Perspectives: Neurodiversity in the workplace
Advocating for change.
This week's Perspectives is an interview with Kelly Colón, founder of Eledex Coaching & Consulting, a company dedicated to advancing neurodiversity advocacy by empowering individuals and organizations to embrace authentic inclusion. Kelly and I crossed paths a few years ago when she sent me a DM on LinkedIn, saying she was at a crossroads in her career and wanted to make a change. A few months later, she made the leap and started her own business. Kelly provides executive function coaching for students and neuroaffirming support for adults.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Anna Burgess Yang: Tell me about your work history, up until the point when you decided to start your own business.
Kelly Colón: My world, since I was a teenager, was centered around real estate. My dad had a real estate title examination business, and so I worked with him and then did some commercial property management early in my career. I never completed my formal college education. I ended up getting my broker's license, and I was selling residential real estate. I did a lot of home staging, working with builders to stage model homes, things like that. I was sort of dabbling in interior design.
When my son was two, I thought I should go back to school and get an interior design degree. I had zero confidence, because I'm neurodivergent and because I was terrible at school. But I got an associate's degree in interior design. And then I realized that I actually hate interior design! I ended up feeling really frustrated and beating myself up about it.
I ended up going to dinner with a friend and her husband, who had been going to the Wentworth Institute of Technology in the construction management degree program. We were talking about what I wanted to do next. I didn't want to do real estate sales forever — the income wasn't consistent, and I had small kids. But I enjoyed the home inspection process, and when I was doing property management, working with tenants. So my friend's husband suggested that I apply to Wentworth's Facilities and Construction program. And I said, "There's no way I could get into that; they're never going to let me in." He said, "Just apply." So I applied, kind of on a dare. If you know me and really want me to do something, double dog dare me that I can't. That's usually a surefire way for me to apply.
I applied, and I got a full ride. Which, to this day, I don't understand how that happened. That shifted my career. I was working for public and private entities, overseeing construction and design projects.
ABY: How did you end up leaving the industry?
KC: During the pandemic, I got laid off. And I thought, "I don't know if I want to do this anymore." The companies were very rigid. I would be in a conference room for seven, eight hours per day running these program management meetings, completely hyper-dysregulated. I was working with companies to design new buildings, new facilities, and I thought, "I could never work here." I had an epiphany at that point. I'd given the last 15 years of my life to this facilities construction industry, and I don't want to continue building spaces I can't even function in.
So, on a whim, I met with a woman who was working for a furniture manufacturer. She mentored me through the pandemic. And she had an open spot on her team, and asked me to come work for her. After three months of saying no, she wore me down. I worked with her for about two years. During all of this, I was also teaching higher ed, mostly adjunct, mostly at night.
ABY: What made you realize that you wanted to go out on your own, versus working for another employer?
KC: Desperation, frustration, anger, rage. I wish there were a better answer, but that's the real one. In addition to my professional background and my teaching, I was also an advocate for families who were going through the IEP (Individualized Education Program) evaluation process for their kids. I never talked about it. People didn't know that I was neurodivergent. I was pulled into meetings where they wanted me to give presentations on trauma, informed design, neuroinclusion, and neurodiversity.
My team was great, but I was surrounded by people who weren't neurodivergent. They were making recommendations that I knew — even though I'm not a clinician — would absolutely harm and traumatize individuals. They're a vendor, I get it. They were pushing a solution, like "put this rocker in your office and it's going to magically re-regulate." And I was like, "You don't even know what that word means. You're saying the words, but you don't understand the language."
ABY: Did you end up talking about it with your team?
KC: I did a podcast for the furniture industry, and I was on a call with three of the company's competitors. We all had a different lane that we were talking about. Mine was obviously trauma, neurodiversity, and neuroinclusion. I thought I did a great job.
My phone and email blew up with people who were really grateful for the content I was sharing and the humanizing way I explained it. I was feeling very proud of myself. About an hour later, I got the dreaded call that leadership was less than thrilled. Because I didn't talk about furniture in any form or fashion. The collective was telling me that there's a desperate need for what I was saying, and there was pushback from the people in charge. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. A few weeks later, I had a meeting with my manager, and I resigned.
ABY: Did you have a plan for what to do next?
KC: I did not have a clue what I was going to do. If you had asked me back then, I would have guessed that I'd do workplace design or workplace strategy. I never would have thought I would publicly go out and talk about neurodivergence when I'd spent 40 years hiding.
But in the response to the panel discussion, I thought, "Ok, there's something here." I hired a business coach. And it took me about six months, but I finally said, "You know what? I'm not going to hide anymore." I had no idea if I could make money and support my family. But I knew that the world was broken, and we have an entire community of humans who are wildly unsupported. And we have another cohort of humans who want to support them, but don't know how. And maybe I can be a bridge to that.
ABY: You post a lot on LinkedIn about being neurodivergent. How does it feel to put yourself out there, and what type of response have you gotten?
KC: I would like to say that it feels great, but I don't know if that would be an honest and transparent response. Early on, it was traumatizing and terrorizing. Once it's out there, you can't dial it back. There was going to be a whole host of people who had known me for 15 or 20 years who might be blindsided by the stuff I was posting. I've lost friends and professional contacts who are opposed to any sort of discussion around inclusion, supporting neurodivergent individuals, or modifying their workplaces to support people. It was hard. It was terrifying.
But hiding who I am impacted my ability to show up transparently. Once I let that go, the response was very much like it was after I was on that panel. People were sending me private DMs and emails, saying that they hadn't seen anybody talk about these things in a way that didn't feel clinical — like a task or a box they had to check off. Over the last year, I've gained a lot more confidence. The people I'm trying to reach and the people I'm advocating for matter more than my fear.
But I will say this much: since January, I've had several people reach out to me with very judgmental, very negative feedback. Unsupportive at best and cruel at worst. Because the work I work I do lands in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space, which is under attack right now. I've had people tell me I'm crazy. I had someone tell me directly that I needed to shut my mouth and put my pen down. And, as I said before, the fastest way to get me to do something is to tell me I can't.
ABY: You advocate for neuro-inclusive policies and practices in the workplace. For people who still believe that's important, what does that look like?
KC: In a nirvana sense, it means that regardless of your cognitive differences, you can show up in a way that feels supportive. It sounds cliche, but it allows people to show up in a way that is authentically them and unique to them. You get a sense of trust and belonging, these things human beings need to thrive. And if that doesn't happen, it has a negative impact on people's mental health and well-being. When there is masking, which is hiding certain pieces of yourself, you have a higher rate of suicide. There's a lot more negative stuff that happens when we're unable to show up the way that we need to.
Community and belonging are critical. You have to be able to show up in a way that is unapologetically you, but also that the community you're showing up in has the policies, procedures, programs, and environment that allow you to show up.
ABY: What are the things that you think are most important to change, things that aren't happening right now to support neurodivergent people?
KC: This is my opinion, party of one, but I think there are a lot of individuals who want to do this work. But as human beings, we want a fast return, an easy ROI, and a step-by-step how-to guide. The problem is, that's not step one. That's where we're getting it wrong.
It's about building literacy. If you're learning a foreign language, it takes time. We need to build a neuro-affirming language. It means our hiring processes are inclusive, and we're really considering cognitive needs and invisible disabilities that we otherwise wouldn't even know if we didn't have the language around it.
ABY: It sounds like some foundational work is missing?
KC: Yeah, it's kind of like building a house on a fractured foundation. It's a massive investment, because we're not talking about one-and-done. Neuroscience continues to change. That's a hard thing for leaders to understand. You can build a foundation, but that foundation has to be trained and re-trained.
If you go into an organization, how many do ethics training every year? I mean, some people just click through the stuff and don't actually listen, but still. They have learning management systems and a process. So my thing is, before you start to modify a workplace, you have to pause and put together workshops and trainings, and build your internal functional literacy around these topics.
ABY: How do you think this type of work will continue to evolve?
KC: The current political climate in the U.S. is scary for marginalized groups. But it reminds me that this work is even more important now than it was when I made the decision to leave two years ago. We have an entire community of people who have started to be courageous enough to admit, "Hey, I am XYZ. I need ABC support." My fear is that if we don't continue to foster this, they're going stop talking, stop advocating, and we're going to see a large cohort of these people unsupported. And I'm worried about the mental health implications of that on the backside.
I will say this much: there are still people who are asking for this work. My executive function coaching has exploded. There is clearly an understanding that this need is not being addressed. There is still a desire for people to continue to do this work, which is good.
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