Support Elaine Day's Writing on Asperger's and Women

i wanted to draw your attention to the work of Elaine Day.  She is a woman and an Aspie.  And she wants to write a book about her experience as a woman growing up undiagnosed on the spectrum.  I think that women are underrepresented as writers in the autism world, and that the experiences of autistic women don't get the coverage they deserve.

Ms. Day is running a campaign on Kickstarter  to raise funds for her project.  She hopes to raise $1,000 within the next 17 days and has already raised $440 toward her goal.  If you can afford to make a contribution and want to support autistic women, I encourage you to do so. I think autistic women and autistic people in general need to support one another and so I am supporting Ms. Day.

Game-Changer for Autistic Scientists

This post is designed to describe two potential game-changing career options for autistic scientists.  I have found at least two web sites that allow scientists to participate in solving problems for pay.  In this way you can be paid for your knowledge and not your social skills.  Your background in biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science can come in handy and help you.  Large companies post these challenges, and they pay significant sums to solve them.  Your inability to function socially with colleagues and bosses in the workplace does not matter.  Your ability to think outside the box and solve scientific problems can earn you a good income.

One of them is called IdeaConnection, and I have belonged to the site for quite a while.  The payment for solving an idea challenge varies from $500 to $10,000 depending upon the challenge.  They also offer payments of $2,000 for technology sourcing leads, that is finding companies with particular technologies or products.  Some of the projects involve working in virtual teams, whereas others involve working alone.  The online environment makes working in a virtual team easier for an autistic scientist than working in an office setting where social miscues can cause tremendous heartache.

I found the other site, Innocentive, by reading the outstanding book Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe.  This site offers even higher payments for solving scientific problems, usually between $5,000 and $100,000 per challenge.  And the profiles of the successful solvers in the book indicate that autistic scientists can succeed in solving problems.  One problem-solver, Giorgia Sgargetta, has a PhD in chemistry but works as a quality manager in a pesticides plant (pp. 41-42).  Ed Melcarek has a masters in physics and now earns a significant income by solving scientific problems.

TopCoder is another web site mentioned in Howe's book on page 122.  The site offers short-term computer science problem-solving challenges that usually take place over 2-3 days and generally offer smaller prizes of $1,200 to $2,000 per challenge solved.

These sites are potential game-changers for unemployed and underemployed autistic scientists who are looking to either expand their income or break out of poverty and support themselves.  Removing the social pressures of working with colleagues and bosses can allow autistic scientific creativity to flourish more fully, thus allowing autistic scientists to maximize their potential and obtain fair compensation for their efforts.

One key point to keep in mind is that scientists should not limit themselves to only solving challenges in their fields.  For instance, Melcarek usually solves chemistry and biology problems using his physics and electrical engineering background (pg. 151).  Karim Lakhani, a PhD candidate in MIT's business school who studied InnoCentive, said,"We actually found the odds of a successful solver's success increased in fields where they had no formal expertise"(p. 151).  For this reason, scientists should try to tackle challenges outside their fields in addition to ones in their areas of expertise.

Count Your Beans: Successful Autistic Owned Company

This blog post represents the first of a series of profiles of successful autistic-owned companies.  The purpose of the series to give hope, inspiration, and practical tips to current and aspiring autistic entrepreneurs.  In addition, the goal is to help autistic entrepreneurs find the kind of business ideas that play to our intellectual strengths and make allowances for our social weaknesses.

Count Your Beans is an example of a successful on-line business owned and run by an autistic entrepreneur.  The founder and co-owner, Karen Krejcha, was diagnosed with autism after her son was found to be autistic.  Ms. Krejcha runs the company along with her husband Chris.  This company sells collectible dolls and bears online with a focus on the Marie Osmond doll line.

I think the company is successful for a number of reasons:

1.  They focus on a specific and well-defined niche.  Thus, rather than trying to sell every type of collectible doll available, they specialize primarily in the Marie Osmond doll line.  This niche focus allows them to maintain relationships with the sales people for Marie Osmond, minimize the size of their inventory, and gain traction among their customers who identify them with a particular well-known brand.

2.  The on-line format allows them to interact with customers via phone and email, thus avoiding the confusion caused by inability to read non-verbal social cues in face to face interaction.

3. They provide constantly updated product news for the Marie Osmond doll line.

4.  Their payment, customer service, shipping and return policies are spelled out very clearly and explicitly in order to avoid any confusion in this area.   Problems in this areas are a common source of customer dissatisfaction, and so they must be addressed properly to avoid problems where possible and to solve them quickly when they do arise.  

5.  Their information section for each product is extremely clear and detailed.  The product name is included  along with a detailed item description, picture, size, price, discounts, the release date, and the item number. Thus, the customer knows exactly what she is ordering when she places an order.

6. The copy for each item is cleverly written, interesting, and designed to keep customer interest.  For instance, the Adora Belle Cowardly Lion from Marie Osmond's new The Wizard of Oz collection #040110153 "will be a great addition to your home. This porcelain cutie is dressed in a Cowardly Lion outfit complete with a badge of courage, furry lion body, mane and tail. Includes The Wizard of Oz Story Book Box."  The copy explains what customer problem the item is designed to solve: providing decoration and art to the home.  In addition, the product's physical attributes product are described in detail.  

7.  Their web page is properly designed to be easy on the eyes.  Thus, each page contains only a small number of items and is not cluttered with too many items.

8.  The inventory is kept constantly updated so that customers know when an item is out of stock or has reached a low level.   This information allows customers to make more informed purchase decisions and avoids the frustration that can arise when a customer orders an item and it is found to be unavailable.

9.  They sell a small portion of their inventory on eBay and Amazon, thus allowing them to reach more retail channels for their products.

10.  They try to entice more customer spending through a customer loyalty program called Bonus Beans.  And normally Bonus Beans expire one year after they have been obtained, thus requiring the customer to spend them withing one year.

11. They have always donated a portion of their earnings to charity, and now they have founded their own non-profit organization called Autism Empowerment.

Thus, the keys to success for an autistic-owned on-line business include serving a well-defined niche, providing clear customer service policies, offering detailed product descriptions, and maintaining constant inventory updates.  The on-line business format plays to the autistic entreprenuer's strengths because it allows to memorize our inventory and eliminates the confusion caused by misread social cues in face to face interactions.  

Opening the Closed Systems of Business and International Relations

I am an autistic woman who is writing a self-employment guide for autistic adults.  As a result of our social deficits, autistic people typically struggle perhaps more with marketing than with any other aspect of entrepreneurship. And so my research for my book has focused extensively upon marketing. 

My research has included reading the outstanding book The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.   The book is full of excellent examples of marketing campaigns that involved thinking outside the box and focusing on the customer’s needs, wants, and problems.  I highly recommend it for autistic entrepreneurs, and all entrepreneurs who want to improve their marketing campaigns. I found the book incredibly helpful as it has greatly expanded my understanding of marketing and customer-centric thinking.  I also recommend his web site at www.webinknow.com

He emphasizes the importance of understanding the buyer persona that a company is trying to reach. For example, on pages 30 to 31, he tells the story of Mike Pedersen, a golf fitness professional who has succeeded by targeting a very specific demographic: the 60 year old golfer who has declining physical capability.  He develops his content by getting inside the mind of his customers and understanding exactly what they are looking for. 

But I want to ponder a different issue in this blog post.  I wanted to understand why so many big companies were so resistant to adopting his more effective method of customer-centric marketing and so stuck on traditional forms of advertising and marketing that are increasingly ineffective in the digital age.  For instance, on pages 1 to 3, Meerman Scott tells the story of looking on the web sites of the Big 3 car companies when in the process of buying a car.  The car companies bombarded him with ads marketing their products to him instead of trying to solve his problems.

And I realized part of the problem is that the large corporate world, like the international relations field, is a closed system.  In the large corporate world, you are either included as a manager or employee, or you are treated like you don’t exist. In the latter case, you are left on the outside looking in without any prospect of any real communication or meaningful interaction with the corporate entity. 

In my case, I was excluded from the mainstream corporate world when I graduated from college because I didn’t fit in socially as a result of my undiagnosed autism.  And so the corporate world would be likely to automatically dismiss my insights as unworthy of consideration because of my social differences.  I think this resistance to new ideas in the corporate world is a consequence of it being a closed system which excludes anyone who does not fit in exactly with the corporation’s understanding of itself and the world. 

In my original field of international relations, I found a similarly rigid and close-minded attitude among my professors.  I was driven out of the Russian studies department of an Ivy League college in the 1990’s by a campaign of covert anti-Semitism.  As a result, I was prevented from pursuing my original goal of earning a PhD and becoming a professor. 

For many years, I attempted unsuccessfully to participate in the field on a part-time basis as a freelance analyst of international affairs.  But my ideas and insights were repeatedly dismissed because I was not a part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.  Soon after receiving my autism diagnosis, I told my professors that I couldn’t work in the foreign policy establishment because of my weak social skills.  And I asked them if they could help me find a way to participate in the field on a part-time freelance basis.  Instead of trying to accommodate me, they tried to pressure me to return to a system where I knew that I didn’t belong. 

I think the solution to this problem is for corporations and the international relations field to open their minds to a wide range of ideas and solutions that differ from their preconceived notions of thinking and working.  They need to find a way to include the insights of people like me who think differently, who don’t fit in socially, who cannot function in rigid and closed environments with conformist rules.   They need to move away from their rigid approaches.  They need to challenge their tendency to divide the world between insiders and outsiders and to automatically reject the ideas and insights of perceived outsiders.  I think both business and international relations are missing out on great ideas because of their rigid approaches.  I think  that a more open attitude toward outside ideas would free them to find a much wider range of solutions to complex problems. 

Autistic Women Face Unique Issues

I am an autistic adult woman, and my personal experience shows that autistic women face different challenges than autistic men.  First of all, I was left undiagnosed until my mid-30’s because my symptoms presented themselves differently than those of autistic men.   My special interest was not trains or insects but rather history and international relations.  In addition, I did not exhibit many of the behavioral issues that typically lead to a diagnosis. 

I was self-diagnosed at the age of 35.  A year later, at the age of 36, I requested and received an official diagnosis from a prominent female psychiatrist who specializes in autism.  The system would never have diagnosed me on its own if I had not already figured out my autism through independent research.  In addition, my female psychiatrist may have been more sensitive to the subtle presentation of my autistic symptoms than a male psychiatrist.

Autistic women are a small minority within a minority.   Autism is a predominantly male condition, with a 4:1 male to female ratio of autistic people.  In addition, Asperger’s Syndrome has a 10:1 male to female ratio.  As a result, the unique issues and challenges that autistic women face are frequently understudied and overlooked because we are a marginalized minority within a minority.  I think the problem is we are more often overlooked than subjected to explicit discrimination within the autism world.  Thus, the solution calls for more autistic women to speak out individually and collectively about our unique issues in order to raise awareness of our differences in the autism community.

In addition, autistic women are treated more harshly for our social deficits than autistic men.  Women in general are held to a much higher standard of social competence than men.  As a result, women are punished much more severely for a lack of social competence than men. Women like me who are not skilled in mathematics and the sciences pay a particularly high price for our autism.  In my case, employers systematically refused to hire me in the business and accounting worlds for 17 years as a result of my undiagnosed autism. The realization that I was subjected to harsh discrimination in the mainstream workplace for being an autistic female is painful but necessary to my healing process.

I have interacted and shared experiences on Facebook with many other autistic women.  This interaction has given me a feeling of shared community and identity which helps me to put my experience into a larger context.  I am glad to have found the Autism Women’s Network and its group of highly accomplished autistic women.  I look forward to further interaction with the Autism Women’s Network. 

Celebrating Autism Candles and Nathan Young

This post honors the success of a determined adult with severe autism named Nathan Young.  Having been placed in segregated workshops at a young age, Mr. Young was determined to change his destiny.  And instead of letting his autism limit him, he has gone on to form his own non-profit company called Autism Candles. The purpose of creating this company is two fold:
1. to demonstrate the full capabilities of autistic adults to the wider society and challenge stereotypical assumptions about autistic people
2. to provide employment opportunities for autistic adults.

He has a sophisticated understanding of marketing and has developed his own strategies for expanding the range of opportunities for autistic people.  His concept is called D2W, which stands for disability to working. The goal of the disability to work idea is to help autistic adults transition away from segregated workshops and into more rewarding professional opportunities that allow them to express and maximize the full range of their talents, skills, and abilities.  Having suffered the negative effects of segregated workshops, he is a strong advocate of integrating autistic adults into the mainstream workforce as much as possible. He is working hard to change a system which has been designed to segregate, exclude, and stigmatize adults with disabilities.  He will not take no for an answer, and he is a change-maker.

In the past few weeks, I have interacted extensively with Mr. Young on Facebook.  I have found him to be a refreshingly honest, kind, and compassionate young man.  He speaks his mind freely and expresses his opinions openly without beating around the bush.  He also has the ability to reach straight to the heart of complicated issues and to see through the many sophisticated ways that society tries to deceive and suppress adults with disabilites. He is a role model for adults with severe autism, and I have learned a lot from him in a short time.

Segregated Education and Employment are Wrong

I did some research on the limited career options open to adults with intellectual disabilities.  I discovered that in the past, students with intellectual disabilities were often placed in segregated special education classrooms that did not allow them to receive the same educational opportunities as typical children.  In addition, students with intellectual disabilities were often denied the opportunity to interact with typical children.

Sadly, segregation in the education system often prepared them for segregation in the workplace.  As a result, adults with intellectual disabilities are usually placed in segregated and sheltered workshops which have several important disadvantages.  First, they are typically paid less than minimum wage and thus denied the opportunity to support themselves financially on even a partial basis.  Second, they are deprived of the chance to develop the skills necessary to function in better forms of employment that should be much more widely available to adults with intellectual disabilities.  They are denied access to the resources needed to prepare them for work in supported, competitive, and self-employment options.

These practices continue even though a recent study showed that 63% of adults with intellectual disabilities who were participating in sheltered workshops wanted to work outside segregated work environments.  38% of their family members wanted to see their loved one with an intellectual disability work outside a sheltered workshop, and 29% of relatives might want to see their family member with an intellectual disability work outside a sheltered environment.  Thus, the study indicated that continued placement of adults with intellectual disabilities in sheltered workshops denies the wishes of a majority of adults with intellectual disabilities and a significant proportion of their loved ones.    

I also realized that I have suffered similar experiences in the workplace as an autistic adult with a high intellect.  As a result of my undiagnosed autism, I was deliberately prevented from participating in the mainstream workforce in business and accounting over a 12 year period.  Thus, I have also suffered the same financial and psychological effects of being segregated and excluded in the workforce as more severely impacted adults with intellectual disabilities.

The only difference for me is that the workplace segregation began at a much later age for me and thus was much more shocking to me.  Having participated in gifted classes in middle school and high school and having graduated from an Ivy League college, I was integrated all my life into the  most elite parts of the mainstream educational system.  Integration in the education system gave me unfulfilled dreams and expectations of participation in the mainstream workforce. I planned my career based on the assumption that society was planning to include me in the workforce. And thus I was stunned when society repeatedly chose to exclude me from the mainstream workforce after college.

But I am grateful to the autism and disability advocacy community for offering me the opportunity to participate fully and freely in your world. In the past few months, my involvement with the autism and disaiblity world has offered me a wide range of opportunities that I never thought possible.  I have been in the embrace of people who worked hard to include, encourage, nurture, and support me rather than finding excuses to suppress and exclude me.  I have found a caring and compassionate movement full of autistic adults, parents of autistic children, and autism and disability professionals who are committed to the vision of including disabled and autistic people in the workplace and society.  And most of all I have found a group of people who accept and embrace me for who I am and who do not try to force me to conform to the social norms of neurotypical society.  Thanks to your support, I am writing articles and book ideas and feeling emotionally safe in the workplace for the first time in my life.

I also believe that segregated education and employment are wrong for disabled people in general, including adults with intellectual disabilities.  Segregated education and employment prepare us for a life of poverty, exclusion, and discrimination and are designed to limit the range of our career, financial, and life options.  The purpose of inclusive education and employment is to allow adults of all abilities to reach their full potential in work and society.  For some people, inclusive work might mean competitive employment or supported employment.  For others, the best career option might be a self-employment venture or a job that involves working from home.  In general, the goal should be to maximize the ranges of work options available to adults with disabilities rather than finding reasons and ways to limit and exclude disabled adults in the workplace.

Also the employment world for disabled people should focus on celebrating our unique strengths and talents rather than focusing on our differences.  Too often the mainstream work world looks for reasons to exclude and suppress adults with disabilities.   For this reason, adults with disabilities need alternatives to the standard workforce environments that allow to focus on maximizing our strengths and talents.  In many cases, particularly for photographers, visual artists, writers, and foreign document translators, these alternatives can include self-employment and working from home.  For adults with skills in computer sciences, design, illustration, mathematics, and the sciences, these options can include working in a fully or partially integrated corporate environment.