Tara May trailblazing and embracing autism in the workplace

Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide?
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Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world,
one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantour. Welcome
to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide.
Joining us today is Tara May, the CEO of a Spiritech,
a nonprofit tech services company empowering autistic professionals through quality assurance,
data services, and accessibility testing. With a workforce of over
ninety percent on the autism spectrum, as Spiritech has grown
over forty percent in new client revenue under her leadership,
she champions neurodiversity, inclusion and innovation, creating impactful opportunities for
neurodiversion talent as a parent of an autistic son. She
will share her personal journey in what drew her or
Spiritech's mission of fostering inclusion and celebrating neurodiversion talent. She
has a wealth of information and we're is so happy
to have a join us today. So before we dive
into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show
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the smartest way to hire. Thanks for coming on, Absolutely,
I'm excited. Yes, me too. So I guess my first
question is give us a little background on what it
is you do.
Absolutely. So. My name is Tara May.
I am CEO of an organization called the Spiritech.
So we are a tech company.
We do a variety of tech services ranging from QA
to web development to cybersecurity. But it's all done by
a team that is more than ninety percent autistic adults.
So that's our mission to embrace neurodiversity in work and
in life.
That's great. So my next question is what are the
humble beginnings of how it all came together.
Yeah, the humble beginnings of a spiritech date back twenty
years at this point to two thousand and eight, when
the founders, Brenda and Mosha Witzberg, were helping their adult
autistic son o'roon look for work that was commesorate with
his intelligence and not finding a lot of options. So
from their kitchen table, fast forward eighteen years to twenty
twenty five, we now have one hundred team members and
roughly six million dollars in annual revenue. And I took
over s CEO about three years ago when they were
retiring because they were coming into their seventies, so that
seems like a fair age to retire.
And then some absolutely, so what led you to the
journey of working with this company?
So my career was really steeped in digital transformation. So
I would come into an organization primarily legacy print media
companies and teach them how to be digital companies.
And so the idea of tech productization.
Is very near and dear to my heart user experience.
My whole career is steeped there. And I also have
an autistic son. I became really passionate about neurodiversity. Leading
a spirit tech marries both my professional love and my
personal love in a really special way.
So your son's autistic, How old is he now?
Yes, he's fourteen. Now he was five when he was diagnosed.
So I'm about, you know, a decade into having neurodiversity
being a very intimate part of my life.
So how did it affect you? I've talked with so
many people that have gone through the same steps that
you have gone through. Everyone's story is a little different,
so what's yours?
So really, it's my son's story and I'm just along
for the ride. He was pre verbal until he was seven,
so he only had a handful of words, and it
took us probably three years to get his diagnosis, especially
ten years ago. Diagnosis is hard, and it's complicated, and
people have varying knowledge of autism in your journey along
the way, so it took us a long time. His
first diagnosis was global developmental delay, which essentially means, well,
your child is not developing like everybody else, but we
don't know exactly what's going on. And then we had
a sensory processing diagnosis, we had speech delay diagnoses, and
finally we got to autism, which is truly who he
is right. It affects everything about how he experiences the world.
And I had to completely relearn how to be a
mother and how to be a parent because the way
he learns and the way I was raising him.
Had to be completely adapted.
So I like to say, we sort of both went
through therapy together, right, sometimes for many years it was
forty hours a week. And what I learned through that
process was that he is capable of absolutely anything he puts.
His mind to. He just might need different supports.
And so when your mind opens to this idea of neurodiversity,
you start to see it everywhere. Right, You're like, oh, gosh,
my grandfather who didn't speak until he was seven, probably
also was never going to be diagnosed autistic in the
nineteen forties in Europe. But absolutely is right. You see
it in your friends, your family, And I.
Saw it at work and I was like, why do
we not talk.
About the way that we learn and communicate and socialize
in the workplace at all?
It seems like a big missing gap to me.
Yeah, so is he verbal now?
He is not just verbal, he's verbose. And he's headed
into three honors classes in high school.
Wow, that's really nice. You mentioned that you learned along
the way. What are some of the things that you
look at completely different now than you did before.
I would never even even have the language for some
of the things I understand now. So, for example, he
was incredibly visual. So even though we had a hard
time getting the words out of his mouth. It doesn't
mean he didn't understand what was going on around him.
So as he was learning to talk, we pasted my
husband and I pasted our entire house with little cards
that had the name for everything refrigerator, bathroom, glass for
and this helped him connect in his mind what he
was looking at with the word he needed to say
out loud. I never even would have thought about that
for any of my other children. I learned about something
called proprioception, which is your awareness of your body and
how close or far you are from someone else.
Well, he has terrible proprioception.
So he would wander away from me right, wander away
from mom to the extent that it was unsafe, and
so we had to teach him how to cross the street,
how to stay close to mom, or stay close to
a sibling to keep.
Him alive literally sometimes. So you become really aware of
the fact that your brain impacts everything about the way
we experience this world.
Yes, absolutely, so you mentioned other siblings. How many children
do you have?
I have four children. He has an older brother and sister,
and he has a twin.
Wow, that's awesome. Any autistic features with the other children.
Yeah, absolutely, so, you know, it is sort of a journey,
and he has the highest support needs out of any
of my children. But it turned out all three of
them were neurodivergent in some way. Apparently we don't make,
you know, very typical brains around here.
What about meltdowns? Do you have any issues there?
Oh?
Oh, Tony, you know, I honestly I feel like I've
blacked out a lot of it because it's just a
coping mechanism, right, You're like, I'm not going to think
about that too much. He had a meltdown every day
for two years. Leaving for preschool, I had to hold
him down and buckle him into the seat belt on
the bus. He had a meltdown every time he walked
into a public bathroom that had the fan air blowing,
which it took me forever to figure out that it
was the sensory noise that was triggering him. He had
such a terrible meltdown once that he unintentionally broke my
nose from thrashing around.
Again.
That was just something where I had to learn what
his needs were. I had to learn how life was
going to look different with an autistic child than it
was with a neurotypical child or neurodivision in some other form. Sure,
there was very few people I trusted to be able
to take care of him.
His grandparents were one of them, my mom and dad.
They're just the most wonderful humans on earth. Even my
dad had to learn. You know, when he says that
he can't go into a restaurant, it's because he's going
to have a meltdown and it's actually going to be
painful for him. My dad quickly learned that that was
not going to work. Pushing him to do it was
not going to work, and you know, to let him
sit quietly and take his food to go. So it
became a learning process for absolutely everybody in our family.
But it made us all better people, more empathetic people.
Yeah. So, with all this happening, how did the transition
to the leadership role that you have now work?
I often say, Tony that I am in the most
challenging and also the most rewarding job of my life.
I get to show the world what autistic people and
autistic brains are capable of. Also, I get to show
my son beautiful representation of autistic people. Not only thriving
at work, but building and leading a company. Eighty percent
of our executive leadership team is autistic, and I didn't
think about that when I took the position, but now
I think it's one of the greatest gifts I've ever
given him.
With you being neurotypical working with those that are neurodiversion,
were there any issues that you had to deal with?
So I think the biggest issue, and I'm very careful
and conscientious about this, is that I am a non
autistic person, and so I can't speak for autistic people.
Autistic people are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, of
having their own voices, and therewived experience is more powerful
and important than my words ever could be. But I
am CEO of the organization, so that puts me in
a position like this right now to be talking about
our mission and our work a lot.
Right CEOs are asked to speak a lot.
I constantly try to make sure that I am incorporating
what they share with me and understanding that it is
a deep trust and privilege that this team has given
me to be a leader of this organization.
I will share one more personal thing.
Actually, as I was going through my first year of CEO,
I was diagnosed with OCD, so I was finding this
out about myself and.
Figuring out how to cope with this.
I think I was gifted the grace of this team
in sort of learning about my own brain and how
to be kind to myself.
So what are some of the challenges you've faced? Not
so much with your son, because you've gone over the
ten years with that and that's been a learning curve.
What are some of the challenges you face at the
workplace working with so many people that, unfortunately the world
proceeds as a little different, even though they are fully
capable of doing anything and sometimes better than those that
would judge them.
I have a very specific response for this question because
I get asked it a lot, and I've given it
a lot of thought.
In a lot of ways.
Working with the team at a Spirit TACK is absolutely
no different than leading teams in my corporate workplace, because
you're leading teams of individuals with strengths and weaknesses and
human needs, and that's true everywhere you go. The one
thing I think is harder at a Spirit TECH and
more of a challenge, is the self esteem and confidence
issues that many autistic people have. I think this comes
from a lifetime of hearing about themselves from a deficit perspective,
whether in therapy or in school or even well meaning
loved ones. It's all what you need to change, what
you need to work on, and what's wrong with you.
At a spirittech are.
Trying to reframe that and say, here's your value, here's
what you have to offer the workplace and the world.
The confidence issues are not easily undone.
Yeah, that's so true. Have you ever had an instance
where a couple of people they may not see eyed
eye on a couple of things, and then they say, well,
you're autistic. You should understand. It's really not the fact
that they're autistic. It's the fact that they're individuals and
everyone has a different perspective in the way they look
at things.
Oh yeah, I mean, we've got one hundred team members
with wildly different personalities, right. Autistic people who are highly verbal,
highly social, they want to process out loud, and then
there are autistic people who are very very introverted, want
to process internally, need a lot of space. And so
when you have two people with those sort of wildly
different preferences and even beyond preferences me, it's really that
can create conflex right. I often say, autistic humans are humans,
and so therefore there is no stereotype that isn't broken
in some way, shape or form. There isn't a difference
that we don't see among neurotypical people that we don't
see among autistic people.
Yeah. Absolutely. Now, you say you have one hundred people
that work there, so that means you've got one hundred
different personalities, you have a hundred different ways that they
can preceive something or look at it. What can you
tell the company that might be listening to this, or
the CEO that might be listening to this that they
definitely need to hear so they can do the same
thing that you're doing and not look at someone because
they're autistic and have a fear of hiring them.
So there's a few things I would share. One is that, well, listen, Tony,
let me say this first, and careful about positive stereotypes,
because they're still stereotypes and they're still harmful. One of
the universally true things about most autistic people is that
they are incredibly productive and engaged in their work. So
one Harvard Business Review study shows that if you pair
an autistic person with a work project that matches their
skill set, they're one hundred and fifty percent more productive
than their neurotypical peer, one hundred and fifty percent more
productive because the problem solving area of their brain is
bigger and more active. In autistic people, they're forty percent
faster at problem solving than neurotypical people. That's a pretty
fascinating sort of cognitive application of how the autistic brain works.
At the same time, they may have social deficits, and
the interview process is built around social interaction, handshakee. Eye contact,
selling yourself. When I talk to business leaders, what I
want to urge of them is to look at a
person's capability to do the job rather than their ability
to sell themselves. And I think that is incredibly powerful
if you can do that. The second thing I say
to business leaders is you already have a neurodiverse team.
I mean, one in five of us is neurodivergent in
some way, whether it's adhd, OCD, autism, and so thinking
about neurodiversity in the workplace, actively considering it is going
to be good for everyone on your team. It's going
to improve employee engagement, loyalty, product tamivity, happiness, and innovation.
And it is going to drive your organization's growth. So
those are two things I love to share.
Tell me if you've had this situation in your workplace.
I had Temple Granted on my podcast. She put it
across as don't tell me what to do, give me
a pilot's checklist. That way I can check off each
thing I have to do and it will get done.
Have you found that type of situation to work in
your workplace?
Yeah?
First of all, I love Temple Grand and she is amazing.
She's visited a spare attack and advocated for a spere attack.
What an incredible human.
But yes, absolutely, that is one of the works workplace
supports that we offer our team members is a checklist.
Here is exactly, step by step, what I need you
to do and how we're going to replicate it. But
what I would say Tony is that while this is
a more imperative need for many autistic people, it's also
just a great workplace practice, right, I mean, documentation is
a great workplace practice. It's really about how important the
workplace support is for autistic people.
It's just more critical.
Yeah, absolutely when you finished a typical day. Wait a minute,
what does a typical day look like for you?
Gosh?
I mean, one of the things I say is true
at a Spiritech or anybody else, is that the higher
up you get in your title in your organization, the
larger of a percentage your day is just about problem solving, right,
Like what problems can I solve, you know, for the company,
for an individual, for my direct reports or my indirect reports.
Or whatever it might be.
So I do a lot of problem solving largely, is
that my day looks like the CEO's day of any
tech company, right, I'm looking at sales and marketing numbers.
We've got a team, we've got growth numbers to hit.
I'm looking at how operations are running. I'm looking at
customer happiness level. What I would say is different is
that I also have a mission to advocate for. So
I am, you know, often speaking and talking about this
incredible mission. We have to really embrace neurodiversity at work.
So it's a typical CEO's day and then a little
something special on top.
Okay, that makes perfect sense. Now when you finish your
normal CEO's work day and you're walking out that door.
You're not only accomplishing the business that is doing well,
you're accomplishing helping the people that really need that kind
of support because the average person just doesn't have that perspective.
That's going to feel pretty darn good.
Yeah, I would say Tony that I am the happiest
I've ever been at work, And my husband would tell
you the same thing. I chose to leave after twenty
five years of corporate jobs, a very wonderful, high level
C suite position, to pour my heart and talent into
this amazing mission and this very unique organization. And there
is not a single day that I don't believe that
was the right decision. But I would also say, and
my husband would agree with this, also, I am the
most stressed I've ever been because we are just chipping
away at an iceberg and the number of emails and
inquiries I get from autistic people who would love to
work for a spear attack keeps me up at night.
So I am constantly thinking how do we grow so
that we can continue to chip away?
A Yeah, that's great goals. Now where are you located in?
What areas do you serve?
So we are headquartered in Chicago, just outside of Chicago.
Our offices are in Evanston.
We have employees and eleven different states at this point,
and we run our Spiritech Academy, which is career training
in seven different states. So we're thinking about national expansion
and hopefully someday international expansion. Right now, we just hire
here in the US and we work with companies from
coast to coast.
Do you do most of your work online?
It's almost all remote at this point.
All remote, okay. Autistic people are really well known for
the focus. Have you had any challenges with them getting
focused on something then going to something else that needs
to get done, They focus on that. Really, they need
to be focusing on what they started on. Any challenges there.
Actually, the ability to work from home and work remotely
has made those issues better for us. Autistic people often
like to create their own sensory experience, right whatever they
want that environment to look like, and they're able to
do that when they're home is their work.
When you are in an.
Office, especially you know, set up sort of open office environment,
there's a lot more distractions. There's less ability to have
maybe the quiet that you need or the background noise
mitigation that you need. Also, about half of our team
does not drive, so there were often long, expensive public
transportation commutes. So the ability to work from home, I
believe is an incredible accommodation we hand give to make
neurodivergence work lives better.
Absolutely, that sounds perfect. Now, are you set up as
a for profit business?
We are actually a five oh one c three nonprofit.
Okay, all right, only because.
We have no ownership.
Every penny that we make goes back toward our mission
and supporting either our existing autistic team members or future
autistic team members through our training academy. However, ninety five
percent of our revenue comes from clients, just like it
would in a typical for profit business.
Okay, all right, what would you like to tell our
listeners that you think is just very important and not
just about what you're trying to do, but more so
on what you are doing.
We are proving every single day the value that autistic
people can bring to the workplace. Incredible intelligence, innovation, problem solving, loyalty, productivity,
and engagement comes from an autistic team.
It is not expensive.
We don't have to spend a lot of time or
money creating the support systems that work for them, and
you can do the same thing at your organization and
you'll benefit from it.
Yeah. Yeah, And it just has this great feeling that
you're doing something not only helping people, but doing something
that can create jobs, and most important, you're doing something
for a group of people that so often not given
the opportunities they deserve because of the perception that others
have of them that just simply are not true.
Absolutely, there's absolutely a stigma and stereotype. Sometimes our team
uses the word infantilization with a lot of people think
autistic adults are like children, and that's just not true.
Autistic adults are mature, intelligent and capable. I can tell
you that from personal experience. The team members that I
build a Spearitech with every day, they're not clients or
people that I'm serving.
They're my team members in.
Building an incredible tech company, and they're my friends and
my colleagues, and I feel very lucky to be building
a company not for them, but alongside them.
Yeah yeah, I actually try not to use that word
stigma as much as I can. I use the word
perception perfect.
I'm going to steal that from you, Tony.
So many people use the word stigma, and when you
use that particular word, it has a conniction to it
that is bad, right, So I really dislike using that word. Yeah.
Are there some autistic people out there that have meltdowns
and do some bad things from time to time. Yeah,
that happens. The media seems to focus on that, but
I think we need to focus on the good and
do away with all the negative connotations. Then use something
like perception, because perception is what they may think it is,
but in reality it's really not what it is. So
that's the reason why I use the word perception as
much as possible, right, And we.
Should all open our minds to perceive what is actually there.
Right.
I love that absolutely because you can have in your
mind what you think it is. Then when you meet
someone you find they are autistic you didn't realize it.
That should change your perception absolutely.
You know, I don't look like what about Bob right
in terms of having OCD. The way it looks in
me is incredible perfectionism, high performance and sort of these
unrealistic standards I put on myself. Well, people at workplaces
love that about me.
Right, So it's just everything is about what you're capable
of not what you're.
Diagnosed with exactly exactly. Well, this has been great, great information,
great conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to
join us today.
Thank you so much for having me in for your
really thoughtful questions.
Oh it's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking
time out of your busy schedule to listen to our
show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as
we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone
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