And in an increasingly tight labor market, some companies, like JPMorgan Chase, are seeking to take advantage of the strengths that autistic workers bring to the table - and they’re seeing real financial benefits from doing so. An emerging group of self-styled neurodiversity activists, many of whom proudly identify as autistic, are demanding to be accepted exactly as they are and are working toward a world that doesn’t just accommodate but embraces autistic people. But, like other autistic employees, they often feel alienated from their managers, colleagues, and clients. People with Asperger’s syndrome, the term still commonly used for one of the most well-known forms of autism spectrum disorder, bring serious advantages to the financial markets: extreme focus, a facility with numbers, a willingness to consider unpopular opinions, a strong sense of logic, and an intense belief in fairness and justice. Through weeks of intensive research, a singular truth emerged.
With my personal and professional worlds converging to a degree they never had in my nearly 20-year career covering finance, I jumped at the chance to write it. The disclosure prompted a discussion in the Institutional Investor newsroom about how many other people in finance might also fall on the spectrum, whether diagnosed or undiagnosed. In February 2019, Bill Gross, christened the Bond King for his phenomenal multidecade winning streak as a co-founder and portfolio manager at PIMCO, revealed in an interview with Bloomberg Television that he had recently been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Statistics I uncovered were deeply disturbing - fewer than 16 percent of adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder were employed full-time, for example.īut at about the same time, something extraordinary happened. This is how, in the winter of 2019, I was thrust headlong into the world of autism and all that it entailed: figuring out what the diagnosis meant, learning how to navigate the overwhelming bureaucracy of parenting a special-needs child, wondering anxiously what her future might be like. Looking for a diagnosis - something the DOE doesn’t give for preschoolers - we also sought the advice of a developmental pediatrician, who confirmed what no one else would tell us: Our daughter was on the autism spectrum. But at the school’s urging, we had her evaluated through New York City’s Department of Education.
Those observations didn’t square with the ebullient, extremely verbal child whose pediatrician had never raised any red flags about her social or emotional development. In short, it was impossible to teach her in a regular classroom setting. Most alarmingly, she wasn’t socializing well - or at all - with other children. She didn’t play with toys like others did. She couldn’t carry on a conversation with her teachers or classmates. Our daughter, it turned out, was wandering out of the classroom. An administrator and my child’s lead teacher urgently wanted to meet with my husband and me. Three weeks after I enrolled my youngest child in a neighborhood nursery school in Brooklyn, I got the call.
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