by building up and supporting everyone on the team.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
I have always ascribed to the notion that, “no person, place, or thing is as good or as bad as another would make of them.” Our celebration or despair over life events is generally derived from our preconceptions not from the reality before us. Just try to see people and situations as they truly are and be open to positive possibilities.
The first time I heard the term autistic I was in elementary school. It was used to describe a kid who was non-communicative, violent, and I was told autistic people have to live their lives in institutions because they cannot live in the real world. Back then there was no spectrum to speak of and this was just what I learned it to be. I was not referred to as autistic for several more years, but I had many behaviors that would probably have been caught and treated in today’s world. I was socially inept and inappropriate. I did not look at people in their eyes. Rather than playing with most kids I designed rockets, electric rocking chairs, and spent hours creating things that no one understood or cared about. I struggled with transitions needing things to always be the same. I had emotional meltdowns especially when I succumbed to sensory overload. I was considered the spoiled unrealistic “baby” of the family, and I started masking without even knowing what this meant.
I grew up hiding my nature. I dared not let anyone see or know the real me. I would go to movies by myself and try to figure out how people were supposed to act. But these were not real people in real situations, so I just learned to play roles that kept people at a distance but close enough to appear socially connected. I would orchestrate events that people participated in and enjoyed but which I personally watched at a distance from outside. I think most people just thought of me as the deep, intelligent, and artistic guy whose grades were abysmal only because I refused to play their silly academic games. The truth of the matter is that I would have given anything to have been like my valedictorian brother. The only reason that I kept going to school was because I had no idea what I was supposed to do, my brothers were academically gifted, and I learned that I could make up with persistence what I lacked in brilliance. I was in graduate school before I was assessed by Dr. Frank Maglione, of the University of Illinois rehabilitation services, and he shared with me that his assessment indicated that I was autistic. I was having none of that and refused to even consider the possibility. Remember, I was taught autistic people had to be institutionalized. I continued to mask and act as if I was perfectly fine.
I remember when I was a young father and my children reached an age when they wanted to go visit the University Park Mall in South Bend-Mishawaka Indiana. I struggled to go into shopping malls because I was always overwhelmed by the sensory overload. But I thought, what father cannot take his kids to the shopping mall? Do you want to know what masking is? Masking is when you go into a mall and you have to go running out in a cold sweat about to have a rocking melt-down because you are overwhelmed by the lights, the sounds, the smells, the music, and the bustle of people. Then you realize you don’t want your kids to think you are a fool so you start driving around the mall late at night and early in the morning before you go to work so you can start to desensitize yourself to this noxious stimulus. You work up to parking, then on Tuesday afternoons when there are few people shopping you start to venture inside. You note where all the doors are, where each store is located, the location of each bathroom, lockers, where the floors transition from one level to another, and all the seats. Then you visit on busier days, and busier times, then start to increase the amount of time you stay. Finally, one Saturday, you say, “I have to pick-up something at the mall, do you kids want to come with?” I literally created a fear hierarchy, a systematic desensitization plan, and carried sunglasses and ear plugs in my pockets so I could act like I loved the mall, and my kids would have a common social experience. It was around this time that I was starting to consider that perhaps Dr. Maglione knew what he was talking about. I continued to mask, however, for much longer because I received feedback that people would not go to a psychologist who had such problems.
Finally, I came across something I had written on a piece of paper years earlier. Yes, my inner geek has kept steno pads of writings since grade school. This page simply said, “No person, place, or thing is as good or as bad as another would make of them.” At the time I think I was writing about how others condemned or worshiped things or people that were just things or people. I had never, however, applied this concept to myself. All I knew was that I was not happy pretending to the world that I was something that I was not because of the fear that I had about how people would react if they found out I was on the spectrum. This was the true disability, not autism. Once I embraced who I really was, I found I was much more creative, more productive, happier, and as it turns out, no one cared that I was on the spectrum. I was not dealing with the reality of my circumstances but rather with my own preconceptions and fears. We can learn to see the reality of situations and choose positive actions, or we can learn to keep hiding from the divine opportunities that life keeps setting before us. We just need to select which habits we choose to embrace.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I think one of the most important things our culture could do to support brain, and general, health is to stop eating highly processed foods and transition to organic living foods. Grow a garden! It’s hard to build healthy brains with fuel that is devoid of any true nutritional value. On a personal level, I am also in the middle of a project about which I am very excited. I am writing the music for a musical called neurodiversity which celebrates the contributions that neurodiversity has made to the arts. A subtheme is that we are all on a spectrum of neurodiversity and that the notion of a neurotypical vs. neurodivergent is what creates disability.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
www.facebook.com/dr.alan.thomalla
www.instagram.com/dr.alanthomalla?utm_source=qr&igsh=ZWh2Y2ljaGw2eHJw
www.linkedin.com/in/dr-alan-thomalla/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
Thank you for having this forum and conversation.
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Mr. Pines has also served as a mediator for numerous federal agencies including serving a year as the Library of Congress’ in-house EEO Mediator. He has also served as an expert witness in federal court for federal employee matters. He has also worked as an EEO technical writer drafting hundreds of Final Agency Decisions for the federal sector.
Mr. Pines’ firm is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices in Baltimore, Maryland and Atlanta, Georgia. His first passion is his wife and five children. He plays classical and rock guitar and enjoys playing ice hockey, running, and biking. Please visit his websites at www.pinesfederal.com and www.toughinjurylawyers.com. He can also be reached at eric@pinesfederal.com.
