Same diagnosis. Different human.

Recently I’ve been rewatching Superstore, and one scene hit differently.

Cloud 9 runs a racism training video. Garrett, a Black man, says:

“Thanks a lot, guys. When I woke up this morning, I was hoping to learn about racism from a white lady.”

I laughed.

Then thought: yep. I know a version of that feeling.

I get it with ADHD.

During student teaching (was an education major for 2 years), I once called myself “an ADHD girl.”

The woman marking me corrected me:

“No. You’re a girl with ADHD. It doesn’t define you.”

She meant well, but it taught me something important:

I get to decide how I describe myself and my disability.

And everyone else gets to decide how they describe theirs.

And just because two people have the same disability doesn’t mean it will present the same way. Just like people are different, our disabilities can show up differently too.

One person with ADHD might get energy from socialising.

Another might love people and still be completely exhausted afterwards.

One thrives on spontaneity.

Another needs structure.

Same diagnosis. Different human.

That matters at work too.

Real inclusion means asking the person in front of you what helps them do their best work, then actually listening.

But some neurodivergent people never even get that far.

Neurodivergent people are estimated to make up around 15–20% of the population, yet many still face major barriers in hiring.

That’s not just an inclusion problem.

It’s a talent problem.

Because interviews can reward a very narrow idea of a “good candidate”:

Quick answers. Perfect eye contact. Polished small talk. Knowing the unwritten rules.

Those things might make someone good at interviewing.

They don’t automatically make someone good at the job.

Which is especially funny in marketing.

We say we want creativity, fresh ideas and people who see what everyone else missed.

We love different thinking.

Sometimes we’re much less comfortable with different thinkers.

Neurodivergent people aren’t all good at the same things. That would defeat the entire point.

But different brains can bring pattern recognition, deep focus, creativity, unconventional problem-solving and connections other people miss.

For me, it’s fast connections, pattern spotting and getting ridiculously invested in a good idea.

That helped me build a creator strategy that reached 18M+ people, and campaign content was reposted by the official When We All Vote Instagram account.

There’s a business case for recognising that too. Accenture found companies leading on disability inclusion had 1.6x the revenue, 2.6x the net income and 2x the economic profit of other companies in its benchmark.

Turns out letting talented people be talented is pretty good for business.

Inclusion isn’t lowering the bar.

It’s understanding that people can reach the same bar differently.