ACS Panel Session: Neurodiversity to enhance IT Innovation

Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, Auticon Australia

Over the last 20 years Bodo has held senior leadership roles, has built businesses and worked extensively with Boards, CEOs and Senior Executives from ASX 100 and global blue-chip organisations across Australasia and Europe on a variety of client engagements ranging from of Strategy Development, Technology, Digital Transformation, Board Advisory, Leadership Consulting and Search.

He is passionate about building innovative social impact businesses, which are purpose driven and shine through neurodiversity. Bodo is excited and proud to be part of the global auticon family, whose primary purpose is to employ talented consultants on the autism spectrum, while providing value adding technology consulting services and cognitive strengths to blue chip clients.

By combining a highly relevant skill set across strategy, technology consulting and board advisory with deep P&L, business insights and leadership experience, Bodo is uniquely positioned to provide a pragmatic approach to developing a sustainable business as well as positioning technology solutions to our valued clients.

Bodo is a Non-Executive Director of the German-Australian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (GACIC). He is also on the Advisory Boards of the FinTech start-ups ‘Nudge Saver’ and ‘Bondle’, a global collaboration and governance application business.

Access Bodo’s LinkedIn profile here.

A Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry University of Cambridge and Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is Director of the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge. He is author of Mindblindness,

The Essential Difference, Prenatal Testosterone in Mind, and Zero Degrees of Empathy. He has edited scholarly anthologies including Understanding Other Minds. He has written books for parents and teachers including Autism and Asperger Syndrome:

The Facts. He is author of Mind Reading and The Transporters, digital educational resources to help children with autism learn emotion recognition, and both nominated for BAFTA awards.

He has published over 600 peer reviewed scientific articles, which have made contributions to many aspects of autism research, to typical cognitive sex differences, and synaesthesia research. Three influential theories he formulated were the ‘mindblindness’ theory of autism (1985), the ‘prenatal sex steroid’ theory of autism (1997), and the ‘empathizing-systemizing’ theory of typical sex differences (2002).

He created the first UK clinic for adults with suspected Asperger Syndrome (1999) that has helped over 1,000 patients to have their disability recognized. He gave a keynote address to the United Nations in New York on Autism Awareness Day 2017 on the topic of Autism and Human Rights. See click here.

Lead Job Coach, Auticon Australia

Jen has worked in autism support roles for over 15 years and has a depth of experience. She is truly passionate about empowering and educating parents, colleagues and people in the workplace about autism. She holds a Bachelor of Science majoring in Psychology from the University of Plymouth, a Special Education Teaching Degree and a Masters in Autism (from the University of Birmingham). 

She is part of the leadership team at auticon Australia, and her primary role is to enable autistic consultants to seamlessly integrate into client IT teams.

Jen leads client education on employing autistic consultants; providing on-going support and mediation to ensure the partnership thrives, with the work environment allowing colleagues to reach their full professional potential. Regular coaching support to provide a safe environment to develop workplace skills and remove the barriers that have often stood in the way to successful employment. 

ACS Diversity and Inclusion Council Member

Ashlea McKay is a senior User Experience (UX) researcher, keynote speaker, writer and Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) leader with more than a decade of experience. She brings an industrial design background to UX and her career has spanned both the public and private sectors in Australia as well as the international SaaS start-up space.

A proud late-diagnosed autistic woman, Ashlea is a passionate self-advocate for unconditional acceptance-based autism and neurodiversity inclusion in the workplace and beyond. She regularly shares open and frank accounts of lived experience examples of her life through LinkedIn to help bridge education and understanding gaps around autism.

Ashlea is an engaging keynote presenter with significant public speaking experience in both the UX and D&I spaces ranging from local professional gatherings to panel appearances at industry events to full length conference talks delivered to large audiences both locally and overseas. She was both the National and Canberra local network lead for Ability@PwC and is an active Diversity & Inclusivity Committee member at her current workplace, Synergy.