Wells Fargo has partnered with the University of Connecticut\u2019s Center for Neurodiversity & Employment Innovation to introduce free neurodiversity workshops for corporate America. The new workshops, an academic and corporate collaboration, aim to provide instruction to key leaders from Fortune 500 companies to help design neurodiversity initiatives end-to-end.<\/p>\n
The full-day workshops are part of a larger $3.75 million grant from Wells Fargo to create the Wells Fargo Center for Neurodiversity and Inclusive Employment at UConn. There are three components to the grant: 1) Providing neurodiversity education and training; 2) funding groundbreaking academic research study to capture much-needed metrics about the business outcomes of neurodiversity programs and to create standards for measuring success in this arena; and 3) working with universities, non-profits, and vocational rehab agencies nationwide to bring efficiency, programming, and education to their regions and better connect job seekers and inclusive employers within their local communities.<\/p>\n
Neurodiversity refers to the natural variation in the ways people think, behave, and communicate. Neurodivergence is when that variation falls outside of what is typical, often creating barriers to success in finding and keeping meaningful employment. Neurodivergent conditions commonly include autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, and other differences.<\/p>\n
Only about half of autistic college graduates are fully employed compared to their peers, according to Stephen DeStefani, the Wells Fargo team\u2019s program executive who has led the initiative to partner with UConn.<\/p>\n
\u201cPartnering with Wells Fargo\u2019s team has been amazing,\u201d says Judy Reilly, Executive Director of UConn\u2019s Center for Neurodiversity and Employment Innovation. \u201cWells Fargo\u2019s willingness to share their real-world industry expertise to create\u2014and deliver at no cost\u2014education for corporate America that\u2019s grounded in academic and research excellence is unheard of in this field.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis partnership enables UConn to blend academic instructional design and research with real-world industry application and expertise to create solutions for corporate America,\u201d Reilly says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe workshops further the Center\u2019s mission to create inclusive workplaces by increasing employer awareness and understanding of the value of neurodivergent talent,\u201d says Anne D\u2019Alleva, provost\u00a0and executive vice president for academic affairs at UConn. \u201cThis is a great example of how UConn\u2019s research provides novel approaches to solve real-world problems in Connecticut and nationwide.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we launched our Neurodiversity program in 2020, we\u2019ve experienced first-hand the significant impact these highly skilled individuals can have on the nation\u2019s largest organizations,\u201d said Kristy Fercho, head of Diverse Segments, Representation and Inclusion at Wells Fargo. \u201cWith continued underemployment of neurodivergent talent, we understand our responsibility to work with our corporate partners to collectively educate and bring awareness to this extraordinarily valuable and untapped talent pool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Job seekers and organizations can learn more about the new workshops and programming at https:\/\/neurodiversity-employment.org<\/a> or neurodiversity.employment@uconn.edu.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" $3.75 million grant from Wells Fargo to provide employers with free neurodiversity education, training, academic research, and talent connections<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":219942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2472,1862,2235,2306,2227,2233],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-219879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gifts-donors","category-busn","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-voices","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-university-news"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-10 22:44:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219879"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219949,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219879\/revisions\/219949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/219942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219879"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=219879"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=219879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}