 Well, hello everybody, welcome to Brain Club. Even though I know all of you, for those watching later on recording, I'll introduce myself. I'm Mel Hauser. I use Shidae Pronouns and I'm Executive Director here at AllBrain's Belong, Vermont. And this is Brain Club, where we will be discussing neuro-inclusive employment, which we always make sure that as part of our, though every week we are engaging in our community conversation on every day, every brain like, anyway, you know, it's late. Every day brain life stuff, we always, once a month, we make sure to engage with employment because lots of people wanna talk about employment and how maybe it's not always going optimally. So by way of the introduction, as a reminder, all forms of participation are okay here. Most of you have figured out, you can have your video on or off, and even if it's on, we do not expect anything of you. We don't expect you to look at the camera, you can move, you can eat, you can stim, you can fidget, you can have kids and pets and everything you want, climbing all over you. And you can communicate however you are most comfortable, you can unmute and get my attention, you can type in the chat box, you can do what needs doing. And just a word on language, you will hear myself and perhaps other people using identity first language as we discussed neurodivergence. So for example, I am autistic because it's part of my identity. And everyone is welcome to use the language that works for them. And safety comes first here always. So in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, we're all about respecting and protecting one another's access needs. So how that tends to play out here at Brain Club is that you are welcome to talk about anything that you're comfortable talking about. We just ask it if it's a topic that you experienced as distressing or traumatic, which is ask that you give a content warning by announcing the topic before you begin so that everyone else can listen with informed consent or leave the room for a minute or shut your sound off for a minute and we'll always type in the chat box when that content topic is over. All right, and last bit of access. If you would like to turn on close captioning, it is enabled, you just need to toggle it on and depending on what version of Zoom you're using, it'll either be a lab transcript CC button to click on the bottom of your toolbar. And if you don't see that, try looking for more, dot, dot, dot and choose show subtitles or hide subtitles if you'd like to turn it off. All right, so by way of thinking about neuro-inclusive employment tonight, when we really think about how we all have different brains, it makes no sense that there would be one way to do employment because if we all have different brains, it would make sense that there is no one correct way to be an employee. And yet in so many spaces in this society, that's not the message, that's not the message. And, you know, Sierra and I, we spend all day, all day, all day, all day supporting people whose health is suffering because of their work. Workplaces that are not affirming all aspects of identity, all aspects of the way we think, learn and or communicate. And that's bad for health. And when we really think about niche construction, the idea of designing a life based on your own needs, when you don't have employment that works for the way your brain works, it can have an impact on health. And when we think about the social model of disability where the barriers between you and the thing you're trying to do are what determine the extent of your disability, there are so many barriers to access in employment. And so when we think about access, I think when it comes to visible disability, let's say I'm a wheelchair user and I approach a building that has a ramp, I'm gonna have less disability than if I approach a building that does not have a ramp. And when it comes to invisible disability, it's the same exact thing. And yet it may not be visible, how the equivalent of the lack of a ramp in the employment sphere when it comes to how somebody's brain works. So when we think about not only mobility-related physical access needs, but say sensory processing. So half of the all-brains belong, staff spent two and a half hours at a large technology retail store this afternoon buying computers, I simply couldn't function for like, I don't know, three, four hours afterwards. Like it just, anyway, the bright lights, the sound, the visual and auditory chaos, my access needs were not met. Emotional communication, the way information is presented, the interpersonal expectations at a workplace, the technology aspects. So shout out to Tracy Brew of the Vermont Assistive Technology Program without whom we would really not be able to do most things here. Because again, so many barriers to access. So, hold on, I need to, there we go. I get so confused about the Zoom settings. All right, so when we think about employment so often, it's all about taking the square peg and like clobbering it, destroying it to make it fit into the round hole. And as I said before, this is really bad for health. And when we think about, and this is a slide from a previous brain club on neuro-inclusive employment and you can actually on the all-brains belong education page, there's a link to a YouTube playlist on all of our past neuro-inclusive employment brain clubs dating back to May. There's a little playlist of all the things, but when we think about these kind of fundamental principles of neuro-inclusive workplaces, a lot of times, like on paper, some of these things might exist, but culture, the culture part is in many ways the hardest to shift. And that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So, Jesse Bridges is the Chief Executive Officer of United Way of Northwest Vermont. And I met Jesse at a couple of different virtual events that I found to be some of the most neuro-inclusive events that I have ever attended. And I was really impressed. So I reached out and connected. And several months later now, Jesse was generous enough with his time to record an interview with me ahead of time. So I'm gonna play this video. It's about 23 minutes long. We can keep the chat box going to interact as it's playing and then we'll still have plenty of time for discussion to follow. Here we go. Oh, we're not gonna go. I have to unshare and reshare and click the button for sharing sound. Motor planning is so hard. All right, here we go. Often when I have these conversations around neurodiversity and access, people say, I've never thought about this or, oh, wow, it's like, so speaking with a leader of a large organization that like actually knows about this and thinks about it and it's important to you, like this is a huge opportunity. But I just, I'd love to hear about your journey of thinking about these topics and incorporating these topics into the work that you do. I appreciate that as a question. And I think United Way thinks about these things as an organization foundationally and it's constantly learning. And that's its history. It's just kind of the way United Way is situated within the community. We are the privilege to get exposed to so much good thinking and learning and conversation. And I think from that, I take a responsibility to continue to learn. For me personally, actually, I'd say my awareness on accessibility began when I was in my first job, when I was thinking about as a working at the University of Vermont in athletics and thinking about people's access to sporting events, physical events, like how the experience is for people and whether that be the physical ability to have a space that you can, because you can't access the bleachers or whatever from a physical ability standpoint to the sound, light, crowd impacts that it has for a more cognitive ability. And I think that's maybe kind of the first place where I was experiencing it. I got really into learning about universally accessible design principles through a colleague that was our parks planner when I was parks director in the city of Burlington. And we tried to bring some of those principles into the design that we were doing for park amenities and features and accessibility around programming and access to spaces and the variety that we were offering, trying to really think about the intersectionality of all those issues. So, if you're designing a playground, not everybody needs to go follow the same path, right? To get to the top of the hill, but everybody has to have a path to get to the top of the hill when you're designing those things. And that kind of visual, because it's such a good visual in my mind, for me at least, and it was really helpful in thinking about everything. That principle of universal accessibility, if I design this meeting workplace playground so that everybody can access it in some way, they don't have to be able to do every year. You don't not have a ladder to get to the thing because some people can't use ladders. Just being able to design so everybody had access and equitable access, right? And kind of removing the barriers, the visuals we all use. And as part of that, I think neurodiversity was a real big feature to that. Thinking about how somebody, whether they be autistic or Aspergers or just have light sensitivities or hearing sensitivities or crowd sensitivities, how you could create spaces and places and programs and meetings that allow for that variety. Or how you create a workplace that accommodates the variety. And in a way we've really, we've tried to think about what we're doing externally, but also thinking about the people who do the work here and supporting them in that journey. Oh, that's so beautiful. And I think that sometimes people, when they have that visual of physical access, as it relates to mobility, related disability, visible disabilities, that maybe is for some people, how they can begin to think about this lens. And then they can maybe take the next step to say, well, invisible disabilities, it's just as important to think about how everyone has to get to the top of the hill and to have multiple paths to be able to do that. So, it's interesting because a lot of people who struggle in their workplaces, they don't know that they have an invisible disability. So they don't have language to talk about it because they don't know that's what's the barrier between them and the top of the hill. They may just know that they're struggling. And I think that when an organization is large enough to have a human resources division, if the top-down lens isn't, oh, this person has this disability and they need accommodations, if that flag is not checked, it may not come into the conversation. It might be, some organizations talk about, we have disciplinary problems, we have difficult employees, or like when I was chief resident during my training, we had difficult learners, like really this was neurodivergent with barriers to access. And this is how this played out. So it's like a total lens shift. When we think about some explanations for why people are struggling, why people are dysregulated, why people are, the conflicting access needs, they are about access needs. I think it really relates, for my experience as a leader too, what I've seen is that it's directly relevant to the way we treat physical healthcare and mental healthcare. So if you think about physical healthcare where we have access to that, we look health insurance, it's not affordable but it's accepted. And it's also not seen as a choice thing. If you get those type of physical ailments, it's not seen as you chose to X, Y, and Z. And what we're struggling with as a community around mental health and we don't give that the same time, right? So you take a sick day because you are physically sick or you take a sick day because you broke your leg. Everybody's like, right on, good for you. Yeah, rest up, heal up. If you are brave enough to say, I need a mental health day, right? I need my brain needs to break and that could be whether you have a disability or not. We don't accept that. Like it's toughen up, right? That's the American like ideal, right? Is that you brain-wise we push through. And because we start with that, so if you start there, and that's for everybody with privilege and able-bodied and then you try and add in a disability to that. Now you're not only going up against accessibility issues, you're going up against cultural norms that are just incredibly difficult to overcome. And the disruption to the work environment and the way in which we expect people to show up nine to five Monday through Friday has changed fundamentally. And organizations that have not necessarily adopted that can and have not adopted the flexibility are the ones, in many cases, everybody's struggling for workforce, but you're compounding that issue by not accepting and talking about that. And so there's a great conversation about access. You've opened the door, if you create a flexible work space environment that has accountability to getting the work done, but is less prescriptive about when and how you do that work, right? Do I need you to be on the teams chat available at all times? No, I don't, I can be. We can work on a different system for me to communicate with you about what I'm doing. You can let your colleagues know, you log in and out for meetings, virtual meetings, but you're not doing the chat thing because it doesn't work for you, whatever that is. Sometimes some access needs are seen as optional. Just the way that you're saying that culturally mental health is thought of as an optional or a stigmatized or in some way separate from the rest of health, but an access needs can be that way also. And I'm wondering what ideas that you might have about how organizational leaders might set the tone about how all of the different types of access needs are at least worth thinking about. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, we don't ever like to think about organizations being top down, but there is a role for leadership, right? There's this idea, we need to set the table, create the space for people to do their work. It's a conversation. Oh, that's what you need. Okay, I value you. I know you can get your work. We are capable of doing what you need to do. And then it becomes a management issue of if work's not getting done, it's not because you're not on this thing potentially or you have to do your work at odd hours or whatever it is. It's, okay, well, how do we, is it not enough too much? But those are conversations. You're opening the dialogue and that's trust that's approach I guess is a big thing. And so it's say to leaders to think about how approachable are you? So if you can give people space, they can come forward with it. And then it's not here's the papers I'm serving you as you have not accommodated my needs. It's we're working together. That's our job. Totally. And I think that when you think about like the brain science of advocacy or self-advocacy, when things get antagonistic, it is completely predictable that you're neither side is going to end up with a good outcome. So the minute I get to the place where I need to assert my legal right, by doing so, it is completely predictable that say an HR person who knows the heaviness of that is going to have a limbic involuntary response to that. No matter what their cortex might be thinking and processing it's like just, you know, dysregulated stand up and like people need to be able to do that it's their legal right. But once you get the idea would be to like not need to get to that place. If there's a culture of I'm having a hard time. These are my ideas about how I can do my work better. A lot of times that really does work better. And that's the advice I give to my patients that partial disclosure or selective disclosure in a less formal way is like that is preferable. I have a million micro interactions every day with people in terms of I need this, you need this, I need this, you know, it takes a lot and it's amazing to me, particularly people that have understand their disability really well, like understand what they need in terms of accommodation, understand what they need, like blown away by some of the conversations I've had where it's like, yep, this is how I know I have to set these kind of guardrails, these parameters. I can work in this, this is how I can get my work done. It's up to me, privileged and in position of power to accommodate and to change the way in which I'm work. I have to adapt in order to say, okay, I'm not going to send you that message via Teams or I'm not going to email you at 10 o'clock at night or I'm not gonna put you on the spot in a virtual meeting to present on a thing that we haven't prepared for or all of these different things. I have to keep that in the role of, that's my job. That's not the person's job, they did their job. Toby, they gave me, they did an amazing job. How much self-work goes into that, right? And how many people don't have access to that level of understanding? So also have that need, but don't have the ability or haven't had the opportunity to express it. And so that's where this universally accessible design comes in, right? If you create the environment where people can choose how they get X, Y and Z completed, right? How they get from point A to point B. Then you've created a more universal inclusive space that today's workforce expects that the leaders of tomorrow meet them there. And the hybrid workplace is like a very safe kind of, it's the pyramid of culture, right? It's the food, it's these things that are like, I can understand that. That, I hope, is opening doors to some of these deeper and harder conversations about real accessibility needs, you know, where it's like, oh yeah, of course you need a chair that doesn't hurt your back, you know? Or a screen that doesn't hurt your eyes. I also need an environment that doesn't hurt my brain. That makes sense. Oh, I love that. Of course I need an environment that doesn't hurt my brain. If everyone would think about this just like that, oh, what a different world we would live in. We don't have that world in 2022 in most places. Instead, we have people in environments that hurt their brains, where the people in the environment are explicitly or implicitly telling that person that it's their fault, that the brain hurts. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, it's interesting. So at Alperin's Belong, we have a community advisory board that in addition to our governance board of directors, we have the community members who are informing all of our programs and priorities, et cetera. I asked them this spring, I said, how will we know when our community is more neuro-inclusive? What would you see? What conversations would you be hearing? And something that a lot of them shared is that specifically they want to hear more casual conversations about access needs. And so I was like, yes. So me, like for me in pretty much every brain club, in most of my group medical visits, I am like taking that, because that's what my community advisory board told me they wanna see. And I am making sure that that is happening everywhere I go. So it's like the impact of the organization, but it's also me as the individual doing the work that is my mission in every interaction I have. And I have like found that to be like a compass of sorts. And so in a group medical visit earlier in the week, somebody starting a new job and I asked them like, how's it going, talking about your access needs? And they're like, I can't talk about my access. What are you talking about? I can't do that. Look, I don't know what it's like that people would judge me and think I'm weird. I'm like, great, great. So it's, and it's because this person has never worked in a culture where that's normative. So it hopefully by people having interactions in cultures like that, it can become to feel safer to show up that way. From the more people do that, it's like any other type of culture setting. Yeah, and I agree. I think it's in any type of culture setting. So if you're thinking about it when you are setting policies, right? So, you know, a thing that just resonated for me when we were talking there, kind of going through this, little things you do around time off, right? So giving more time off, generally better. It's also good and competitive. But a lot of workplaces will have vacation time and sick time, right? And so at culturally, we classify like a mental health break as vacation, right? Why do we designate the two? You have time off, right? You have time off. I don't, why do I, unless you need to tell me, this is a, you know, I need a break from X, Y, and Z because you want me to know what's going on for you within the work environment so that I can support you when you get back. Great, but that's not whether or not you get to go. So, you know, and, and you know, you know, one, we've also, you know, COVID's also had a culture where it was like, you know, show up to work, coughing and hacking because you need to power through and be sick too. Look, I think we got rid of that one. It's like, you got a minor cough, everybody's like, you better stay, you better be remote only. If you feel like you can work, that's great, but like remote only, you know? But that's, you know, that designation, that separation of even that within a policy of saying, you don't have to classify or clarify for me why you need time. What part of you needs time? Yes. The last question I have for you about how what you just said connects to what you said earlier, but I got so excited about something else. You said that I didn't follow up on, but you know, you named the thing, which is that in 2022, so many organizations are struggling to fill their open positions and they're struggling to retain their existing workforce. And you know, I see that and I'm like, yeah, it's because you're not talking about neurodiversity and access, you could do like, but just thoughts about how that's connected from a CEO perspective. For sure, I think that the, you know, workforce challenges, many of them are rooted in, we still have old structures in terms of our work expectations as a society, right? And it's not that every other countries have this perfect and right and many are way worse than we are in terms of accommodating, some do it better. And it's, some of that is cultural. And, you know, examining, if we had the space and time capacity to examine, what are the systemic barriers that are keeping people from being part of the workforce? Because we all need to work. I mean, not the kids, they gotta go to school and you gotta, but we all, you know, we do, it's part of society. It's not just a means to an end for myself, it's not just how I pay my rent or mortgage or I feed my family. It's how everybody does it. That's kind of where the whole thing's based on that. And we don't all have the privilege of getting a tremendous amount of value from what we do like you and I do, right? Of like, you know, there are, you know, we need people to do the X thing and there's a need for that. And it's not always altruistic or rewarding in the same way. But if we think about how do we make it so that people want to work in our environments, whether it's making a thing, right? Or it's community building or it's healthcare, you know. And when I say healthcare, I mean all of healthcare, mental healthcare, physical healthcare, it's, you know, you could probably think about how we're addressing a lot of these things. And there are so many barriers that keep people in the way of the employee. It's one of the things Working Bridges works a lot on with the social determinants that get in the way. So you've got childcare, housing, you know, transportation, food insecurity, all of these things and wages, of course, stacked on top of that, you then start getting into the issues of, well, what's the barrier in terms of my work environment and what is expected of me in terms of how I'm showing up to do X thing that you've hired me to do. And so I think it plays a huge role in, you know, those intersectionality of all of those things are oftentimes what keep people from being part of the workforce. So much of what you've said is about the way you see the world. And that's what sets the tone of leadership is that you actually believe that we all do things differently and that you can shift the environment around so the people who work for you thrive. If you don't have that lens, nothing you're gonna do is gonna feel real to your people. But if you start with, we are all human and, you know, my colleagues talk a lot about human-centered design in terms of meetings and spaces and doing those things, you get a lot farther. I think you can have a lot more space. And, you know, maybe culturally, one of the big things that we miss and we lack in today's day and age is the ability to have a conversation with each other and be a little bit vulnerable on both ends of, I don't know what I don't know. So there we have it. Thoughts, anyone? You feel different between Messi and... Our YouTube kept going. Hey, Matt, you go for it. The thoughts about, you know, having that, like he said, having those tough conversations, being vulnerable to CEOs, the typical CEO, like he said, he's a CEO. They have a, like a standardized mindset about what to look for in an employee. And, you know, having like he said, having that, you know, difficult discussion and conversation moving forward because CEOs are like, like he said, human beings too as well, you know, they can't help you if they don't know your access needs. And, you know, and they gotta, you know, it seems like, you know, or they're trying to walk a fine line because there's rules to be, you know, followed through. But I do think we should look outside about, you know, in my opinion, outside of the box approach, approaches to these, you know, employment opportunities because I do see a lot of, you know, hope within, you know, within the community, within the disability community too as well because we can fail on those stats that they're asking about. I know some require skills or, you know, education, but most of it, you don't need a GED to have you to do. Most of it's like trade, you can work in trade. It's just, you know, having that conversation with CEOs across Vermont, that's like having those, you know, tough, vulnerable conversations because they wanna hear from their employees what's working for them and what's not working for them. Thank you. Thank you. A couple of things that come to mind based on what you said, Matthew. So one is, I think that, you know, power dynamics are really important to consider. And I think that when someone in leadership has, sets the tone of, I want to know your access needs. This is the cultural norm that we all have access needs. That goes a long way. But like I said at the end of that interview about the paradigm that a leader is operating under, the way they see the world, is ultimately going to dictate energetically whether an employee can show up authentically. Because, you know, for example, Sierra and I have so many patients who when a supervisor asks for feedback and candid feedback is provided, our patients get fired. Like that is a common phenomenon. And it's because the paradigm was not there. The language may have said, I want to hear what I can do better. But the paradigm, the culture was different. Matthew, and actually, Matthew, before you, I want to give someone who hasn't spoken yet an opportunity, I'm going to read in the chat. Nita says, I'm interested in the point Laura brought up about how to support leaders and having their access needs met so they can support employees to do the same. Yeah, yes, I have many thoughts about that. So I think that in many ways, in many large organizations where someone in a position of leadership still may not have autonomy to meet their own access needs and may not in fact be regulated. And so when someone's not regulated, they are much less likely to be able to perspective shift and be able to engage in meaningful reciprocal conversations with their staff. And so it all begins from a place of, is this a culture where everyone one knows about how their brains work because if you don't know that, you're not going to have a framework of access needs. What do I need to be able to have full and meaningful participation? And so it really begins at the level of self-awareness and if the culture's not there, it's like chicken or the egg. It really, if we're saying that when there is an imbalance of power the leader is the person who can set the tone from the top down of this is how this is going to go, that person's not going to be able to do that if they're not regulated. And it's hard to kind of like chicken or the egg of like how do you get off that train? What I had to do is I had to get off my old train and start a new train because it was really about access and regulation. And everyone needs to be regulated to have access to their cortex. And as Sarah says in the chat of culture and a model of universal design because we all have access needs including a leader. Absolutely. So it's tricky because we all have and like how many brain clubs have we done about brain rules? When we are dysregulated, we retreat to our brain rules. Brain rules are cognitive self-regulation strategies. And if that term is new to you, if you're new to brain club when we use that term around here, we made it up. So brain rule meaning like a cultural assumption, something I think is a universal life truth but I really made it up or someone else made it up. Like, well, we need to turn our video on for Zoom meetings. That is a brain rule and not a world rule. It's not a law of physics. But when we are dysregulated, we retreat to these kind of rigid ways of being in the world. And it becomes even more difficult to discern that something is a brain rule when a lot of people share it. If you look around and a whole bunch of dysregulated people are sharing the brain rule, it really kind of looks like a world rule, but it's not. I find it really interesting that, so you talk a lot about, well, you don't say hierarchical, but I think that's what you're saying when you talk about organizational structure. And if I've worked in organizations that have had a... I mean, every organization has different roles and responsibilities, but it seems like the organizations that were more reliant on the hierarchical structure for communicating to their employees what is expected of them were the ones where access needs were less likely met. Whereas when I've been working in a culture of more seeing everybody that is working with you as just having different roles and responsibilities and not necessarily in a hierarchical structure organization, there seems to be more room for discussion of these things. So it's like needing to break it down from the way that the organization structure is built. It seems like how the culture could change by seeing things less, much more like different levels of authority, whatever. That's interesting, Christina, because I... And I wonder what anyone else thinks about this because I would... I don't know that hierarchy is the problem. It's just that there's a lot of cultures that are dysfunctional that have a lot of... Is it hierarchy or is it just bureaucracy and the multiple tiers of dysfunction? And it may not be... The hierarchy part might not be the problem, but the chaos and the bureaucracy and the lack of self-efficacy because how... We say it at ABB, for example, because we're small, we're so small, and if we have open dialogue about access needs and someone's access needs are not being met, we can literally just change what we do immediately. And that's important to us. It's a value of our culture amongst our staff. So it's like we're small enough to be really flexible and nimble, responsive to the needs of the people. And it's not that there isn't hierarchy. It's just that it is a core value that... The access isn't that. So it's like it's... I'm reading in the chat, Aaron says, I work with the hierarchy's major problem because it creates conditions for power differences that can be abused. The power doesn't have to be abused. Exactly. Yeah, you said it way better than I did. It's not that there's higher... Hierarchy is not the problem. It's just that in systems like that, it is more likely to have dysfunction and abuse of power, which is the problem. And it is common. Yeah. Yeah, I think it depends upon how tied the people in leadership positions are to using the position for power. Like if they identify closely with that system, and you see it in families too, where if the parents are, I am the authority, and I tell you how that seems to inherently create issues. But I think it's more about the thought process of the leaders for sure. It does seem to be that organizations that have different structures just tend to have more of those types of people. Totally. And last week at Brain Club, this came up in the context of like threat and demand and energy management, where I forget the context, but we had talked about the idea of power over. And sometimes for little kids, that's the only thing that's ever modeled. It's the only type of power is to have power over, where it's like, I feel like that's gross. I don't want power over someone. So I might, or a position of leadership, I might like be supervising people. And I might be like, I have to be accountable for like all the things. I have to be accountable for more things in my position of leadership, but I do not see it as power over because that's gross. So it's about, I think the paradigm that the leader is existing in, I think. And I think that there, you know, there's organizations where the leader doesn't, but they're not like looking like they're not needed. The power over thing is not the deal. It's like power of vision, power of purpose, power of connection. There's like all the other powers. And that's the problem. And I think Christina, something else you just said that this made me think of, there's often in a lot of systems where the leader is so distanced and detached from the rest of the people, they're not getting data. They're not getting feedback that's authentic, especially when the culture is toxic and the people can't even give feedback. And so you, many times in organizations, leadership is so like detached and like clueless from what's really going on. And I mean, this is the thing about systems. Systems are designed to perpetuate the system. But back to Nita's question about supporting leaders to meet their own access needs is I think, I think they have to learn that access needs are a thing first and that they get to have them because everyone does as human beings. And that is, that's not, that's not there yet. Oh, sorry, Matthew, working memory. I should have written this down. Thank you for your patience. You had your hand up. No, no, no, you answered. I was listening in on that. That's pretty good. Interesting. Well, I was trying to say an answer to your question about bureaucracy and a system in itself. The answer is there's a quiet little bit of both within intertwined, you know, because you've got that bureaucracy side of things, you know that, you know, like I said, they're intertwined with our culture. But also, like you said, the statewide system in itself is part of our culture too as well. It's about, you know, those are the problems, but how can we find a solutions to those problems too as well? We got to think about that too as well, you know, because every problem there is a solution. And it's about, you know, how can we, you know, address those solutions to leadership that has that, you know, typical standard bureaucracy mindset that everybody's so fond of that, you know, having, you know, outside of box innovation mind to think outside that, you know, spectrum or that normal, normalcy of, you know, the way the system is. How can we have that conversation with leaders or discussions with leaders, CEOs that have that same, you know, mindset of it's about, you know, keeping a culture the same. But we're afraid of going forward if we try to, you know, switch or change the system the way it is. How can we have that conversation? Knowing that the system we have is, like you said, it has a little bit of a negativity of bureaucracy and, you know, and that culture of what you call standard normalcy that, you know, that ableism side that considers that the dominant side of, you know, of our system. Thank you. I started giggling to myself because I, it takes a whole lot of impulse control on my part. But what is, what doesn't usually work is telling the oppressive ableist systems that they're oppressive and ableist, they fairly predictably flip their lead. But, yeah, I mean, it's, I think it starts from, you know, I did a training last week for a state organization and that that that is working really hard to improve neuro inclusion. And I summarized, they asked, like, you know, tips for neuro inclusive meetings. Well, it all starts with ground rules. You actually have to have the, like, like a shared premise that you want everyone to meet their own access needs and not infringe upon the access needs of others. That is a lot to take for granted there. If you skip that stuff, nothing else happens that, that makes forward progress. And in fact, that premise is not always stated. I'm, I'm reading Christina, I think we need to educate organizations more about neurodiversity at my company. We talk about diversity, but all the other, all the other forms of diversity, right? And I absolutely agree. Neurodiversity and access are largely missing from the community conversations on diversity, equity, and inclusion, despite one in five people having brains that think, learn, or communicate in a way that, you know, significantly departs from the majority of brains. That's a lot of people who's, who are more likely to have their needs not met. So we have about five minutes left. Anyone, particularly anyone who's, who's not, not had an opportunity to share either in the chat box or, or out loud other, other directions you think we should explore here. And if not, I have a question. How does ABB reach the CEOs? Great question. You know, I think that, you know, I've been really, really impressed, you know, any, any organizational leader that I've connected with has, has, you know, I think the message is really landing. And I think through the language of, there's this widespread problem of like, no one can fill their positions or keep their positions filled. Like, so that's, that is often like a lens through issue, like, oh, I guess I'm like open to kind of seeing that maybe there's something I'm missing. So there's that. But, but, but I think, and I think the oblique angle is, is often about, you know, I, I, I think, oh yeah, I'm interested in Claudius saying there's more non CEOs than CEOs and I wonder if people power would help create change. Yeah, you know, I, and incorporating that into just the, I think what we've learned this year is that the oblique angle, the not challenging brain rules, the not telling the people that they're doing it wrong. It's really like, there's this new opportunity here to build, you know, a more inclusive culture. Like I have, I've, I, I don't think I've, I haven't heard yet anyone say to my face that they don't want an inclusive workforce culture. This is part of it. Guess what? This is part of it. If you want to have your, your people feel like they belong, you have to figure out how to meet their access needs. And I really think that, you know, Jesse Bridges opening line at the beginning, not opening line, but like early, at the beginning of the interview when he said, you know, I feel a responsibility to keep learning. That was a, that was, I mean, that very simple sentence was huge, huge. I think I'm going to turn it into, I'm going to turn it into something like a social media post or something. Yeah. Because I mean, that's, that's the deal. And, you know, I think that having, you know, you know, leaders like Jesse come out and be like, yeah, I don't get it right all the time. I don't keep learning. And, you know, I'm a CEO of an organization. And this is how I see the world. I think that, I think that, that goes a long way. But the question, another question I have for all of you is, you know, for, for, for, for December brain club, we're going to do brain club greatest hits. We're going to revisit the topics over the past year. We've got 12 months of brain club almost under our bell. So that's a lot. So when it comes to employment, what, what, what do you want to talk about for neuro inclusive employment week is where we always do one of one, one brain club a month, we always take it. About employment. And need, I agree, need is writing. It's nice to hear a message from someone out there in a position of leadership. Absolutely. Right. So it's, it's, it's some, it's really important to have, have people modeling how they're doing it, how they're doing it differently, how they're reimagining, you know, what's possible. Well, thank you all so much. Matthew, go for it. Yeah. And speaking of brain clubs, you know, having this opportunity, like having Jesse on, you know, a CEO that thinking that sees things differently, but also, you know, also brought his perspective view as a CEO within, you know, of, you know, what can we do together? You know, like he said, what can we truly come together? That we can, that we can all get, you know, you know, what other CEOs around Vermont, you know, so they also can train them on how to, you know, have that different perspective view, and work with, you know, also learn and grow with saying, this doesn't work. How can I switch it up so much to make my employees feel like they're included, but also have that sense of belonging on why they work for me or work for this organization. That's, you know, having those types of brain clubs, like with Jesse, the CEO, the CEOs of Vermont is a way to also open another horizon, open another, another conversation about, you know, what it's like to, you know, to be looking on an outside end with this paradox of every, of this culture that we're also looking into and how to, you know, change it in a way, or modifying a way where everybody can come to a table and actually have that same common, you know, mind thinking of moving forward about to address these issues we have. Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's, it's, we learn from everyone. I mean, we learn from everyone. I think at least I learned from everyone I ever interact with ever. And I think that, you know, you never know, you know, who's going to, you know, that he's going to hear that message. It's going to click and it's going to shift thinking. It's really just to think about inviting curiosity, um, curiosity about like, oh, what's that? Oh, that's interesting. Um, you know, and, and, and creating, creating a, you know, a culture where people can feel safe to shift their thinking. Um, and, you know, I think that, you know, whether it's, you know, whether it's in healthcare or education or, you know, whatever, whatever fields, there's just so much unlearning and relearning to do. Um, and I think it's about, I think that, I mean, that's why we talk about inclusion because everyone wants inclusion. They may just not know what it means. But I think when you get to a place of there are lots of people in our society, kids and adults who don't feel like they belong and are experiencing tremendous suffering, physical, mental health, social isolation, unemployment is 80% of neurodivergent adults are unemployed. I mean, when you, when you start from a place, when you start from a place like that, like there's not going to be anyone who can say, oh yeah, things are, things are the status quo is working really well. Like, so I think, I, I, I think those data points are also important. All right, everybody. Well, I will, we'll hope to see you next week as we wrap up our last week of neurodiversity and culture month. And we're going to change the title for next week, because it was, it was, it was a little too aggressive, but we'll be, we'll be, we'll be talking more about the oblique angle of culture change.