Letter From the Executive Director - 2025
By Scott McLeod, PhD
Executive Director, Aspire
Over the past several years there has been a notable retrenchment of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across various businesses in the United States. Several prominent corporations have scaled back or restructured their DEI programs. Recently, Walmart announced that it had made moves to discontinue several programs including their withdrawal from Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. Boeing dismantled its global DEI department. Ford stopped participating in external diversity surveys. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to end affirmative action in college admissions represents a shift in policy on a national level.
In recent years, Aspire has expanded our services to support successful employment for persons who are Neurodivergent. Neurodiversity has become an important topic within the broader DEI context. Many employers embraced our support to help them attract and retain employees from within the neurodivergent community. Many others hosted internship programs. The internship programs provided valuable opportunities for interns to demonstrate their talents as well as to learn the “soft” skills of being an employee such as how to best manage their time and priorities or to navigate the various relationships with peers or customers or supervisors.
Our experience has shown that coaching of the intern or staff person, in conjunction with training the broader workplace community, can have astounding results. Neurodivergent individuals find success and long-term employment when given the appropriate tools and supportive environment. Businesses benefit from the acquisition of talent and realize that many accommodations they might make for those in the neurodivergent community benefit staff across their company.
The challenge that we are facing at Aspire is that we have far more amazing candidates for internships and employment than we have business partners. I ask each reader of this Aspire Wire to spend a few minutes thinking about a business or nonprofit or agency that might be an excellent home for one of Aspire’s neurodivergent participants. The talent we have is boundless, but we currently have needs in the following areas:
- IT/computer science/cybersecurity/data analytics/software development
- Data entry/admin
- Library science
- Daycare/childcare
- Broadcasting/media
- Graphic design
- Game design
- Behavioral health
- Biomedical engineering
- 3d modeling
If you know of anyone or anyplace that could host even one intern for an 8-week internship cycle, drop us a line and we will pursue each lead.
Scott McLeod, PhD
Executive Director
mghaspire@mgb.org