NWRC 2026 Program

Day 1

June 22, 2026

Pre-Conference Workshop

INVITATION ONLY

Main Conference Opening Event

Neil Barnett

GM & Chief Accessibility Officer

Neil Barnett is General Manager and Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft, where he leads the company's accessibility strategy across products, services, and policy.

With more than two decades at Microsoft, he has helped advance inclusive technology, customer support, and disability inclusion programs, including Microsoft's Autism Hiring Program and Enterprise Disability Answer Desk.

Neil partners with the disability community, customers, governments, and industry leaders to make accessibility more seamless, trusted, and built into technology from the start. He is especially focused on the role of AI in expanding opportunity, independence, and participation for people with disabilities.

Day 2

June 23, 2026

Julie Lounds Taylor, PhD

Co-Director of the Center of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at Vanderbilt University

Julie Lounds Taylor, PhD is a Professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she holds an Endowed Directorship in Autism Research. She is also Co-Director of Vanderbilt's University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities.

Her program of research focused on understanding how to improve the transition to adulthood and adult outcomes for autistic individuals and their families. She has led a number of research projects focused on autistic adolescents and adults, including: understanding changes during the transition to adulthood, testing interventions to improve access to adult disability services, examining associations between aspects of community engagement and mental health; and investigating employment stability, including predictors of stability and consequences of instability.

Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense's Autism Research Program, and the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Educational Sciences. A few key recent citations are included below:

Mueller, S., Libster, N., Sullivan, V., DaWalt, L.S., & Taylor, J.L. (published online Mar. 10, 2026). Associations between aspects of employment and psychological health among autistic adults. Autism in Adulthood. https://doi.org/10.1177/25739581261418877

Moser, C., Adams, R., Zheng, S., Bishop, S., Taylor, J.L. (2026). Brief report: The vocational and educational activities of transition-aged autistic youth with low IQ. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 70, 218-224.

Day 3

June 24, 2026

Paper Session 1

Track A: Threads of Belonging: Culture, Allyship, and Inclusion in Neurodiverse Workplaces (70 min)

• Universal Design as a Pathway to Belonging: Reimagining Workplace Inclusion for Neurodivergent Employees
  Indu Garg (PhD Student, Utah State University)
• Moving allies to action through play: Assessing the INteractive Tool for Empathy in NeuroTypicals (INTENT)
  Sorrah Edwards-Thro, Precious McQuade, Yi Ting Huang, Jennifer Wessel (University of Maryland - College Park); Kathy Dow-Burger (University of Maryland, College Park); Andrew Begel, Morgan Evans (Carnegie Mellon University); Steven Isaacson (INTENT development team)
• Exploring Employee Intentions to Stay: A narrative inquiry of global technology employees who are neurodivergent and not on the autism spectrum
  Daneisha Brazzle

Track B: Threads of Access: Pathways, Fit, and Sustainable Employment for Neurodivergent Talent (60 min)

• The Path to Employment: Success enablers for Neurodivergent Job Seekers
  Ruiqi Qin, Hala Annabi (University of Washington, iSchool)
• Identifying Job Profiles that Maximize Well-being for Workers with ADHD
  Erin M. Richard (Louisiana State University)
• Sustainable Work for Adults with ADHD: Preliminary Evidence for a System Architecture Extension of the Job Demands-Resources Model
  Tiffany Jameson (grit & flow); Mirit K. Grabarski, Martin Morales Arana, Paul Angelo Santos (Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada)

Paper Session 2

Track A: Threads of Leadership: Navigating Strengths, Strain, and Neurodivergent Leadership Paths (40 min)

• Suppressible and Harnessable Symptoms in Leaders Diagnosed with ADHD
  Andrew Millin, Nathan J. Hiller, Hock-Peng Sin (Florida International University); Garrett Smith (Redemption Psychiatry)
• Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire?
  Debora Gottardello (University of Edinburgh)

Track B: Poster Session: Threads in Motion: Emerging Research on Neurodiversity, Work, and Inclusion (60 min)

• Centering Neurodivergent Individuals: From Program-Driven to Participant-Driven Systems
  Dave Thompson (Vanderbilt University)
• Who Stays and Who Goes? Workforce Heterogeneity and Its Cultural Implications in Competitive Integrated Workplaces
  Dustin Weilbach, Sarah Wittman, Brian Petrucci (George Mason University)
• Making the Invisible Visible: Supporting Neurodivergent Employees with Dysautonomia Through Wearable Technologies
  Lida Ponce, Anika Binte Islam, Dustin Weilbach, Sarah Wittman, Vivian Genaro Motti (George Mason University)
• Toward Brain-Healthy, Neuroinclusive Workplaces: Exploring the Intersection of Neurodiversity and Brain Capital
  Maria Hasenhuttl, Sabrina Volpone (University of Texas at Dallas)
• Incivility and Burnout: Are Victims with ADHD More Susceptible?
  Brian Goldfeder (Hofstra University)
• Perceptions of Generative AI and Their Impact on Accessibility in Neurodiversity Research
  Rachel Bonnette, Valerie Sullivan (University at Buffalo, Department of Engineering Education)
• Navigating the Double Disruption: Talent Retention Through Executive Function Coaching as a Support for Postpartum Mothers with ADHD Reentering the Workforce
  Jamie Nadjari, Paige Porter (The How Skills)
• NSF TTP-P: Video calling tools to enhance real-time alignment for remote teams
  Shevaun Lewis (University of Maryland); Andrew Begel (Carnegie Mellon University); Susannah B.F. Paletz, Stephanie Valencia Valencia (University of Maryland)

Paper Session 3

Track A: Threads of Interaction: Rethinking Communication, Camouflage, and Collaboration at Work (95 min)

• Lost in Translation: Expert Perspectives on the Double Empathy Problem and Cross-Neurotype Communication in Workplace Settings
  Nigel Newbutt, Daniela Alexandra Castano Lavado (Uni. of Florida); Miroslava Migovich, Davids Caudel, Timothy J. Vogus, Zalen Ingram, Keivan G. Stassun, Nilanjan Sarkar (Vanderbilt Uni.)
• The Invisible Labor of Assimilation by Individuals with Stigmatized Identities: A Qualitative Study of Autistic Workers' Organizational Socialization
  Young Ji Kim, Margot Plunkett (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• Social Camouflaging Predicts Zoom Fatigue and Meeting Recovery in the Neurodivergent Workforce: Gender Moderates the Indirect Pathway
  Grace Winder, Joseph Allen (The University of Utah)
• Realizing Autistic Strengths in Teams: How Autonomy, Anxiety, and Attention Demand Constrain Participation and Recognition in Collaborative Work
  Young Ji Kim, Anusha Srinivas, Ella Cabigting, Rebecca Foster, Margot Plunkett (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Track B: Threads of Support: Designing Accommodations, Interventions, and Systemic Change (90 min)

• Understanding ADHD Productivity in Construction Work: Toward AI-enabled VR Interventions
  Zinat Ara (George Mason University); Behzad Esmaeili (Purdue University); Lap-Fai Yu, Sungsoo Ray Hong (George Mason University)
• How Accommodation Request Framing Shapes Managerial Decisions and Employee Outcomes
  Robert Chico, Emily Ma, Elijah Wee (University of Washington)
• Doubly Marginalized, Doubly Prepared: Coping at the Intersection of Neurodivergence and Race
  Debora Gottardello (University of Edinburgh)
• Circumstances of Systemic Change Work on Neurodiversity in Organizations
  Chloe Cameron (Ivey Business School)