Cassie (she/they) is a Black mixed-race wheelchair user living with chronic illness and neurodivergence. She is a scholar activist whose work focuses on ethical, community based and lived experience led research, education, and policy making practice within the fields of mental health, neurodiversity, unpaid care, critical disability studies, and race studies. Cassie's current academic work focuses on the intersections of poverty, mental illness, and support from the welfare state in the UK and ethical ways of co-producing knowledge and knowledge equity among communities that are disempowered within mental health, social care, and welfare services in the UK. She is a lead lived experience consultant in NHS England's adult mental health, and mental health, autism and learning disability quality transformation teams.

NdC Associate & Co-Founder

Chris brings extensive experience supporting change in practice in education and healthcare settings to ensure neurodivergent cultural and communication needs are understood and met. He is great at providing gentle and effective challenge to address poor practice and support services to deliver better outcomes for the neurodivergent populations they serve.

Chris is experienced in providing mentorship and development support to neurodiverse individuals who are struggling to identify and meet their own needs. He does this by sharing his own experience to give insight, identification and understanding.

Doreen started her career as a mental health nurse but soon moved to work in the voluntary sector, she has worked in the voluntary and independent sector since 1986 to help people become full and active citizens. During this time supporting many people to leave institutions. She has been involved in setting up several small, person-centred organisations in both England and Scotland. Doreen is the Director of Beyond Limits, an organisation that supports people who have labels of being challenging and complex to support. Beyond Limits use a tailored approach and Individual Health Budgets (IHB’s) in the form of an Individual Service Fund (ISF). Beyond Limits supports people to come back home from institutional care environments and to take up their rightful place in their community by offering the tailored support that people need to do this successfully.

Jean is a leading practitioner in the Field of Inclusive Design having specialised in inclusive environments and accessibility for over 20 years. She has special interest in neurodivergent design considerations and guidance standards. Jean is technical author for PAS 6463: “Design for the Mind – Neurodiversity and the Built Environment” and longstanding member of the British Standards Institution Committee “Design of an Accessible and Inclusive Environment”.

For the past two years Jean has been the UK Government Disability and Access Ambassador focusing on the Built Environment as appointed by the Minister for Disabled People and managed by the Cabinet Office Disability Unit.

I have 45 years of experience working in the care sector and started my journey firstly by training as a general nurse and then as a mental health nurse. Since then, I have also worked as a practice nurse, practice manager, deputy director for governance for the largest provider of out of hours care in the UK, a clinical auditor, trainer and ISO auditor. In 2001 I worked at a learning disability hospital, closing the wards and discharging the long-term patients into individual or group home settings. I have set up and ran an advocacy service taking on board citizen, self and group advocacy and I as I head towards my retirement I am working as an operations manager for the regulator of health care in England.

It was clear that my grandson William was autistic from a very early age and was diagnosed at 2.

Neurodiverse Connection Associate

(he/him)

Richard has been working with autistic people and people with learning disabilities throughout his career. He brings a wealth of experience and insights to working with individuals, and continues to provide support and mentoring to individuals and their teams.

Richard is an experienced speaker and trainer who uses his experience to share stories and insights about autism from a lived experience perspective. Richard shares some of his learning in his book I Dream In Autism.

CEO, British Institute of Human Rights

Sanchita joined BIHR in 2008 and has held various roles within the organisation, primarily in policy, public affairs and campaigning, whilst championing the charity’s practice-based work. She took up post as Director in 2018, with a role change to CEO in 2022.

Sanchita is a recognised expert in human rights and equality law, policy and practice, with over twenty years of working both in the UK and internationally.