Thinking Differently: Neurodiversity in the Workplace

Neurodiversity is a natural and valuable dimension of human difference that, when understood and supported, results in greater creativity, adaptability, and effectiveness. This session offers a practical, grounded introduction to neurodiversity for public-sector professionals, with tools and frameworks tailored to three distinct roles: neurodivergent employees learning to advocate for themselves, managers learning to lead and hold neurodiverse teams accountable, and HR and administrative leaders building cultures where everyone can do their best work.

Drawing on Trystan Reese's original frameworks for neurodivergent identity development, shame-free accountability, and mutual adaptation, this 90-minute workshop moves quickly from awareness to action. We will explore what neurodiversity actually is (and what it is not), examine common neurodivergent communication and work styles, and dig into one of the most undernamed dynamics in neurodivergent workplaces: Rejection Sensitivity, the heightened emotional response to perceived rejection that affects up to 99% of neurodivergent people and shapes how feedback lands, how conflict unfolds, and how trust is built or broken.

Participants will work through Collaborate Consulting's Inclusion Checklist, a practical self-assessment tool for managers and leaders, and leave with a personal adaptation commitment: one specific change they will make when they return to their workplace. The session centers a "mutual adaptation" model, meaning everyone in the organization, neurotypical and neurodivergent alike, has a role to play. Inclusion is not a one-way accommodation... it is a shared practice.

This is a session about what becomes possible when organizations stop treating difference as a liability and start treating it as an asset.

Trystan Reese is a DEI strategist, facilitator, and the founder of Collaborate Consulting, a Portland-based firm that helps organizations build inclusive cultures through practical, research-backed training and leadership development. He has spent nearly two decades doing frontline advocacy and organizational work at the intersection of identity, equity, and change, with a particular focus on what it takes to keep equity commitments alive when the political and cultural winds shift.

A Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory and a certified Dare to Lead™ facilitator, Trystan brings both rigorous methodology and lived experience to his work. As a transgender man and neurodivergent professional, he doesn't just teach intersectional inclusion… he lives it. His training on neurodiversity in the workplace draws on personal experience alongside the latest research, offering public-sector teams a grounded, shame-free framework for building cultures where different kinds of minds can do their best work.

Trystan presented on neurodiversity at the 2024 Northwest Public Employees Diversity Conference, where his session was among the most highly attended of the day. His public-sector clients include the City of Hillsboro, City of Portland Office of Equity and Human Rights, Clean Water Services, Multnomah County, Oregon Health Authority, Oregon Employment Department, Oregon Department of Energy, Bonneville Power Administration, and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, among others.

A Lambda Literary Fellow and author of the award-winning memoir How We Do Family, Trystan has been featured on CNN, PBS, and in People magazine, and has delivered keynotes and workshops for federal agencies, health systems, municipalities, and nonprofits across the country. He lives in Portland with two of his three children. They are very happy.

Learn more at collaborate.consulting