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[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.

[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, Autism, Disability and Employment: An International Conversation, October 5, 2022. Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera, with a library setting in the background. The Touro University logo is at the bottom right.

[ALAN KADISH] I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's program. Touro Talks and the Jewish Law Institute at the Touro Law Center have once again put together an opportunity for people to make a difference in autism advocacy by learning from leading experts. Dr. Sam Levine, Professor Sam Levine, at the Touro Law Center, will co-moderate this evening with me.

Tonight's topic about advocating for autism is something that's near and dear to Touro. Touro has made a commitment to be involved with disability advocacy. And we have a disability rights and inclusion project at the Touro Law Center.

The program, in addition to helping individuals, features speakers on campus as well as in webinars. And recent guests have included John Elder Robison, Temple Grandin, as well as Shira Ruderman of the Ruderman Foundation, all leaders in the disabilities inclusion space.

Touro's involvement with autism goes beyond just education and seminars. On the West Coast, Touro Nevada has one of the few autism institutes in the state. On the East Coast, we're making progress on an innerschool project that includes research and advocacy that incorporates the Law Center as well as the Health Sciences schools. Finally, our academic affiliate, the Westchester Institute for Human Development, is involved in caring for young men and women with autism as well as with other developmental problems.

Tonight's program is part of Touro's 50th anniversary celebration. And it builds on our prior programs that I described to you previously. We believe that awareness, acceptance, and inclusion all are interrelated with employment. And that's a vital step in integrating individuals with autism into society.

As president of Touro College and New York Medical College, I recognize that we have employees with a diverse span of abilities. And sometimes, differences in our employees lead to creativity and lead to a team that works together well. So I'm very excited about the ability to hear from experts about autism and what we can do to continue to integrate people on the spectrum into employment and society.

Tonight, we're excited to have with us four individuals from around the world who are involved specifically with promoting employment opportunities for individuals with autism. These experts will discuss their personal stories, as we mentioned, some of which may be sensitive, and their professional efforts. The first speaker is Tim Goldstein, a global Cloud trainer with Google. Tim was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at age 54. And he'll tell us how the diagnosis changed his life personally and professionally.

After decades wearing many hats in the bicycle business and metalsmith supply industry, as well as an IT consultant, and now at Google, Tim is working to change the perception of autism as a neurodiverse communication specialist. He is probably the only one in the world doing exactly what he does. Tim, would you join us, please, and do a bit of your presentation. Thanks for being with us tonight.

[DESCRIPTION] Tim Goldstein joins and plays PowerPoint with visuals.

[TIM GOLDSTEIN] Well, thank you very much. What a great introduction. I want to meet that person. Thank you. Let me share some slides here.

And I promise you that it won't be a boring PowerPoint. What I really want to cover today is the neurodistinct and looking at it from an artistic standpoint. And of course, when we're talking about neurodistinct, we're not talking just autism. There's a whole bunch of other conditions, as you can see, labeled there and plenty of others that I don't have labeled. But myself being autistic, I can only really speak from the autistic standpoint.

Just a couple of things that weren't in the introduction that I want you to really understand well is, first off, I'm not a typical autistic individual. On the other hand, none of you are typical for whatever groups you come from. We're all unique. We're all individuals. So don't expect that if you meet one autistic individual and they happen to act or be a certain way that the next one will be like that. We're all just humans. We're all our own selves. We're all individual.

As far as the diagnosis and how did it change my life, it changed my life in the direction I was heading. But as far as changing anything else, I was autistic the day I was born. And I just didn't know that there was a name to it until I was 54, when they finally gave me this diagnosis and said, hey, the way you've been living and interacting, that's called autism.

And then my career has been, as we mentioned-- the doctor has mentioned-- employment is a big challenge. And my career has been a roller coaster. I've done extremely well in areas. I've run my own businesses and done well at that. But then I've also had big crashes and been fired lots of times. And a matter of fact, fired so many times, I got really good at interviewing and wrote a book called Geeks Guide to Interviews.

And then last thing is the disclaimer, is, yes, I do work for Google. But this does not represent any of Google's viewpoints. They are purely all my own.

So the first thing I'd like to ask people is, what do you see in this picture? And yeah, unfortunately it's hard to see the chat and all that. So I'm going to fill in what normally most people would say. We would get some responses that would say they see a frog. And we would get some responses that would say they see a horse. And the answer is they're both right. There is a horse there. And there is a frog there. And I'm not sure which one you're seeing. If you're not seeing both of them or can't find both, just tip your head 45 degrees one way or 45 degrees the other way, and the two different things become fairly obvious.

And the point of this really is to show, we're looking at the exact same image at exactly the same time, but we're getting two completely different realities out of it. Wow. Guess what. Welcome to being neurodistinct. We live in a different reality than a lot of you do, even though we're getting the same inputs.

To give you an idea how different the same inputs can be processed, I'll tell a little story. I, like a lot of autistic individuals, have a tendency to eat the same thing over and over and over again. And I was on a kick for lunch of eating roast beef sandwiches on potato bread. And it wasn't a health kick by any means, but it was the eating kick I was on.

And my wife and I would go shopping. And we'd go to the local mart. And we'd walk into the bread aisle. And I would be looking up and down the aisle reading the ends of the labels, because I know the information is in the words printed on the label. And my wife would just go and point somewhere and go, honey, it's right over there. And I'd walk over. And she was, of course, and it was right there.

So after a year and a half, I finally asked her, how do you do that? I read quick, but you just always point to it. And her answer, it was amazing. Oh, there's just an orange circle on the end of the wrapper of the brand you like. I just look for the orange circle. Here, I thought the important information was in the words printed on the wrapper. She found something that was a much easier identifying mark, because she wasn't concentrating on the words like I was. She was just looking for an identifying mark. In this case, her way of perceiving and processing was far superior for finding the bread. Now, fortunately, there are some things where my process actually does work better.

Communication is really one of the huge challenges that we have as autistic individuals, particularly in the workplace. I'm going to try and cover what's normally probably a 10-minute slide in about a minute. So I'm going to gloss over a few things. But I think you'll get the main parts out of it.

And I'm going to start over on the right-hand side. And there, we have a neurotypical person talking to-- in this case, this is how I personally process things, fairly common for a lot of autistics. But again, we're individuals, not necessarily for everybody.

Neurotypicals, I'm convinced, speak in three channels, three modes of communication simultaneously. And they use words. And as you can see at the bottom, the words are those colored things going across. They get through that wall. And they get to me. And I take the words, and I take them literally. Just like the first dictionary definition is how I take those words.

But there's tonality in there. And the tonality can completely flip the meaning of the words around. But you can see it hits the wall in front of me, and I don't pick up the tonality. And there's also facial and body expression. Same problem as tonality. I just don't get them.

So what do I get? I get the words according to the dictionary. And I don't get any of the nuance or modifications you made to them.

Now, if we flip over to the other side, this is me, me before I learned how to actually put emotional sounds in my voice. I had the good fortune of studying with the best vocal coach in the world. And they taught me how to speak in a manner that was far more engaging than the traditional autistic monotone, where you just go on. And it's one note, and it sounds really boring. And then you really can't get anything out of it, because there's really no emotion or anything mixed in there. So that's how I used to speak. And that's how a lot of autistics speak.

And when they do, they're only using words. And they're using the words literally. Unfortunately, the neurotypicals are expecting two other modes. They're expecting tonality to help modify and shape the words. And they're expecting body expression and facial expression.

So when you don't give it to them, what do they do? They manufacture it out of what they got. So when you give them words and you just talk like this, what does it really mean normally? It means the person is disengaged. They're not very excited. They're just not into it. So even though I might be saying in the words, this is the most fun project I've ever worked on in my life, the emotional tonality is, Tim isn't into this thing. But that's completely untrue, completely wrong interpretation.

I'll give you a little example out of my own life. I had a boss who gave me a message the first day of a vacation and wanted to get on a call together. Now, I'd been fired enough times to know that when your boss wants to talk the first day of your vacation, it's usually not a good sign.

And we had a conversation. And along the way of our talk, she said to me, Tim, I think you should look for a new job. Well, I can understand what those words mean. We look them up in the dictionary. That means you're getting fired. Go find a new job. That's what it means.

Well, come to find out, after spending lots of time with HR and all kinds of things, that's not what she meant. Her tonality and her body language were showing concern. What she really meant, but didn't say very well, was I'm concerned how the stresses of this particular role are affecting you. And I think you could perform much better in a different role. Wow! That's so different from, you should go looking for a new job. So you can see where there's complete miscommunication going in both directions because we're using different modalities of communicating.

Another thing that happens all the time that causes huge problems is we think, we perceive, we process differently, like the bread example gives you. There was two completely different ways. So when I say the word "beach," most people come up with a concept in their mind that looks more like the right-hand side one. It's tropical. It might be an island. It's got palm trees. It's got gorgeous blue water and maybe a piña colada in your hand also.

I personally grew up in upstate New York, right at the base of the Adirondacks, one of the best canoe waters in the United States. And I was a Boy Scout. So I did canoe a huge amount. And my beach is actually on a little circular island that I camped on that had the beach all the way around it. And the lake that it was in was surrounded by mountains and pine trees.

So if I just tell you that for the weekend, I'm going to the beach, it doesn't make any difference what your version of the beach is versus my version of the beach. They know I'm going off to have some fun. But if you tell me I need a picture of a beach for a presentation I'm doing and I give you the picture of my beach, chances are you're going to say, this isn't what I'm looking for. Guess what. Beach can have many meanings, just like most other words can have many meanings, but usually, we don't explain them. We just expect people to know what's in our brains.

And the last thing that I think causes people to lose employment is what I refer to as the rule of the tribe. And I am convinced that most companies, most organizations act like tribes. And there's a rigid structure. People follow the rules. They keep everybody staying along in the same direction. And if you don't go in those directions, you are not considered part of the group.

Unfortunately, being autistic, we don't look at things the same way. And nobody explained the rules to us. So why is it that it's considered great social etiquette if I lie to you and tell you that you're looking great when really you look like crap? Well, I don't know. I can't do that. And when I don't do that, suddenly, I'm not following the rules of the tribe. And the tribe goes, you're not one of us. And suddenly, you're under the microscope and on the way out the door.

And then last thing is just a couple quick little things that you can do that can improve communication, not only with autistics. This will actually work with everybody, but very much with autistic individuals. And first off is just check for stress and overwhelm.

How many of you really communicate well and understand and process well when you're stressed out? And the answer is, I don't think any of us do. And autistic individuals tend to have more challenges with that than other individuals do.

Another thing that really gets us is vague comparisons. And I come from the tech industry. So you always hear these things about 10X it, and give me 110%. Well, 110% logically makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. This human body can give you 100%. And that's all it's got. Where does the other 10% come from? What is this line of whatever that's being spewed? You told me nothing, because you said something that does not make any sense.

And then lastly, prioritize. Tell us what's important to you. How is it that we're supposed to know that this important thing is supposed to get done before that other important thing you gave us if you don't say, I want that one first? So a couple of quick little tips. And hopefully, you can put those to work right away. And with that, I'm done.

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you very much. We'll have questions and discussion after each of our speakers had a chance to speak. Our next speaker is Hardeep Rai. Hardeep is the founder and CEO of Kaleidoscope Investments, an international London-based company that exclusively invests in disabled people with great business ideas.

He spent 25 years in the investment management industry, including 13 years in the well-known hedge fund Gartmore Investment Management. He also spent the last 12 years as an entrepreneur, investor, and business growth specialist, and I hope tells us some stories about how investing in disabled people and their business ideas has made a lot of sense. Welcome, Hardeep.

[DESCRIPTION] Hardeep Rai joins and plays PowerPoint with visuals.

[HARDEEP RAI] Thank you very much, Dr. Kadish. And I'm delighted to be here today. I will also just share my screen now for everyone. Hopefully, you can see it. Can someone just say yes?

[ALAN KADISH] Yes.

[HARDEEP RAI] Brilliant. Thank you. So this is a picture of my little boy, Eshan, who is 15 years old and severely disabled. And I will come to how that happened very shortly.

So first of all, a little bit about me and my story. So I studied law and economics, very appropriate given the university that we're speaking with right now. I had a great career in finance for 25 years in hedge funds. I had a good degree of wealth, fantastic family and friends. I was going on all the holidays I wanted to, and I got married in 2004.

And then I had three what I call LCEs, Life-Changing Events. So the first was a holiday of a lifetime in 2004, Christmas. And I'm not sure if that rings a bell, but what happened to me-- this was the view that we had on Christmas Day. And this was the view that we had on Boxing Day. So this was the first time, really, in my life that suddenly something happened to me that I didn't have control of.

We were hit in the tsunami, the Boxing Day tsunami, where hundreds of thousands of people died. We came very, very, very close to death. The tsunami actually came into our hotel. And it was a really, really scary experience for us. That was the first thing that happened to me.

And I think one of the things that really resonated with me was my value system being challenged by not helping people that really needed help, that were calling out for help and saying-- and I knew that if we were going to help those people that needed help, we would have probably lost our lives ourselves. So that was the first time in my relatively stable life something happened that was out of the ordinary.

The second thing that happened to me that was very out of the ordinary, for any of those of you that are listening that are parents, is that I had a little baby boy with my ex-wife, who wanted a water birth. We'd planned it perfectly. And we also knew that when you had water birth, you had to make sure that there were-- you weren't delayed and that everything was on time. So we went to reflexology. And we did a few things to rush that.

But what happened was that there was a last-minute birth complication, which led to Eshan having 17 minutes of brain damage. And that was a global injury. And that was something that totally shook my entire world.

And the first thing we were told is that if Eshan survives, he's going to have seven days to live or die. And we were actually given the option of turning off his life support machine. So any parent can just imagine a little baby in their incubator that's alive, thinking about switching their life support machine off. We were told that if you keep him, he's going to be a vegetable. He's going to be fully dependent all his life. The condition that he's got is cerebral palsy. And you can forget any benchmark that you think you were going to ever expect that he will hit.

That was a really difficult thing for me to hear. And for me personally, as a 36-, 37-year-old, that was the first time that I experienced mental health. I went through postnatal depression. I coined a phrase that actually already existed, but I thought I was the first, which was called the sound of silence, which is where when I was listening to everything that had happened about Eshan, it actually made me feel that I was here but I wasn't here. I was surrounded by a world that was going around me, but I could genuinely hear nothing.

And the only thing I can liken it to is when you have a seashell by your ear, and you hear that hollow echo sound. That's what I felt, and I couldn't shift myself out of it. So that was my real first experience with disability, actually, in the mental health space, from a depression point of view, from the perspective of postnatal depression, which we often talk about from a lady's perspective. But actually, men suffer from postnatal depression as well.

And then on a personal level, as an Asian, I experienced significant discrimination. And I'm a Christian now. But actually, previously, I was a Hindu. And in those days, you believe in reincarnation. And there were so many people that were saying that, he's cursed, or Eshan's cursed. What did he do to deserve this?

And suddenly, the amazing thing was my friends started dropping off one by one, one by one. And it was conscious some of it. Some of it was unconscious. But I experienced a lot of pain outside of just Eshan being born from the people that were my loved ones that were around me.

In a professional environment-- and we're beginning to talk about employment now-- I used to hear people say, we don't know whether we should congratulate Hardeep or whether we should commiserate Hardeep. But when I walked into the trading floor after Eshan was born, there's no balloons. There were no cakes. There were no congratulations. It was really somber. And nobody knew what to do.

And at first, this was something that I took very personally, very personally. But actually, what I realized is that there's one huge, very powerful word that accompanies disability. And that word is called "awkward." So many people feel awkward around people with disabilities, whatever their disability may be.

And I had never really appreciated that before until it happened to me. And I think this is the one thing that people start to learn about disabilities. You either have it from the time that you're born, or you acquire it throughout your life. And sometimes when you acquire it throughout your life, you have the benefit of seeing both sides of the coin. So this was something that was really powerful for me and really hit me very strongly, is awkwardness.

And it helped me to understand that, how should we be treating people in the workplace that may be different, that may be disabled? What should we be doing in the way that we handle them and we treat them? So that was a really big thing that I began to realize. And that's one of the things that Kaleidoscope now does, is help companies to address how to deal with awkwardness.

And then the third life-changing event for me-- I think, in America, you have a show called Shark Tank. In the UK, we have a show called Dragons' Den. And I actually ended up working for my hero for a period of time. I never expected it would happen, but it took me 10 years to build up my city career. It took me two and a half years to lose my city career. And then it took me four days to go from zero to hero.

And one day, I'm going to write a book about how James influenced my life and how he gave me an opportunity. And that is why, in a way, with Kaleidoscope now, we are an organization that give opportunities to disabled people to excel. And it started, as Dr. Kadish very kindly said, with investing in disabled people.

So that was my-- and that's actually how it was born. So funny enough, on the screen now, you see my son, Eshan, together with my business partner, Shane. And Shane first came to me and said, do you know people with disabilities really struggle to raise money because people don't really buy into them or trust them, or they don't have a track record.

And that's when I first thought, actually, if we set up a company that enables us to invest in disabled people, then we can bring the best of both worlds-- Shane's world of understanding disability, my world of understanding investment-- and bringing them together. So that was really the birth of Kaleidoscope Investments. And our vision very much was, we want to live in a world where we see no difference in different.

And the reason I say that-- it's a very simple phrase-- is that because we do see difference in different at the moment. The world sees difference in different. And that's what we need to change. We have perceptions. We have biases. And from my experience, in the last seven years of having met 1,300 disabled people from 65 different disabilities, from 28 different countries, they are more talented than any of the people that I have ever met in my entire life. And I include the entire disability, whether that's neurodiverse, mental health, hidden physical, whatever that might be, I include all disabilities in that umbrella.

And our mission right now is to change perceptions that people have towards disabled people and actually stop them from feeling sorry for disabled people and see what they're capable of doing and actually understand what they can do. And I've done this first hand. The session is about employment. I have employed over 50 people with disabilities over the last seven years. And three of those individuals are neurodiverse.

And actually, it is remarkable how talented people with disabilities are, if-- and this is a really big if-- you enable them to work in a way where they can capitalize on their strengths and if you take the time to understand their strengths in the first place. So the way I work now is I don't work on a 9:00 to 5:00 basis. I forget about that. I offer total flexibility to the people that work with me. So they start when they want. They finish when they want. If they need a day off, I know they're going to make up for it on the weekend.

The only thing I do is I use monday.com. I actually say, here's a task that's been assigned to you by a certain day. Is that realistic? Or isn't it realistic? And if it is realistic, then that's the only way that I measure them. I don't need to do anything else. And the loyalty and the commitment you get is phenomenal.

Reasonable adjustments. Obviously, you have to make sure that individual has the reasonable adjustments. And you have to respect boundaries. In my experience working with people with lots of different types of disabilities, the boundaries sometimes can be blurred. And it's important to make sure that you respect those boundaries, for their benefit and for your benefit.

And one of my lessons, actually, from working with individuals that were autistic or on the neurodiverse spectrum is that the world almost glorifies a lot of people with neurodiversity and say they are amazing, they're exceptional, they can do these things on a level and at a speed that a lot of other people can't do, or some of them. And that might be right in some cases. But actually, what you have to remember is they're still human beings. And they shouldn't be abused or taken advantage of just because they have that ability.

And with the people that I worked-- and, Tim, it was fantastic about what you said about prioritizing. That was really important for me in the way that I work with the individuals. I made sure I prioritize things for them, because I could see how they could go off at different tangents. So that was my experience. And I still have a team full of people with disabilities. And it's absolutely incredible if you give it a chance.

And that's where I think the employers of today have to do more than just pay lip service to hiring people with disabilities. They actually have to do it. And one of the things we've developed is an incubator program that maximizes the potential of people with disabilities to enable them to perform to the best of their abilities when they are in that workplace.

And then the final slide I've got over here-- and this is on the investment spectrum-- is that my takeaway for all of you today is I would like you to change the lens through which you see. So when you're looking at-- when you're looking at people with disabilities, just think about changing your lens. And look at this slide about what's possible.

So on this slide here, we have Sir Henry Ford, Elon Musk, the founder of IKEA, Steve Jobs, Apple, HP, Steven Spielberg, Richard Branson, Walt Disney, the Cisco founder, Tommy Hilfiger, and, and, and. These individuals have learning difficulties or are considered disabled according to-- depending on what act you follow. And yet they have got nearly-- they've got over $700 billion in annual revenues.

They employ just under a million people between those 11 companies. And those founders have disabilities. And very often, people actually say to me, when it comes to investing in people with disabilities, there's no track record. Or who can you demonstrate that has a disability? And they might pick Richard Branson as one person that they know about. But actually, there are a significant number of people that have disabilities and that have been very capable.

So these started with an idea, all of these. And they became great businesses. So that is why I say that investing in people with disabilities and giving them the opportunity is an extremely important thing for us to do. Thank you.

[ALAN KADISH] So what a tremendous list. Thank you so much.

[HARDEEP RAI] It's incredible, isn't it? Not at all. My pleasure.

[ALAN KADISH] It is. So our third speaker is Dr. Michael Stein, Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability. Professor Stein is one of the world's leading experts on disability, law, and policy. He's received numerous awards in recognition of his transformative work and has brought landmark disability rights litigation globally.

He earned a JD from Harvard Law School, where he was the first person known with a disability to be a member of the Harvard Law Review, and a PhD from Cambridge. And he's going to talk a little bit about his project and disability rights. Welcome, Professor Stein.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Michael Stein joins.

[MICHAEL STEIN] Thank you ever so much for having me. And thank you to my friend Sam for inviting me. And what a pair of speakers to have to follow on. Everyone is invited, should they desire, to come to www.hpod.org, and you're always welcome to our events as well.

So employment is actually the one area where I'm not bouncy and happy and optimistic regarding persons with disabilities and their prospects. And that arises from having studied it for about 30 years and having worked in the sector. I was on the Board of the National Organization on Disability for 12 years. And I've worked with numerous NGOs and DPOs, Disabled Persons Organizations, throughout the world.

And it's the informal labor market that actually shows, at least to my eyes, the most progress, some of what Hardeep had described-- entrepreneurs, individuals who come up with their own creative ideas. We like to say within the disability community that disabled persons are problem-solvers. How is it that you got to work today? How is it that you got to the library? We encounter barriers all the time, and we come up with creative solutions to get around them.

But in the formal labor market, so as far as I can see, with all the data that I could see, there has not been improvements across the sector nor within the ASD sector. And that's due to a number of reasons that you heard from Tim and from Hardeep regarding stigma and certain presumptions. But within the sector, as far as ASD itself, there are a number of companies who have programs that particularly aim at the neurodiverse. They include IBM and Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Freddie Mac. And we can go on and on.

These pilot projects are actually paralleled for other types of disabilities as well. And I would like to say that, of course, they do good, because the job is a beautiful thing. Having someone be economically self-sufficient, having them have a place where they can go and connect to a larger organization, to contribute to a common goal is a really wonderful mitzvah. It's a great deed to do.

But here, I'll be somewhat cynical and say that part of my problem with these pilots is that the large companies will put them in. They'll employ 10, 15, 20 people. Again, not a small thing. It's 20 people's lives and prospects. But there's what I call a glass door. These individuals tend not to get promoted within the company.

The idea of inclusion tends not to spread to other types of disabilities. They become basically the pet projects. And again, for the individuals who are employed, it can be a great thing, but the overall culture isn't changed.

I also wonder and worry at times about things such as the notion of skills and what skills certain people with disabilities are assumed to have relative to others. And I think Hardeep referred to this a little bit. I have friends who are neurodiverse who are marvelous on computers and marvelous with numbers. I have friends who are neurodiverse who pretty much can't count.

And to think that all people-- and any time you go with "all," you wind up into trouble-- people who are neurodiverse are going to be excellent at spotting patterns or being able to program computers and so on is a misstatement and an injustice to them and to the many other talents that they happen to have. But within the autistic spectrum community, it's very, very important to note that 85% of those with college degrees are not employed. And this is relative to 4.5% across the general population.

And that means we have a problem. And it's a problem that is highlighted with the idea that employers often talk about being able to find low-level workers, maintenance, manual labor, but not mid-level management, not individuals who are worthy of promotion and inclusion. And whether we look at the list of 11 from Hardeep or whether we look at this number of those with ASD who have college degrees, who are unemployed, it's simply not true.

So the numbers are out there. And they're not being included within the larger community of corporate social responsibility, which, by the way, I don't believe in-- and I'm being purposely provocative-- or human rights obligations, which I do believe in but we don't have in this country, or enforce employment and support provisions, which again, we don't have within this country.

But some things that I've learned that are helpful-- some things that I think are helpful. One is that companies tend to work either on a top-down or bottom-up level. And that includes the nongovernmental organizations that work with them.

So either they will come up with plans that then trickle down. The CEO expresses a desire to hire people with autism or people with cerebral palsy or whatever we're speaking about. And human resources are trained. The handbook is done within the corporation. And the idea is to try to increase the culture, increase the inclusion.

In 12 years with the National Organization on Disability and this afternoon with my friends at the Valuable 500, I just don't see the data ticks that reflect that as being a positive overall strategy. Obviously, it's the main one. Maybe it's a clever one. But what's missing there is the accountability.

So if we were to sit the Fortune 500 CEOs, as they did in Davos two years ago, and asked them, Do they believe in hiring people with disabilities? their answer will always be yes and a very loud yes. And I don't doubt that they believe it. But something happens between when people with disabilities, and particularly the neurodiverse, apply for jobs and what comes out of the other side of the process, which is who is ultimately hired, retained, and promoted. The numbers do not equal in any way, shape, or form.

And ultimately, it comes down to accountability. So the very few best-case practices that I've seen involve the CEO or the vice president, usually with a family connection, who will tell the head of human resources, this is important to me. We have X percentage now of individuals with disabilities, of whatever type it may be. And I want to sit down with you in six months and see progress. And as part of seeing progress, I want you to show me numbers and how we've improved. And that improvement is going to be part of my evaluation of how effective you are as the head of human resources. It's those rare cases that we actually see progress moving forward.

Other things that are being done go the opposite way, from the bottom up. We take the individuals. We see their skills. Usually, it's a nongovernmental organization. In New York, Job Path is notable for being really good with this. And they work with companies that they have long-term relationships with and managers and supervisors that they have long-term relationships with.

And they work together to include, again, individuals, sometimes with outside supports-- New York State is very good on the voc rehab side-- and try them out and see how they work and give them support and move forward in that way. But of course, there are always issues that arise. It's an imperfect system. One, it's heavily labor intensive. Two, it involves trust and long-term relationships.

And three, sometimes when it doesn't work out with particular employees, the organizations that are doing this work have to think about the broader community and their relationships with these companies and whether and how strongly to push for particular individuals for whom this job didn't work.

Some things that I think about looking forward and that I worry about, because I always worry about lots of things, is that there's been lots talk about in a post-COVID world, we'll be building back better, that now we've had a magnifying glass to various forms of inequality-- and that's true-- and that employers can no longer claim that telecommuting is not an essential job function, that it's not viable. They said that for many, many years, especially in response to people with various disabilities requesting telecommuting.

Then the pandemic hit. And all of a sudden, everyone was able to telecommute. In fact, they needed to. Now, in the post-COVID world, with telecommuting being more acceptable, with the large office spaces, particularly, say, in Midtown Manhattan being extraordinarily expensive, some companies are pivoting towards it.

And for some people who are neurodiverse, this will be a good thing. It means that they can manage their time more efficiently and more specifically empowering to themselves. It means that if they want to get up and move around, they need not be concerned about fitting within firm culture. It means that they can turn off their computers and make noises and stim and do other things.

But for other people, it's going to mean more social isolation. And for other people, it's going to be part of that second level of culture, what Hardeep referred to and what Tim referred to as there's a certain tribalism. There's a certain way of doing things at the company. And if we don't see you, if we don't interact with you, if you're not here for the Friday night going out and binge drinking, which is probably a good thing for you anyway, you're not part of the group. You're not part of the culture.

And it may not be disability specific. It could also be faith based, by the way, for Friday night and alcohol. But the idea is, if you're not part of the culture, if you're not part of the tribe, you tend not to be included. You tend to be isolated and to be marginalized.

And what will happen post-COVID about these structures and about what we refer to in the legal literature as second-generation employment discrimination remains to be seen. We also need to see and to wonder about how AI is going to affect either positively or negatively those individuals who are neurodiverse. So thanks very much for having me. And I look forward to your questions and answers later.

[ALAN KADISH] Thanks so much, Professor Stein. Great presentation. It seems like we really have a lot of work left to do. Our final speaker is Elisabeth Wiklander. Elisabeth is a prize-winning cellist and a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

She has taught orchestral performance at conservatories in Amsterdam, London, and New York. She also holds a teaching position in her native Sweden. Elisabeth is autistic and a neurodiversity advocate, appointed Cultural Ambassador for the National Autistic Society in the UK. And it's great to have somebody with musical talent on the panel. Welcome.

[DESCRIPTION] Elisabeth Wiklander joins and plays PowerPoint with visuals.

[ELISABETH WIKLANDER] Thank you very much for that-- well, for that warm welcome. Before I start, I will just mention that I'll touch upon some mental health issues and social injustice references and also that my account is my own and not an attempt to speak for the entire autism community. Now, I also have some slides.

And I'm just going to wait for the control panel to move away so I can do-- so I can choose Play. Hopefully, that's happening in any moment now. I hope that my slides won't be too boring, as most of them are pictures from my life, a great example of how literally an autistic individual may interpret and encouragement to be personal. Let me see. Now, there we go.

So I was born in Sweden in 1981. And I was born autistic. In the '80s, the diverse autistic community that we explore today hadn't yet connected through common characteristics and shared life stories. So like many others, I was hidden in plain sight without any answers as to why my upbringing was painful, lonely, and confusing, despite growing up in a very loving environment. No matter how meticulously I expressed myself verbally, I just couldn't get my surroundings to understand me, as if I spoke a different language hidden within my own mother tongue.

It was in my late 20s when I studied for my master's degree of music in the Netherlands that I was diagnosed with autism or, as I prefer to say, officially recognized as an autistic individual. Unfortunately, I was recognized only through a deficit lens, because my traits were viewed from the angle that the conventional, the neurotypical communication and thinking style was the desired one. I simply did not fit the socially and culturally constructed box.

And for the coming years after this, I embraced myself as disordered, thinking that I was the problem. So because I'm analytically inclined, I used my diagnostic information to identify my differences so that I could eliminate them, thinking that this was the way to acceptance. So over the years, I created a huge construction of artificial behaviors and gained, with these, social success in-- amongst people and in work cultures in my jobs.

So I thought, yes, I had conquered autism. I had conquered my diagnosis. But obviously, that was a serious misjudgment.

I have performed as a cellist all my life but can still feel nervous when I enter a stage. I may look calm and happy because I have learned to mask the fight or flight reaction and to harness its energies to benefit my performance. But these are strong instincts from our deep past. And to overrule them comes at a huge effort.

Masking autism is not a limited performance on a Saturday night at the concert hall. It requires a huge amount of energy day in and day out at any given moment. So for me, it led to a burnout that caused my life's absolute worst mental health crisis.

To avoid negative treatment and social rejection, I had assimilated to something I was not calibrated for, really, almost to the point of self-destruction. So learning social skills other than your own, of course, is really important, and it is rewarding. But for me, it was important to remember that they are a foreign language. I was just as autistic as before but used the foreign social knowledge that I attained to suppress my instincts and camouflage my distress when sent into a fight or flight reaction by the neurotypical world.

This didn't teach other people anything about who I was. What I needed? Tolerance or appreciation for the skill sets that I already possessed. It was not inclusion with dignity. And I realized that masking had been, for me, a harmful and oppressive coping mechanism which didn't build genuine success or genuine relationships and that communication issues were a reciprocal problem.

So the only sustainable way to live, really, was a two-way approach. So seven years ago, I took to the stages to advocate publicly, the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. But it felt like at that point, I didn't have much choice.

This was the point where the autism community really appeared to me, because people who related to my story reached out. And they could be from my immediate sphere, to my great surprise. Or they could be from the other side of the globe. But they were everywhere. And they were popping up like mushrooms.

And up until today, I have publicly advocated and become part of an incredibly diverse, global, and quickly growing community. I'm lining up with pioneering self-advocates who mobilize now and are demanding change through their appreciative approach of the neurodiversity paradigm. The autism community validates my experiences. And it gives me a sense of belonging that I never had before. It gives me inspiration and pride in being a neurovariant, a natural and valuable expression of human cognitive diversity.

So more pictures from my life here. But the idea of neurodiversity pulled me out of a solitary confinement and connected me to the world. My current relationships portrayed on this slide, they all operate on a transparent basis, verbalizing inner experience with respect to the fact that we are different and must share the load to bridge that difference.

With this approach, understanding and empathy has blossomed. And it has allowed me to build four pillars that I never had until now that supports a happiness that I never thought possible in my life. I have a job where I'm supported by my managers and appreciated for my skills. You can see me at the top left there with my cello colleagues from the London Philharmonic.

And I have a support network in my loving family, which has reconciled after having been brutally torn apart by autism, by unrecognized neurological differences between us. We are found there at the bottom left. I have a flourishing social life with sustainable friendships of all neurotypes and belonging within a community of neurodivergent people. And you can see me out with my friends throwing axes, there at the bottom right.

But my biggest pillar and gem is my husband, Damian. We have a platform of honest communication, from which we have been able to evolve together from. And for the first time, I have a relationship that actually keeps growing instead of eroding by mysterious and painful misunderstandings. And eight weeks ago, I gave birth to our first child, our son, named Roscoe.

Now, I can only speak for myself, as the autism spectrum is so diverse. But the root of my life issues is and always have been ignorance. And my medicine is what I'm doing now is trying to change my environment to better understand autistic people.

Through a strength-based approach, I have gained knowledge and control of my strengths, my needs, and my limits. And I have a solidified identity now and a self-acceptance with the deficit model eliminated from my system. I use my passions to contribute to society, recognizing that I have both differences and similarities with others.

Some of these differences is how I divide my attention, prioritize impressions, and process information. If majority demands conformity, we cannot attain or benefit from diversity. I admire the fact that neurotypical people often have the ability to process so many more stimuli than I at once without becoming overwhelmed or to see general outlines quickly and concepts for fast information processing and fast decision-making, using previous experiences and contextual information.

Instead of being broad, many autistic people, like myself, tend to be deep rather and configured to work best with single focus, with less divided attention, working from details upwards towards a concept, and to be less reliant on contextual information, which instead makes us less prone to generalizing or to be influenced by presentation rather than content. Again, these are all, of course, generalizations. But we are good at different things.

If neurotypical and autistic people formed teams and consciously worked towards harnessing all the qualities of breadth and depth that we possess together, the dimensions of what we can create really are limitless. And my husband and I, we can definitely vouch for that in our teamwork that we have in our marriage, because he is neurotypical.

And here are some stats from the National Autistic Society in the UK. And as you can see, what they reveal is really bad news. Although the majority of autistic people want to work, only 16% are ever in a full-time job. And for those who do get their feet through the door, bullying and discrimination is a huge issue still, as well as underemployment with little or no chance for advancement.

So offering the same treatment to everyone doesn't always generate equal opportunity or allow for an employer to make a well-informed decision about who is best for the job. So therefore, reasonable adjustments are today a right in the UK, where I work, that allows neurodivergent job candidates to better portray their skills and competencies. But only 3% who disclosed to their current or most recent employer that they were autistic have actually been offered an alternative interview process.

Autism is today a protected characteristic in the UK 2010 Equality Act. So bringing neurodiversity into account is important for businesses to stay contemporary with DEI expectations but also now to avoid litigation or grievances.

I have experienced also indirect discrimination, with horrifying consequences, in audition processes that compromised months of hard work and which didn't allow me to show my true skills. Small adjustments really can have an enormous impact. I have a visual mind. And taking notes helped me process speech and systemize information in a way that my mind can absorb. Something as simple as a pen and paper can make the difference for me between effortless excellence or a real struggle for mediocre results.

Another crucial need of mine is detailed instruction. My mind needs a lot of details to create a cohesive whole that I can see. I've played cello since I was three, but I didn't become what you would call a successful cellist until I was in my mid 20s. I really struggled in my development compared to other students who seemed to overcome technical obstacles on the cello almost like magic.

But when studying for my master's of music in the Netherlands, I met a teacher who was strict, blunt, meticulously detailed, and with an almost mechanical approach to cello technique. Many students found him off-putting. But I was intrigued. This man gave me something that I could visualize. The information suddenly locked in, and I was off.

In just one year, my playing skyrocketed. And I graduated with the highest degree with distinction. And a few months later, I had a desired apprenticeship position in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and was awarded a prestigious prize in Sweden.

It was the upbeat to my career finally and to my future positions in the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and ultimately in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, where I currently work. So although my difference has been a hurdle in my life, it has also ended up being part of the solution to overcome those hurdles. Today, I'm the Cultural Ambassador for the National Autistic Society in the UK. And I contribute to all kinds of projects all over the world.

And as the neurodiversity movement is gaining momentum, I find myself more and more speaking on platforms for both the public and corporate sector and joining webinars, such as this one, and giving consultation and presentations to companies, including to the CEOs of my own orchestra, which is incredibly exciting to be part of this change which is happening now.

So to finish, although reasonable adjustments are important and do make a difference, 50% of autistic people have said that support, understanding, and acceptance alone would be the single biggest things that would help them in employment. So I find that the best way to be an ally to the autistic community is to listen to the autistic community. And to best develop practices for neuro inclusion is to actively involve the community itself, to represent their needs and ideas, to apply any adjustments to the whole workforce whenever possible in universal design for true inclusion and for the benefit of everyone, to embrace the neurodiversity paradigm and use an appreciative language to help give us the psychological safety to unmask.

With less masking, we can focus our energies on our work and use accommodations if we need to. And employers can benefit from our authenticity and our true skills. Knowing that understanding and nonjudgmental support is available has proven to increase disclosure and reaching out.

The workplace can really help us find how we work best by being flexible, building on strengths to build confidence, and support an environment that helps everyone grow by keeping all communication channels open. So the new understandings that neurodiversity offers are bursting with possibilities for us and are going to play a crucial part in our pursuit of societal goals, minimizing injustices, reaching greater inclusion, and extracting maximum benefit out of human talent.

It is really important that this neurodivergent generation and its neurotypical allies support each other, that we demand change and challenge harmful stereotypes, to hold the door open for the next generation. Thank you so much for listening.

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you very much for a great presentation. Sam, you're going to take over from here, right?

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you so much, Dr. Kadish. And I'm going to ask all of the panelists to rejoin us for our questions and answers. And I want to publicly thank Dr. Kadish for your leadership as president of Touro University generally and specifically for your leadership in the efforts toward autism and disability rights, inclusion, acceptance that you described to open the program. And I look forward to continuing our work as a university in these and related areas.

Well, I'd like to now, among the different panelists, continue the conversation. And before we turn to the audience's questions-- and there are quite a number of questions. I want to thank the audience for joining us from all over the world. And on that note, just a special thanks to our speakers. For some of you, as well as audience members, it's way past your bedtime. So I particularly appreciate you taking the time to join us.

And before we turn to the audience questions, if there are any comments, remarks, responses that any of the panelists would like to make, questions you may have for each other.

[HARDEEP RAI] Maybe I'll go first, if I may, Samuel. First of all, Elisabeth, I wanted to say a big thank you to you. I was fascinated by listening to your talk. And I love the relationship to your personal journey with respect to what you've achieved and what you've done. I thought that was absolutely incredible.

And I thought that the way you were talking about the autistic community and engaging with the autistic community, to me, is critical. And actually, it's critical for all types of disabilities, not just neurodiversity. I'm finding that there's almost carve-outs of disabilities that are beginning to happen.

So in the UK, the Down Syndrome Act was passed fairly recently, the first time ever giving rights to people with Down syndrome. And so listening to different disability communities is becoming really, really important. So I love that.

And, Michael, if I may say, I thought your views and your comments around CSR and what is happening in that employment world are really powerful. And I loved what you said about the accountability point, because in my very limited experience of interacting with people over the last two years, employers in particular, from large companies and medium-sized and smaller companies, if the management and the CEO do not buy in, you have not got a hope of anything. You just really haven't. And that accountability at the highest level, I think, is really powerful. So that really resonated with me, Michael, in terms of what you said.

And of course, Tim, kicking it off in terms of what autism is in the first place and actually explaining through pictures about how autistic people think differently was really powerful and really helpful. And even with me as a genuine employer of people with disabilities, I took away some learnings from that. So thank you very much. Those were my initial comments, Samuel.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you, Hardeep.

[MICHAEL STEIN] Sam, would it be all right to ask fellow panelists a question?

[SAM LEVINE] Please do, Michael. Thank you.

[MICHAEL STEIN] And I've often wrestled in providing trainings with those who are on the spectrum, regarding employment and self-disclosure, because from a legal point of view, until you disclose-- even after the job offer is accepted-- until you disclose and request the reasonable adjustment, reasonable accommodation, you're not entitled to any legal protection. And yet the way to know when and whether and how to disclose is very much reliant upon skills that are often said not to be very strong among the neurodivergent, being able to read between the lines, to sense the atmosphere, to try to test the water.

And it's dramatically unfair and painful, at least for me, to tell these groups that you need to make your own assessment. And you need to test the water and see where you're comfortable. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are and what wisdom you could share about when and how to disclose, for those not only who are neurodivergent but who also have other nonvisibly discernible disabilities.

[TIM GOLDSTEIN] Well, I guess seeing as I've written a number of papers and such about it, I'll say a few things. First off, I generally advise to autistic individuals that if they're capable of getting through the interview, don't mention it through the interview. On the other hand, if they need an accommodation to get through the interview-- I can speak in real-time. I have no problem with that. But it's not uncommon for autistic individuals to need 20, 30 seconds to pull their thoughts together.

I actually say they have so many details, they're trying to dummy it down for the idiots that are listening. But I don't say that to them to their face. But nonetheless, that's generally taken as being, oh, they're not real quick. They're not real bright. So if you have some of those tells like that, probably, you would be best disclosing for the interview.

But I always tell people, as soon as you meet your real manager after they hire you-- I actually did a sheet that I then worked out with Vanderbilt that is a 10 very common things that autistic individuals need in the workplace. And you just mark off the ones that fit you. And you walk to your manager, and you hand it to them. And I've used it with my last three managers. And it's pretty funny. All three of them have actually, six, 8 months later, asked for another copy of it.

So that's my approach, is you first have to judge. And often, that is asking other people that you've worked with, do you think I can get through the interview? I mean, usually, if you're going to go into it as an autistic individual, somebody's trying to coach you on the interviewing process.

And if they say, yeah, you can interview just fine, don't even bring it up. Why give them something else to worry about because you don't know if you're going to have a biased group or not a biased group. So don't. But if you don't tell your manager right up front, you're going to be that outlier of the tribe sooner or later. So I always prefer to control the narrative versus it being, I said something really stupid. Now I'm trying-- oh, by the way, I'm autistic. And now it sounds like you're trying to cover up as opposed to give them the warning ahead of time.

Now, I personally do it a little different. I can get through interviews no problem. But if you just google Tim Goldstein, you find out immediately that I fill the first page all about autism. So I tell during an interview right up front because I know they're going to go look me up anyways. So that would be the one odd situation, is if you're well known about autism, you should probably tell them right up front.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you so much. Elisabeth.

[ELISABETH WIKLANDER] It's such a difficult question. And there really isn't one right answer to this. I think it's very important for every individual that I mean-- it depends also how long you have lived with this knowledge about yourself and how comfortable you are with this knowledge, because I find that for myself that when I disclosed, it was really important for me to have the knowledge that I needed to tackle any of those issues that can arise when you do disclose, when people maybe are dismissive or they challenge you, or maybe they don't even treat you right and actually deliberately, that there are really bad people out there that can do terrible things sometimes.

And I felt that no matter what kind of buts people threw at me, I had the artillery to just answer that, because I had built that knowledge up before I came out. And so I think it's helpful that you can be prepared, that there might be some areas from wherever that-- there could be issues. But I have to say also that disclosing is the best thing I've ever done in my life and that support came in overwhelm from everywhere and lifted me up in a way that I have never experienced before and that I could never anticipate would ever happen.

And that was already quite a while ago now. I mean, the community has grown a lot since then and been shown more in media since then. I mean, the awareness is greater nowadays. If you mention Asperger syndrome, which is also one of my labels, back when I started, no one had heard of the thing. And now people are more aware of what these things are.

That's also why I mentioned universal design in my presentation, because I think it's really important for companies that the more they know about the things that you can adjust, that will really help just include much more people. These small interventions, they go such a long way, like my pen and paper in an autism interview, that it's applied in general for everyone. And if everyone will benefit, if we have more clarity, more detailed information, if there are visual aids, if there's a picture of the entrance of where you're supposed to go, I mean, small things like that can be so helpful, for people like me at least, to lower anxiety levels and to help us understand what is expected of us.

And also for companies to-- in their DEI initiatives that they really are serious about the whole neurodiversity things. And bring in autistic voices to explain how they perceive things. And from there, see, what can we bring in that we can apply everywhere? And where might we have to be-- have specific adjustments? But I think there's just so many things that can be done that you can apply on everyone that's going to benefit a whole workforce. And therefore, maybe people don't need to disclose, because it is already going to be built in, in the interview process. That's what I hope, at least, for the future.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you so much, Elisabeth. Turning to some of the questions from the audience, and if I may, I've been scrolling through the Q&As and some of the common themes that I've seen running through. And first, I just want to repeat, emphasize, highlight just how appreciative both myself and the audience is for your presentations where you expressed both your own lived experiences, your own lives that you described so personally in some cases, and the work that you've done to promote awareness, inclusion, employment, and acceptance.

And on that note, I've seen maybe two primary themes, interrelated but somewhat different, that perhaps you can all address. One has to do with the reality that you've acknowledged that with all of the success, with all of the positive that you've been able to bring out, there are these obstacles, the numbers, the statistics, the problems, the challenges that are still there. So the first question is, how do we bring about awareness and acceptance? How do we promote the appreciation for whether it's neurodiversity, whether it's the skills that every individual has the potential to bring to a particular job? How do we explain that and bring that to the public's awareness?

On a somewhat different, but I think very related topic, as one of the viewers put it, not everyone is an Elon Musk. And as inspiring as all of your stories are and as much as speaking for myself-- and again, I think, speaking on behalf of the audience as well-- your stories do serve to bring about encouragement and hope and optimism. The reality is that most people, and certainly most people with disabilities, are not going to be Harvard Law professors or in a supervisory position at Google or world-class musicians, or in a position working with James Caan and employing people around the world in the business.

So what are some of your suggestions for promoting recognizing employment opportunities for a wide range of individuals with disabilities?

[TIM GOLDSTEIN] Well, this one's going to sound maybe a little bit odd. But I think one of the first things we need to do is we need to bust the myth that these autism at work programs are actually effective. I know a lot of the leaders. I've known them for years, that have started these programs from the biggest companies who have been the foremost leaders.

And I had a chat with one of them who probably the most leading company of all of them. And what he told me was-- and this is at five years after they've had the program going. If the board ordered them to put 100 autistic people on that year, they couldn't do it. After five years, and this is one of the biggest companies in the world. That's ridiculous.

Another company that I know real closely but I won't name-- [LAUGHS] made a big deal in the papers. And you heard about how great they were that they did an autism program. They hired one person. And there's all this great hope of, oh, corporate America has caught on. Yeah, corporate America has caught on But we're really good at advertising. That crap has got to stop. And they need to be serious about hiring autistic individuals, not making them into poster child.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you.

[MICHAEL STEIN] And I would add two quick points. One is that last time I saw a survey of American DEI programs, it indicated that well over 90% didn't have the D word, our D word, "disability," as part of the DEI. So that is a very obvious flaw, which is why I made my critique of CSR programs.

And the second, kind of along the lines of what Tim said, and following on what the other panelists have said, is that actually universality-- part of creating the culture, in a way, is not to emphasize particular disability types, particular races, particular gender expressions, but rather to have a culture of inclusion and to understand that we accommodate all kinds of people all the time, whether it's the diabetic who needs to do the insulin shot or whether it's the nicotine addict who's going to go outside to smoke or whether it's the single parent who needs to have time to take care of their child or whether it's the person undergoing marital or other relationship issues who need some time off.

We accommodate all the time. It's universal. We're all human. We all have needs. We're all imperfect. And only by having a culture of we all support each other, understanding that the flavors and the particular requirements may differ from time to time, I think is the way to go forward.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you.

[HARDEEP RAI] If I may go next quickly, Samuel, I'm going to answer this from an entrepreneurial perspective and then from an employment perspective. From an entrepreneurial perspective, putting Elon Musk to one side, I have seen some phenomenal things happen in the last few years. The disability marketplace is huge when it comes to spending power. $13 trillion a year, I think, is the amount that people with disabilities and their families have as income to spend on products and services.

And two really quick examples-- two guys that are wheelchair users set up a disabled-friendly Airbnb. So they called it Accomable. And three years after being formed, they were purchased by Airbnb. They did really well.

Literally two days ago, somebody that I know very well, Keely Cat-Wells, had her talent agency that promotes disabled people purchased by a company called Whalar after she set up C Talent for two years. So actually, a lot of people with disabilities are coming forward with relatively simple ideas and actually getting some real interest. So on the entrepreneurial side, if there are people that are thinking about starting businesses, this is an excellent time, because I'm seeing a lot of traction. And I'm seeing a lot of investors thinking about disability.

And on the employment side, from what I have seen in my personal experience, the only way, very sadly, to get employers interested in hiring more disabled people that I found is to get them to think that they're actually going to benefit from generating more revenues and more sales from hiring people with disabilities, because those people that you hire will be talking about your company, your product, your services. They might want to bring in some more of their people that they know into the company to recruit and actually start generating more sales.

And, Michael, you mentioned the Valuable 500 and the initiative and what that's all about. So I think people are becoming more aware of it. But I think realistically, we still have a long way to go to get people to actually do it in practical terms.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you so much. Elisabeth, some thoughts on those interrelated issues?

[ELISABETH WIKLANDER] There's been so many great answers already. But if I'm to add anything to this already very well-answered question, I think for me, it's really important the whole thing with language, that language reflects the attitudes that we have towards something.

And I, from my part, would love to see a change in how we use language around disability and around neurodivergence and definitely not shoved under the carpet, obviously, the struggles that are there but to balance up the language with the benefits and the drawbacks so that there is a better balanced view of who people really are and what they can do.

And I think that is a really important step in breaking the stigma around these things, to talk about them in a more appreciative way, because in the end, disabled doesn't mean unabled. And everyone can do something. And it's just to find that way for people to be able to maximize the every talent that they have, through whichever stepping stones that we need to take.

And in order to find out which ones they are, we need, as Tim said before-- representation is extremely important. And you can't really find any ways to deal with these issues unless you involve the communities themselves, to voice what their needs are so that they can have an equal shot at things in life like everyone else.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you so much. And on that note, recognizing how difficult it is, how challenging it is, as you've all described, as you all know better than most of us, as many in our audience know as well, it's so difficult to change hearts and minds. And we do hope that tonight's program will help promote all of the efforts that you've been working on for so many years. And we look forward to continuing this work, both with all of you, with many of our audience, and as Touro University.

I do personally want to thank all of our panelists for sharing with us your valuable insights, your valuable time. And I look forward to keeping in touch.

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[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks

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