Top picks of our guests, Émilie, Falisha and Marylène

Our guests—Émilie Vion, Falisha Karpati and Marylène Ouellet—share a list of top picks that will deepen our appreciation for neurodiversity and cognitive diversity.

A coming-of-age novel, a true manifesto for embracing difference, recommended by Émilie Vion: Un funambule sur le sable by Gilles Marchand
Filled with humour and poetry, the novel Un funambule sur le sable shines a light on the coping mechanisms adopted by neurodiverse people from childhood. Mixing magical realism and humanism in telling the story of a little boy born “with a violin in his skull”, Gilles Marchand addresses crucial questions about diversity and inclusion: How do we grow up without denying who we are? How do we adapt without losing ourselves?
Marylène Ouellet of Braindlab invites us to discover Auticon’s unusual business model
Recruiting neuroatypical people, valuing their differences, and highlighting their talents are issues that lie at the heart of Auticon’s business model. The first company in Quebec to specifically employ people on the autism spectrum/Asperger’s syndrome as IT consultants, this company is part of the Auticon Group, a consultancy founded in Germany, whose model has been widely copied due to the success of its formula for both team members and clients. The implementation of winning conditions for the fostering of neurodiversity in the workplace has made Auticon a company where innovation, efficiency, and the well-being of a team are interrelated.
Falisha Karpati directs us to a website brimming with tools to support inclusion in your teams
If diversity is a fact, inclusion is an action. For this reason, Falisha invites us to equip ourselves appropriately not to assimilate diversity, but to recognize, reveal, value, and interact with the cognitive differences of team members. Acting for inclusion in the workplace clearly requires concerted effort, new tools, and changes in practice. Liberating Structures: Including and Unleashing Everyone is a website offering a multitude of activities and new frameworks in which to explore different ways of thinking and give each individual the opportunity to contribute to their full potential.
The Raccords team shares a powerful cover letter that could change an employer’s mind
Raccords recommends watching this very short video we discovered while researching our eighth edition. It’s a dramatization of a cover letter from a person on the autism spectrum to a potential employer. In just a few words, it beautifully captures the potential impact of valuing neurodiversity, individually and collectively, in the workplace. The video was produced by the Specialisterne Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works toward the creation of jobs around the world for neurodiverse individuals, including those on the autism spectrum.
Attention Deficit Disorder—or an unacknowledged talent for organization? Raccords shares this article (in French) from The Conversation that invites us to reconsider the attractions of nonconformity and thinking which is original and divergent.
This article in The Conversation explains how the profile of neurodivergent people, and in particular people living with Attention Deficit Disorder with or without Hyperactivity (ADD/ADHD), manifests itself in the workplace. It also describes how such people must get used to “re-engineering” existing models and methods and organize themselves differently to perform to the required norms, “a bit like the lefties among us, who are so often forgotten and who every day handle many objects in a right-handed world”.

Read the other sections of this issue

THE PODCAST

Emilie Vion, invitée du balado Raccords portant sur la neurodiversité

A neurodiverse person’s quest for an environment that will allow her to blossom

In this episode of the Raccords podcast, presented exclusively in French this time around, we look at the notion of neurodiversity from the perspective of a neuroatypical person acting to accelerate change. She invites us to make room for neurodiversity. Read more and listen to the podcast

THE INTERVIEW

Marylène Ouellet, dans l'entretien de Raccords #08 sur le thème de la neurodiversité

Neurodiversity as a vector of creativity and innovation

Raccords talks with Marylène Ouellet, founding president of Braindlab, an ideation laboratory with a social mission: helping organizations increase their creative capacities by embracing neurodiversity. Read more

THE VIDEO

La vidéo de Raccords #08 Des cerveaux qui fonctionnent différemment et enrichissent notre vision du monde

Minds that work differently and enrich our vision of the world

To demystify the subject of cognitive diversity—a term that encompasses neurodiversity—Raccords meets Falisha Karpati, an inclusion consultant who holds a Ph.D in neuroscience from McGill University. Read more and view the video