The inaugural Entrepreneurs Unleashed conference is set to take place on Thursday, November 28, at the Cathy Short Theatre, Jennymount Business Park in North Belfast.
The conference, organised by media and marketing agency Excalibur Press, promises a diverse and dynamic lineup of speakers who will share their expertise on a wide range of topics essential for entrepreneurial success.
Cara Marks, co-founder of networking group Neurodiversity SPARK, will be attending the Entrepreneurs Unleashed conference to present on neurodiversity in the workplace and how to foster innovation and creativity.
She comes with a unique and practical personal perspective as a business leader with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) who is able to share both an insight into the condition and practical measures for businesses.
Outlining details of her own personal experience and diagnosis journey, Cara is open about having ADHD and how her son’s diagnosis journey led to her own.
Car said: “My son was getting some feedback in school about different behaviours, and I was like, ‘I do that, it’s normal.’
“And they’re like, ‘these are not things that you possibly learn from a parent. These are kind of just in you.’ That’s when I started to go ‘Oh. Me. He’s got it from me.’
“As he was going through his diagnosis and I was learning more and going to the appointments and hearing more and they sort of look at the parent and you understand, oh, this is genetic.
“It all sort of makes sense. And then I went on a diagnosis journey.”
Up until that point ADHD wasn’t something Cara had considered.
She said: “I used to think that everybody thought like me and everybody thinks that they’re a little bit different. You know, I’m so different. I don’t really fit with any one crowd. I think differently about things. I feel differently about things.”
Through her own diagnosis, and being in post-grad education with research at her fingertips, Cara was soon put in touch with SPARK co-founder Gary Gates. They met for coffee to discuss their shared experiences and, following his PHD research, Gary felt there was a gap that they could work together to fill, helping to better support neurodiverse people in the workplace.
“He said ‘we’ll get this group of people together, we’ll see who wants to join.’ Honestly, I think it was a surprise to both of us that we kind of put the word out there and people were just interested and it just grew and grew and grew and really without a lot of input from us. It kind of has taken off. So it was part just us exploring what we wanted to do, which was talk to more people like us and then part accident.”
A key aim of SPARK is celebrating the strengths and talents of neurodivergent people across Northern Ireland. They have created a supportive community to discuss and overcome a multitude of challenges faced by neurodivergent people from across the diagnoses spectrum, including ADHD, autism, and OCD.
Cara explained how these workplace challenges can be damaging to mental health and said: “I think just generally being misunderstood because they don’t behave or speak or communicate always the way a neurotypical would and what’s perceived to be the right way.
“If you’re told ‘just shut up and do your job’ and ‘it’s nothing to do with you’. That’s not really how somebody for example with ADHD maybe thinks because they’ve got a strong sense of social justice and you know, they’ll not be able to help themselves to speak.
“And people end up then feeling like they’re not cared for, they’re not listened to. Unfortunately, if you’re already neurodivergent, that’s going to put you in a really bad spot because you’re then going to feel worthlessness, like you’re not being listened to and actually it puts people into a deeper, darker state of what they originally were.”
The group has been steadily growing and Cara puts the rising rates of neurodiversity in adults down to a few factors.
“So a lot of workplaces have focused in the last few years of bring your whole self to work. There has been lots of research into people not feeling like they can be themselves and work and for lots of minority groups that has been very prevalent.
“There have been a lot of culture shifts. We want you to feel like you can be who you are in the workplace so a lot of people have taken the mask off.
“Then there has been a lot of understanding changes. For example, if we look at ADHD, it used to be young boys, then it turned into a behavioural problem. Then it was a learning disability. Then it was not just children, actually, you have it your whole life.
“And so we see a lot more people who are late diagnosed who go light bulb that makes so much sense. We see similar things with autism as well. “
With rates of neurodiversity rising Cara believes that businesses that want to succeed need to fully understand their workforce, customers, and service users.
The importance of future looking is a key reason she thinks talks like the one she will deliver at Entrepreneurs Unleashed are needed.
She said: “More than half of Gen Z identifies neurodiverse, 22% definitely, and 31% somewhat so at the minute, 2 out of 10 of every employee service user customers are going to be neurodivergent, but it looks like that number is going to grow.
“So if we’re not prepared for this, if we don’t start increasing our understanding, if we don’t start, start talking about neurodivergent talent in the workplaces we’re going to be in a really serious world of pain in the future.
“If more people have more understanding, more people are getting diagnosed, then there’s going to be more people out there. They’re going to hit the workplaces, the workplaces need to be prepared.”
The future is at the centre of Cara’s thinking, and she wants attendees of the conference to leave with a clear take away, the principles of how to adjust for neurodiversity and how to apply these in business.
Cara said: “I think if we take the conversation outside of neurodiversity, that ultimately what we’re really talking about here is helping individuals be the best version of themselves, and that doesn’t even have to be they have a neurodivergent condition that is just let’s work more towards an individual individualistic approach and think about individuals.
“If somebody works best in the morning or in the evening or needs a bit of flexibility they can still achieve a lot.
“Then let’s look at productivity and not necessarily having people conform to certain behaviours. Move away from chatting about neurodiversity and about what do you struggle with, what are your weaknesses?
“Every single individual person has strengths and weaknesses and if we can understand those and capitalise on those, that’s where we get to in the future.”
To hear Cara’s talk, along with a range of other interesting speakers, Entrepreneurs Unleashed will be held on Thursday November 28. Tickets are available here: entrepreneursunleashed.co.uk