0:02 Welcome to risky conversations. Why? Because everything that's worthwhile is on the other side of a risky conversation. My name is Jamie Lee. I'm an executive coach for smart women who don't like office politics, and I help them get promoted, get better paid, without throwing anyone under the bus, and today, I have the awesome privilege of interviewing Tara May. Tara May is the CEO of Aspiritech, and she is somebody who's deeply committed to challenging business norms around inclusion. I think this is a great time to talk about inclusion, because it's under attack, so let's talk more about it. At spirit tech, she works alongside over 100 autistic adults, more than 90% of the team at aspirate, proving that diverse minds propel innovation and growth. Welcome to risky conversations.

0:59  
Thank you for having me.

1:04  
You're so welcome. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about you know who you are, and you know I one of the questions I ask all the time to everyone who comes on to this podcast is what was one of the riskiest conversations you've ever engaged in, and why was it worth it?

1:26  
Yeah, absolutely. So, just a quick intro to me, like you said. My name is Tara. I'm CEO of a spirit tech. I am so privileged to lead this company because I think we are redefining what workplaces can and should look like, right? And we happen to do that for the Autistic community as our mission, but I think we're setting an example for everyone. So what you were saying about office politics and workplaces and women leading the challenge of business norms really resonated with me. I'm really excited to dive into all of that today. I'm also excited to answer your question, because I had a very specific conversation. Jumped to my head immediately when you said that, and I so I think the riskiest conversation I ever had was when I told my husband that I wanted to donate my kidney to my dad. My dad was going through dialysis and very intense kidney failure, and I couldn't stand by and let it happen. And for me, it was the easiest decision I ever made. But I am lucky enough to have a husband who loves me very dearly, and who I knew was his initial reaction was going to be, no, absolutely not. I don't want you to do that, and it was that was his initial reaction, because he puts me first, and that's something I'm really grateful for. But I also knew that that conversation was going to be worth it, that I was going to be able to give my dad another 20 happy, fulfilling years with us, at least, I hope. And so we began a really tough conversation about the things that matter most, about family and health and value sets. And that risky conversation gave me the greatest gift I could ever ask for, which is more time with my my dad, who means the world to me.

3:27  
I'm I'm almost crying. My father, my late father, had two kidney transplants before he passed away.

3:41  
Oh, wow. Well, we're kindred spirit. Then Jamie, yeah, wow.

3:49  
And he I was never asked if I was like, it just never came up. But wow. And I could deeply relate with you, because he passed away Summer of 2020, and in the spring, he was ill, and my life partner got mad at me because I wanted to take the train to visit my father, and this was during the height of the lockdown where we, like we all thought, like stepping outside our doors was

4:16  
your partner loves you, right? Your partner, I don't want to put you at risk, right? And isn't it? It's so fascinating and risky when, when love butts up against love, right?

4:30  
When love butts up against love? Oh yes, this is a good one. This is a good one because I think it's going to connect to Aspiritech.

4:40  
It is. It absolutely is, yeah, yeah.

4:44  
It's where tough love puts up with other people's definitions of love.

4:48  
That's right, that's right. Well, and you know, I also had to step aside for, you know, roughly four to six weeks from a leadership position. That's really important and intentional, and I had to trust and rely on my leadership team to fill my gap for me, and so they were showing their love for me and our family and our organization by by taking over and allowing me to do this right so I think it's an important thing to remember that everything we are and everything we do personally intrinsically weaves into who we are at work. And I think so often corporate culture tries to disregard that. And I think when we do we we do ourselves and our organizations a disservice.

5:41  
So this happened you giving your kidney to your father. Happened while you were still CEO,

5:49  
it was just about eight months ago I did this.

5:51  
Oh, my goodness, just eight months ago. How are you feeling? Oh, I'm

5:55  
great. Living life with one kidney is totally easy. It's no big,

6:01  
okay, so tell us about your journey to the helm of a spirit tech. Maybe you can give us, like a quick overview how you arrived and how long you've been there, absolutely.

6:15  
So I always spent the bulk of my career in media companies. So I started as a journalist. I was a reporter for the Roswell daily record in Roswell, New Mexico, covering crime. And through my time as a reporter, I was in the midst of near constant layoffs because the print industry was in major decline. And so I really learned to pivot my skill set to building digital products in the media space, and I became very good at that. And in fact, it sort of accelerated my climb to an executive, because there was this big gap in leadership that understood what we needed from a digital perspective. So that became my career, right? Digital transformation, product building, audience development and monetizing user experience around digital experiences, and I was very good at it. I loved it, but I felt like at some point I wanted to use my talent and my intelligence to make a bigger difference to some problems, some other problems I saw in the world, one of them being the future of work for my autistic son, who is 14 today, and he really inspired me to see the world differently and to understand neuro Diversity is all around us. It's in our friends and our family and in our workplaces, and yet, as leaders and managers, we almost never talk about it, right? We never talk about how our brains work and learn and communicate, and it seemed to me like such a missing piece. So when the opportunity to lead a spirit tech as its CEO came open, I jumped at it because I get to put to work my technical skills, and I get to pair that with something I'm very, very passionate about, which is making the world and the workplaces better for everyone and every piece of The human experience.

8:19  
What does a spirit tech do

8:22  
great question, such a simple but important question. So we do tech services so that can range from quality assurance of software products, accessibility, testing of digital experiences, large language model, building creative services like digital marketing and things like that, as well as managed it and cyber security. And it's all, you know, a bunch of nerdy tech services, but it's done by an incredibly talented, autistic operations team, and that makes us incredibly unique in what we do and how we do it,

9:02  
tell us there is a strength here, right? What is the strength of your uniquely talented autistic team that most people you know overlook or don't really understand?

9:20  
So I'm going to start by giving a little bit of an analogy. When we think about neurotypical people's strengths and weaknesses, it generally looks like this, right? A little bit of ups and downs in our strengths and weaknesses. When you look at an autistic person, they often have what we refer to as spiky profiles, meaning there might be a big gap, let's say, in social communication or processing speed, but then there are also huge strengths like creativity or the ability to focus or be really productive. And as a society, we've often focused on their the gaps, right? What are the. Deficits of autistic people, but at a spirit Tech, we focus in on those strengths. So whatever the strength is of the individual, we try to match that to a client need. And when you can do that successfully, something really incredible happens. So I'll give you a good example. One of our client projects for years, was helping the TSA develop the large language model that was going to scan luggage at airports to test for security. Well, our team members, who were highly visual, could annotate those images at a pace that was only rivaled by people, neurotypical people who had been doing it for a decade. Wow. So it's example of how you take someone's strength, you turn it into matching a business need, and you have a very happy client at the

10:57  
end. Excellent. And do you have also a very happy worker who's well,

11:03  
yes. I mean, aren't we all are happiest when we are doing work that we're good at that matches our strengths and our passion absolutely,

11:11  
yeah, yeah. And I know some of my clients told me, you know, they they yearn to feel useful, Be of service

11:21  
well and and work is such an important way of translating that to the world, right? So work is it's how we put food on our table and roofs over our head, but it's also how we express our identity and our value to the world, and that's such a critical piece of being a human.

11:45  
I totally agree. And this is the work that I do with my clients. You know, some clients who work for big, you know, billion dollar companies, and they're like, but something is missing. I don't feel right. It doesn't feel good. I reject this because it's not aligned with my values, with who I really am, yeah. So when, yeah, that is aligned. It's, it's, you know, chef's kiss. It's better than gold. It's better than, you know, sometimes it's better than money.

12:15  
I could not agree more Jamie, and it was the driving force behind me leaving the corporate world and working at this organization, and I left behind some, you know, pretty healthy corporate bonuses, but you cannot put a price on the happiness you feel when your value set is aligned with the work you're doing every day. There. There is no price tag for that.

12:40  
Yeah, yeah, my nephew is on the spectrum, and he is hyperactive. I mean, I have ADHD, but my hyperactivity is in my mind. But you know, for right? And I heard that that's very typical, that the typical gender divide, and ADHD. And I also learned ad having ADHD is a form of neuro diversity, or Yeah, yeah. Neuro sparkliness is another phrase I learned. Neuro spicy, yeah. Neuro spicy, yeah, yeah. And when my nephew was only like four and a half, like almost five years old, I bought him a book of dinosaurs, and this is he was going through his dinosaur phase, and he wouldn't always respond when you said hello and called him by his name, but he knew every single dinosaur by shape and by name. We had, like, photographic memory. It was, it was incredible.

13:42  
I have two autistic sons, and one of them went through absolutely the dinosaur phase. And I remember Jamie, like, struggling myself to learn and remember the scientific names of the dinosaurs, because he would be like, I'm looking for my, you know, bronchial Soros. And I would be like, what's the bronchiosaurus? I don't know. I was, like, searching the house for the bronchiosaurus, trying to remember which one it was. And he

14:07  
knew, yeah, that's amazing. It's amazing. So I'm also curious, as the CEO of Aspiritech, so it sounds like you've been there for several years, three years now. Three years. Nice, nice. What are some of the challenges that you faced?

14:27  
So I think the biggest challenge is confidence building. And I bet you really relate to this. You know, executive coaching women, because I think it's very similar the amount of imposter syndrome that follows around autistic people, I think, is very similar to what I've seen coaching young women up and coming in their careers. And so a lot of what I feel like is is a challenge, isn't you know, some of the stuff. Stigmas that people have, like, oh, can they do the work? Can they communicate? How does client communication go? No, it's none of that. It's actually convincing them what they're capable of. Right to not be scared, to put themselves out there and try something new. Because Absolutely, the potential is there. You know, the thing we say to women where you're like, you don't need to fit every criterion on that job description, point by point to be capable of doing it. That sort of self esteem reinforcement and confidence building is absolutely one of the biggest challenges we face.

15:37  
I had another fellow executive coach on the podcast, and she made the excellent point of highlighting how imposter syndrome is actually systemic, not not a reflection of personal pathology, right? I completely

15:56  
agree with that, and it makes sense when we see it in very specific marginalized communities. That is accident, right? That is something that has been systemically created. I could not agree more,

16:10  
right? And if you've seen throughout your life, you know, from messaging, from media culture, from institutions, that normal is good and abnormal is, you know, less than ideal like or you know, this deviation from what everyone else seems to be, right? Then, of course, how could you not internalize the message that somehow you're lacking something absolutely

16:36  
and especially to it feels like we're doing an excessive amount of othering in society, right? You are other, therefore you are not good enough. And I think along with that comes the powerfulness of representation right on the flip on the positive side, because a lot of autistic people, just like a lot of women, don't see themselves in the top roles in the powerful roles in in the workplace at all. You know when it came to women 50 years ago and now to many autistic people. And so it's so important for us to hold up these examples to work toward and say, there is no reason why there is any limit to your potential. And here's an example of that, and we're going to continue to build those examples until it isn't just an example, it's everything everywhere.

17:39  
Would you give us an example of how you instilled and helped build confidence, you know, with your employee?

17:48  
Yeah, absolutely. So one of our team members, I'm actually, I'm going to say his name, because I know he would not mind. His name is Maxwell. He's our VP of Operations, and you know, one of the things he will share very publicly, is that, as an autistic person, he felt very stuck in low level retail jobs, and he found out about a spirit attack, got a job as a tech person, and he wasn't sure he could do it right, because he's like, I had never seen myself in that role. I didn't know, but through training, he absolutely could do it. And not only that, he was excellent with clients. He was excellent with teaching other people how to do the work. And he rose up through the organization and is now the VP of Operations, overseeing 90 some people, right? And I think that's one example. It's one very powerful example. But I could tell you that story 100 times at a spirit tech, and I think it's most important when we tell that story to autistic children and teenagers who are looking to others to see what their life could look like, right? And their life could look like Maxwell's Absolutely

19:04  
I did once work with a client who identified herself on the spectrum, and she struggled with communicating with her neurotypical supervisors, and it just felt like very frustrating for her to feel seen, heard, understood, would you from your perspective, I'm curious if you can share any you know tips or any guidance for how neuro spicy, neuro sparkly people can better communicate. And also we want to do the vice versa too, right? We will. We also want to talk about how the

19:46  
first thing I was gonna say, Jamie, so, yeah, listen, I think, you know, we've got a lot of work to do to stop asking autistic and neurodivergent and. ADHD people to change, rather than having the world embrace all kinds of brains and all kinds of bodies and all kinds of humans, right? And that's the work we do every day, but setting the table that this is the world we live in, and sometimes there are going to be challenges. One of the things I encourage neurodivergent people to do is build community with each other, right? Sometimes it's, you know, maybe you're not going to be able to change that manager today, but maybe you can get tips from another neurodivergent friend who's struggling with the same thing, or maybe you can just vent a little and not feel so alone. I mean, community is a very powerful thing, a very uplifting thing. You can certainly work with coaches like yourself, who can help you sort of be a translator for the language and the things that you need to communicate. There's also some great tech tools out there nowadays, right where you might even say into your favorite Gen AI tool. This is what I'm trying to convey to a neurotypical person. Can you help me come up with some language that does it? We often tell people, put it down in writing first, right? If you struggle with processing time, and maybe you know that back and forth conversation, that quick conversation, gets hard for you, put it in writing first. Ask the person for a little bit of time to process your response, right? That's a perfectly acceptable thing to do, and it's a trick I use all the time myself. If I'm not ready to answer something, I say, can you just give me a little bit of time to think about that and to respond to that? Right? That, as humans, is a perfectly acceptable and polite request, right? So while I'd like to say, let's change the world first, and I do say that regularly, in the meantime, we have to meet people where they're at, and a few of those different tips can really be helpful. Excellent.

21:55  
One of my favorite writers is on the spectrum, and she writes, you know, prolifically about being autistic and the challenges and the insights and the unique perspectives, and it's, it's, it's a wonderful read. It's so refreshing because her perspective is like, oh, right, she just cut through all the noise. Her name is Penelope trunk, and she's been writing on on the inner webs for for many years. So, yeah, I think writing it down, asking for help with, you know, Gen AI, I mean, I still, I do that too.

22:29  
How to figure out year over year growth in a spreadsheet every time I'm like, Okay, what sells do I need to divide?

22:38  
May I ask you a political opinion, you may Okay. I want to hear your thoughts about you know, some of the things that are being said by RFK Jr, around autism, vaccines. Could we go? There? Is that okay?

22:59  
We can go there? Are you ready to go? There with me?

23:03  
I want you to take me there. Tell me what you think. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to hear the thoughts of a female CEO who manages a team of uniquely talented, amazing autistic people. Well, first, I

23:18  
will refrain from using any of the four letter words that might come to mind initially for this podcast. And secondly, I will say that I think it's incredibly unfortunate that many topics in 2025 are even under the nature of political right, I mean, autistic diagnosis and identity as a political conversation is ridiculous to me, right? But that said again, that is not the world we're living in. So if we pause and look at this moment in time, I think we have a few problematic things happening, right? One is the idea that autism is a danger and a problem and something to be cured, right? I think that, in and of itself, is problematic, and I think we need to start any conversation we have by me saying and many self advocates saying we do not believe that to be the case. If I could go back in time 14 years and make my son not autistic, I would not do it. It is core to his identity and the person he is, and he makes my life, our family's life, and the world a better and brighter place, period, full stop. And I say that about my son because I have the privilege of being. His mother. But I also would not change a single person at a spirit tech who are my friends and my colleagues and the people I build and run a $7 million company with 100% so I want to start by saying that with a period and an exclamation point. There is no question mark there to me. But then you do get into this conversation about cause and cure, and I think it's really important after you say, I don't think there is anything to cure, to say any discussion around diagnosis has to be based in science. There are important things I would love to learn about the autistic brain and how to support it and how to help it be its most successful, the brain being the it right for all of us. I think there's so much neuroscience, so much we don't know about the brain, it would be wonderful to have more science and more research around that, but to be pointing at things like Tylenol and vaccines is already debunked and not based in science. So we are having conversations in circles around things that are not factual. And my opinion, Jamie, is that these are circling around blaming women, right? Who you took Tylenol in pregnancy. It's your fault your child is autistic. You got your child vaccinated. It's your fault they're autistic.

26:53  
Well, first, it's our fault for keeping people alive,

26:56  
right? Well, okay, so I will also make that point, and I and I actually had a team member come over to me quietly and say, Thank you for making that point, because I don't think anyone says it out loud enough say, vaccines cause autism. First of all, that's not true. But second of all, let's say you really believe it's true. Are you saying that you would rather have your child die of the measles than be autistic? You'd rather have a dead child than an autistic child? Because that's what I hear, right? And that's what many autistic people will say. I hear that too, and that that hurts me at my core. Yeah, I did once have a friend say to me, and this damaged our friendship. She said to me, don't you hope that they can identify what causes autism? So your daughter doesn't have to have an autistic child. And I was so caught off guard in that moment. We were just out on a walk right like and I was so caught off guard and wasn't expecting that that I didn't respond properly. But what I did turn to her and say was, No, that is not how we think about it. In our family, we don't wish our autistic brothers didn't exist.

28:32  
So,

28:35  
yes, it's political. It's also personal,

28:39  
yeah, coming back to love, butting up against aversion or a perceived ideation of love. You love your children. You love you know autistic people. You love different people just as they are, and you can appreciate them for their differences, and you can see that their differences lend to their strengths. And some people think love is about getting rid of differences.

29:09  
Yes, and I do, I do understand, you know, there are parents that come from the perspective of of a version of autism that comes with very, very significant support needs and people that may struggle to live independently, yeah, but I would still come back to the point that I bet every single one of those parents is still grateful that their child exists, right? Yeah, I want to be very careful that we are not trying to eradicate certain kinds of people, right?

29:51  
This is why this, this conversation is so important, like the more we can accept. I mean, I mean just being a woman. There is a difference, and then having other forms of marginalized identities, whether you're autistic, you're neurodivergent, a person of color, immigrant, right, right? It's not about eradicating the differences, but how can we understand and better appreciate, so that we can honor

30:24  
and celebrate our differences. Honor and

30:27  
celebrate

30:27  
World is we're all the same. I don't know about you, but my favorite humans on this earth are, you know, the the quirkiest and the weirdest and the most you know, identity is such a complex thing. We are not just one thing. We are many, many things. We are. We are a gender. We are an expression of that gender. We are a socio economic status and education status. We are a color and an ethnicity. We are a certain kind of brain. We are so many complex and wonderful things. There is, there is no normal,

31:15  
yeah, there is no normal, yeah, yeah. I'm also a member of a Zen Sangha, which is like a meditation community, and we learn about how like each person, each expression of a person, is a result of like millions, millions, perhaps even billions, of different permutations of ancestors and conditions that we can't even fully fathom. Right? Somebody had to make the shirt I'm wearing, somebody had to make the microphone I'm speaking into. Somebody had to invent the computer that I'm connecting you through, which I'm connecting with you today. And like, our facial expression is a result of, like, millions of ancestors having survived and having produced and so it's like, that's

31:58  
so exciting to think about, yeah, yeah, the

32:01  
more we think about like, how interconnected we ultimately are, right? We're connected to people who don't look anything like us. We're connected to people who don't even agree with us and who don't always act like us. You know, we're all supported by each other. So I could have this conversation for hours and hours, but I am curious, where should people go to learn more about aspirate?

32:31  
Yeah, absolutely so. Two good recommendations here. One is our website, like everyone else you know, go to www.aspirate.org but also feel free to follow me on LinkedIn. We have some really valuable conversations on LinkedIn. It's one of my favorite platforms, and you can really engage in a discussion there.

32:50  
And you know who should follow and who would most benefit from learning from Aspiritech, like I'm thinking like, who are your ideal clients? Who do you want to connect with on LinkedIn? Tell us about that too.

33:08  
Oh, my goodness, a little bit of everyone, right? If you have in your life, follow us for that conversation. If you need QA or data services or cyber security, certainly follow us. We'd love to help you with that. And if you're just passionate about creating better workplaces, we love to have those conversations as well, and we have a lot of tools to help with that.

33:33  
Do you work with individuals as a like your clients? Are they businesses? Are they government agencies? Or can they be like solopreneurs,

33:43  
all of the above we have we work with two people startups all the way up to JPMorgan, Chase and Goldman. Sachs are two of our clients.

33:51  
Cool, really, cool. Okay, I will keep that in mind when I need cyber security, because I'm a one person startup for

33:58  
now, that's real. Yeah.

34:02  
Thank you so much. Is there anything else I haven't yet asked that you would love to address before we wrap up?

34:09  
This was such a wonderful conversation. I'll just say thank you for having me Well,

34:14  
thank you for reaching out and thank you for joining risky conversations. Please check out the show notes for links to a spirit Tech, I will also link to your LinkedIn profile, and of course, I'll add my LinkedIn profile there as well. So if anyone wanted to connect with me, they can do that too. Thank you

34:32  
Tara, wonderful. Thank you, Jamie.

34:37  
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