Drawing on his lived experience with neurodivergent friends, family and colleagues, Mark will give an overview of the neurodiversity movement, and how this is shaping a new understanding of how conditions like dyslexia, Autism and ADHD are not only disabilities but can also be strengths if they can be better understood and accommodated.

He’ll explain the essence of each of these conditions, and how they can be seen in a similar way to other forms of cognitive diversity such as personality differences. This will include insights from the community as gathered from the survey.  There will be time for Q&A at the end, in which he will be able to draw on his experience as a manager of technical colleagues to comment on how to use these ideas particularly within knowledge-working teams. 

Biography – Mark Ainsworth

Mark’s 25 year career has been all about helping people make decisions with data, starting from his degrees in Psychology from Oxford and Operational Research from Southampton, and then applied in various industries.

These include British Airways, race strategy at the McLaren F1 team, Tesco’s Customer Insight and Site Research teams (where one big project was rebuilding the Tesco Gravity Model using the 2001 census data), as Technology Director of Talent Innovations (a psychometrics business), and as Head of Analytics at Smart Steps the mobility insights business in Telefonica.

From 2014-2022 he set up and grew a 30-strong data science function in Schroders the Investment Manager. He recently joined ProblemShared (a mind healthcare business) as their Chief Data Officer.

Over recent years Mark discovered that many members of his family and his team had neurodiverse conditions including dyspraxia, ADHD and Autism, and in educating himself on these, he discovered the power of understanding and harnessing neurodiversity in life and work, as well as establishing a deeper understanding of himself.

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