Megan Roddie - How Neurodiversity can be Leveraged for an Excellent ROI

you're in the UC conference room be in a track called in the thick of it if this is not where you're supposed to be get out of here I'd like to thank our sponsors for this event today same as University USA a Trend Micro digital defense sans Texas cyber summit and the speaker you're about to hear today Megan rowdy she's going to talk to you about how neurodiversity can be leveraged for an excellent ROI

so to begin just a quick introduction myself I'm a currently a cyber threat researcher at IBM I'm also the CFO of mental health hackers who are looking for sponsors so if your company is interested come talk to me and running the mental health village across the way here so come check that out too the reason I speak on this topic is actually from personal experience I have Asperger's syndrome and so I talk from the experience of being an autistic employee in the security industry to start off a couple disclaimers first I don't have a degree in psychology I'm not a therapist I am NOT an expert by any means I read some blogs I read some books I read some

research papers but at no point where I claimed that I'm an expert or formally trained in this topic again not a psychiatrist but I will say that because of my public facing advocacy and my work in the area of mental health awareness in the industry I have met a lot of people who have shared their stories and that's why since I've given my talk in past years on autism specifically I've expanded this talk to reach a more diverse crowd of bipolar disorder and ADHD also because of the people I've met along the way and lastly the a lot of what I talk about is based on the fact that I have autism and I seem to be

doing okay so I'm doing something right and I want to share my experiences so first overview of neurodiversity as IBM says we treasure the wild ducks another disclaimer neurodiversity part of the word is diversity and even within the classification of neurodiverse disorders there's much diversity an example of this I found really apt was a famous autism advocate on Twitter asked what stereotypes people feel they did fie well one of the stereotypes is autistic people are good at math and so many people call out that they said I'm terrible at math I hate it so I defy that stereotype also a lot of people said they can make eye contact sit which is also a common thing that a

stereotype of people with autism can't make contact at the same time she asked the exact opposite question but got the same answers people can make eye contact and people are really good at math so even when I talk about generalizations in this talk is still worth noting that there's a lot of diversity and not everything I apply applies to every person but it will apply to a good chunk of people so why should you support narrow diversity as a manager or an employee at an organization first you get a wider spectrum of capabilities when somebody's building a sports team a football team basketball soccer they're not just hiring the strongest player bringing on the strongest players or

recruiting the fastest players a team comprised of just the best quarterbacks in the world is not going to be the best football team because you need more to your team so in the same way of thinking your security team is only going to be the strongest team it can be if you have the different versions of speaking another analogy that has been used by Steve so vermin another autism advocate is that the human brain and diversity it can be thought of as an operating system some people run Linux some people run Windows some people run Mac no matter what you're running there's benefits and there's challenges that are faced so sometimes things there's going to be c-suite people who don't care

about so I guess I missed a point the second point of happier and passionate employees people who enjoy where they work and feel like they're treated with respect and are accepted despite potential disorders disabilities they're getting happier employees but for the c-suite people who may not think happy employees and lots of different brains is good enough reason to start a neurodiversity initiative some of the swing points they like numbers and they like knowing how to save money so first direct replacement costs it's been found that they can reach as high as 50 to 60 percent of an employee's annual salary when an employee leaves and the total cost associated with a turnover whether it be the training cost to hire someone

bring them in and get them up to speed any accommodations changing insurance etc all rows can eventually range 290 between 90 and 200 percent of an employee's annual salary which is a huge cost but employers have found that employees with disabilities are less likely to leave a company without just than employees without disabilities because often if they find an environment that they're comfortable and work well in they're going to want to stay with that environment because it's so much harder to find a place where they they get that sort of treatment so treat them while they'll stick around your guys save money second point consumer appeal there if you take every one in 49 or forty-five

whatever the statistic is for a number of people diagnosed with autism in the US and you tack on their direct relatives their parents grandparents cousins and siblings you get 17 percent of the u.s. population match this with the statistic that 93 percent of consumers have a more positive images of companies that support a cause they care about and that 89% of consumers would be willing to switch brands given matching price and quality to one associated with a cause that consumer appeal brought on by outwardly supporting no diversity is gonna run great return for your company and lastly I debated a long time adding this one because there's a lot of controversy around quotas and stuff but

the truth is currently especially in the US where a lot of cybersecurity companies are contracting with the government many companies have requirements about the percentage of employees with disabilities that they have to have as part of their organization so you are meeting the quota also by hiring these employees and another reason to make employees with invisible disabilities more comfortable as they're more likely to disclose their disability when being polled about quotas like that so quota meeting no matter how controversial is a thing so so in terms of being a successful individual in the industry while living with the neuro-diverse disorder the power of neurodiversity a book by Thomas Armstrong it talks about I think seven

principles associated with how a neurodiverse individual succeeds in life number five principle number five is that success in life is based on adapting one's brain to the needs of the surrounding environment adjusting to living in a neurotypical world however at the same time principle six well may it may sound kind of opposite of this statement it also depends on modifying your surrounding environment to fit the needs of your unique brain this is called niche construction and I'll talk about that I'll bring up that term multiple time so basically it just means that along with me having to learn how to live in a neurotypical world there's some things I have to do that allow me

to live it with my brain so the first section I focus on the one that I'm kind of most familiar with obviously and most comfortable with is autism spectrum disorders those are the challenges that maybe have faced in terms of employment with neurodiverse individuals autistic individuals specifically is communication deficits how employees how diverse employees communicate with their co-workers management clients is going to be different than a neurotypical person and typically a lot of those times they their communication methods are kind of more negative a bit weaker different I just say it's different way of communicating but because of how neurotypical would then interpret that communication it ends up being more more of a bad thing the second is being

obsessive I put this as a challenge because it can be distracting for the brain it can also be in a social manner kind of seen as a disability to those around the individual being obsessed with the topic especially combined with the social skills of not learning being able to take social cues a lot of times an individual you've probably either experienced yourself or seen in TV shows or know about it is you have an autistic person who's obsessed with trains and will stand there and talk to you about trains and no matter how hard you try to change the topic it just keeps coming back to that so socially that can be a challenge but I also actually consider

it a strength in the sense that I can become obsessive about a topic related to my job and that just pushes me to become an expert in that area and and I can learn really quick so if if shaped in the right way it can be a strength but specific shrinks to talk about our attention to detail being able to see things that may be missed by a neurotypical employee you'll find a lot of autistic employees in quality assurance roles and a lot of hiring programs to get them into quality assurance roles because they can spot little bugs and little things that a neurotypical person may not see Israel their army actually has a dedicated unit

of only autistic individuals who sit in a sock essentially for 24/7 working at satellite images and looking for changes that could indicate enemy movement or explosive being planted because they are able to focus in on those things and enjoy finding those little changes and lastly high productivity I haven't really been able to explain how it happens but I myself and as has been found with many other autistic individuals I can do two to four times the amount of work a perot typical co-worker could do on the same task I don't know what it is that causes that but it is something I found so that definitely works yeah so this is time to speak anything yeah

and if when I looked into it I found that a lot of it has to do with skimming a large portion of the work that's that a normal person would have to do by making connections yeah yeah and I think I used to be faster at math probably because of the same reason I could skip steps and do more within one step and then also I think it's a lot about I think we're able to find efficient methods of doing things and kind of streamlining things so it's probably a combination of those different things and then going back to the niche construction creating an environment in which the individual is going to thrive better so for example

modulation of sensory input there's a lot of sensory processing issues associated with autism for me one of the things when I was looking for jobs I was specifically like one of my criteria that seems dumb to sway my choice with working with a job was I wanted a job where I could wear whatever I want because I have so much trouble being comfortable and clothing and when I have to wear clothing now I'm not comfortable in my productivity level drops I get distracted by what I'm wearing as opposed to what I'm doing so it actually became a factor my job hunting that I wanted a place and I ended up in a remote job but I was also looking at

companies who had a casual dress policy but this could also mean things such as allowing the individual to wear noise-cancelling headphones in the office ensuring the lights any flickering lights are fixed that may be bothering them such as that things like that stemming which you guys probably would recognize as the kind of the stereotypical hand flapping or rocking that an autistic individual can do a lot of times there's a lot of controversy in the community about therapies trying to stop that behavior but in the end the way I see it it doesn't hurt anyone if I want to sway side to side while I'm working it's kind of just let the person do that as long

as it's not hurting you or your business if they're going to be more productive if they're allowed to do that things there's reasons there's psychological reasons autistic individuals stim so letting them do that is only by increase their comfort in your office and their productivity on the work so some negative job elements again when I'm saying these things I'm not there are people who are good at this list of things and are autistic but some of the things that just in the general psychological point of view about how an autistic brain usually operates here some negative job elements multitasking I know I many other individuals like to get to focus on a task and get it done

and so being in an environment where you could be working on a task and then you're pulled to another way and another way or you have to keep track of multiple projects scale reduce the effectiveness of being able to complete a task high levels of socialization again some people don't mind it depending on the day I like socializing with people but other times having client-facing roles or roles that are like entirely group work all the time may not be the best option and lastly again sensory overload being in an environment that's going to be loud and it's gonna may be the the issue is lights or things like that on being in an environment that makes them

uncomfortable from a sensory processing perspective job elements that would be positive and are well suited for a large number of autistic individuals are jobs where you can be in a routine I very much like knowing what I'm gonna be doing the next day and and go into work knowing what I'm doing repetitive tasks we're good at finding efficient ways to do that producing a high quantity valium of work that is repetitive and often the the benefit to a team as a whole is repetitive tasks a lot of times it's menial work and it's stuff that a neurotypical employee will not enjoy and wants to hand off so if there's somebody on that team who is

happily and willing to take on that work that's a benefit to the whole team even in my own job I have a lot of data processing work and I kind of just do a lot of everyone else's for them because I really like doing it but they don't like sitting and sifting through data and you know just entering data into a database for four hours in the day so I enjoy doing it myself so I take that over and then logic a lot of autistic people are very logical and so being able to make those connections especially in the security industry and IT industry thinking at the level of a computer type thing is is very

beneficial so what are some roles in our industry that might suit this what I personally do and I found as well-suited for me my background is actually in sauk work and defer and I love it but I've just found the job elements in the kind of setting that I'm working in for threat research is really well suited for me it's a lot of data processing it's a lot of connecting the dots like I do a lot of malware research type stuff where I have to connect the dots between different operations select hunting do to kind of like I said like with the Israeli army looking at changes in different things being over the spot those little things that are out of

place and pull them out so that you can you can be able to find find evil and in a large amount of data and vulnerability analysis I could never do it full-time but I have done a bit of it and kind of getting a report that means you know is if you've ever seen a vulnerability report they spit out everything handing them and just trying to work off of a full report of 500 vulnerabilities is not working so being able to take 500 vulnerabilities and process it in a logical manner to produce meaningful data is something that I have at least experienced and based on the characteristics I've talked about our well-suited so my next category is bipolar disorder

this section is largely based on interacting and talking and interviewing in some ways a group of bipolar security analysts so the challenges that so the security analyst I talked to face mood swings obviously that's like the key characteristic of bipolar individuals they can go from being a state of euphoria you know that manic personality to depressive states to rage and those kinds of things risk it so effective types of bipolar disorder there's psychosis that can be involved which of course as you can imagine would be a very big barrier to being able to operate similar to a neurotypical and lastly distractive thoughts kind of your brain going everywhere and thinking and moods the distracted thoughts involved

with mood swings so the strengths however individuals with bipolar disorder typically are strong with have strong like and that their empathy is strong and so they're very empathetic individuals which can be a benefit in the industry for sure they're also during manic states at least can have a high amount of energy one of the guys I talked to said like yeah during a depressive state or a rage state he's like may not be doing his best but as soon as he kicks into a manic state wants to work like 20 hours a day and like will keep going and doesn't even care and then lastly creativity bipolar and schizophrenic individuals tend to be very creative individuals which tends to

be something not as commonly found in our industry so it does like I said filling that gap adding to your team's thinking styles in terms of niche construction bipolar individuals will do well in environments where they find meaning and purpose they have something that can focus on and and kind of think about as being their main main goal and maybe having purpose their hands-on work is a characteristic that works well and being able to work for oneself especially in when you're having different mood swings being able to be in a place where they can work when they need to work in that type of stuff work when they best work and not be on a

schedule that could involve them being in a negative depressive or rage state so some job will is that based on the previous slides would be well fitting again provided to me by some bipolar individuals cybersecurity analysts just because the the work there's that clear goal meaning purpose and analyzing data finding evil that type of thing and then penetration testing and social engineering penetration testing it step typically going to be an engagement based thing so it allows for that more flexible like when I'm in a manic state I can knock out an engagement and there's kind of that room for moving then social engineering and penetration testing from the aspect of the empathy that those individuals typically have

being able to social engineer works well lastly is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder again a lot based on what I've read a lot based on talking to individuals with ADHD and especially through mental health hackers a lot of the people we talked to our security analysts with ADHD and so we've talked a lot to the wider community to get feedback that we can then provide to those individuals some challenges are weak executive functioning which executive functioning is kind of like your ability to plan and schedule and a prioritize and those kinds of things which which are typically needed in a career there they're positive skills in a career but weaker in a lot of individuals with ADHD also hyperactivity

obviously it's in the name that that kind of mental state can also often cause challenges for the individual strength says hyper focus be they can get really focused on a task that they want they it's kind of contrary to what you might think based on stereotypes because the whole distractibility thing and moving place to place but typically it's more that the reason that recognizes because it's more the ADHD individual focusing on a specific thing that either interest them or that they've their brain for whatever reason has honed in on and that is taking their distraction away from potentially other things that should be focused on and then even though I listed it as kind of

a challenge hyperactivity still becomes a a benefit if channeled in the right way being able to channel that energy into your work especially if you're in a role where that that hyperactivity and that energy and adrenaline is is needed for the role this construction job with physical movement an environment where change is often occurring there's high stimulation and you're able to do a hands-on role those are the kind of niche construction the areas that you're going to define ADHD individuals thrive in so the job elements that you may see translating directly to job roles is jobs where you can travel or move around and locations frequently that change in environment being able to work with one's hands

that's typical trait that is found in ADHD being actively involved with new situations daily almost opposite autism where I want routine and repetitive work and know what's going on a change in roles is actually better for ADHD individuals handling emergencies there's research that shows a high concentration of ADHD individuals working as firefighters and police officers because of that adrenaline rush they thrive really well in those situations and again working for oneself there's also a lot of research showing a high amount of high concentration of ADHD individuals who are CEOs and business owners because they also do well in those roles so where are some job roles incident responder that's kind of our industry's equivalent of a firefighter or police

officer the situation where you get thrown in time is of the essence you don't exactly know what's going on and you got to figure it out find solutions that's probably one of the best roles threat hunting again the being able to channel that energy and that focus into finding something where you don't know where is and then lastly consulting this is a really specific job but kind of a consulting element to whatever role you choose do their that often involves travel even if it doesn't involve travel typically can when you're doing consulting you're changing environments a lot you have engagements so you may be somewhere for a month and then go do something else and keep going

back and forth so to summarize I kind of as a whole look at what each individual can do for the neuro-diverse individual it's important that the individual recognizes their strengths and weaknesses and learns will learn what works for them because of that element of adapting to the environment around you we do have a responsibility as neurodiverse individuals to do our best to meet our employers our co-workers our friends halfway if they do their best understand us we do our best to understand how to operate in their world so that's a really important thing it takes time it's taken me a long time to kind of start recognizing things and I kind of tackle different things at

different times one by one to try and adapt as much as I can learn self improvement in self-care in the end these are mental disorders affecting the individual however you choose to do self care whether it's medication therapy exercise whatever works for you as long as you're focusing on that and recognizing that there is things that can be done to help you and you should be focused on helping yourself and caring for yourself what can an organization new they can promote no diversity and make sure their employees recognize that they support no diverse individuals because it's going to increase the likelihood those individuals come forward and speak about what they need which in the end overall

improves the environment look into neurodiverse hiring initiatives there's a lot of recruitment firms that specifically work with neurodiverse individuals to get them into a position via hiring process that works better than for them than the traditional interview process so those kinds of initiatives are something to look into support your managers and employees when your managers or employees come to you and say accommodations are needed or changes need to be made and how processes work into them work with them make sure again kind of with that promoting neurodiversity creating an environment where neurodiverse individuals feel comfortable and know that they can bring these challenges for without negative impact and then lastly something that's very rare in companies look into how

your health insurance plans are handling mental health situations can your employees go to therapy and get the help they need that they may not get through traditional avenues that you would get with physical health issues so an employee being able to afford therapy and stuff based on insurance is an important aspect going down the step what can the manager do the main thing is to accommodate and adjust learn that the way you manage a neurodiverse employee is not going to be the same as you manage a neurotypical employee but recognize that the if you work with them to change that management style you're going to end up having a more productive a happier a better employee advocate

think upward but both up and down make sure your organization understands that this is important that you've learned it's important and you want to work towards creating an organizational neurodiverse advocacy view and also advocate down a lot of times there will be conflict between neurotypical and neurodiverse employees due to the different thinking styles and especially with situations like autism and bipolar where the behavior can often come off as rude or weird or strange making sure the co-workers understand that the the individual thinks differently but there an equivalent member of the team and also that they should feel comfortable coming forward and saying hey we've been having this issue can we figure it out because often the neuro-diverse

individual doesn't know what's happening or hasn't thought about adjusting so bringing up those topics is important and lastly patience and understanding and just knowing that it's a learning experience everyone involved especially if you haven't worked with no diverse individuals and so it's important that you just kind of be patient and expects a longer learning curve and challenges to come up and lastly the co-workers what can they do the key is awareness keeping in mind that no diverse individuals are going to behave differently and that you can't come into interactions with them from a neurotypical perspective that often when they communicate the way they're communicating is not from the same viewpoint or thinking methods as a

neurotypical employee one thing I highly advocate for is learning and asking questions I make sure all my co-workers know that they can ask me questions if anything comes to mind I'd rather they bring up the topic and discuss it further and I've talked to a lot of autistic people who say the same thing often like people feel uncomfortable or they away they're gonna like offend the autistic individual which one we're very very not easily offended like I don't think I've ever been like offended by someone like in any way because I just don't get offended so so that's not an issue and really that's it's I'd much much rather you you learn from me as

iment autistic individual then just accept stereotypes and then again patience and understanding understanding that there's going to likely be conflicts that come up and that it's because of different thinking patterns that both individuals have not encountered before and it takes longer for us to adjust so just a shout out to Patrick put Minh he's the main he has a website called the bipolar hacker where you can read more about his experience in the industry with bipolar disorder but he was one person I worked really close with to develop some content went back and forth a lot with him Amanda Berlin I like to call her out she brought me on as the CEO a CFO of mental

health hackers which I've gotten to meet a lot of people facing different challenges in the industry I've got to wider spread my message by taking the the mental health village and speaking out additional conferences and fewer she she accepts some of my work like all my quirks and all the weird messages I may send her so she stuck stuck with me for like almost nine months now so so far so good my manager of course he lets me I was giving this talk in Poland last week and he lets me go and give this talk and also he's practiced the things I've learned from working with me as his first autistic employee and he's done a

very very good job having me only been there five months learning and picking up and working with me on things any questions

yes so um most of what I have from that aspect is is specifically focused on autism but what a lot of the recruiting firms and consulting firms do with autistic employees is because they don't do well in a setting a traditional interview setting of being asked questions having to socialize especially things like the lack of ice contacting the stimming that will kind of throw an interviewer off like just because it's strange and they don't understand so they kind of mostly avoid the interview process outside originally initially bring them into the program and what they do is this that kind of trial run so IBM for example they have up in Michigan they have a team that is like a

quality assurance personnel who are autistic and they basically what their program where there is the initial the recruiting firm bottom in they did kind of a short interview more focused on like personality match then they worked worked on the teams for six weeks then the company decided who to hire based on working with them directly because often once in an autistic individual as guests thrive behind the keyboard doing the work not in a Q&A type situation that they'll never actually like really ever encounter in person so having a social method of hiring is not good for someone who doesn't succeed socially having a kind of more technical interview is something that works better and yes

[Music] so if I have one or two weeks where I can't yeah that's honestly going to depend on the organization in the role and that's kind of like why role fit and niche construction is so important because there are jobs that you definitely cannot just slack for a couple weeks but if you end up as position for example I'm working for oneself like I consider a position obviously it's hard to start your own company like I'm not gonna limit that but being in even if it's a start-up where they're okay with you going on engagements that are typically that like working on engagements for a period of time and then step you away but again that's gonna be the

organization the role making sure you find a role where they're very flexible with your schedule but a lot of times like once you prove yourself if the organization is accepting they'll work with you any other questions

what would you suggest I do if I want to work in more of a responsible what my specialization is in so it's a combination of a its beginning to recognize those strengths and weaknesses kind of figuring out what kind of role you're gonna be best in then it comes down to like the typical that even neurotypical people face that lateral movement path which a lot of time is not an easy challenge I'm not definitely not one to be able to explain how to laterally move I think a lot of people are trying to figure that out but developing skills getting certifications and then being able to apply to those jobs in those different areas and also

articulate during your interview process about like these are my strengths and this is why I'm trying to move into this field because I know I can thrive due to these things that my brain it just works this way [Music] you know those organizations I do not know of any myself really that's a lateral movement and that kind of training I just I do I will say networking at conferences is probably one of the best way like making those connections who can then get you places I've definitely I am very glad I started out early in my career making connections cuz like I'm in a place now where I feel like if I was like on the

streets needing a job I have would have someone on my Twitter feed who if I explained my situation they'd find me a job kind of thing so I think that's one of the big things is building a network and then starting to ask that network hey do you have any recommendations on how I get here type of thing

is there -

yeah um so it's actually interesting is a lot of 40 50 year olds are now getting diagnosed with autism which typically it's you get diagnosed in the 3 to 5 year range but 4050 years ago people weren't diagnosing autism and and for a while after that 20 30 years ago it because it was so focused on kids are autistic adult diagnoses were so uncommon it's finally becoming common typically what I'd recommend is talking to your PCP and they typically have recommendations for who to go to but you'll want to speak to a psychiatrist specifically they're the people who will be able to diagnose and make recommendations

yeah [Music]

[Music]

yeah and that's very much what this a large focus of is that talk is autistic people are not going to thrive until they're in an environment that allows them to thrive and a huge part of that is acceptance and honestly that's kind of just like how do you create the acceptance in any other situation how do you create acceptance for lbgtq and other you know racial diversity and organization this the same issue it's awareness and making it and there's still going to be toxic environments that won't accept neurotypical individuals and so at that point like recognizing that you're in a toxic environment like I always say if I'm gonna be repercussions I know a lot of individuals like I are

still kind of I guess in in some way closeted and they don't want to share that information because of fear of repercussion and potentially they're in a career like I'm working in cybersecurity there's a lot of job need and so I feel quite comfortable with like job security but like at least for me my path of thinking is if I'm yes a I'm autistic and then you're gonna treat me horribly because of it that's not the right job for me and I need to get out of that toxic environment because it's just gonna make my like being in that kind of environment is only gonna do damage to my mental health that that self-care kind of thing recognizing when

I'm in environments that are negatively impacting me

so I know that in the US all the only thing that you declare when you're like disabled like there's no form for me to say I'm autistic the only thing related to that is the the federal form that you've probably seen applying to jobs or whatever that says yes I have a disability but you don't specify so I'm guessing there's not much data at any companies on that especially my company but we do have hiring programs for autism and those hiring programs are slowly building in other countries so we have two statistics about where those hiring programs are taking place which kind of shows which countries are more ahead in their thinking and their forward action

on that anything else oh well I have to head back to the mental health village for everyone wants to chat you can follow me there and