Welcome to Rise Up, AllBright’s celebration of diverse careers, diverse experiences and diverse women in the workplace. Curated by our community, for our community, this is a space to champion the incredible work achieved by all women. This week, we hear from Alessandra Bester, the mother of an autistic son who decided to set up her own business, with an ethos of giving work to young people with a range of disabilities.

According to the National Autism Society, there is a gender diagnosis gap when it comes to autism - women are more likely to be diagnosed later in life, or have more difficulty in getting the help and support they need.

A 2018 poll for CIPD, the organisation for HR professionals in the UK, found that “due to a lack of awareness within UK organisations and the way that most organisations are physically and structurally set up for ‘neurotypicals’, many workplaces do not enable neurodiverse individuals to perform to their full potential”. CIPD said that "given the high prevalence of neurodivergence, organisations are missing out on the unique strengths of a large talent pool.”

Here, one woman shares her experience of employing neurodiverse people and outlines how workplaces can become more inclusive.

Alessandra Bester never thought she’d end up where she currently is: the founder of her own food company.

She started her career in hospitality, and then set up a creative agency working from home when she became a mother. Her son, who is now 16, is autistic, and being a single mum and a parent of a neurodiverse child meant that she never felt she really fit in with a “very male driven, dominated world”. So she paused and decided to forge a new path. “Naturally, out of a life crisis, a business emerged,” she says. “It just so happened that I’d spent two decades studying nutrition, and my son had such complex eating needs that I'd developed a range of snacks and food solutions for him.”

As she shared these on social media, the autism community responded, and she decided to set up her own business, with an ethos of giving work to young people with a range of disabilities. Her latest project has been offering 50 autistic women artists the opportunity to showcase their art and designs on new chocolate bars.

How have you seen neurodiversity perceived by workplaces?

When I set up my home kitchen, my son got involved and he was only 10 years old at the time. He’s severely affected by autism; he's non-verbal, he needs 24-hour care. So for me to see that he could do a range of tasks was a big lightbulb moment. I immediately thought, ‘imagine what someone twice his age can do’, or 'imagine what people who are more functional than him can do'. I have this set of skills to assist someone and understand how the work needs to be modified and to be an example for other companies.

So I got in contact with a local adult education college and we started having interns coming in, with a range of disabilities, primarily a neurodiverse group. And what we noticed was that they had never been educated to be prepared for work. It was decided for them that they would never work, even though they were perfectly able to. They were patronised, and treated like children.

But because we took them on and treated them like adults with sets of skills, magic started happening. The feedback we got from our students was that we treat them equally, which was something they'd never experienced.

What one or two things can workplaces be doing to make sure they're inclusive and open to people who are neurodiverse?

I think this is a real challenge and I'm not sure that any place is ready for that. And the reason why I say that is because education has to change. We cannot expect people who have never come across someone with autism, for instance, to just take them on, especially if we don't have good preparation of those young people from college into employment.

What we have done is prepare someone for real employment afterwards, and then assist the companies that we've moved the person to. There are actual consultants, people who do specifically that, who will go to your company and look into what area of your company you can recruit someone with additional needs or a disability of any sorts, and make you more inclusive.

On the smallest scale, what definitely can be done is to take on the apprentices or interns to start with. That person may need a little bit more time to adapt to the workplace and settle into it, but what you’re doing is investing in a lifelong employee.

That's one side; on the other hand there are thousands of thousands of diverse freelancers, who are able to deliver very effectively from their own space. So that's definitely something that I would encourage everyone else to try.

How will the future workplace be built for neurodiverse people?

When the management may be understanding and inclusive and eager, that employee still has to deal with a range of other employees or customers, and not everyone on the spectrum wants to advertise that they are on the spectrum. Education is definitely the key, but I also think that an openness is needed, and by that I mean acceptance is really required.

People are really socially hungry, socially deprived, and we need to recreate that kind of model where a workplace is more of a family where one looks after the other.

[Our apprentices] all say that was the best job they've ever worked in because they didn't come just for the money, they were leaving work everyday really satisfied and happy. And I feel that for people to perform, they need more than just to be competitive.