Neurodiversity in the Workforce: Sara Owens Of Media Matters Worldwide On Why It’s Important To Include Neurodiverse Employees & How To Make Your Workplace More Neuro-Inclusive
An Interview With Eric Pines
Establish and normalize flexible work arrangements. Allow employees to work from home when possible and on adjusted time schedules when needed. Offer this to all employees so that the workplace is equitable and inclusive, and neurodiverse employees don’t feel singled out.
Research suggests that up to 15–20% of the U.S. population is neurodivergent. There has been a slow but vitally important rise in companies embracing neurodiversity. How can companies support neurodiversity in the workplace? What are some benefits of including neurodiverse employees? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about “Neurodiversity in the Workforce: Companies Including Neurodiverse Employees”. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Sara Owens.
Sara Owens is the Vice President of Analytics at Media Matters Worldwide, an independent, women-owned and operated media agency. With over 20 years in data and analytics, Sara’s experience spans the brand, publisher, ad tech, and agency side of the industry. She is passionate about using data to solve problems and tell stories. Sara lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two children.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are?
I think it goes back to my sophomore year of college when the deadline to declare a major was upon me. I really didn’t know what direction I wanted to take. I was crushing my math classes and my Dad encouraged me to make it my major. My Dad is very wise and a trusted advisor to this day so I followed his advice. My first job was as a business analyst at a life insurance company. Then I moved on to a marketing analyst job and then the rise of digital marketing started. I followed my gut and took jobs that gave me the opportunity to solve interesting, novel problems with data and math. I worked at brands like GE and Macy’s. I did a stint at an ad tech startup which was such a unique experience. After that I was at Microsoft Advertising, doing yield management and data science on the sell-side of the industry. I finally came to the agency side in 2015 and have never looked back. I love the inherent variety of problem-solving required in working across many clients.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Tenacity. Curiosity. Emotional Intelligence.
Tenacity. There have been many moments throughout my career filled with self-doubt. Making the transition from individual contributor to manager was difficult for me. When I didn’t have experience managing people, I couldn’t get a promotion or a new role managing people because I didn’t have the experience. It was a catch-22. I kept trying. I advocated to start an intern program and lead it to gain experience. I raised my hand to lead projects that would help me build leadership and people management skills. I learned to read and understand the workplace I was in to assess if my growth would be supported. I started bringing this lens to every job search.
Curiosity. Status quo is comfortable. And it can be an analyst’s greatest enemy. We do things a certain way because it’s how we’ve always done them. And change is uncomfortable. In my field, an analyst’s job is to engender change. To be curious and ask “why”. To dissect data, find meaningful insights, and recommend changes based on those insights to improve performance. This requires curiosity. To ask “why” and to keep asking “why” until a novel finding is discovered.
Emotional Intelligence. There are good and bad managers, I’ve had my share of both. And then there are great managers. They are rare. I’ve been lucky to have one or two of the great ones. I’ve always aspired to be a great manager and the main reason being to connect with people. I wanted to nurture and support my team members. I wanted to create a work environment that was fun and positive and rewarding. As I started growing in leadership roles, I realized more and more that human connection is the most important part. And each person is unique. To be a great leader is not to extract as much productivity out of your team as possible. To be a great leader is to understand each individual, to connect and meet them where they are, and to create the opportunities that allow them to do their best work and shine.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work-related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
Early in my career, I was not always taken seriously. If I’m honest this started as an undergrad. I was one of the few women majoring in mathematics. In one of my first jobs, I noticed my projects weren’t prioritized as high as my male colleagues. A manager of a male colleague I was working on a project with called me a “mermaid”, suggesting that I was “luring” that colleague to do what I wanted. This is going to sound wild but I got a lot of “dumb blonde” comments back in the day. This was well before we had the language of unconscious bias and microaggressions; before we had harassment and discrimination training.
This is where all three of those character traits come in. I had the tenacity to keep going and to call out discrimination and unacceptable behavior. I had the curiosity to explore why I was being treated that way and what I could do to change it. And I had the emotional intelligence to forgive the behavior, move on, and stay true to myself without getting disenchanted.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I’m really excited about a proprietary measurement solution my team has been working on for the last 18 months. It is a new take on an old solution marketers have been using for decades: Marketing Mix Modeling or MMM. MMM measures how much revenue a brand’s marketing activities are generating. It’s hugely valuable, and it’s very expensive in both time and money. Most brands can afford to run it maybe twice a year, and it takes a team of statisticians to build and refresh it.
Our solution is called Agile Mix Marketing, or AMM™. We’re using machine learning to automate a lot of the building and training of the model. We can run it weekly, enabling our teams and our clients to measure advertising campaign performance more often and make shifts to measurably improve ROI way more frequently. We’re preparing to go into beta which is so exciting after all these months of development.
Let’s now shift to our discussion about neurodiversity in the workforce. Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience working with initiatives to include neurodiverse employees? Can you share a story with us?
My experience with neurodiversity started 8 years ago and outside of the workforce. I have a daughter with a rare genetic syndrome called Au-Kline syndrome and Autism Spectrum disorder. To be completely honest, neurodiversity was not on my radar before she came into my life. In the last 8 years, I have learned so much and immersed myself in books, podcasts, support groups, and educational talks. I serve on the DEI committee in my children’s school district. I am on the board of Dedication to Special Ed, the PTA serving Special Ed communities in my county. I’m just beginning my journey of taking what I’m learning as an advocate for inclusion in schools and bringing it to the workplace.
This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have an inclusive work culture?
If organizations are not inclusive, they by definition are excluding people. That is fundamentally wrong. As human beings, we all deserve to belong. It is our most basic human need to belong and to be connected. I could go into all the benefits that come from a neurodiverse workforce, and there are many, but I don’t think there should have to be a quantifiable benefit to an organization in order for them to create an inclusive culture. It’s just the right thing to do.
Can you share a few examples of ideas that were implemented at your workplace to help include neurodiverse employees? Can you share with us how the work culture was affected as a result?
I’ve found having a flexible workplace is the best way to include neurodiverse team members. Covid has helped bring flexibility to many workplaces and we should work to maintain that flexibility. We learned that the old ways of working — in the office 100% of the time, being at your desk from 9am — 5pm (or in agency life until 8pm) — we simply don’t need to operate that way.
My current place of work is fully remote and always has been. 18 years ago when the co-founders started the agency, they wanted a workplace that was flexible and could meet the needs of employees, particularly young mothers. Being fully remote means employees can work from where they are most productive and comfortable.
Another big shift is the way I engage with my teams. Sharing content ahead of meetings is important to allow those who need more time to digest information to prepare. Some team members prefer to send questions or thoughts ahead of time via Slack rather than having to speak in a large forum. And during meetings, team members can participate by either speaking or using the chat. I’ve also found the virtual whiteboard to be an effective and inclusive way to allow all team members to engage.
What are some of the challenges or obstacles to including neurodivergent employees? What needs to be done to address those obstacles?
The first and most obvious challenge is with recruiting. The recruitment process favors the extroverted neurotypical person — rounds of interviews where one must field a set of questions that are not known ahead of time while maintaining composure, eye contact, and a smile. Right off the bat, this is weeding out neurodiverse people.
When a neurodiverse person does get hired and joins an organization, they must work hard to adapt to the workplace because more often than not accommodations are lacking. This stems from a lack of understanding which stems from a lack of representation and normalization of flexibility and accommodations in the workplace.
Stigmatization is also a big problem. As a society, we are not yet accepting of neurodiversity. As humans, we want to fit in, and we’ve learned since childhood that being different is bad or shameful. So we tend to hide or mask our differences. This is a shame because different is beautiful.
How do you and your organization educate yourselves and your teams on the concept of neurodiversity and the needs of neurodivergent employees? Are there any resources, training, or workshops that you have found particularly helpful?
Training courses are the low-hanging fruit when it comes to education. My current organization subscribes to Udemy which has a plethora of training courses.
We also work with an executive coaching firm that has facilitated a series of sessions over the last two years with our executive team, giving us tools and skills to lead the organization with inclusive emotional intelligence.
We have team discussions that are safe and vulnerable. We ask all of our employees what they need as individuals and what they need from and within their team. We then form something we call a Working Alliance. This is a framework that defines 3 things:
- What kind of culture do we want to have, how do we want to be with each other?
- What will make this team thrive?
- What will we do and how will we be when things get tough?
Each team member contributes so that the finalized Working Alliance is inclusive of everyone’s input. Each team member commits to it. It becomes a manifesto that can be used in times of difficulty or conflict — to bring everyone back to the values and how we want to be with each other.
This is the main question of our interview. Can you please share five best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people who are neurodivergent?
1 . Establish and normalize flexible work arrangements. Allow employees to work from home when possible and on adjusted time schedules when needed. Offer this to all employees so that the workplace is equitable and inclusive, and neurodiverse employees don’t feel singled out.
2 . Have your people managers ask employees how to get the best from them and what they need. Every employee! And then train and encourage your people managers to adapt their management approach to individual employees. All will benefit from this one.
3 . Ask your HR Department or recruiting team to include neurodiverse candidates in their searches and in the applicant pools. Stop the practice of evaluating candidates based on things like making eye contact, smiling, and the like.
4 . Leaders in the organization should model acceptance of accommodations and flexible work arrangements. All employees in the organization will feel able to ask for what they need.
5 . Rethink the meeting. Run meetings in different ways that allow for participation and engagement for all attendees — from the employee who dominates every conversation to the one who just will never elbow their way in.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
“Understand your sphere of control and work within that”. It took me a long time to really understand that I cannot control other people. I can only control myself and how I react to others. Trying to change and control others only leads to suffering. Focusing on my own values and living into them brings me joy and reduces anxiety and conflict.
I have a close family member with severe mental illness. I tried for a long time to control them and the illness. It put a huge strain on our relationship, to say the least. I was miserable and full of anxiety. I felt like a failure. I had convinced myself that it was my responsibility to save the day and cure it (there is no cure). When I finally understood that it was out of my control, I changed how I was behaving. Instead of constantly issuing orders, giving lectures, and trying to control my loved one, I started showing up without agenda. I am a support, a listening ear. I am present and offer unconditional love. The mental illness is still there and it’s really hard and unfair. But it always was, and that was never going to change. And now instead of contributing to the pain, I can be a source of comfort.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I’ve had this wild idea that started in early Covid. What if we fundamentally changed our economic system? We live in a world where places of work are incentivized to increase profit quarter over quarter and year over year. Public companies traded on the stock market must show attractive earnings to keep shareholders rich and therefore happy. We’re in a cycle of what I think of as toxic productivity. Do more, earn more no matter the cost. There are no real incentives for organizations to be more inclusive whether that is related to race, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, or other minority groups. So there is exclusion instead of inclusion. And there is burnout, exhaustion, and anxiety at levels higher than ever before.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Mr. Pines has also served as a mediator for numerous federal agencies including serving a year as the Library of Congress’ in-house EEO Mediator. He has also served as an expert witness in federal court for federal employee matters. He has also worked as an EEO technical writer drafting hundreds of Final Agency Decisions for the federal sector.
Mr. Pines’ firm is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices in Baltimore, Maryland and Atlanta, Georgia. His first passion is his wife and five children. He plays classical and rock guitar and enjoys playing ice hockey, running, and biking. Please visit his websites at www.pinesfederal.com and www.toughinjurylawyers.com. He can also be reached at eric@pinesfederal.com.
Neurodiversity in the Workforce: Sara Owens Of Media Matters Worldwide On Why It’s Important To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.