Neurodiversity in the Workforce: Stacey Herman Of Kennedy Krieger Institute On Why It’s Important To Include Neurodiverse Employees & How To Make Your Workplace More Neuro-Inclusive

An Interview With Eric Pines

Communication is important as well, because it builds trust. When this young man’s store eventually closed, he was moved to another store very close by. Having a great service provider relationship helped with this transition and that’s where that communication came in.

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: Companies Including Neurodiverse Employees”. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Stacey Herman.

Stacey Herman is the assistant vice president of neurodiversity and community workforce development at Kennedy Krieger Institute. Her role includes the creation and supervision of programs designed to support individuals with disabilities as they transition to the workforce and access their community. Stacey is also a leading member of Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Neurodiversity Initiative, working with community leaders, business professionals, and policy makers to realize the Institute’s long-term goal of improving employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities.

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?

My background is in inclusive, elementary special education, where I worked with kids with disabilities. I then received a master’s in severe disabilities with a focus in autism. But even before that, what really got me into working with individuals with disabilities was my experience as a camp counselor. When I was 14, I had a camper with autism. He was three and I just really connected with him, and I worked with him through all his years of camp, even after I graduated from college. I actually provided some home schooling for him to support his education through his county schools.

From teaching, I eventually transitioned to working with teens and adults with disabilities through a nonprofit organization that designed vocational volunteering and community programming. That is when I connected with Kennedy Krieger Institute, where I have been able to focus on developing their Neurodiversity at Work program, which was a board-driven initiative to improve employment outcomes for adults with disabilities.

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?

I think my love of collaboration is part of my success, whether it’s within my team or with state agencies or provider programs or families and the people we support. The more people that we can bring together means the more that we’re going to be able to solve challenges, come up with solutions, and make grand visions really come true. This collaboration is really the basis of our Neurodiversity at Work department. We look at a societal challenge, which is employment for people with disabilities, and then we work collaboratively with other like-minded organizations and individuals to really break down those barriers and improve employment outcomes.

I also really believe my passion for basic human and civil rights led to working with individuals with disabilities and is another huge part of what led to my success as a leader in this field.

I also believe that I am self-motivated, so I’m not necessarily motivated by external sources. It’s really my own vision, my passion, my motivation to improve the world that we live in that powers me. I really want to make the world a place where we all feel that we are accepted and valued and that there is a place for everybody. That really motivates me in my work and motivates me to lead my team to better opportunities for individuals with disabilities.

Can you share a story about one of your greatest work-related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?

Some of the workplace challenges that I see and feel are working with organizations on being inclusive in their workplaces and trying to support their teams to recognize when they might be stereotyping or discriminating against a person with a disability. A lot of times when working with organizations and businesses, I find that they have the best intentions at heart. They really want to focus on hiring people with disabilities. However, knowing that that person has a disability sometimes impacts their ability to manage with the appropriate support, presume competence, or provide clear expectations and meaningful opportunities. We have had instances, however, when a teachable moment has led directly to disciplinary action instead of remaining a teachable moment. My question then is that action going to result in the same disciplinary action for someone who does not have a disability. . Our job is to build a really strong rapport with businesses, managers, and organizations to develop systems and processes for meaningful and successful employment and really help people recognize those unconscious biases. You have to build trust and then you have to establish these partnerships.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

I think one of the most interesting projects that we are working on right now is kind of redesigning our training and education services. We provide training on inclusive workforce strategies to families, businesses and local school systems. We continue to get more requests for our business training and many requests now come from outside of the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area. As a result, we are creating small TED talk-style trainings. These are very short 20-minute webinars on one specific topic in the area of being an inclusive employer, like learning how to retain, recruit, and manage individuals with disabilities. Our hope is that businesses will use these webinars and contact us for more in-depth training on the specific topics that affect their organizations.

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?

That really encompasses my entire job, whether that is designing quality and meaningful direct services, hosting a national conference to bring together experts, or working on research and policy. Our goal is really to change the landscape of services and supports for adults with disabilities with the inclusion of employment throughout our community.

I think of a young man named Tyler, who graduated from the Project SEARCH program at Kennedy Krieger Institute, which is a 10-month, transition-to-work program. Tyler identifies as having autism, and he has a visual impairment. During the pandemic, he came to work at Kennedy Krieger as a health screener, screening patients and families who came onto our campus. Tyler really loves security and wants to be part of the security team. This job was a collaboration between our nursing department and our security department. One of the challenges we faced, though, was that due to his visual impairment he wasn’t always able to see when patients and families arrived. An easy modification was to put up a sign that said, “Please say hi when you arrive.” Then Tyler knew that patients and families were there and he was able to complete his health screening. Now Tyler is back at school taking college classes, and he is a huge advocate for people with disabilities. He is passionate about employment for people with disabilities and talks about his experiences, helping others who do not identify as neurodiverse think about their actions and the impact they might have on the neurodiversity population.

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, currently one in 36 children are diagnosed with autism and one in four adults identify as having a disability. Think about those numbers and think about the number of people that work at your organization or the number of customers that come into your organization. Inclusion should look like what our population looks like, and our population has people with disabilities, whether you can see that disability or not. The bottom line is that we need to have a diverse workforce because our society is diverse.

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?

Seven years ago at Kennedy Krieger, we really began focusing on having a more inclusive workforce, and our Neurodiversity at Work department in collaboration with our human resources department began focusing on initiatives, including our HR pathways program that allows an individual to self-disclose at the beginning of the recruitment process that they have a disability with someone within our HR department. Then that HR specialist really focuses on matching their talents to an open position at the organization.

We also implemented a Project SEARCH program, which is a 10-month transition-to-work program for students and adults with disabilities. Kennedy Krieger departments not only provide training and job training to individuals with disabilities, but they use it as a recruitment strategy for open positions within their departments.

Finally, we have hosted two national neurodiversity in the workplace conferences, including one this year that drew 300 participants.

What are some of the challenges or obstacles to including neurodivergent employees? What needs to be done to address those obstacles?

One barrier is our unconscious bias. This really goes back to our days in school when we learned very early on that people with disabilities were in separate classrooms down the hall, away from everybody else and not part of our community. We have to work on breaking down that bias so we can really look at someone’s full potential. We need to presume competence. We can manage a person with a disability the way they need to be managed, just like we manage all of our employees in the ways they need to be managed. So, there needs to be more training for managers in those areas. As a society, we also need to think about transportation and access to work. We need to have more opportunities for individuals with disabilities to have access to transportation to get to work.

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?

We have a business advisory council that includes local businesses and institute departments. We also work with our EDI committees and we provide trainings to the departments that work with us through Project SEARCH. I personally have gone department to department at Kennedy Krieger Institute talking about our Neurodiversity at Work efforts, and we provide one-on-one consultation when department heads and managers come to us for support, working in collaboration with HR.

Can you please share five best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people who are neurodivergent?

1. Consistency and management are key. We had a young adult who was hired at Petco four years ago and actually had the same manager for 3 1/2 years, providing that support and consistency. He worked at the same store for most of that time, too, so everyone knew him. That really helped his professional and personal growth.
2. Communication is important as well, because it builds trust. When this young man’s store eventually closed, he was moved to another store very close by. Having a great service provider relationship helped with this transition and that’s where that communication came in.
3. Accept that everyone is different. Everyone has unique skills and see people for who they are. Sometimes we see someone’s actions as quirky or weird, but it’s because we’re not looking at that person as a person. Often we are looking at that person as a person with a disability.
4. Ensure that the person you have hired is part of the team. When you provide accommodations or supports, think about what might benefit the entire team. We did a consult with an organization that had hired a person with a disability and they came to us asking, how do I make sure this person fully participates in meetings? I asked, how do ensure that all of your staff are full participants in meetings. We need to follow universal design concepts knowing that what might benefit one employee could benefit the entire team. Does someone need dim lighting? Great, everyone will benefit from dim lighting. Does someone need captioning? Everyone will benefit from that. If we’re going provide feedback, do we do it verbally and written? These are accommodations, but they’re accommodations that benefit all. We want to think about making our workplaces more inclusive through universal design that benefit all of our employees.
5. Finally, think about career ladders. There needs to be opportunity for career growth, not just for employees that don’t identify as having a disability, but also for people who identify as having a disability. We saw that with another young adult who worked as a health Screener here at Kennedy Krieger. He really wanted to work with children and this job as a health screener got him in the door with us, which so many of us know we have to do. You have to get in the door. He was a recent college graduate with a degree in psychology, and now he actually has transitioned over to a position with our World of Care therapeutic nursery where he is a child care assistant and works with the kids each and every day. And, these are kids who have disabilities who now see someone like them as their teacher.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?

We need national legislation and a national movement to unify services for people with disabilities from state to state, so that if adults move they can still access services easily. Currently services are not equal across the states and many different models exist. As a society, we need to find additional ways to offer more meaningful and quality services that lead to inclusive employment and community engagement for people with disabilities.

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. :-)

We need national legislation and a national movement to unify services for people with disabilities from state to state, so that if adults move they can still access services easily. Currently services are not equal across the states and many different models exist. As a society, we need to find additional ways to offer more meaningful and quality services that lead to inclusive employment and community engagement for people with disabilities.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

www.KennedyKrieger.org/Neurodiversity.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!

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.