RAW FILE
Disability:IN Virtual Inclusion Works Meeting 2025 
Session 6:  Start Where You Are:
Strengthening Support for the Neurodiverse Employees you Already have in your Workplace
Thursday, February 27, 2025
2:15 p.m. EST. 

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This text, document, or file is based on live transcription.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.  This text, document, or file is not to be distributed or used in any way that may violate copyright law.

>> Recording in progress.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Hello, and welcome to Session 6 of our Inclusion Works meeting today.  Thanks to all of you for joining us.
>> SARAH KIRWAN: Wait.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Okay.  Good afternoon.  Hello, and welcome to Session 6 of our Inclusion Works meeting.  Thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon.
Impala Paula, one of the Disability:IN's Inclusion Works consultant.  And I will be your moderator for this session.
I am a female with dark brown hair, shoulder length, and I'm wearing glasses, and a black sweater this afternoon.
Our panelists are Laura Sabattini, who is a director of global inclusion and diversity at AstraZeneca, Luke Mann, senior talent acquisition manager, University relations and recruiting Northrop Grumman, Elizabeth Betzler, Vice President of global diversity and inclusion and employee branding leader at Thomson Reuters.
Our moderator is myself and my colleague, Sarah Kirwan, will be our question facilitator.
We are going to take a minute to go over some housekeeping reminders.  On the next slide.
When that comes up, you will see that we are going to use the Q&A button, if you have any questions during this session.  Also, if you have questions for our Q&A session, which will be after the panel discussion, use that same button.  You will see English captions throughout the conversation.  They are available on screen.  And captioning in additional languages are available through StreamText.
And this session is being recorded and you will also Cialis interpreters on the screen.  Thanks to them as well.
  It's been a great day so far, as I said, and we have got a great session coming up for you.
First we are going to spend a few minutes introducing our panelists and then our facilitator.  And then we will get right into the Q&A ‑‑ right into the discussion followed by some Q&A.  The discussion will be around 40, 45 minutes, followed by 10 to 15 minutes of Q&A.
Let's start by introductions of our panelists.  Elizabeth, I will start with you.  If you can introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your role at Thomson Reuters and how you support neurodiversity.
>> ELIZABETH BETZLER: Thanks, Paula and welcome everyone.  My name is Elizabeth Betzler.  I use she/her pronouns.  I am an Asian‑American woman, I've got my hair pulled back and wearing a dark green turret the neck.  I serve as Thomson Reuters' vice president of diversity and inclusion across our global footprint, in addition to our Employer Branding Leader.
You might hear me reference TR as Thomson Reuters throughout our conversation so I wanted to throw that out there as well.
We are a global content driven technology organization, comprised of over 26,000 employees across over 70 countries.  And so when I think about my role and focusing on support for neurodiversity, it's with and through a number of specific initiatives and strategies.  I am personally through my role, lead talent strategy with a focus on creating inclusion and belonging and really a workplace where all employees can thrive and succeed and feel valued.  And with and through this, there are a few specific ways that I will touch in on this conversation but just to kick us off, that we really focus on the, the first is we have both an employee Disability Network along with a neurodivergent TR community and together those groups help create community and belonging and foster inclusion.
Additionally, we have specific talent programs.  One includes an autism spectrum internship program which over the past six years has evolved into our neurodiversity internship program, which has brought over 60 interns into Thomson Reuters and many staying on in positions thereafter.
And then additionally, we make sure we are tell our story quite often, so there's work that we are doing in the belonging space, work very specific in the talent program space, but equally making sure that it's a very active and present part in how we are telling our employees' stories, celebrating diversity across our organization, both internally and externally.  And collectively together that multiprong approach feeds into really creating the environment that we are proud of here at Thomson Reuters.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Does, Elizabeth.  Now, Laura, how about you?
>> LAURA SABATTINI: Yeah.  Thank you, Paula.  And, yes, I'm Laura Sabattini.  I am as Paula said, a director of global inclusion and diversity at AstraZeneca.  AstraZeneca as you may know is a pharmaceutical company and I happen to be based in the United States, in Maryland.  But we have many locations around the world.
I have brown wavy hair.  Today I'm wearing glasses and a blue shirt, turtleneck.  And my role at the company is to manage our global ERG, Employee Resource Group strategy, so some of the stories I will share later are a lot about the work that we do as part of the ‑‑ with our many ERGs.  But I also manage our strategic partnerships, external strategic partnership, including our partnership with Disability:IN.
And as part of my role, I also ‑‑ I'm the person responsible for collecting many of our benchmarks, and inclusion and diversity benchmarks related to many dimensions of diversity.
So going back to the question how I support neurodiversity in the workplace definitely through our work with employee resource groups and I'm going to talk about this a little bit later.  But I also, through our benchmarking and our external partnerships, am able to contribute knowledge and information of how we can continue to improve, how we build inclusion internally, our processes, our communications, and so on.
So, I try to contribute through a knowledge sharing, but best practices and so on.  Thanks again for having me here today.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Thank you, Laura.
And Luke, please take a few minutes to introduce yourself and the work that you do at Northrop Grumman
>> LUKE MANN: I'm happy to be here.  I'm Luke Mann, I'm a white male, I have very long flowing hair, which is a joke, if you can see my image, I have no hair.  I am wearing a gray quarter zip.  I have a slight beard that I grew out during COVID and I haven't shaved yet.  And my background is an image that we received back from the James Webb space telescope, which is, of course, one of our products from Northrop Grumman in partnership with NASA.  And I just love looking at that image whenever we are in meetings.
Here at Northrop Grumman, specifically I'm in our space sector.  And my role, I oversee our university relations and recruiting team.  So, what that team is, what we do is they hire all across the country, all of our internships and all of our entry‑level roles for our locations across the country.
So, I'm really excited today to talk about ‑‑ with you all about what we have done to strengthen support for our neurodiverse employees.  Thanks for having me.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Thanks, Luke, Laura, Elizabeth.
Now I'm going to ask Sarah, our Q&A facilitator to just introduce herself.
>> SARAH KIRWAN: Thank you so much, Paula.  I am just really excited to be here with you today and this incredible panel.  I am a white woman with blond/silver hair.  My pronouns are she/her.  I am standing in front of a navy blue virtual background with Disability:IN in the corner.  And like Paula, I am a Corporate Disability Inclusion Consultant with the Disability:IN Inclusion Works program.  And I am just really looking forward to the conversation today.  Thank you. 
>> PAULA KELLEY: Let's jump right into this conversation, because I am excited as well.  And I'm going to start with you, Laura, and ask you at AstraZeneca, you have both disability and neurodiversity ERGs.  How did that come about?  What have you seen as benefits in terms of strengthening the culture for your neurodiverse employees, and what are some of the lessons learned that you would share?
>> LAURA SABATTINI: Yes, of course, and maybe I will provide additional context.  I mentioned my role at AstraZeneca.  I should also mention that I'm relatively new to the company.  I have been here a year and a half.  So, not just started.  But I am still learning many of the aspects of how employee resource groups work at AstraZeneca.
But I have been in this field for 20 years, so I have worked with a lot of different types of employee resource groups.  And some of the things that I notice is sometimes, as you mentioned, when the way ERGs come about impacts how they operate and how they ‑‑ and the benefits and there is opportunities that the ERGs are.
I mention this because for context at AstraZeneca, many of our current ERGs came about as grassroots groups.  These were groups of employees that wanted to build community around particular areas that were meaningful to them and also wanted to provide resources to the organization.
And so in this context, then, this provides a little bit of a sense of the benefits, in my perspective, of this group.  So as you mentioned, we have a disabilities analysis group that focuses on creating a safe space for people with disabilities, and invisible disabilities at work but also provide allyship skills and opportunities to connect and share knowledge.
And then our neurodiverse ERG Employee Resource Group called think neurodiversity focuses on building a global conversation around neurodiversity, encourage some areas of and building knowledge is a key element, but also celebrate and support a neurodiverse community.
So, I mention this because as you can hear from the description, these groups have a lot of common areas and there are opportunity synergies that we can leverage but they really came about as very unique or have their own identity, so to speak, both in terms of how they operate, their structure, and they are both global but sometimes they operate in different countries, not all the same countries.  So, to me as a not new, new but relatively new person, some of the things that I have observed that seem to really benefit is really the sense of being able to focus on areas of passion for the employees who, you know, started a ‑‑ history about how it came about and value add with specific unique activities and things that they are doing.
And the other benefit that is sort of more of anecdotal observation on my end is that I notice, it provides sort of an interesting way also when we expand globally, for example.  You know, right now many countries that historically didn't have employee resource groups have started to wanted to start new chapters and having these two groups provide an opportunity to focus on different areas that way, depending on the priorities that are at the local level.
These are, you know, happy to discuss a bit more later, but these are really to me the benefit comes from the synergies, but also the unique identity of these groups and how they operate that provides a lot of different ways of working that can build on each other.
Now, areas, learning opportunities and those are always evolving when you work in inclusion and diversity, things change and often you have to evolve how you work.  Definitely you think that as a global inclusion and diversity team, our challenge is to ensure that alignment and impact.  So we don't want to have a lot, many siloed, siloed ERG.  We want to have ERGs that work together and build on each other to show the impact that you can provide.
And also identify common processes and language that ERGs, even while they maintain their work and the way it works and their own identity can operate on to provide some consistency over time and also make sure that these groups are staying over time and continue to grow.  These are the two areas I would say more around broader strategic elements but I do think that depending on how ERGs come about, it can be beneficial to have both, just because there is a lot of work to do in both ways.  You just have to find ways to build on each other and not see that as a conflict activity, so to speak.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Absolutely.  It's so important, as you mentioned, that ERGs work across opportunities to collaborate, and the impact you make together is so much more when you work together, as well as the efficiencies that you mentioned as well.
Now, Elizabeth, you mentioned in your intro that you also have two ERGs, disability and neurodiversity.  So, same question for you.  Can you talk a little bit about the impact that Thomson Reuters ERGs have had on your neurodiverse employees and any types of lessons learned that you would like to share?
>> ELIZABETH BETZLER: Yeah, I would love to.  We call them BRGs, Business Resource Groups at Thomson Reuters, bought same impact from what Laura was describing, even if we are using a different acronym.
To give the group a little bit of context, our disability employee network as a Business Resource Group started in 2008, and actually came into our organization at a time in which we were seeing Business Resource Group expansion across other facets of identity as well.  So, they were one of four newly introduced BRGs in that time period.
Whereas differently our neurodivergence group at Thomson Reuters, neurodivergence at TR is what we call them, spun out of some work that our disability employee network was doing at the time in membership, in addition to some additional grassroots and looking at more than identity around disability, but a wider conversation around neurodiversity and recognizing that not all folks that have neurodiversity may identify with also having a disability while many do, it's not the case for all.
And so looking at our workplace culture, we really created space for this new group to evolve and it really started with shout‑out to my colleague Kelley, who is a dear colleague of mine, she what felt like a brave thing at the time, but I love that we have got the employee culture and empowerment around this.  In 2021, she wrote an internal blog on our intranet focusing on celebrating world autism day and included her personal insights on having autism spectrum disorder, what that looked like for her, and at the end of that post, this kind of like, hey, I'm wanting to build community and shared belonging and understanding, invited our colleagues to come together to continue the conversation with her.  And that's really where our neurodivergence at Thomson Reuters community was built from.  She was involved with the disability employee network at the time.  But really from this, you know, saying hey, I think there's more we can do and more we can do outside of the mission of our disability employee network.  That's where that was born from.
It started officially then, following her post in 2021, in 2022, and within six months there were over 100 global members of this new community.
Our disability employee network in our neurodivergence at Thomson Reuters groups actively partner so similar to what Laura and Paula were mentioning and there's the importance of coming together across identity to really drive shared impact and goals, overlaps in action items in which each of the groups are looking for, but what I really found interesting about how our neurodivergence community has continued to grow today, it's with and through, again, like, creating that space for folks across different identities to build that community and to lean in and lean into not only their passions, but areas of opportunity to help us shape and co‑create what our work experiences are at Thomson Reuters and be a really valuable input to us across our diversity and inclusion team and among other teams and making sure that we are creating equitable and inclusive spaces and experiences for all.
So, I was looking at some of the recent work that they have done, and they have covered topics such as seven common misconceptions about neurodiversity at work and hosted a webinar in that space.  Or highlighted a Harvard Business Review article on neurodiversity as a competitive advantage, which touched on autism spectrum disorder and dyspraxia and dyslexia, and then created space for employees to share their personal experiences with our entire company, as what that means for them as they are moving through their work day.  There was an incredible post from one of my colleagues around ADHD, focusing on raising awareness and fostering acceptance but also sharing her lived experiencing and doing myth busting of common misconceptions that people have about her and her experiences with ADHD and really empowering employees living with neurodifference to express that difference and/or ask for accommodations if that's something they might need.
So, we have seen a number of benefits from having both of these communities coexist.  The way in which they operate and bring their work to life looks very different as well.  One from kind of this historical well‑structured disability employee network that has existed for gosh, nearly 20 years at our organization to more of this grassroots kind of startup effort, started as a community of individuals who were looking to connect on particular aspects and has grown quite large from there.
And I think that's the power that we all have in front of us as we are figuring out, you know, to the topic of this session, really how do you start where you are to support employees.  I think there's a lot of flexibility and room in that and it doesn't always need to be maybe as structured as we always think it needs to be.  It's sometimes just creating that safe space for open dialogue and sharing experiences.  And then working and listening as leaders to co‑create what does the roadmap look like in this space.
So, for example, neurodivergence at Thomson Reuters still kind of sits under a disability employee network, somewhat, to some extent.  And we have conversations with the group often of, again, how do we best support, how do we best position the connection between the two, but also the distinct differences between the two.  And they have decided not at this point to become a full blown Business Resource Group at our organization, but we still keep it under that banner and help to celebrate diversity and empower and invest in that group in similar ways.
So, hopefully that's helpful of some of the benefits we have seen, but also kind of what we have learned along the way.  Again, I think hopefully all of us can leave with a little sense of, like, okay, let's try something new and experiment and learn from there.  And when you are co‑creating with and through employees and making sure that neurodiverse employees have a seat at the table, they can go a lot of different directions.  Maybe in the direction of Thomson Reuters or maybe in a different space in which best meets your employee needs.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Thank you so much.  You both talked about the importance of building awareness.  We know that 70%, approximately, of disabilities are non‑apparent and creating that safe space for people to feel comfortable to tell their own stories really helps drive that cultural shift so that people feel they are safe.
Luke, you have another story about cultural safeness and cultural change.  But you are going to talk about the dimension of hiring programs.  So, in addition to ERG/BRG supporting disability at Northrop Grumman, you have some great experience in your particular role as well as within the company around hiring programs for neurodiversity and how that has evolved over the years to particularly change the culture and particularly mention for us your examples of storytelling and the road show that you have and how those two components have really shifted.
>> LUKE MANN: Yeah, absolutely.  Thanks, Paula.  So, from the beginning, we wanted to ensure that we didn't just have a hiring program, just to have a hiring program.  Instead, we wanted to ensure that the people that we were hiring were set up for success.  Our focus has always been on ensuring that we have a neuroinclusive culture where everyone is respected and included.
So, we always hire and we promote and pay based on performance, but knowing that I think the latest numbers that came out last year were that one in five people are neurodiverse, thinking about the 100,000 plus employees we have here, the thousands of students that we hire every year into Northrop Grumman, for us, it's about creating an environment where employees feel like they belong and can perform at their best.  So, when we started to stand up this program, that was sort of at the core of what we were envisioning, was starting the insight of Northrop Grumman because we know we can hire talent but we wanted to be able to receive them and set them up for success.
So, in the beginning we intentionally started very small and focused at one of our locations in Baltimore, Maryland.  So, that was year 1 at one site.  And over the past three years, we have grown to five different states, over three of our operating sectors within Northrop Grumman, which we are really proud about that and we have a roadmap for continued growth, intentional growth planned for the future.
So, early on, we learned that this program is not a one size fits all program.  It is a part of our larger Northrop Grumman internship program with all of our intern employees.  But we learned that each employee who is a part of this cohort might leverage different offerings and it's not one size fits all.
We also learned a lot about ourselves internally in that not all of our business areas were familiar, for example, with our accommodations process and how easy it is to provide to employees and what that looks like.
We created what we referred to as a continuous feedback loop with our interns and with our managers and with our HR partners.  We focused heavily on awareness and that internal training to create the neuroinclusive culture that I mentioned earlier.
And our end goal was to make the program obsolete because through the power of universal design and our overall hiring process, becomes inclusive for everybody and we don't have to have a specified program.
You mentioned storytelling.  That's been a huge part of this.  In year 1 we partnered with our internal communications team to highlight the standup of this program, particularly one of our interns in Maryland and the story that he shared with us and it was incredible.
We also had our directors and our leaders share what they learned and we put together a road show and went out and talked about this program.  We talked about the trainings that we provided internally.  And some of the growth that we saw.  And it was incredible just through those road shows, so many people here at Northrop, and I mentioned the one in five number and you can do the math on a company of this size, but so many people who were already employees here raised their hands and they said, hey, you are talking about me.  You are talking about my family.  My child, my loved one, my friend, my spouse.
And so something that I think is an incredible evolution of this program is that we have our Voice ERG, which is our allies for disability inclusion ERG, which I think a lot of you are familiar with, but through the voice ERG, we have now stood up a community of practice specific for employees who are neurodiverse themselves or may be a caregiver for someone who is and so that has been a really powerful piece of those road shows and of the storytelling.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Thank you.  You mentioned universal design.  What's good for one is good for all and that's so important as a goal for all of us to work towards in our companies.  And that's really what the Disability Index really helps us to do.  It helps us to develop a roadmap to get towards disability inclusion for all of our employees.
You also mentioned, Luke, the importance of the role of leaders and managers.  And I just want to underscore that because we know also as one statistic, less than 1% of employees feel uncomfortable identifying disabilities.  Creating that safe space and having our managers and leaders talk about disabilities, whether it's their own personal disability or family member or their support or experiences with disability, that changes the culture so much.
Now, Laura, I'm going to get back to you now.  And speaking of culture, can you talk a bit more at AstraZeneca, what are some of the specific programs and activities that are helping to create that inclusive culture for your employees with disabilities, and specifically neurodiversity?
>> LAURA SABATTINI: Yes.  Thank you, Paula.  And, yes, and I have a couple of examples that I wanted to share, again, from our ERG as they do a lot of work in this space and they are really, I want to give them credit for bringing this area of work to everybody's attention and increasing awareness as we have been talking.  But I also wanted to kind of provide, first of all, when I think about creating an inclusive culture for neurodiverse employees, so it's important to build on some of the things that we have been discussing, right.  So, it's typically not one thing.  It has to be a multiprong approach.  And you mentioned leaders so, yes, having leaders, for example, share their story, feel comfortable sharing their story about neurodiversity or disability is so important, making sure we have the right processes and practices, like Luke was sawing about accommodation, you know, not only making those processes clear, more transparent, easier, but also make sure they are communicated throughout.
When I talk about specific programs and initiatives, I always think of these in the context of all these other things that are happening and need to be happening for those initiatives to be successful and actually drive change.
Other things that come to mind are also related to, you know, how we work, our working spaces and especially now that many offices, you know, not only people are going back to the office, but also many offices are open.  And so what kind of challenges and opportunities do we have there to make sure that we keep in mind different ways of working and how these may impact neurodiverse employees.
On this kind of context and a couple of things that I wanted to bring up because I think that it's kind of innovative ways of increasing awareness is some more interactive opportunities.  So, as Elizabeth mentioned that we have a lot of ways to increase awareness through materials and partnerships and speakers and knowledge sharing, but our think ERG also started to work more interactive side activities.  So a couple of examples are first of all, some trainings and specific to ‑‑ for people managers that allow them to build knowledge through scenarios, studies, and that is specific around neurodiversity.  And this is, I should mention, just a pilot that it's going to start this year, going through cycle for people managers.
But it provides UN in the large sea of a lot of different trainings that we have, you know, not only at AstraZeneca but are there in terms of inclusion diversity and this provides specific skills and one of the goals is to provide people with the language to feel comfortable speaking, you know, with their colleagues or speaking with their teams about these topics, and to practice specifically, again, because the element of interaction is so important.
The second activity that our ERG started to implement across a lot of different regions and has been successful in engaging employees is somewhat of a virtual reality simulator through a headset, people experience different types of visual and sound perceptions and it similarly is meant to help understand how people on the autism spectrum may feel, like in environments such as coffee shops or in a classroom when there's a lot of noise around.
But I think that the kind of experience it provides from a sensory perspective can be helpful across many dimensions of neurodiversity.  So, the way the activity works is they set up these sessions in different offices and employees can go in and try the simulator where, again, you go and you may experience a room like a coffee shop and then the simulator provides different types of noise, visual effects and so on that help you kind of understand the sensory experience different from your own.  And this has really led to important discussions, but, again, I go back to the skill building opportunity, which is by learning more, how other people experiences, but also learning how to talk about these experiences so that you can create more inclusive work environments.
So, those are a couple of examples that I think can really help sometimes, by being active in these experiences, you are sort take an active role, not only are you listening but you are also taking action.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Great.  Thank you.  That's so important to mention, you have to take action and that's how people see the results.  And that's how you build that safety.
All right.  Luke, thinking more about this multiprong approach building an inclusive environment in the workplace for people with neurodiversity, you mentioned earlier Northrop Grumman accommodations program.  Could you talk a bit more about that for us and what the benefits that you are seeing for especially your neurodiverse employees are?
>> LUKE MANN: Yeah, absolutely.  So, I had to go back and find the date because it was actually 10 years ago this year, 10 years ago we moved our accommodations process from a decentralized process to a centralized process, which has been an incredible value‑ad both to the employees and, in my opinion, to the managers as well over those employees.
So, the reasonable accommodation requests, they are all managed by our accessibility and disability accommodations team at what we call the enterprise level or the corporate level, again, of that centralized location, versus segmented out at the different businesses.
The benefits of having a centralized process at that enterprise level are consistency and fairness, streamlined process, much less administrative and financial burden, only employees manager.  Think that's a big one because previously when a manager would receive an accommodation request, there's, obviously, going to be a cost associated with it.  And he or she is weighing that cost versus their other business cost of the day‑to‑day activities.  And so a lot of times they had to make those decisions that weren't really fair to the employee who was requesting them.
So, much less administrative and financial burden to the employee's manager, helps ensure that we are compliant with disability laws, obviously.  But also just an increased employee experience.  And we are seeing a lot of that feedback.  I mean, I have gone through it myself personally.  I have had employees on my team who have gone through it.  And it is so much easier when it's centralized and streamlined like that.
What we have observed as a result of that centralized process is an increase in our employees who happen to be neurodiverse, submitting their reasonable accommodations requests.  The feedback we have gotten back to our accommodations team from those neurodiverse employees is that they feel much more comfortable with a single POC that's dedicated to providing them with the reasonable accommodation and is not a part of their management chain.
You mentioned earlier, Paula, with the percentage of employees who still aren't comfortable disclosing, this is an avenue for them where they don't necessarily have to do that.  Because, again, it doesn't go through their direct manager.
Additionally, our AD&A team, the accessibility and disability accommodations team, is able to use their past experience and lean on team members to help identify out‑of‑the‑box accommodations for unique requests so they are kind of the experts who do that and then they can do all of that best practice sharing at their level.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Thank you so much.
>> LUKE MANN: Of course.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Elizabeth, earlier today we had a session on AI, but I know that Thomson Reuters also uses AI, particularly for your internal workload for your employees.  Could you talk a bit about how you are using AI internally and especially using AI for neurodiverse employees and the benefits that you are seeing, as well as some of the challenges.
>> ELIZABETH BETZLER: Yeah, I would love to.  The early session on AI for folks that didn't get to join, I encourage you to watch wa it.  It was interesting and a lot of great tips.
To build on that conversation and narrative, at Thomson Reuters we are a tech company so experimenting with tech and making tech available to our employees is kind of part of who we are as well because that's what we bring to the marketplace.
So, with and through that, all Thomson Reuters employees globally have a goal related to AI, we all have a goal related to AI.  And that creates some space to really empower folks and push folks to get in and try tools that we make available.  So, for example, we have got an environment with a number of AI tools, large language models and more, like ChatGPT, and what we are finding is employees that are experimenting with it in conversations that I have been having with neurodiverse employees in particular, it's been really nice to be able to have a digital assistant at their fingertips at any moment to be able to help ease how they are moving throughout their day.  They may, for example, I was talking with a colleague recently who has ‑‑ needs some support with executive functioning and being able to manage a number of different tasks in a wide array of information that's hitting her desk at any time and being able to use a generative AI tool to be able to put that information and give her a starting point around data analysis, synthesis, recaps, being able to help her focus in on the things that matter most for the work that she has got ahead of her, has been a game changer.
Something that she has had to struggle through and work through in different ways, and kind of patch together different tools to best get that.  That is now available to her and all of her peers.  And with and through using AI, she is building her expertise in new ways of working and doing things that she is able to share with her peers.  So while she has a very specific focus and challenges and she is looking to solve in her day to day, it's benefiting her peers more broadly and being able to work more efficiently and have greater productivity and that knowledge sharing and sharing of examples because we are building an environment and fostering an environment where that experimentation and knowledge sharing is desired and part of our goals, has really helped advance that quite a bit.
I think in addition, we are using various chatbots to make it easier for employees to get instant support for common workplace issues or questions that they might have, which we found reduces anxiety for some neurodiverse employees instead of having to email someone directly or pick up the phone, you are able to start with a chatbot and ask it questions and in a way in which works for you to get that information that you need.
We are also experimenting with and bringing more AI into our learning and development platforms, so helping folks personalize based on their learning styles and preferences and access to content to continue to skill build and grow within our organization.
A number of pieces around workflow optimization, so making it, again, easier to streamline tasks and reduce some of that cognitive overload that folks might experience.  And then also enhance collaboration tools, which offer our employees alternative communication methods, like visual mapping or voice to text options or more, in which, again, really kind of enhance the way in which folks need to access tools and present information and collaborate across teams.
And that also helps folks work asynchronously as well more efficiently, so providing some folks more time and space to be able to process, put ideas together, and share and not necessarily have to do so live within various meetings.
The role that we are finding as a result of all of those pieces is that, again, we are getting enhanced accessibility and ease of use for a number of our tools and resources.  We are making sure that our employees, to the best of our ability, are getting personalized support, tailored to their needs and preferences, and also improving productivity and job satisfaction, because at company when it comes to Reuters we have pushed r published pay report in 2017 called a future professionals report and last year was our second issue of that, and 77% of respondents noted that they believe AI will have a highly transformational impact on their careers.  And 40% of respondents noted that what excites them most about having AI embedded in their work day‑to‑day kind of workflow is that it's going to bring time savings and efficiencies to them so it's really wonderful as an organization that we are seeing that come to life.
What I would say, you know, for organizations out there that are figuring out what do we do, how do we start this, we don't have a cool open arena tool like Thomson Reuters to be able to experiment with.  Without compromising your code of conduct or security or any of those pieces, even just getting folks familiar with and starting to experiment with ChatGPT or free tools that are available out there can be really powerful.  And maybe leaning into aspects of it that may provide your organization less risk as a starting point, so using it as a digital coach, helping folks navigate various workplace situations and issues or as a manager, how best to support neurodiverse employees, using that as a bit of a starting point and a coach to have those conversations can be really powerful.  It doesn't necessarily need to be 26,000 employees around the world all, you know, having a goal and using various tools.  But it can start really small and in a way in which we will positively move the needle in this space.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Thank you so much.  We have heard so many great ideas and examples of success from our panelists this afternoon.  As Laura mentioned, it's truly a multiprong approach when we try to build disability inclusion for our neurodiverse employees who are already in the workplace.
But I'm going to wrap up the conversation here by asking each of our panelists to give us just some last words of tactical, practical words of advice.  So, Laura, let me start with you.
>> LAURA SABATTINI: Yes.  I may just reiterate something that I mentioned earlier, just to emphasize that it is about providing common tools and it's not necessarily the same structure or ways to do things, but things like language use and how we talk about topics in a way that is consistent, so to encourage, you know, again, within this multiprong approach, to provide common themes for people to understand.  I think that also reinforces knowledge and understanding about these topics and these issues and provides employees common ways of speaking about it, having those conversations.
So, as I was hearing the various examples to me this is one thing and it's not easy, sounds easy, but it sounds easy, especially if you are in a large company with many different businesses and cultures, but I think the more we can encourage the consistency when it comes to how we talk about issues and including neurodiversity can be very valuable.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Thank you.  Elizabeth, how about you?
>> ELIZABETH BETZLER: Yeah.  I have got three quick things.  I think the first in terms of my advice would be start small and be intentional in your efforts in supporting neurodiverse employees.  It doesn't have to be this big grand global strategy or even across one business unit.  But if you identify one or two areas where you can make a significant impact, start there and experiment and test and lean into it with a sense of humility and empathy and co‑creation, and I think you will learn a lot from it.  So, get started.
The second is, making sure you involve neurodiverse employees in that process, as you are testing, experimenting, making decisions, make sure to truly listen and take feedback and suggestions and also close that loop thereafter.  I think building that trust and accountability and in shared effort in moving that forward goes a long way.
And then lastly, I would encourage you, be patient and persistent.  This work takes time.  It's about creating neurodiverse friendly workplaces which is an ongoing process.  It's not a destination, but it really is a continuous effort and commitment.  So, that's what I would leave you with as you think about next steps after this conversation.
>> PAULA KELLEY: And Luke, how about you?
>> LUKE MANN: You made me go last after two brilliant minds, like Laura and Elizabeth.  I agree with all ‑‑
>> PAULA KELLEY: You are also a brilliant mind.
>> LUKE MANN: I would agree with all of that.  I think like the title of this panel states, start from where you are.  We always use the phrase, don't try to boil the ocean.  When we stood up our program that I had mentioned earlier, we spent our entire first year benchmarking with external partners and figuring out what our plan was going to be and small little areas we wanted to start in.
The final piece is just listen, listen to your employees, listen to their feedback and be prepared to adapt, right.  Remember, nothing about us without us.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Uh‑huh.  Perfect.  Thank you so much.
So, now I'm going to have Sarah join us.  And we have got some great questions that have come in through the Q&As component of our conversation this afternoon.
So, Sarah, I will turn it over to you.
>> SARAH KIRWAN: Thank you so much, Paula.  And I just so enjoyed that conversation and hearing all of the bits of insights and knowledge that you all have.  So, thank you for sharing that with us today.
We have had some really great questions come in.  One of the first questions that we want to touch on, which was submitted initially, is, Elizabeth, you touched on this a little bit previously about separating the neurodiversity and the disability BRG.  And I'm wondering if you can share a little bit of information about how you made that decision and what the process was for you to actually message that and create those two BRGs.
>> ELIZABETH BETZLER: Yeah.  So I think, I mean, the way in which that came about was really through what our employees were asking for and need, needed at the time, but also still have been asking for and need today, and that our disability employee network that had existed for some time, again, you know, disability is in the name.  It's part of the mission.  While disability in and of itself is very diverse, what we were hearing directly from employees is that, you know, I identify as being neurodiverse.  I don't necessarily identify as a disability.  And going back to some of the conversation today, right, whether it's from not necessarily feeling safe to self‑ID but maybe it also isn't part of their individual identity and the disability conversation looking very different across societies around the world, we really wanted to recognize that.
So, we intentionally, you know, have let both groups coexist or both groups have coexisted with and through, again, our employee means and their identities and being responsive to that, not forcing folks to say, okay, you can only do this work underneath the disability umbrella.  But, again, creating that safe space, that community and addressing that need for broadly.
So, that's a continued conversation.  We have that regularly of, you know, based on what your objectives are for this year, where are things going or as the group continues to evolve, what do we best need to do to solve for that.  I think there was some concerns at the get‑go around, is this potentially going to take away members from our disability employee network?  If there is a significant overlap in the work that's happening.  Are we spreading folks too thin across different missions and orientations and work that's happening.  And what we found is we were like, we don't know until we actually get into it and try it and experience it.
What we found is that hasn't been the case.  Our neurodivergence at Thomson Reuters group are incredible allies for disability employee network and our disability employee network are incredible allies to the other group.  And there is a lot of overlap in membership across those groups.
But maybe no different from membership across other groups as well and where allies may be showing up or identities aren't necessarily distinct and part of our Asian employee, our Asian affinity network, I'm also a part of our women at Thomson Reuters network, I'm also part of our veterans network as a sister of military brothers so there's multiple facets of my identity and that can easily coexist in our workplace today.  We wanted to take the same approach and test and learn from that as we think about disability and neurodiversity within our organization.
Does that help, Sarah?
>> SARAH KIRWAN: Oh, I love that.  And I love that you mentioned our multiple identities co‑existing in our workplaces.  And I really think that's so important, because we can't just take out one piece of our identity, because they are layered and together inherently connected.  Thank you.  That was wonderful.
This next question, all three of you really touched on this a little bit.  So, it's how do we move from neurodiversity awareness into neuroinclusive cultures?  And Laura, you touched on this around skill building, through scenarios and interactions and how do we really talk about these experiences.
Luke, you touched on benefits of having the centralized process at the enterprise level for consistency and fairness.
And Elizabeth, you talked a little bit about the goals related to AI that each of your global employees has.
I know we are running short, we are not running short but we are clear, we are getting there.  But I want to start with Laura, if you don't mind, talking a little bit more about the skill building and the experiences that you have to move that needle toward neuroinclusive culture.
>> LAURA SABATTINI: Definitely.  And I will mention, too, that to me, awareness building is a constant.  And my experience not only around neurodiversity but any inclusion and diversity initiative, you know, our knowledge continues to evolve but also there's different people that come to the organization, different teams, different structure so to me it's really a question of engaging people, continuing to build the awareness throughout, and the more you build the awareness, the more, you know, it's not just one person communicating, but many others that can share those resources.
So, mention to me awareness building is always a component.  And the examples that I brought up earlier is also building the skills but also make sure people take an active role in being allies or in their learning or in participating in some of the initiatives.  I think that fosters engagement but also it's a way for people to interact and practice beyond just learning about what neurodiversity is and things that are happening.  And also make it relevant.  Because sometimes people may not understand and we see this with employee resource groups, sometimes there's still misperception, especially in some countries that employee resource groups are just for the people that identify with that particular dimension, versus for others that may want to learn.
So, going back and I will be quick to how we train also people managers, you know, encouraging people managers to join employee resource groups as an opportunity to learn and increase awareness can be a good way to then, sort of, continue to share their knowledge across.  So, these are ‑‑ I don't know if that answers your question but these have some ways to build those skills, yes.
>> SARAH KIRWAN: And to really get people involved so they had a stake in the process, right?
>> LAURA SABATTINI: Exactly.  Right.  And interested and show we all play a role.  Yes, yes, yes.
>> SARAH KIRWAN: And that's perfect.  I mean, you can move that needle then to a more neuroinclusive culture.
>> LAURA SABATTINI: Uh‑huh.
>> SARAH KIRWAN: I would like to go to Luke.  Luke, if you don't mind.  I would love to hear a little bit more about how you move from that awareness to the neuroinclusive culture through your efforts in the centralized accommodations process and the other streamlined processes that are less administrative and less of a financial burden.
>> LUKE MANN: Yeah.  I read through the comment on this question that was put in there.  I think it's so important because it's ‑‑ my answer to this one will be there's ‑‑ once you have gotten to the point where this individual, they are doing the education efforts, but they said they haven't fully sunk in yet and I think there's not really a clear finish line.  It's a continuation of process.
In my experience, I haven't really met some manager, an employee who necessarily has ill intent.  I think it's a lack of exposure in most cases.  And so what I have found is that, you know, the continuation of the training, every year we go through the same training for all of my recruiters prior to our recruiting season, all of our hiring managers prior to them doing interviews.  And I just think the more you can weave it into the fabric of something that you do every single day in your process, I talked about universal design earlier, but your process, that's just how we do it now.  I think the more that you will see those education efforts will sink in because it becomes more of the everyday activity that your employees are doing.
And by the way, it's good for every single person that you hire and every single person that's working for you.
>> SARAH KIRWAN: Yeah.  I love that as well.  Thank you.
Elizabeth, did you want to just touch on the goals of AI and employees?  Yeah, their goals.
>> ELIZABETH BETZLER: More broadly.  I think moving from like awareness to actual experiences, it's all of us shared accountability and pausing, as Luke mentioned, like with and through your day‑to‑day, both asking yourself, you know, are there things that I could have done better to create, you know, a more inclusive experience?  Have I ‑‑ I know the tools exist out there, right?  Did I actually use accessibility checker?  Did I actually send the agenda in advance of a meeting, knowing that I have got folks on my team who have asked for ‑‑ you know, who benefit from having time to process and prepare before coming into a meeting, versus being put on the spot when we are all moving 100 miles an hour in our day to day.
Did I actually do X, Y and Z, the best practices or approaches in which I am hearing with and through these learning opportunities?  And then am I asking my teams, you know, various touchpoints for their candid feedback of what more or different can I do, we do as a team to show up and actually live out what we are hearing when it comes to awareness or inclusive workplace.  I think it's a really conscious effort.
You know, I have heard of colleagues like, okay, I am just going to schedule a reminder on my calendar for, like, every so far out to check myself on this and do some self‑coaching around it, whether it's in this space or other spaces.  I think that's a really easy, tangible action item that we can all take that helps us move one step forward and not just bringing the right awareness and training, but helping empower people, like what do I do next, and then creating some of those easy touchpoints to make it more conscious.
>> SARAH KIRWAN: Yeah, I think that the points that you make up about just the day‑to‑day practices, I feel like when we have that awareness and we keep talking about that, we can really shift that culture through education.  And those continued conversations like we were talking about previously.
I know that we are about 60 seconds, one minute away from this program ending.  I am going to pass it back over to Paula to close us out.
>> PAULA KELLEY: Thank you so much, Sarah, for facilitating the questions there.
So, as she said, we are at time.  And I want to thank first of all, I'm going to thank Ashley and Jason from the Disability:IN team who have helped us with the technology execution for this session.  Nikki and Leah, our ASL interpreters, Kelly, our captioner, and certainly our three panelists, Laura, Elizabeth, and Luke, and Sarah, my colleague, our facilitator.
We have learned a lot today.  As we know, there's so much more to learn.  And I hope you all take away some of these best practices and lessons learned to your own organizations.
So, we are going to drop now.  We have got a 15‑minute break before we have Session 8 and Session 9 coming up at 3:30.  Be sure that you go back to your agenda and log into those specific links to those sessions.  But thank you all for joining in the audience and thank you, especially  To our panelists for your great information.  Really inspiring afternoon.  Thank you.  Bye‑bye.
>> LAURA SABATTINI: Bye, everyone.
>> LUKE MANN: Bye
(Session was concluded at 3:16 p.m. EST) 

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