In this engaging episode, Dr. Kirk Adams sits down with Margaux Joffe, a board-certified cognitive specialist, accessibility champion and founder of Minds of All Kinds, to trace her journey from a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis at 29 to becoming a leading voice for neurodiversity in tech and beyond. Joffe recounts how learning she was neurodivergent reframed earlier struggles, inspired the women-focused Kaleidoscope Society project, and ultimately propelled her to create Yahoo's first Neurodiversity Employee Resource Group, which blossomed into a 35-office global network before she moved full-time into the company's storied accessibility team. Along the way she underscores the importance of dismantling invisible workplace barriers, from overwhelming procurement paperwork to inaccessible technologies, and credits mentors like accessibility luminaries Larry Goldberg and Mike Banach for sharpening her advocacy lens. The conversation then pivots to Joffe's entrepreneurial leap: launching Minds of All Kinds as an LLC dedicated to "learn, connect and lead" programming for neurodivergent professionals. Flagship offering ADHD Navigators has already graduated more than a hundred participants across fifteen cohorts, pairing evidence-based coaching with peer community to combat burnout and build strength-based career strategies. Joffe and Adams explore the ripple effects, parents modeling self-regulation for their children, companies re-thinking cognitive accessibility, and a broader "generational healing" that turns lived experience into systemic change. Their dialogue leaves listeners with a clear takeaway: inclusive design and empowered storytelling are not just accommodations, they're pathways to flourishing workplaces and lives. TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Doctor Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am, said Doctor Kirk Adams. And today I have a fabulous guest who I have had the pleasure of knowing for quite a number of years now. Margaux Joffe is here. She is the founder of a nonprofit called Minds of All Kinds. So say hi, Margaux.

Margaux Joffe: Hi. Hi. Kirk. Hi everyone listening. Let me just say. Oh, Doctor Kirk. My Bad.

Dr. Kirk Adams: There you go. One time.

Margaux Joffe: Doctor Kirk.

Dr. Kirk Adams: We'll go doctor one time. But yeah, I, I and I come by that. For those who don't know me, I have a PhD in leadership and Change from Antioch University, which I completed about six years ago. And my dissertation it's called Journeys Through Rough Country, an ethnographic study of blind adults employed in large American corporations. So I interviewed a lot of really cool blind people working at brand name companies that we all know and found out to. To what did they attribute their success? What were their challenges and ongoing challenges and what are their disappointments? That was a bit of a surprise that I wanted people who would self-describe as successfully employed, and they all did. And they, they very clearly tied that success to compensation and economic freedom, and they all expressed a pretty strong degree of disappointment that they were the only person who was blind who'd reach that level in the org chart, that they didn't see anyone in leadership with the disability, that people who were junior to them and they felt less qualified were promoted beyond them, that they needed to constantly battle for accommodations that their employer would, for instance, decide to implement a new technology system and not take accessibility into account.

Dr. Kirk Adams: They would walk in one day to do their job and couldn't do it. So they had had had to continually, continually battle and really disappointed really, really a high level of disappointment that they were the exception rather than. And anyway, it's called Journeys Through Rough Country by Doctor Kirk Adams. You can find it with a search engine. And I'm proud of it. The doctoral work was really, really enlightening, talking to all these fellow blind individuals. And I'm blind myself. Have been since age five, when my retinas detached and I became totally blind very suddenly. And I went to a residential school for blind kids. State of Oregon, Oregon State School for the blind for first, second, and third grade. And I was given three gifts there. I was given really strong blindness skills. I had to learn how to read braille, travel with a cane, and type on a typewriter. So I could go to public school. When I was ready, I was given the blindness skills I was given the gift of high expectations. Not all kids with disabilities live in environments where people expect much of them. And sometimes those low expectations become internalized.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I had high expectations from my family and my school, and then I then I was given that strong internal locus of control, and that that's something that everyone I interviewed for my dissertation talked about, that they had some set of experiences that gave them that belief deep in their bones that they could overcome. They could solve problems. They could carve their own path as, as opposed to a strong external locus of control where you think things, things are happening to me, and I can't really do much about that. So that, so that so that's a that's just a little bit about me. But we're really here to learn about you, Margaux. So I would love to hear about your journey as a person. With a disability. And what brought you to the point where you founded minds of all kinds and what you're currently doing, what the scope of activity is on your vision of the future because I know you have one. So I'll turn it over to you and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll reserve the right to pop in and ask you a question from time to time. But really, here's the talking stick. I'm handing it to you.

Margaux Joffe: Okay. Thank you. I'm taking the talking stick. Thank you for having me on your podcast. It's so fun to do this after. I think we met in person maybe eight years ago or so when I was working at Yahoo. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Brand new. Yeah. Just starting.

Margaux Joffe: I was just starting on the Yahoo accessibility team, and I believe you came maybe, maybe my first couple weeks in that role. So. Yeah, it's what a full circle moment. But yeah. So thank you for the introduction. I am proud to be a neurodivergent woman. I am a board certified cognitive specialist and the founder of Minds of All Kinds, which is an LLC platform for neurodivergent individuals to learn, connect and lead. And we also do training for companies to help them learn how to be more inclusive for minds of all kinds. And it's funny because I didn't always do this work, and I didn't always know that I was even neurodivergent. I have a background in the creative field, so I'm a former producer. About I spent about ten years producing everything from public health campaigns for the city of Boston to advertising campaigns for big brands in New York City and then tech campaigns in Silicon Valley. And that's how I where I started making my transition into accessibility. And really the turning point for me came when I was 29 and I was diagnosed with ADHD. That was really a life changing experience. That shifted how I understood myself, how I understood the world and LED to me creating a platform for women with ADHD, which ultimately led into my broader neurodiversity and accessibility work.

Dr. Kirk Adams: But a little bit more about that, and I think I misspoke when I said you founded a nonprofit. I think you just said you're an LLC.

Margaux Joffe: Yes. I just wanted to make that connection. And I think it's funny because one of the reasons I chose an LLC structure is because when it comes to running a business, when it comes to working, when it comes to just adulting and surviving in the world, there's so much paperwork. There's a term called administrative burden. And for people with cognitive disabilities, for people who are neurodivergent, sometimes it's the paperwork that can get in the way of our greatness. And I was literally just talking to somebody earlier this morning who is this incredible public speaker and futurist technologist who travels around the world working with big companies. And she was literally just telling me that she hasn't gotten a payment for one of her projects because she hasn't done the paperwork to get into their procurement system. And that's the blocker. And she's really struggling. And so that that's the thing that's one of the things for people to understand is that. There's so many invisible barriers. Yeah. That many other people don't understand why is this a big deal? You know, just like fill out this procurement paperwork.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right?

Margaux Joffe: But things are not always cognitively accessible, and that keeps people out. And that keeps people out of financial opportunities. So I'm now I'm now I'm on my cognitive accessibility soapbox. But to answer your question.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I wanted to I also wanted to hear about to diagnosis. So you said the turning point came at 29 when you were diagnosed with ADHD. And, you know, I'm aware that people receive that diagnosis as adults. And what led you to the point where you were in a situation where you were being diagnosed or being treated, or what was the situation that led to you understanding that ADHD is one of your characteristics?

Margaux Joffe: Yeah. So it's interesting because when we're born with a certain type of brain, we don't know anything different. And that's how it was for me. Like I was just like, oh, this is how my mind works. I thought this, I thought it was how everybody's mind works. Right? And you know, I started struggling with depression and anxiety when I was in my teenage years. And it really escalated when I went to college. And because there was no concrete outward thing I could point to as to why I was feeling that way, why I would just feel this chaos of emotion sometimes, why I felt disorganized, overwhelmed, you know, but in many other ways, you know, I was smart. I did well in school. So and, you know, some people use this term spiky profile. I definitely had a spiky profile where I had extreme strengths. And then also very frustrating challenges in areas that made me feel like maybe I was just being lazy. So what do you do if you think you're lazy, you work twice as hard as anyone else. So I did a lot of masking and overcompensating, and I also just chalked it up to, you know, I'm a creative, sensitive person. So I thought, you know, I just need to toughen up because the world is tough and I'm just too sensitive and my heart is too tender for this world. And when I was in my late 20s, I got a job working for a non-profit media company in the Bay area.

Margaux Joffe: So I left New York City. I'd been working in New York City as a producer, and I wanted to get back to work. That was social impact driven because I had loved working in an advertising agency, working with amazing creative people in New York, producing exciting campaigns. But I felt like something was missing because I've always been energized when I'm working on projects where I feel like it's making a difference for people. And so I took this job working for a non-profit media company, so I moved across the country. It was a lot of change all at once, you know, new, new living arrangement, new job, new city, new. My support systems that I had in New York were gone, and my anxiety really ramped up and I started having panic attacks and I just knew something was wrong. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what it was. And actually, the day that kind of made it clear was I went to Ikea and my mom kindly volunteered to come with me to help me because I had to get some furniture for my new apartment. And I don't know why. We thought we decided to go on a Sunday and it was hot. It was crowded. There was so many people there that day. There was kids screaming and looking back, I can see now what was happening was it was from a sensory perspective. It was very overstimulating for me. So the sensory environment was very overstimulating. I didn't have any awareness or tools.

Margaux Joffe: Like today, I bring my earplugs with me. When I go into places like that, I prepare mentally in advance, knowing like, okay, this might be a lot, but I'm mentally prepared and I know that I can have an exit plan, but that day I didn't have any of those awareness or tools or language to be able to advocate for myself. And my battery started getting run down. And on top of that, I was using a lot of executive functioning skills because I had to make a lot of decisions about am I, am I buying this color of towels or am I buying that color of towels? What couch am I going to get? And these are like big decisions about spending money. And so I was using a lot of cognitive resources, and I think I was like, maybe I didn't sleep well the night before. And so my cognitive battery, my brain battery was definitely run down. And I started to as we're going through Ikea, all of a sudden something felt wrong and I was like, oh, like I felt like I was shutting down and now I understand sensory overload and that there was more information coming in from my sensory environment than my brain had the ability to process. And so for me, it, you know, it triggered a response of anxiety, of panic, of emotional you know, emotional flooding. And I wasn't able to, you know, communicate my needs in that moment. And I just told my mom I was like, I was like, I can't I can't stay here.

Margaux Joffe: I need to get out of here. And I didn't have the language to explain why. Right. And she was like, oh, like we're almost done. Like, let's just keep going. And, you know, when we don't understand what's going on, it can make us feel like a child, you know, like childish, like, well, this is not a big deal. What's wrong with you? Why can't you just, you know, make this this like we're in an Ikea, like what's going on, right? So. Right. But my mom is amazing, and so she. I think she could tell I was overwhelmed, and she Yeah, we finished the shopping trip. We got out of there, and the next morning she called me and I remember it was, you know, first thing in the morning. And she was like, it's now a good time. I want to talk to you about something important. And my first thought was like, oh my gosh, did a relative die like her? Because her tone of voice was very different. Serious? I knew like, this was going to be a conversation that I needed to be paying attention to. And before I could say anything, she was like, you know, I was reading this article about women with ADHD and I wanted to read you this list of symptoms. And she started reading this list of symptoms of women with ADHD. And I remember I was listening to her words, and it was like someone was holding up a mirror to my life.

Margaux Joffe: And here tears just started streaming down my face. I mean, I was 29, right? So imagine I had lived almost three decades of life, and it was this recognition moment of like, oh my gosh, even realizing something was different. And then also at the same time having this relief of an explanation of like, oh my gosh, there's a reason why certain things were so hard for me or why I have certain experiences, and it was also a roller coaster of emotion. So after that I went and got an evaluation and so many emotions, you know, the relief and the moments, but also the grief and sadness about, wow, maybe I could have gotten a lot more out of my education if I knew, and different ways of studying, different ways of doing things in school without using different strategies that I used of like, you know, just white knuckling my way through doing whatever I could to, to get things done, even if it was like also just bullshitting and improvising my way through a lot of stuff that that was hard. And so I always tell people who are recently diagnosed, whether it's with ADHD or, another form of neuro divergences. You don't have to figure it out all in the first day. Giving yourself time to process the diagnosis is important because there's a lot of emotions, and sometimes it takes time to process and really settle into knowing what that means for you. And that's okay.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you're you have a name now for. Yeah. You have language now that you didn't have before at 29. You've been given terminologies and explanations and rationales for why you've had some of the experiences you had. So I imagine then as you process and kind of grew into that understanding that also some other things must have changed for you too.

Margaux Joffe: Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, being able to name our experiences is so important because when we name something, then we can navigate it and then it's not we can look at it outside of ourself and be like, okay sensory overload. I may have I have sensory processing sensitivities. This means if I go into certain environments, I may start to get overstimulated. That's what that might look like. And here's ways I can support myself I can communicate, I can plan ahead. I can manage my cognitive resources. I can bring earplugs. I can make decisions about where I'm going on a first date with somebody. Maybe I'm not going to a sports bar. Maybe I'm going to a cozy cafe. Right? So we start to have more agency over our life. And when you were talking about strong, you were talking about strong locus of control as one of the gifts that you got from the school that you went to. And I think that resonated with me deeply, because I see a specifically for a lot of people with ADHD. Part of the healing journey is regaining our locus of control, and to put it in plain language, is regaining trust in our own self and regaining the feeling that we have the power to make decisions over our own life.

Margaux Joffe: Because for people that go undiagnosed with ADHD, we are taking actions, but we're not getting the outcomes that we want or that we expect, right? So we might care about someone a lot, have an intention. We want to do something. We say we're going to do something and then we don't do it. We don't follow through. And so that's one example of a struggle that, you know, people with ADHD, if they're undiagnosed or even if they have a diagnosis, but they don't have the skills and strategies. There's a lot of shame around a lot of shame around not following through and even on things that are important, you know, things that are important to people. And so what happens is not only does that damage our relationships with people in our life and damage our credibility. The most painful part of it is that it damages our ability to trust our self. And so when you lose trust in yourself, then that's going back to you feel like you don't have that locus of control. You don't have agency self-efficacy, being able to feel like you can trust yourself to have power over your own life.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And did the diagnosis and the language and the self-identification of the person who's neurodivergent. And that leads you to the work and accessibility you mentioned when I first met you. You were you were part of the accessibility team at Yahoo! Like, you know, I was the CEO of American Foundation for the blind at the time that come out, come out from New York to visit our friends in the Bay area. And so I'm just wondering how you went. I think you said you're working for a nonprofit media company at the time of your diagnosis. And how what was the path from there to being on? Yeah, on a on a renowned accessibility team with some with some legends and accessibility.

Margaux Joffe: Life is so life is so funny and amazing and, you know, the roads and how we get to where we are. But when I was first diagnosed, no, I wasn't thinking I'm going to now become an accessibility, you know, professional. That was not my thought at all. My first thought was just what does this mean for me and What the heck? I mean, I'm a producer. How can I have ADHD? I mean, I literally get paid to produce campaigns on time and on budget, staying on top of every detail, making sure they're getting delivered to the spec in the right file format and so they can work whether they're going on TV, radio, internet, etc.. So learning about ADHD was a huge eye opener to be like, oh, people with ADHD, it's not that they can't pay attention is that our attention works differently and we're motivated by things like interest, challenge, novelty, urgency. I was like, oh, it makes sense now working in the creative field because there's such a high level of novelty. There's always new campaigns, new amazing creative people to work with, urgency, being in a fast paced, deadline driven environment. Challenge is always new challenges to solve. And so that's why you see a lot of people with ADHD in fields like journalism, technology, emergency first response services. And when we're in those environments, we can thrive at the time, I was not thriving in that. And that specific time I was struggling and I was looking for resources for adult women with ADHD. And so this was about 11 years ago that I was diagnosed. And I remember, you know, going online because I'm a millennial.

Margaux Joffe: And I was like, let me go on the internet. And a lot of the information I found was for parents, you know parents or men. And a lot of it was clinical and very mythologizing about like, this is what's wrong with you. And these are the bad outcomes. And if you have ADHD, you won't accomplish your goals and you'll be in financial ruin, and you'll be in divorce and you'll lose your job. You know, a lot of negative. Yeah, a lot of negative content out there. And I was struggling to find resources that I could relate with. I was struggling to find role models. You know, I remember I went to I started therapy for the first time after my diagnosis and my therapist was amazing. He specialized in ADHD. I always tell people, if you're looking for a therapist and you have ADHD, you know, ask them about what their experience is because not all of therapists have experience working with people with ADHD. But he showed me this PowerPoint and it was it was so great. And it was telling me, you know, explaining what ADHD is. And there was this one slide that was about strengths, and there was another slide about famous people with ADHD. So he really took a strengths based approach, and I really loved that. We got to the slide about famous people with ADHD. And I remember it was all men literally like not one woman on this slide. It was, you know, a list of all these men and, you know, like Richard Branson and, you know, all of the, all of the usual. And it was in that moment where I was like, wow.

Margaux Joffe: Like where, where are the women? And I went on to Instagram and I looked for ADHD women, and I found there was two posts with the hashtag because at that time that's how you searched up you on the. There was a hashtag area, two posts with the hashtag ADHD women, and that's hard to even believe, as I'm saying it now, because now we have TikTok. TikTok wasn't even a thing then. But you know, we go into TikTok, you can find millions of videos of women talking without with ADHD. But it was in that moment where I started thinking about, how can I help other people that are probably struggling in the same way that I am? And I thought about, how can I use my background as a producer and in documentary work to make a difference? So I started interviewing women with ADHD. I went to a local support group, and I met a couple women that were there And I started there. And just one by one, I started interviewing women with ADHD about their lived experiences. And that led to creating a website called Kaleidoscope Society, which was the first of its kind content platform created for and by women with ADHD. And so we highlighted diverse lived experience of different women and their experience about how they were building on their strengths, how they were navigating challenges. And then I also got to work with leading experts in the field to create, you know, short form digital media content that we could highlight specifically for this audience. And so that was really my journey.

Dr. Kirk Adams: This kaleidoscope society is still a resource for people. Or is it morphed into something else?

Margaux Joffe: Yes. And so yes. And in that I made the decision two years ago to sunset the website. It's still there as an archive that I have to say, there are a couple accessibility issues with it as WordPress. You know, as things have changed and things have gotten outdated. And so but I kept it up as an archive. So Kaleidoscope society.com, it still is there. And now I have expanded my work to minds of all kinds, really, to create resources around neurodiversity more broadly. But Kaleidoscope Society was really my onramp into what would be my journey into the accessibility field. But it didn't happen right away. I was just doing Kaleidoscope Society on the on the side as a passion project. And during that time, I had taken a new role as head of production in the marketing department for Yahoo! And when I took the role, I didn't disclose I had ADHD because, you know, I was trying to pay my bills and it was my first job in tech. It was still a time where I was in meetings, where sometimes I was the only woman in the room. And, you know, I was trying to build my career as a as a producer. And I was also a people manager. So I had I managed a team of producers. So I was also worried about what are people going to think? And I really just wanted to give people the chance to see what I could do before they had a label in their mind that could possibly change their perception of my abilities, especially in the role of production, because production is all again about, you know, it's all about getting things done on time and on budget and being organized.

Margaux Joffe: And so that doesn't really jive with the stereotypes that are out there about ADHD. So I was working. So how I got into accessibility from there was working in production. And two things happen. One is that about a year in, I started feeling like I was living a double life because Kaleidoscope Society was gaining traction. We were getting more attention. There was media coverage about us. And so in in my free time, I was an advocate in the community, in the community for women with ADHD. But then my day job, I was masking and I didn't tell anybody at work. No one knew that I had ADHD. No one knew that I had created this project for women with ADHD. So I started to feel that my integrity wasn't yeah, wasn't showing up. And integrity is one of my top three core values. So I started to feel like this noise inside of me. And so I started thinking, what could I do, where I am in the role that I'm at, where I could make a difference, maybe in my workplace. And I had been hearing all these stories from women with ADHD, and one of the main challenges that I was hearing time and again was challenges in the workplace. Do I disclose in the workplace, You know, what about all of these? You know, all the different challenges people were experiencing. And so I started to see, like, this is an area that we need to address.

Margaux Joffe: And it was funny, at the time, I didn't know anyone with ADHD at Yahoo. I didn't know any neurodivergent people. People didn't talk about neurodiversity. People didn't even talk about mental health at the time in the way that they do now. And I saw that we had ERGs, which are employee resource groups, which are basically like peer networks for employees of different identities, whether they're veterans, black employees, women. So I started thinking, like, maybe I can build on this existing structure that exists. And I propose starting a neurodiversity employee resource group. At the time, people didn't really even know what I was talking about, like what neurodiversity means. But we had an amazing head of Dei and she supported it. And we launched the group in 2017. And it was funny because on in the proposal they asked me like, well, how many employees do you have that are going to join? And I said, you know, and it was hard for me to answer because I didn't know, but I knew, I knew in my I knew in my intuition. I'm like, I know we're out here because first of all, the tech and the creative areas like the neurodivergent people were out here. And and then I remember we, we made the announcement. And then one by one by one, people started coming forward saying, yes, like, this is me. I want to be part of this. And over the next few years, we built a global peer support network in 35 offices around the world. And that was.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Wow.

Margaux Joffe: Transformative. And I mean, and in that process. So this is the long, winding road of how I got to accessibility. So well, that was happening and I was working on the proposal. I had also, in parallel been asking about accessibility because as a producer, it was one of the things that I knew from my agency days of like, you know, different companies have different requirements about if you're launching a website, if you're launching, you know, a digital campaign, there's accessibility requirements. So I didn't really know much about accessibility, but I knew it was a thing, and I was getting a lot of blank stares in the marketing department. And so I went to the product department and there was this one guy and he's like, oh yeah, go talk to the accessibility team. I was like, oh, we have an accessibility team. Like I had been at the company for a while. I didn't even know we had an accessibility team. And I remember I went over to another building on our campus and walked into this little kind of like conference room that was in the corner that had been converted into. When I first walked in, it looked like a computer lab, and that's when I found the accessibility team and they're like, come on in. And they started showing me the assistive technology that they had. And they started talking to me about all about accessibility. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, we need to get the whole marketing department knowing about this. This is an amazing resource. And I'm talking about, I mean, you know, the team I mean, Larry, Larry Goldberg, who helped get closed captions on TV for the first time, Mike. Banach, who had worked had come from Apple and who had helped be part of the initiative to get VoiceOver launched. I mean, these were some of the OGs in the accessibility.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Space you had. You had legends on that team, that's for sure.

Margaux Joffe: Yes.

Margaux Joffe: And that's where I always say, I mean, I was so lucky to. That we had that team. I mean, I've everything I know is because of all the people that have worked in the field that taught me everything they knew. And so it really started. I went to our, our head of marketing and I was like, hey, you know, we need to add this into our production guidelines. And there's a team and they can and they can train us. And so we started I started setting up workshops where we would bring groups from marketing the designers, the developers, bringing them over to the accessibility lab to do workshops. And then it just sort of evolved. And then my boss was like, hey, can you be the unofficial accessibility, you know, point of contact for our department, for the marketing department. And it really just evolved from there. And as I started learning more and more about accessibility, I really was like, and then I had launched the Neurodiversity Employee Resource Group at that time, and I really felt like, okay, I love producing, but this accessibility stuff, this is lighting me up in a way that is different. And I was so passionate about it, and I saw that there was such a need for us to spread accessibility, awareness and education. And so it evolved. And it it got to a point where the accessibility team, their biggest challenge is that people in the company didn't really know that they existed and what they did. And accessibility is really everyone's job. It's not the job of an accessibility team. I mean, accessibility teams are there to you know, have the subject matter expertise and help guide. But really, accessibility is successful when everyone in a company knows how they need to be applying it into their everyday work.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you are no longer leading a double life.

Margaux Joffe: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: You're leading a life, an integrated whole life.

Margaux Joffe: And yeah, so I was able to make a transition into the accessibility team full time. So I, I moved and that's like one of the things I tell you, people, you know, if they're starting out their career, the cool thing about working at a large company is that you have so much opportunity for growth, and you can start doing one thing, and then a couple of years later, you can maybe move into a different department. And so I really am thankful that I had that opportunity. And I it was kind of like a crash course. And I learned.

Margaux Joffe: I.

Margaux Joffe: Learned so much about accessibility. You got to work with amazing partners and groups, you know, like your former organization. So yeah, that's the long version, the long.

Margaux Joffe: Version of the story.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's a that's a super interesting version. I really appreciate it. And then let's fast forward a little bit to mines of all kinds.

Margaux Joffe: Yeah. So I. Worked on a number of disability initiatives and accessibility initiatives that I won't get into, but about. We got acquired by Verizon. And my journey continued and Verizon corporate brought me over to. Work in their corporate social responsibility team, building out their disability inclusion pillar within their broader portfolio. And that was also a great experience. And then about four years ago, I got to a point where I really realized, like I wanted to focus on neurodiversity and there was so much I wanted to do. And so I decided to leave my corporate job four years ago to go out on my own. And I started minds of all kinds. The first program that I launched was a professional development program for adults with ADHD. Because. So after I had been so publicly visible about being a professional with ADHD, I got so many people reaching out to me about wanting to learn. How do I navigate this? What are skills and strategies? So it was really like the biggest area of need at that time that I was seeing in the community.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So these are working age professional people who have understand that they are neurodiverse and they're looking for tools and techniques and.

Margaux Joffe: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And resources to thrive. Yes. And so, gotcha.

Margaux Joffe: And I wanted to make sure that I wanted to make sure that, you know, I could create something that was super valuable. So I was like, let me partner with somebody who is best in the world at coaching for adults with ADHD, right? Because my background in accessibility and corporate disability inclusion and a lot of lived experience and also expertise that I had gained. But, you know, I wasn't trained as an ADHD coach per se. You know, so I, I ended up partnering with an amazing person. Cathy Richardson, who is a faculty member at the AD Coach Academy. So she literally trains coaches. ADHD coaches on how to coach and work with adults with ADHD. So we put our superpowers together to create the initial program that we initially was called the great ADHD reset, and it was an eight week cohort based program live cohort based program for adults with ADHD. So anyone from early career to senior career who were looking to escape, you know, the overwhelm, the burnout, the exhaustion that can come with being a professional with ADHD and really figure out how do I move through my day to day life with a more even keel one day at a time and channel my strengths, build on my strengths. So we launched that program in the fall of 2021. We facilitated eight cohorts together. We had over 100 graduates and incredible. Learned so much. And then her work kind of shifted a bit. And so we decided to stop running that program together. But I relaunched another ADHD program using a lot of the core curriculum that we had created together called ADHD navigators.

Margaux Joffe: And we just graduated our seventh cohort of that program. So to sum it up, over the over the last few years, I facilitated 15, 15 group programs for adults with ADHD. And that's one of one of my favorite things to do is working with neurodivergent people. It's been such a privilege. And so that's a that's a core program of minds of all kinds is our ADHD navigators program. I also host community events where I'll bring in outside experts to bring knowledge and resources to the community. So we have for an example One of my friends is an HR expert. She used to be head of HR at places like Netflix and CNN, and she came in to do an event with our community, answering tough questions about workplace challenges specifically for neurodivergent people. Questions like, what do I do if my accommodation requests are denied? How do I navigate micromanaging bosses? You know what? If I'm neurodivergent and I put on a performance improvement plan, how do I navigate these tough situations? So she provided coaching and advice. And so that's an example of, of some of the kind of events is like, and really just responding to the community needs and wants. So listening to people about what their challenges are and then bringing in experts. So that's the community side of things. And really, my vision is creating the space where neurodivergent people, where we can learn, connect and lead. And it starts with empowering ourselves. And once we can empower ourselves. People are empowering others. I've heard stories of people that have gone through the navigators program, and now they're telling me that, you know, they're able to share some of the skills and strategies with their kids because, you know, ADHD is highly genetic.

Margaux Joffe: So if you have ADHD, there's a high chance when one or more of your kids is going to have ADHD. Right. So this is a generational thing. And so I think a lot about how I can be one small part of creating generational healing in my community. And what I mean by generational healing is a lot of forms of neurodivergent are genetic and run of families especially, you know, autism, ADHD, bipolar, etc.. And so our parents and the older generations, a lot of them didn't have access to diagnosis or even know that they were neurodivergent, and so they didn't have the knowledge and skills. And that, for many, caused a lot of challenges that could have been avoided. And they didn't always know how they could pass that down to us. But now we have an opportunity now that we're in this time and we are having these diagnoses and finally getting this awareness and knowledge, we can break the cycle. And first empowering ourselves. And so then we can pass that down to the next generation, whether it's our kids, young people in our life that we're mentoring and letting them know, you know, there are ways of doing things that can be less stressful. You can improve your quality of life. You know, here's things you can do. And also when we can model it, when we can regulate our emotions when we can be at peace in ourselves. Then we can show others that way to peace.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Wow.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So I just feel like saying I'm really proud of you. Really proud of you. Just you're doing wonderful work in helping so many people and going to be helping so many more. And if people want to connect with you and minds of all kinds, what's the best way for people to get in touch?

Margaux Joffe: Thank you for that. Well, you can check out our website. Minds of all kinds. We have our events listed there, and we have a resources page where we link out to, you know, other organizations that are doing great work. So you can visit mines of all kinds or, you know, connect with me on LinkedIn, you know, where I'm on the internet.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So yeah, yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And I just referred someone to yesterday who recruits and places neurodivergent talent, the tech companies who's also here in Seattle. So they'll be reaching out to via LinkedIn shortly.

Margaux Joffe: And thank you so much for that. And thanks for yeah, thanks for making the connection. I love what you're doing with this podcast. I think it's so important that all of us in different areas in the disability space collaborate and work together. We're definitely stronger together. And I think that's something that's important is the the cross movement solidarity.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And sometime we'll, we'll talk about people with multiple disabilities, people who are blind and deaf who have ADHD, and people with ushers who have ADHD and mobility issues and all the things. But it's time has been a truly a pleasure. And it flew by. And for those of you listening who want to get in touch with me my website is Doctor Kirk adams.com. And I'm also very active on Dr Kirk Adams PhD. Page on LinkedIn. So thank you for listening to this podcast. If I visit with Margaux Joffe from the founder of Minds of All Kinds and everyone go, go forth and do good things. So thanks, Margaux.

Margaux Joffe: Thank you Kirk.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at. Kirk Adams. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening. Keep learning and keep making an impact.