NeuroClastic Board of Directors and Advisory Committee

Terra Vance

CEO

Pronouns: any

About: Terra is an industrial and organizational psychology consultant with specialization in inclusion, diversity, and poverty dynamics. She’s diagnosed autistic, ADHD, and dyslexic and has multisensory synesthesia.

She’s a former English teacher and trauma spectrum counselor and currently spends her days writing, editing, networking, and doing advocacy through NeuroClastic. She’s the proud mother of an autistic child and the spouse of an autistic husband.

After 20 years of hitting walls and trying again, she has found her purpose in autistic advocacy. Terra’s personal goal is to contribute to understanding the complexity of autistic minds through fiction and hopes to publish her novel with most of the primary characters being autistic.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Communication rights for nonspeakers and those with complex communication barriers
‑Ensuring that underrepresented voices are represented in autistic advocacy
‑Effective supports, therapies, and accommodations for autistic children
‑Creating a safer organizational culture for autistic self-advocacy
‑Publishing autistic talent

Splinter skills:
‑Near-eidetic memory for factual information no one wants to hear
‑can survive with less water and sunlight than a cactus
‑is a human thesaurus (humanity not confirmed)

Quirks:
‑half her language consists of quotes from Hamlet, Steppenwolf, and Moby Dick
‑Self-references as Ahab in third person and uses archaic language without realizing it
‑Only drinks from a wide mouth Kerr Mason
‑feels pain when looking at the color yellow
‑Can only do one thing. Cannot stop doing the one thing
‑Listens to one artist all day every day

Special interests:
‑Herman Melville
‑Vintage and antique glass
‑Autistic advocacy
‑Armchair diagnosing autistic historical figures

Anna Kraemer

Chair of the Board

Pronouns: she/her, they/them

Anna is a late-diagnosed autistic self-advocate who is currently a graduate PhD candidate in auditory neuroscience.They have a BA in neuroscience from Knox College, Illinois. They also have other invisible disabilities including hyperacusis (physical pain or discomfort with moderately loud sounds).

In the future, she hopes to investigate hyperacusis and auditory hypersensitivity in autistic people, as hyperacusis is sparsely researched within the autistic population, even though it is quite common. Many parents don’t understand that pain from loud sounds exhibits very much as physical ear pain. She has had hyperacusis her entire life, since her very first memory (aged 4 years old in a Batman movie), and she thought they had to pretend not to be in pain in front of others, as she thought everyone else also experienced (and hid) pain with loud sounds.

Online Advocacy:
They are currently an editor and writer on NeuroClastic, as well as her own site. They hope to provide their experience to help both parents and/or late-diagnosed autistic people to understand themselves as well as their autistic children better.

Disability Advocacy:
At the University of Maryland, College Park, Anna is a member of the Student Advisory Group for the President’s Commission on Disability Issues, and a member of the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Senate Committee.

Autistic Profile:
Anxious masker, auditory hypersensitivity, hyperacusis, touch sensitivity, eye contact sensitivity (like staring into the sun some days), motion sensitivity, day-to-day executive functioning issues but relatively good at planning long-term and following through, experiences alexithymia.

Advocacy interests:
‑Educating non autistic people on the diversity of human brains
‑The intersection between life undiagnosed and the autistic experience
‑Hyperacusis
‑Misdiagnosis
‑Autistic Access to Healthcare

Splinter Skills:
‑Fast typer
‑Good at running their shoulders into walls while looking where they are going
‑Good at planning for the annual gaming convention for their online friend meetups (yes, she was the one who started them, the autistic person)
‑Has ear protection for at least 3 other people on hand at all times

Quirks:
‑almost always humming a quiet song at home and don’t even realize she is doing it
‑not disinterested when she doesn’t talk, just really, really tired.
‑very good at laughing a lot during awkward/sad moments due to nervousness, yet bad at attempting to intentionally smile.
‑very good at giving out exact information while pretending it wasn’t that exact (maybe/I don’t know), because that would be weird to know otherwise
‑still terrible at deflecting praise and compliments even though they’ve been practicing receiving compliments for about four years

Special Interests:
‑deciding to research a subject they randomly found on the internet for two days (usually a movie, TV show, or actor related) and then moving on to something else the next week ‑Disability advocacy in general
— accesibility on college campuses
‑Being tired

Alisar Kobeissi

Finance Director

Alisar has worked as a CPA, global project manager, lemon zester, small business owner, and full-time mom. She is Arab/Muslim-American active in the neurodivergent community. She is a not-so-secret frustrated engineer and builds Lego Creator & Architecture sets instead– as well as designing her own.

Alisar is Mama Bear to one child. She is a person of extremes who would prefer to take a weekend trip abroad for a mood lift than to practice mindfulness.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Education — advocating for a strengths-based experiential approach to learning
‑Parenting — promoting a collaborative approach to raising self-determined children and encouraging parents to deal with their own issues first
‑Economic equality — fighting for every person’s right to access basic health needs, especially marginalized communities
‑Disability rights — educating on the right “to be” and invisible disabilities

Splinter skills:
‑Navigation — frequently lost but can always find my way home
‑Analytical problem solving — better than chocolate for a rush
‑Painting rocks

Quirks:
‑An inordinate fondness for the color red
‑Detests cooked green peppers
‑Will listen to the same album on repeat for hours
‑Loves dragons
‑List-making

Special interests:
‑Learning languages
‑Storytelling — oral and written
‑Comparative religion
‑South America, especially Chile
‑Um, Lego?
‑Reading math dissertations

Marcia Eckerd

Board Member

Pronouns: She/her

Marcia’s perspective is that of a licensed psychologist (Ph.D) who’s worked with ND people of all ages (7 – 65) for over 25 years. Her article on diagnosing women seems to actually be used by doctors seeing women. Her special expertise is finding ways to do noble things for no money.

Marcia writes extensively for professional journals, parenting magazines, and newsletters, blogs and websites, She is on the CT ASD Advisory Council and the Clinical Advisory Group of the AANE. She tends to own her , prosopagnosia, and being ridiculously literal over owning her achievements, like being on councils and in the first class of Yale Women. She does enormously value having helped people.

Advocacy Interests:
‑current advocacy passion is neurodiversity employment
‑passionate about her ND kids being taken seriously in school, and she goes to the mat fighting for them
‑having the mental health profession learn about autistic girls and women

Splinter Skills:
‑her mind is a garbage can for everything she has ever heard, so she remembers everything someone says once she has any idea who they are

Quirks:
‑Her goal in life is to tell her right from her left without having to figure it out.

Special Interests:
‑theater from classic to new and edgy
‑photography
‑art
‑opera, having had an incredible daughter who at age 10 turned out to be a professional opera singer

Melissa Simmonds

Board Member

Melissa Simmonds is a campaigner on Autism and Neurodiversity and intersections with race and faith. She is the founder of MisTaûght and the creator of Black History Month for Dummies & White Teachers. She’s in her final year of a MA in Autism Studies at Sheffield Hallam University where she’s doing a dissertation on looking at children as ‘Agents of Change’ in birthing a more autism-inclusive society.

Advocacy interests:
‑wants to ensure that Black autistics and other autistic people of color are represented in advocacy and in broader culture
‑ensuring that disability awareness and acceptance is taught in primary schools

Splinter Skills:
‑can hear everything everyone is saying in a busy place, unfortunately at the same volume
‑poet
‑singer and dancer
‑epic at creative swearing

Quirks:
‑does not trust anyone who does not love Die Hard [the movie]
‑feels like a unicorn because she feels like the only Black autistic on the planet, especially in the UK
‑has only ever shared chocolate with her kids
‑gave up chocolate 9 years ago, which she is convinced made her sick

Special Interests:
‑Game of Thrones
‑Kendrick Lamar
‑massive Marvel Cinematic Universe fan

Philip Reyes

Board Member

Pronouns: He/Him

Philip is a 16 year old high school student. He blogs and writes in books and some articles. Philip has written for NeuroClastic and his own blog, Faith, Hope, Autism and has a YouTube channel.

Advocacy Interests:
‑communication choice for nonspeakers

Splinter Skills:
‑can ride a two-wheel bike, but can’t do a lot of everyday skills without help.

Special Interests:
Biking

Jeremy Andrews

Board Member

Jeremy is an autistic self-advocate originally from Montréal and now living in Toronto. He works in the technology sector, with a focus on data analytics and cloud computing. Jeremy is a co-founder of NeuroClastic and primarily helps with technical aspects of running the website along with some writing and editing.

Advocacy interests:
‑Civil rights
‑Education
‑Accessibility

Splinter skills:
‑Computer programming
‑Network engineering
‑Logistics

Quirks:
‑travels more to see the transportation systems than the destinations
‑often feels like he has more in common with children and the elderly than other middle-aged adults

Special Interests:
‑trainspotting
‑skiing
‑amateur radio

Mónica Vidal Gutiérrez

Board Member

Pronouns:She/Her

Mónica is a 46 year old autistic and neurodiversity movement activist for over five years, working hard to bring the autism neurodiversity persepctive to Spanish-speaking countries.She is a Colombian living in Colombia with the privilege of being fluent in English.

Her career was in systems and computer enginering and she has worked on and off for a company that develops software for financial organizations (mostly bug-hunting the last few years working there).

Right now she has double vision from an autoimmune disorder and is on prolonged medical leave. She is a mother of neurodivergent teens, one of them autistic, and before knowing a thing about autism her obsession was respectful parenting. She was one of the first bloggers to write in Spanish about autism from a neurodiversity paradigm perspective, and maybe she is the most persistent one.

Her personal blog is Aprender A Quererme- Autista cuestionando paradigmas and she is part of the Spanish-speaking collectives Mi Cerebro Atipico, Traduciando Autistas and Autismo, Liberación y Orgullo.

She has failed repeatedly to quit writing about ABA. Her personal and some of her collective blogs on ABA have been featured on Thinking Persons Guide to Autism. Some of her articles, including one at NeuroClastic, have been included on The Great Big ABA Opposition Resource List. She has moderated and been an admin in several autism groups, both in English and Spanish, both actually autistic groups or autistic-led support groups for parents.

One of her crowning achievements is being kicked out of several “autism mom” groups without being aggressive or breaking the rules, simply by merit of not agreeing with their perspectives about autism.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Promoting neurodiversity paradigms and disability justice in Spanish-speaking countries.
‑Sharing Spanish-speaking activist’s perspectives with the global #ActuallyAutistic community
‑Creating a local community where people can make accessibility a reality
‑Helping families understand that we are not against them but are trying to make sure that their kids can live authentic and fulfilling lives no matter how much support they need

Splinter Skills:
‑her brain (on its best days) seems to have an index of articles where she read something, but not it’s content
‑Infodumping when loved ones ask for something
‑Collecting online books she’s not able to read
‑Appear moved at concerts, carnivals, or parties when she is just overwhelmed by loud noise

Quirks:
‑Staying at home on beautiful sunny days, while loving being out on rainy days with no umbrella
‑Having an echolalic song for the last word in a sentence that her kids say
‑Chronic oversharing
‑Right cheek twitches in uncomfortable or stressful situations.
‑Falling asleep in action movies

Special Interests:
‑Dancing at Rio Albierto
‑Her cat, Chi.
‑Gardening succulents and edibles on her balcony (when her executive functioning cooperates)

David James Savarese

Board Member

He/Him or They/Them

David James (DJ) Savarese is an autistic and non-speaking poet, activist, and optimist. DJ graduated with honors from Oberlin College in 2017 with a degree in Anthropology and Creative Writing. His book of poetry, A Doorknob for the Eye, was published that same year.

DJ has also had prose and poetry published in a number of journals and magazines, and has presented at a number of events, including as a keynote speaker at the United Nations’ World Autism Awareness Day. His lyric essay “Passive Plants,” published in The Iowa Review, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received Notable Mention in the 2018 Best American Essays.

DJ is also the co-producer of the Peabody Award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary film Deej: Inclusion Shouldn’t Be a Lottery, which works to unearth the discrepancies between the insider and outsider perspectives of his lived experience as an alternatively communicating autistic.

DJ has published other poems and prose in literary journals, such as The Iowa Review, Seneca Review, Prospect, Stone Canoe, wordgathering.com, Nine Mile Magazine, Bellingham Review, Art in Autism, and Autism in Adulthood. “Passive Plants,” a lyric essay published in The Iowa Review, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and named a notable essay in the 2018 Best American Essays. As a 2017–19 Open Society Foundations Human Rights Initiative Youth Fellow, DJ worked—and continues to work—to make literacy-based education, communication, and efficacious and interdependent lives a reality for all alternatively communicating people through artful advocacy, community organizing, and teaching. Before moving to Iowa City, DJ graduated from Oberlin College in May 2017 with a double major in Anthropology and Creative Writing. Links to his publications, film, and artful activism can be found at http://www.djsavarese.com.

Advocacy Interests:
‑inclusive education
‑language and literacy
‑communication rights

Splinter Skills:
‑hopelessly hopeful

Quirks:
‑non-humans are his heroes

Special Interest:
‑hope is a state of being

Sydney Henry

Board Member

Sydney Henry has a Master of Public Administration with a graduate certificate in nonprofit leadership as well as a Master of Arts in Youth and Young Adult ministry. Sydney is a pastor & church planter on a journey to abandon comfort and safe living for risk-taking and a mission-driven life.

Advocacy Interest:
‑passionate about autistic advocacy for people of color and the creator of #AllAutistics.

Quirks:
‑won’t drink orange juice because it looks like raw eggs

Splinter skills:
‑Graphic design
‑Playing the piano by ear
‑Public speaking
‑Songwriting

Special Interest:
‑Ministry

David Gray-Hammond

Chief Operating Officer; Advisory Committee

Pronouns: he/him

David is a UK-born autistic with OCD who is in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. As of April 7, 2020, he is 4 years sober. He has a BSc (Hons) in Forensic and Archaeological Science from the University of Bradford (UK) which gave him a methodical and rigourous approach to many of the issues he has faced in life.

Due to addiction and mental health issues, David spent many years at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, but he has been rebuilding his life as he goes.

David has written for a number of advocacy publications, and that writing has tended to focus on autistics experiencing addiction and mental health issues. In his home city, he has done a lot of independent consulting around the commissioning of addiction treatment services and access to services for neurodivergent individuals. He hopes to one day to take on postgraduate study in the field of psychology and/or neuroscience and looks forward to sharing his advocacy work with you.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Addiction and Mental Health
‑Service commissioning
‑Abuse of autistics with quack cures
‑intersectionality

Splinter skills:
‑can write 1000 words in under 10 minutes and still sound like he knows what he’s talking about
‑can also look you dead in the face and not hear a word that you are saying to him

Quirks:
‑has to salute magpies and say the word ‘toast’ if he walks over more than 3 manhole covers in rapid succession
‑full name is longer than a Welsh village

Special interests:
‑Forensic anthropology
‑Forensic geophysics
‑Psychology
‑Pharmaceutical science
‑Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
‑Destiny (the video game)

Stacia Langley

Board Member

Pronouns: she/her or they/them

Stacia is the mother of three wonderfully different kids, one of whom was killed by a teacher at school in 2018. Her son Max was autistic and had just turned 13, and he was one of the smartest and funniest people you ever could meet. While she is sure that she did things (some of them probably quite interesting) before that event, it has basically obscured everything else for her at this time.

Advocacy Interests:
‑see the end of the abuse & murder of autistic people by agencies and people entrusted with supporting them.

Splinter Skills:
‑mostly visual scanning. One example would be that I rarely walk out of a flea market, yard sale or thrift without something worth far more than I paid.
‑good at finding cool bugs and rocks, something Max and Stacia enjoyed doing together.

Quirks:
‑I am really nothing so much as a rough conglomeration of quirks.

Special Interests:
‑spending time with my surviving kids, who are fierce, hilarious and kind.
‑visual art stuff
‑maintenance of a large pack of rescue dogs
‑working on a giant tinfoil sculpture of a possum

Marcelle Ciampi (aka Samantha Craft)

Board Member

Pronouns: She/Her

Marcelle Ciampi, a respected autistic author and community advocate, is best known for her writings found in the well-received blog and book, Everyday Aspergers. A professional educator, she has been featured in various literature, including peer-reviewed journals, Autism Parenting Magazine,The Mighty, Project Aspie, Art of Autism, and Different Brains.

Marcelle works as the Senior Recruiter and Outreach Specialist at Ultranauts, a technology company with a neurodiversity-hiring initiative, and is a consultant for Uptimize and Spectrum Fusion. A contributing author of Spectrum Women: Walking to the Beat of Autism, Marcelle speaks globally on the topic of neurodiversity.

Marcelle also serves as the founder of Spectrum Suite, LLC, the co-founder of the Spectrum Lights Inclusion Summit, co-executive of NeuroGuides, and a contributor to autism organizations internationally, including Stanford University.

Some of her works, especially The Ten Traits, have been translated into multiple languages and have been shared in counseling offices around the world. She resides in the Pacific Northwest with her sons and life partner.

Advocacy Interests:
‑actively involved in building community with individuals on the autism spectrum and their supporters.
‑passion involves worldwide outreach and presentation, whilst providing a voice to the marginalized minority of autistic individuals.
‑honed in the study of autism as it relates to the workplace, including 2,000 hours of study and a 200-page manuscript used for presentations on the topic.

Splinter skills:
‑can visualize where almost any inanimate object is located in her home, particularly the exact location of food items in her fridge and pantry. “Oat milk? Second shelf down, far left, behind the almond milk.”
‑can easily come up with out-of-the box strategies and action plans for just about anything, (which can be quite annoying)

. Quirks:
‑despite 1000s of pages of writing, published books, and dedication to honing her spelling skills, she still needs to look up an average of 5 words per blog post
‑as a cancerian, INFJ, and an empathic, she is a soppy (once-hot) mess.
‑still puts on her sweater inside out, mismatches her socks, and forgets to brush her hair.
‑has no idea how to apply makeup or when she has offended you.
‑her book (Everyday Aspergers), hundreds of pages long, is pretty much an elongated summary of her quirks.

Special interests:
‑John David Hall from Neuroguides.org.
‑questioning if she has been honest enough or entirely too transparent
‑the all-too-tiresome self-analysis of self-analysis ad nauseum, whilst trying to breakthrough quantum loop of existential depression

Nolan Perry

Board Member

Nolan is a high school junior, 16 years old, from South Carolina. He is an avid chess player, having started 2 chess clubs in his hometown, one in his school where he will be part of the second ever graduating class there, and one online. He loves technology and is probably going for a degree in tech, health, or education.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Equality
‑Informing people of what autism actually is, and that not everyone is Rainman

Splinter Skills:
‑Knows every single law in SC, read several times

Quirks:
‑Never can get mental arithmetic down, always a few numbers off
‑doesn’t know mental multiplication

Special Interests:
‑Coding
‑Web design
‑Over-cleaning stuff
‑Virtual reality

Patrick Donald Lukas

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: He/Him

Patrick is a queer autistic writer and linguist from the land of noodle heads. His favourite languages are German, French, Turkish, and Swahili. He has degrees in writing, literature, and history. He would also have a degree in linguistics, but PTSD and anxiety are a bitch.

Patrick is about to launch the world’s best adult-themed damn Nancy Drew podcast! He is also an aspiring neo-noir soap opera, black comedy writer with future plans to open the Anti-Hallmark (because sentimentality is for losers). His ultimate goal is to turn everyone in the world into jaded punks. He’s been called a shining light, a hero, a genius, a troubadour of nihilism, and the woman in every Celine Dion video ever. At least one of those is true.

Advocacy Interests:
‑childhood trauma
‑the queer autistic experience
‑situational mutism
‑countering hate and stigma with knowledge.

Splinter Skills:
‑can memorize an absurd amount of foreign words with a little help from a pen
‑has the Burberry equivalent of spider-sense
‑was born with a near-perfect fashion sense
‑can convince people to buy things without even talking… it’s like telepathy, but you cry afterward

Quirks:
‑can turn himself into a pretzel
‑spends more on hair care than your entire family budgets
‑holds the record for most hours spent in a day looking at cocktail dresses
‑randomly sings the ‘One Life to Live’ theme song in public at least once a day
‑last week (every week), He insulted 7 million people without trying
‑RBF, He’s ghosted more people than Casper

Special Interests:
‑Mixed Martial Arts
‑Dior
‑Oceanography
‑Geography
‑General Hospital

Ren Everett

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: They/Them

Ren is a 30-something human being living in Ontario, Canada (on the traditional territory of the Haudensaunee and Anishnaaberg). They are queer, asexual, and nonbinary. They were diagnosed autistic and ADHD at age 29, after which point they started making sense of a lifetime of social confusion and emotional dysregulation. They have a college diploma in court reporting, and they are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in the cognitive science of language.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Communication access
‑Inclusive education
‑Universal design
‑Anti-Bullying

Splinter Skills:
‑QWERTY Keyboard typing speed 100wpm+
‑Machine shorthand stenography speed 200wpm+
‑Wildly clumsy but never broken a bone

Quirks:
‑Loves reading but can’t concentrate enough to finish a book
‑Still owns a bushel of stuffed animals
‑Can usually be found fidgeting with their lip piercing
‑Eats all the cucumber slices from the veggie plates at parties

Special Interests:
‑Twenty One Pilots
‑Language and linguistics
‑Sustainable living
‑Dogs and animal training
‑My Little Pony (1980s to present)

Sarah Selvaggi Hernandez

Advisory Committee

Sarah began life by ferociously loving the world around her and has continued since. Her passion for service and engagement has guided her to opportunities as a Head Start Teacher, therapeutic foster parent, occupational therapist, and currently, professor. She is delighted by her children, all things related to sensory, and the joy of other people. Pediatrics is her jam, and mental health is her jelly. She also virtually connects with the autistic community as The Autistic OT.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Autistics in the foster system.
‑Developing autistic development scales.
‑Autistic identity and culture.
‑Occupational justice.

Splinter Skills:
‑Can smoothly transition between a Southern and Boston accent.
‑Once ate an entire raw onion because nothing is too great a cost for the team.
‑Frequent climber/slider of national monuments.

Quirks:
‑Can sniff out anything
‑At eight years old, legally changed her middle name from Ann to Anne (+10 for understanding why)
‑Genuinely believes in Santa if you do
Special Interests:
‑Sensory Processing
‑The temporal context
‑Reality Real Housewives

Lisa Mihalich Quinn

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Lisa is the Executive Director of Reach Every Voice and an educator by trade, working to use augmentative and alternative communication (including spelling, pointing, and typing) to empower individuals with complex communication needs. Injustice and segregation have irked her since she was a teeny kid, and she spends a lot of time trying to amplify the voices of people who are typically shut out of the conversation. She reads voraciously, sometimes trains for triathlons, and makes up ridiculous songs to sing to her baby.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Communication access
‑Presuming competence
‑Well-written IEPs
‑Inclusion- because ALL deserve to be in the room where it happens!

Splinter Skills:
‑has a ridiculously accurate sense of direction
‑has a guaranteed ability to drop/duck away from any ball thrown to her
‑has a knack for amplifying the voices of those who don’t speak.

Quirks:
‑In her early and mid twenties she had a pretty irrational fear of twins and squirrels
‑She’s an adventurous eater (she’s had alpaca and probably guinea pig) but beets make her gag

Special Interests:
‑Books
‑Bourbon
‑Triathlons

Gee Abraham

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Gee is a late-diagnosed autistic transgender woman of mixed-race heritage (Arabic, Hispanic, and European). She and her nonbinary partner have been together for 18 years, and they are raising two young, neurodivergent children.

Gee is a communicator with a background in materials science, authoring numerous publication in the field. An experienced content developer for complex STEM topic, she was also the Managing Technical Editor for six years at a science/technology company. She is an editor or reviewer for three peer-reviewed scientific journals, a contributor to two O’Reilly design books, and editor of three small business blogs.

Profile:
Alexithymia, hyperlexia, hyperosmia, auditory processing disorder, trichotillomania, executive dysfunction, mental illness, hypermobility, chronic pain.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Education
‑Mental illness
‑Gender equity
‑Eco-social justice

Splinter Skills:
‑was the kid on the school bus doing complex math in her head to entertain others.
‑optimizes every single one of her routines.
‑is a black belt in the martial art of Soo Bahk Do.

Quirks:
‑She collects collections.
‑She likes every food she has ever tasted, but due to her sensitivities she can smell food going bad two days before anyone else.
‑She taught herself HTML using WebTV.
‑Her eBay account spans four decades.
‑She is ambidextrous.

Special Interests:
‑Red Hot Chilli Peppers
‑LEGO
‑Tabletop Gaming
‑Reading everything within reach

Jeni Canaday

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Jeni is a human rights activist and self-proclaimed mother of neurodiversity who strives not to take her privilege for granted, or herself too seriously, she also creates weird art. She ascribes to no religion but self-describes as a Universalist and often finds herself wondering what Jesus would do if he were Lao Tzu.

A mother of three, Jeni has PTSD and is a three-time college drop out with no degree, who sees more than can be witnessed and has witnessed more adversity than you would care to see. She has experienced enough vicarious psychosocial trauma to be certain that ABA “therapy” must be burnt to the ground. She also loves bees.

She has spent the last 24 years actively (and at times desperately) challenging an oppressive system and calling on society to stop the blatant and egregious discrimination against the most marginalized of humans.

She uses knowledge she has gained through her guru, Zane Davis, a 24 year old, blind, autistic seer, who lives with C‑PTSD and also happens to be her first-born child, a beautiful poetic soul, with a talent for speaking in metaphors and the resilience of ten men. Together they are on a mission to advance society’s understanding of the autistic experience, to facilitate the creation of spiritually-appropriate interventions and treatment options for NDs and NTs alike, and work at building bridges, while breaking down communication barriers.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Special education rights under IDEA and ensuring appropriate educational opportunities for all students
‑Providing resources and support to parents struggling to understand their child’s behavior as communication
‑Promoting the use of appropriate communication modalities for all.
‑Is the founder of herself, in the process of building A Zaney Life, a little nonprofit she is starting, named after her son, and focused on advocacy, education, and therapy for members of the ND community who experience profound communication challenges.

Splinter Skills:
‑has the ability to hold her entire end of the conversation in nothing but song lyrics.
‑can predict the past, mould the future, and manifest change.
‑is extremely adept at making everyone in a room instantly uncomfortable by blurting out inappropriate commentary at just the right time, without even trying
. Quirks:
‑cannot do math if there are any sevens in the equation
‑automatically bursts into a “yummy dance” when delicious food touches her lips.
‑does the running man if music comes on while she is standing in line.

Amanda Chisholm

Advisory Committee

She/Her

Autist, mother, outdoor education facilitator

Advocacy Interests:
‑Outdoor education
Splinter Skills:
‑recognising voice actors
‑replicating recipes by smell
‑apologizing for being helpful

Quirks:
All of them.

Special Interests:
‑Comedy
‑Labor History
‑Education reform
‑Physics

Jo Richardson

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Jo is a diagnosed autistic with a PDA profile. She is also ADHD and OCD as well as a whole list of acronyms and is also physically disabled due to a host of different conditions. She is a mum to a PDA 4 year old who is getting assessed for ADHD as he is like the Energiser bunny 20 hours a day!

She is a passionate writer and advocate, she runs her own website and facebook page for her writing, as well as writing for the magnificent NeuroClastic! She has also been published in AuKids magazine in the UK and runs a facebook group for autistic mothers.

She is holding her first conference in April 2020 in the UK and is hoping that this is the first of many.

She is addicted to learning and has Level 2 diplomas in Understanding Autism, PDA, Emotional and Mental Wellbeing of Children, and has seven other courses that she is currently working on!

Advocacy Interests:
‑wants to educate the masses, to eradicate the outdated and misguided understanding of who autistics and PDAers are.
‑To raise awareness of PDA globally.
‑To stop harmful therapies, treatments, and “cures” that are inflicted on our children.
‑To help autistics into work by training companies and businesses to be autism friendly.
‑To find a way to stop autistic people from being bullied in school.
‑To help fix the broken education and support systems in the UK that are doing more harm than good.

Splinter Skills:
‑doesn’t cook, but can reheat with skill and finesse.
‑can categorise and organise books/DVDs/videos like a boss
‑is very good at masking.
‑is good at making cups of tea.
‑is exceptionally good at obsessively collecting craft items that she is never actually going to use.

Quirks:
‑is a major control freak.
‑can’t eat eggs if the yolk is broken.
‑all of her jumpers have to be fluffy.

Special Interests:
‑Autism
‑PDA
‑Serial Killers
‑Psychology
‑All the craft hobbies

J David Hall

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: He/Him

Corporate neurodiversity consultant, keynote speaker, relationship purist, cultural bridge builder, strategic major donor relationship professional, published writer, Dad to three autistic persons.

Passionately focused on guiding neurodivergent persons to discover their strengths and gifts and enjoy meaningful lives. A relentless optimist, an encourager who is out to build up individuals, to better communities one great relationship at a time.
Recent and upcoming appearances include:
Different Brains podcast interviews, EACE Neurodiversity Conference, Washington State Employment Law & HR Conference, Spectrum Lights Inclusion Summit, Southwest Washington Autism Conference, Bellingham SHRM Luncheon, Metro Library Autism Advocacy Series, Microsoft accessibility lab, Seattle Aspiring Youth/Delphi Programs/Ryther, Stanford University Neurodiversity Summit speaker, ERE Recruiting Conference, Elijah Winfrey Show, BNY Mellon, General Assembly (NYC), corporate leadership trainings with Fortune 500 companies and government agencies in neurodiversity hiring and inclusivity and more.

Strengths Finders 2.0 Attributes: Connectedness, Developer, Empathy, Input and WOO (Winning Others Over).

Advocacy Interests:
‑Will not rest a moment, until each and every one of his tribe of fellow autistic persons sees the day of true neurodiversity and actual inclusion socially and in workplace cultures.

Splinter Skills:
‑An unerring ability to see the strengths, abilities, and capacities in other human persons
‑And to engage them accordingly.

Quirks:
‑Is “swimming” a quirk?
‑Very few people may notice, but when in “high stress moments,” he begins arranging things around him, aligning, putting things into patterns.
‑If you could use him as an “interior designer” you ought push him to the edge of stressfulness, and then turn him loose on your condo.

Special Interests:
‑Obsessive interest in movies and film
‑has watched favorite movie “Young Frankenstein” at least 30 times (OK, maybe more).
‑A voracious reader, writer, old school conversationalist, and writer of handwritten letters (melted wax seals, the works).
‑Healing the pain of others

Zoey Read

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Co-Founder of International Coalition Against Restraint and Seclusion. After becoming a parent advocate and working to pass a bill into law, she decided to form the coalition after her research revealed that this wasn’t just a local or state issue, but an international human rights crisis.

Zoey met Beth Morrison in the process, a long-time activist in the cause of banning restraint and seclusion, and Deidre Shakespeare (Northern Ireland), and ICARS was born. Bringing together advocates from the USA, UK, Ireland,Canada, and Australia, ICARS aims to force legislative change and an end to restraint and seclusion abuse in schools.

Zoey has engaged with and created alliances with Autistic and Neurodiversity self-advocates internationally whom she believes are the foundational voices that must be amplified in discussions with lawmakers on both state and federal levels regarding the abuse of restraint and seclusion.

She continues to add, meet, and join other collaborators, parents, activists and advocates to the movement.

Originally from the London suburb of Pinner, she moved to the United States in the late 90s. She is she a mother to three amazing children ranging from 19 – 6 years old, two who are autistic.

Advocacy Interests:
‑All areas that encompass providing children and adults with the human rights, respect, and dignity that they deserve

. Quirks:
‑Tries to be funny but fails miserably as she is not sure whether she should be using UK or US humor. Americans can’t understand her because of her English, but the people back in the UK can’t understand her because she is too American now.
‑Typing too fast and sending before checking what autocorrect has changed.
‑Forgetting what she is typing mid sen…

Special Interests:
‑UK Masterchef and cookery shows
‑Antiques Roadshow
‑Keeping up with UK television
‑Tiptoeing through daisies, chasing unicorns, ignoring bitter people, hugging her babies, and trying to make their lives better everyday, any way she can

Meagan Dixon

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Meagan is a female in the Northern California area. She is lucky to have the all-encompassing profession of stay at home mother to a 7 year old autistic child. She has a background in MultiCulture and Gender Studies, professional editing and writing, and parent advocacy, particularly in the realm of IEP’s.

She is an aspiring novelist, with approximately 8 stories going at once, which manages to keep her browser tabs full, and her attention span short. She is passionate about parent advocacy, and wants to work to create a space for parents as allies and continuing to build a bridge between parents and the neurodivergent community.

She likes to focus on intersectionality and continues to challenge herself in finding her ingrained privilege and working through it. She is new to her diagnosis of autism and ADHD, so she is a work in progress on all fronts.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Education
‑IEP’s
‑Developing the idea of Executive Parenting

Splinter skills:
‑can accurately follow the storyline of 6 novels and 1 nonfiction at the same time.
‑able to find large and obscure words in general conversation, but often searches for common words like fork

Quirks:
She asked her partner, and he said shoes, germs and punctuality. She feels he knows better than she does.

Special interests:
‑books
‑reading books
‑writing books.
Also see: literature, fiction

Kristine Semelis Weiskopf

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Kristine is a neurotypical paralegal specializing in civil litigation. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, her autistic son, and their tiny dog and bearded dragon. Kristine likes to be industrious and she stays busy by helping administer social media pages, support groups, and organizations with the goals of promoting neurodiversity and amplifying autistic voices.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Debunking pseudoscience surrounding autism, including the vaccine-autism myth and fake “cures”
‑Promoting acceptance over awareness
‑Bridging the gap between neurotypical parents and autistic adults
‑helping NT parents embrace neurodiversity and inclusivity; fighting ableism in all its forms.

Splinter skills:
‑Voracious speed-reader
‑Officer of the Grammar Police since 1990
‑Epic multi-tasker
‑Can withstand near-arctic temperatures for extended periods of time (like a penguin, with slightly less waddle)

Quirks:
‑She once got lost in a Macy’s bathroom, so don’t trust her with directions
‑country music sends her into inexplicable rage

Special Interests:
She’s NT so she doesn’t feel like she can claim to consider her hobbies to be comparable with the love, attention, and joy of autistic special interest, but she likes
‑reading
‑watching American football while reading
‑running the treadmill while reading
‑eating while reading
‑crocheting while reading.
‑Playing darts is basically the only leisure activity she does without a book in her hands

Jen Bluhm

Advisory Committee

She is Jen Bluhm, Jen Bluhm is Waltzing on Waves; Multiply-neurodivergent professional independent recording & performing artist, neurodiversity/mental health advocate, Venue/event consultant for neurominority inclusion, TV/Film/Advertising composer, freelance vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, parent, & full-time personal care assistant to three neurodivergent children, & spouse to one neurodivergent man.

She resides in Minneapolis, MN, USA. If you follow Waltzing on Waves on social media, she will make you laugh and cry in the same song/post. She writes songs that give voice to her life experience as a Neurodivergent human with Mental Illness. She has no shame in saying about herself into a microphone that which many people in any given audience are trying to hide. Her kids think she’s cool, and two of them are teenagers. She is anxious a lot, but she cracks a lot of jokes to cope.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Autistic and ADHD Advocacy for Children in regard to parenting and education.
‑Advocacy for Neurodivergent Artists/Audiences in regard to live music inclusion and accessibility

Splinter skills:
‑makes good soup
‑can read her children’s minds. They are the ONLY humans who’s minds she can read, though
‑is a student of human behavior and picks out behavioral patterns quickly, so she might make a good guess at what your damn problem is.
‑usually keeps that part to herself.
‑has been told she would have made an excellent child psychologist. That is correct. Why? Because she remembers what it was like to be a child.

Quirks:
‑can often look at someone’s face when they are speaking, but she can’t often look at someone’s face when she is speaking.
‑has phone anxiety and parking anxiety.
‑mentally pictures expressions & metaphors-automatically and every time someone uses them, including herself.
‑has a few forms of mild synesthesia.
‑talks to herself, a lot, both silently and out loud.

Special interests:
‑Songwriting. Currently, She also has an obsessive repulsion regarding Mukbang.
‑She loves hating American Mukbangers. Like, she can’t believe people watch it, and she judges them for it while She’s doing it. It’s the only area where she allows herself to revel in hypocrisy. ‑It’s a phase.

C.L. Lynch

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: she/her

C.L. Lynch is a twelve year old caught in a middle aged body. She has two children of her own and is married to a very cuddly enby. She has a degree in Psychology, hyperlexia, generalized anxiety, and occasional depression. She was born in Canada but spent much of her childhood on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. Since returning she has lived in four different Canadian provinces and is now settled in Vancouver, B.C. Always fascinated by autism, she was still surprised when she herself was diagnosed with it in adulthood. The diagnosis explained many things in her life. Her spouse said, of the diagnosis, “suddenly the last ten years of my life makes a lot more sense.”

Her author career took off when she first read Twilight. She hated it with an obsessive passion and decided to write a book which was the complete opposite. That book, Chemistry, was hailed as “overflowing with wit” by the BookLife Prize in Fiction, a “rollicking good read, slickly paced and sassily written,” by the Whistler Independent Book Review, and won the IndieReader Discovery Award Humor category.

She has also developed an interest in publishing and her publishing company, One Tall Tree Press, will be dedicated to publishing neurodivergent authors.

Advocacy Interests:
‑autistic education
‑communication
‑helping people understand our neurology better.

Splinter skills:
— great at writing dialogue and characters, terrible at plots.
‑can write ten thousand words in a day but can’t pour a pot of spaghetti into a strainer without risk of injury.
‑great at taking complicated concepts and putting it into terms other people can understand. Incapable of hearing what people are saying when focused on something else.

Quirks:
‑drinks diet Pepsi almost exclusively but always leaves the last few sips in the container.
‑has ticker tape synesthesia.

Special interests:
‑Giant Squid
‑Fictional non-fiction
‑Publishing

Bárbara Herrán

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: she/her

Autistic activist and self-advocate, 42 years old, Latin American, specifically from Peru. Bárbara can only speak Spanish but can handle reading in English and even translate from English if she has to (with the help of online translators, obviously). She studied organizational communication in San Marcos (UNMSM), “Dean university of the Americas.”

Bárbara is also the mother of an autistic young girl, 16, with an above the average grade in self-esteem, which is her greatest achievement. She has worked in many things: sold candy on the streets, managed a food chain restaurant, led projects for a corporate education company, sold cars; in each of these areas she obtained outstanding results but didn’t last more than a year due to the lack of adjustments, which led her time and time again to high levels of stress that manifested physically on her, making her very ill on all the occasions.

At the moment she provides for her family working as a freelancer community manager, that allows her to give herself her own adjustments and work from home, but she aims for living from her passion: fight for the rights and the inclusion of autistic people. Bárbara learned about the autistic community 2 years ago and she found her place in the world and her passion. She set up Mi Cerebro Atípico up in 2018.

Advocacy Interests:
‑contribute to educate and empower the new generations of autistic activists.
‑consolidate the roads that will provide them with the support net they need, so their rights and the rights of all autistic people are guaranteed.
‑leave her daughter a better world than the one she had to live in
‑make an impression on the Latin American people and reach for big changes in the current speech.

Splinter skills:
‑can’t stop thinking about behavior and mental processes behind it, hers as well as others (all her special interests are related to that).
‑understand the needs and desires of non-speaking beings, like babies and pets, then use their own ways to play with them.
‑stop a cat from climbing where it shouldn’t by copying the sounds of a mother cat setting boundaries.
‑incredibly good with lists and absolutely useless without them (can’t do anything with out a list!)
‑crazy about reading, she can read while she walks on the street, at a disco with the noise cranked up, at a very high speed, and she can also read for days on end without sleep or getting tired.

Quirks:
‑prefers to play with children rather than spend time with adults.
‑has very low respect for dressing conventions; can go out in pajamas and rarely cares about what others may think.
‑likes singing loudly on the Street and even more so if there is echo.
‑loves dumb silly jokes.
-mask is so tremendously well put together that people may go from loving her to hating her as soon as she doesn’t have the energy to maintain it.
‑Sensory-wise, sees magic wherever she goes.

Special Interests:
‑sociology
‑anthropology
‑ethology
‑philosophy
‑psychology
‑autism
‑basically can’t live without thinking about why living beings, especially people, do what they do and think what they think.
‑fantasy and sci-fi literature
‑strategy games

Christa Holmans

Advisory Committee

She/Her

Christa Holmans, an autistic self-advocate from Texas, runs the the internationally recognized neurodiversity lifestyle blog Neurodivergent Rebel. She also manages Neurodivergent Consulting.

Her career background is in recruiting, employee retention, marketing, and consulting.

Christa opened her blog in 2016 as a way to introduce people unfamiliar with the concept of neurodiversity to this new way of seeing neurological difference. Her blog, which is sometimes released in written format and sometimes as a YouTube video, explores the ideology of neurodiversity and the creative expressions of autistic people.

Advocacy Interests:
‑ending dismissive attitudes towards autistics ‘coming out’
‑breaking down myths and stereotypes surrounding autism
‑improving access to employment for autistics
‑Abolishing quack cures and harmful ‘therapies’
‑Abolishing pathological language surrounding autism

Splinter Skills:
‑can predict the future by picking up on patterns
‑chameleon human with the ability to appear neurotypical for short periods of time
‑hoarding large quantities of facts and data
‑social distancing before it was ‘cool’
‑mirror touch synaethesia (can also be a curse)

Quirks:
‑can do complex aerial acrobatics, but also equally likely to trip over her own feet
‑happy-flappy autistic who is always stimming
‑lightning fast typer with the hand writing of a third grade boy
‑rocks chewy jewelery and sunglasses without apology
‑can’t stand being told what to do

Special Interests:
‑human and animal psychology
‑autistic culture
‑marketing

Wendy Katz

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Wendy was always interested in psychology but decided to gear her whole career around disability and self-advocacy after learning she was autistic at age 18. She received her BA in Sociology from Hanover College and her MSW in Macro Social Work from George Mason University.

She has held many positions over the years, including: short order cook, office volunteer, waitress, bartender, babysitter, direct service social work, non-profit development and communications, and volunteer Sunday School and Ed Teacher.

She currently works part-time as a brain trainer at LearningRX and runs the Advocacy Page “The Amazing Adventures of AspieGurl V.S. An NT World.” By day, her proudest achievements are her work with children in learning reading and thinking skills and her work at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Reston as Chair of the Music Committee and a member of the choir.

By night, as AspieGurl, besides having written several articles, she is proudest of the protest she lead in May 2019 in tandem with ADAPT in Chicago in front of the National ADAI Convention. She looks forward to continuing to make a difference.

Advocacy Interests:
‑appropriate schooling and employment for autistic people
‑appropriate diagnoses for autistic women and girls

Splinter Skills:
‑still cannot fly, but she is learning to leap social media in a single bound
‑improving her fundraising skills until she reaches “faster than a speeding bullet”!
‑writing and quirky innovative ideas.

Quirks:
‑audiographic memory
‑imitation of voices
‑ability to be unphotogenic 100% of the time (voice of a songbird, face of a dishpan)
‑Simpson’s quote for any occasion real or imagined
‑hoarder of books toys and useless supplies!

Special Interests:
‑writing
‑singing
‑books and movies
‑learning about human nature

Sophia Rashid

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Sophia is a 25 year old hijab/niqab-wearing Muslim woman of Eastern European decent. She is an advocate for issues surrounding domestic and gender-based violence, economic inequality, universal healthcare, universal childcare, universal higher education, and neurodiversity. She consults for non-profits and childcare/education-based businesses, offering them access to her autistic magic (in the form of writing, organizational planning, system building, and constructing order in the wild pit of chaos we call this world).

Advocacy Interests:
‑domestic and gender-based violence
‑economic inequality and dismantling the capitalist machine
‑access to quality healthcare for all
‑access to quality childcare/preschool and higher education (ie university, community college, trade school, etc)
‑promoting and celebrating the normalization of neurodiversity in ALL aspects of the human experience

Splinter Skills:
‑all problem solving and life skills acquired through playing an obscene number of hours of Speedy Eggbert
‑expert in traditional Ukrainian embroidery
‑chef-esque

Quirks:
‑not the best at following through: flaky as a pie crust
‑can and will hike/walk for 8+ hours
‑keeps rando facts like chipmunks keep acorns (shall I enlighten you with the complete unabridged history of peanut and non peanut brittle?)

Special interests:
‑doing laundry
‑taking walks
‑reading and collecting books (especially pre-1960’s)
‑traditional Ukrainian cross-stitch/embroidery
−1980−2005 video games

Joel Schwartz

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: He/Him

Joel is an Attentionally Different and Hyperinterested Dude (ADHD) who also happens to be a Clinical Psychologist. Growing up different and misunderstood sensitized him to the trials and tribulations of similarly misunderstood folks. Add to that that he married into a family where all of them are Neurodivergent in some way and one can imagine how important/lifesaving the Neurodiversity Paradigm has been.

Being somewhat of a rebel his whole life and despite being formally trained and licensed as a clinical psychologist, he has always been outspoken against anti-humanistic, shame-inducing, and trauma-creating forces within his profession. He has worked his whole professional career to build a practice that is based on humanism, Neurodiversity, cultural diversity, sex-positivity, and free of any coercion.

He hopes to eventually expand his practice beyond an office to include training, conferences, programming, and research by and for Neurodivergent people.

Advocacy Interests:
‑helping to create therapies, systems, and opportunities for Neurodivergent people that are free of shame and coercion.
‑educating people on how to be neurodiversity affirming/accepting and to incorporate these ideas into their practices/businesses/families/etc.

Splinter skills:
‑creative out-of-the-box thinker who can adapt under pressure.
‑has an uncanny memory for music and movies, but can’t remember names of people he has known for years.
‑plays guitar and baritone horn – though not well enough to perform.
‑loves to sing, and can do it decently.
‑deeply compassionate, and can sit with and affirm things that many in his profession may struggle with.

Quirks:
‑soft touches and soft high-pitched sounds are the worst.
‑ASMR? No thank you.
‑Tinny high hat on poor speakers? He would rather puncture his ear drums please.
‑put a soft flowery substance on his skin? May as well flay him alive.
‑oh, yeah,can get pretty dark sometimes – see below.
‑always 10 minutes late
‑always, always, always has a song stuck in his head.

Special interests:
‑music, books, and movies that wade into the darker, more macabre aspects of life.
‑gallows humor.
‑of course, psychology has been a deep interest since age eight, watching Forbidden Planet and learning about the I^d.

Ralph James Savarese

Advisory Committee

Ralph James Savarese is the author of Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption, and co-editor of three collections, including one on the concept of neurodiversity. He has published widely in academic and creative writing journals. In 2012–13 he was a neurohumanities fellow at Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences. He teaches at Grinnell College in Iowa.

Advocacy Interests:
‑supporting nonspeaking autistics and those with complex communication barriers to be empowered with access to the best communication tools
‑presuming competence

Splinter skills:
‑can pontificate on the most mundane of topics with the most impressively grandiose language
‑proving people wrong about what they believe is impossible
‑writing twelve-line sentences without a single adverb

Quirks:
‑hopelessly rigid
‑cannot deliver criticism without counterbalancing with self-effacing commentary
‑approaches advocacy from Don Quixote’s playbook
‑technology skills maxed out in the era of 8‑tracks

Special Interests:
‑Herman Melville
‑autistic expressions of talent and perception
‑responding to pretentious ableists with monologues inspired by Hamlet and Lord Byron

Lilith Briar Esperanza

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: she/her

Lilith is an autistic comic artist who also does freelance illustration. Her artwork has been used at her local school system’s board meeting presentations and will be used in an upcoming book from NeuroClastic.

She is of Mexican heritage and is bilingual though she feels it could be better. She is dedicating time to improving her Spanish language skills to be a better advocate for her fellow Spanish-language speaking autistics.

After a disastrous experience in her middle and high school’s special education program, she transferred to and eventually graduated from her local school system’s alternative high school. She has since been invited to her school system’s board meetings to advocate for the alternative school’s continued usage as a viable option for students with special needs and to end the stigma associated with attending this school.

She can happily say that their efforts have been fruitful as more and more students with disabilities or other circumstances have been attending and finding success at this school. To help end stigma, the school has been relabeled from “alternative” to “non-traditional”.

Advocacy Interests:
‑ensuring autistics have access to a communication system that works for them as she knows from personal experience how devastating the consequences of not having one can be
‑happily serves as the “go to” person for parents when they need advice
‑aims to help parents learn to go from “coping with a child with autism” to “supporting an autistic child”
‑sees her comic work as a form of advocacy in that she is writing a graphic novel that features an autistic protagonist
‑aims for it to be the comic her twelve-year-old self needed to read

Splinter Skills:
‑believes being autistic has given her the gift of drawing ability
‑able to store miscellaneous facts and trivia in her memory, which she is able to pull from to get inspiration when drawing and writing.

Quirks:
‑able to parrot people’s voices and intonation
‑imitates robotic voices such as the voice of a self checkout, a fun trick that creeps her family
‑is also face blind, which has lead to some hilarious incidents of mistaken identity

Special Interests:
‑ALL ANIMALS
‑Yes, that includes things like spiders
‑pets include three dogs, a cat, two rabbits, three lizards, two species of roach, and two birds. ‑hoping to add a tarantula in her collection!

Michaela Morgan

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her or They/Them

Michaela lives in London and has a background in academic philosophy and professional editing/copywriting. In her spare time, she enjoys caring for plants and photographing plants and nature, as well as moderating a Facebook support group for autistic women. She loves to play simulation games and is trying to learn to make 3D computer models.

Michaela was diagnosed with ADHD in Nov 2017, and shortly after that self-diagnosed autistic. She is still waiting for her autism assessment. In the meantime, she receive a small amount of support and advocacy from the local autism service.

This is her first time acting upon an advisory committee, and she is delighted to be able to contribute in this way, as she is particularly passionate about advocating for ND humans, as well as providing one-to-one peer support.

Splinter Skills:
‑plant whispering
‑animal whispering
‑can do very technical things they have never done before
‑good at making people smile

Quirks:
‑disgusted by the number 2 and the letters N and P
. ‑puts gravy on their salad
‑every single one of their plants leaves has an identity

Special Interests:
‑plants
‑video Games
‑disasters/Crime
‑pharmacology
‑Mr Robot

Wolf Tacy Traverso

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: She/Her

Wolf is an autistic advocate and mother of autistic children who is passionate about making the world a better place for the next generation of #AutisticGold kids. She is writer and manager of The Autistic Wolf (website, Facebook, YouTube), founder of Our Golden Moment and AutisticGold. She checks boxes of diversity such as gay, Spanish, female, androgynous-presenting, and is an active member of the Diversity & Inclusion task force at her day job.

Wolf is experienced professionally in sales, business development, marketing, and getting others excited about new ideas.

She was educated in rhetoric at University of California, Berkeley. She is a native of Berkeley, CA, USA, but is currently residing in Washington State, near the border with Portland, OR. Wolf is a firm believer that the movement for Autistic rights is the most present civil rights movement to take the stage next.

Advocacy Interests:
‑creating diplomacy between autistic and allistic cultures and communities to forward the accommodation of autistic adults and children.
‑interested in creating a format for autistics to “come out” and be proud.
‑hoping to empower autistic adults to unmask and be their true AutisticGold selves, while educating allistics on why the freedom of autistics creates a better world and future for all.

Splinter skills:
‑incredibly spatially talented, clumsy as hell, but lightning-fast reflexes (to catch things knocked over)
‑pleasantly persistent
‑articulate in oration and writing
‑big picture thinker

Quirks:
‑partially faceblind
‑likely ADHD too
‑socially outgoing but equally clueless
‑charming and doesn’t know it
‑stims freely, in public and at work
‑honored and humbled to be considered a leader, in any capacity, in the autistic community

Special interests:
‑evolutionary and behavioral anthropology
‑great white sharks
‑painting
‑her children
‑and wolves, of course

Rachel Alexander

Pronouns: she/her

Rachel is a fantasy romance novelist with two published books and a third underway, and is a lifelong environmental, mental health, and human rights activist. She was diagnosed ADHD earlier in life, and identifies as neurodivergent. She is the proud mother of a neurodivergent child, and partner to a neuro-lurker husband.

Advocacy Interests:
‑urban planning, affordable housing, and public transportation activist
‑LGBTQIA+ autistic advocacy
‑poverty, ethnicity, and mental health
‑alternative integrative learning modalities
‑abolishing standardized testing

Splinter Skills:
‑autodidactic hyperlexic with perfect pitch
‑occasionally overdeveloped sense of right and wrong.

Quirks:
‑forgetting that not everyone else in the world is a walking thesaurus
‑holding graduate degree levels of knowledge in topics no one cares about
‑cloistering away for indefinite amounts of time only to emerge with even more knowledge that even fewer people enjoy

Special Interests:
‑amateur astrophysics
‑Greek mythology
‑science fiction
‑historical trends Current events
‑The San Francisco Giants

Riah Person

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: she/her or they/them

Mariah received her official autism diagnosis at the age of 25, in July 2019. She is an aspiring dance movement therapist, intending to help people to heal and develop through movement and help to understand the significance of stimming. Currently, she creates accessibility-conscious curriculum for her dance/creative movement students.

Mariah is still on the recovery end of burnout & is exploring how she can be of use to communities again. Last year, she put on her first “autistic space” event called Express Unbound, and is looking forward to continuing to create autistic-lead accessible social spaces in the future.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Autistic BIPoC visibility
‑Communication rights
‑Accessible social spaces
‑Autistic led Autistic spaces
‑Autistic children having access to autistic play
‑Autistic access to needed therapies & therapists
‑Destigmatization of stimming
‑Furthering of having stimming better understood

Splinter skills:
‑Erm..dancing?
‑Being hyper-aware about creating opportunities to share “space” with others
‑Human jukebox of music created & yet to be produced

Quirks:
‑Constantly compelled to include *everyone* applicable
‑Has two special bowls that they prefer to eat from
‑Lives for movement
‑Loves to understand people’s inner child state
‑Tends to speak in vague concepts in attempts to put words to the picture/shapes/feelings inside their mind
‑Speaks in accents almost any time she’s not speaking with others
‑Can be quiet & keep to themselves but will intentionally shake things up when needed
‑Recovering perfectionist

Special Interests:
‑Dance/Movement/Expression
‑Equity & Justice
‑All things cute
‑Other people’s special interests
‑Empowering wellbeing

Errol Kerr

Advisory Committee

Pronouns: He/Him or They/Them

Errol is a 25-year-old UK-based activist, artist, and all-round nerd, with two degrees, one cat, and no working joints. With an academic background in literature and international politics, Errol has been heavily involved in creating and developing marginalised networks, and has strong links to multiple disabled persons organisations, including Autistic UK.

A writer, journalist, and editor with strong events management and personal skills, Errol currently works in the cultural sector in Manchester, alongside developing Game Assist, a multimedia project discussing representation and inclusion in videogames.

Advocacy Interests:
‑Physical and Online Access and Inclusion
‑LGBTQ+ Disability Representation
‑Mutual Aid Networking
‑Decolonialisation
‑Promoting young disabled people’s voices

Splinter Skills:
‑A typing speed of 110 words per minute
‑Avid piano player
‑Able to mimic accents and voices with minimal listening time
‑Makes the best cup of tea
‑Easily able to recognise the intent of people or groups in their actions.

Quirks:
‑D&D nerd. Usually ends up playing a Cleric if not running the game.
‑Finds a way to insert puns into any given conversation.
‑Finds mushy peas and corduroy a textural sensory nightmare.

Special Interests:
‑Videogames, preferably with a lot of story behind them
‑Digital art
‑And a new special interest every month! Tune in to check what this month has in store