THE PROBLEM

By 2023, neurodiversity was everywhere — in the press, on social media, in HR policies. But volume wasn't the same as quality. Most coverage was either clinical and inaccessible, or personal and anecdotal without any grounding. For the people actually living with ADHD, autism, and related conditions, the public conversation felt simultaneously overwhelming and somehow still not about them.

The gap wasn't awareness. It was credibility and compassion in the same place at the same time.

THE BRIEF

Ben Branson — entrepreneur and founder of Seedlip — had the conviction and the platform. What the project needed was a strategic and psychological framework that could hold the weight of the subject: something that would attract serious contributors, earn the trust of the neurodivergent community, and produce content that treated its audience as intelligent adults rather than a demographic to be educated at.

I was brought in as a strategic consultant to help build that foundation — drawing on my background in strategy and psychology to shape the editorial premise, define the approach, and ensure the series had the rigour the subject deserved.

THE WORK

The framework we developed started from a simple but underused idea: that the people best placed to speak about neurodiversity were those with lived experience of it, in conversation with those who had studied it seriously. Not celebrities talking about their diagnoses in isolation. Not academics presenting findings without humanity. Both, together, in a format that let the conversation go somewhere.

That approach attracted contributors who brought genuine depth. Kit Harington spoke about his ADHD and OCD diagnosis. Martine McCutcheon and Millie Mackintosh discussed their adult ADHD experiences. Heston Blumenthal, Mae Stephens, and Sam Branson contributed perspectives from entrepreneurship and creative life. Professor Nancy Doyle — ADHD organisational psychologist and founder of Genius Within — provided the academic backbone that gave the series its authority.

THE RESULT

The 2024 British Podcast Awards recognised the series with a Silver for Best Interview and a nomination for Best New Podcast — a strong result for a first series in a competitive category. More importantly, the podcast found an audience that felt, perhaps for the first time, that something made about them had been made properly.