BOARD CHAIR

Bridgette Hamstead is the Founding Director of Fish in a Tree: Center for Neurodiversity Education, Advocacy, and Activism and Chairperson of the Neurodiversity Coalition of America, where she leads transformative work at the intersection of education, healthcare, and social justice. She is an AuDHD woman, autistic and ADHD, late diagnosed, and she is the architect of the Neurodiversity Justice™ Framework, the intellectual and strategic foundation of the neurodiversity justice movement that moves beyond the neurodiversity paradigm to center justice, equity, and systemic accountability. An internationally recognized writer, keynote speaker, and activist, she has been featured as a United Nations panelist for World Autism Acceptance Day and as the keynote for Global Neurodiversity Pride Day, and she has been named Activist of the Year for her work in the movement.

Bridgette's work blends lived experience with scholarship to advance neurodiversity justice, build sustainable systems of neurodivergent led change, and challenge structural ableism across institutions. She is the author of the forthcoming books The Trouble with Being Good: How Late-Diagnosed AuDHD Women Break the Rules to Save Themselves, which combines memoir, research, and collective testimony to reframe survival as resistance, and Neurodiversity Justice: The Definitive Guide to the Framework and the Movement. She is also the host of The Trouble With Being Good podcast. Bridgette holds a master's degree in human development and family science with a specialization in gerontology, and under her leadership, Fish in a Tree has grown into a neurodivergent led, justice oriented organization with national and global reach, partnering with universities, corporations, nonprofits, and cultural institutions to build lasting, structural change.

BOARD MEMBER

Stephanie Bealer is a licensed therapist and counselor whose clinical work centers the lived experience of neurodivergent people rather than treating that experience as a set of symptoms to correct. She writes and speaks from a neurodiversity affirming framework, holding the full complexity of concepts like masking without flattening them into a single explanation or a single population. Her work makes clear that masking can be a neurodivergent experience and a trauma response at the same time, and that clinicians, educators, and leaders who fail to hold both truths at once risk missing the person in front of them entirely. She publishes her writing on Mind Clinic, where her debut piece on trauma, masking, and identity established her as a clinician whose thinking is rigorous, affirming, and genuinely useful to the field.

Stephanie serves on the board of the Neurodiversity Coalition of America, where she brings a clinical and therapeutic lens to the organization's structural and advocacy work. She is also a co-host of the podcast The Trouble With Being Good, where she engages directly with the late-diagnosed AuDHD community and the anger, grief, and reckoning that often accompany a late diagnosis. Her voice belongs firmly within the neurodiversity justice movement: she understands this territory from the inside, and she brings that understanding to bear on every piece of clinical and public-facing work she produces.

BOARD MEMBER

Raymond Byrnes is a dyslexic professional who recently retired after three decades at one of the Big Four accounting firms. Throughout his career, he brought his identity as a dyslexic person into his professional life rather than keeping it separate from it, understanding early on that his neurodivergent mind was an asset to his work rather than a deficit to manage. He built a distinguished career in a field that demands precision and analytical rigor, proving in practice what the neurodiversity justice movement asserts in principle: that dyslexic minds bring genuine value to complex professional work when structures make room for them.

Beyond his professional responsibilities, Raymond was an active member of his firm's Abilities in Motion (AIM) Business Resource Group and a key contributor to its neurodiversity sub-group, where he helped build internal advocacy and support structures for neurodivergent employees inside a major institution. He now brings that same depth of personal and professional experience to this movement and this community, offering a rare combination of lived neurodivergent experience and decades of insight into how large institutions can be restructured to include and support neurodivergent people rather than merely accommodate them.

BOARD MEMBER

Dr. J.D. Neubauer, LMFT, is a neuroqueer therapist and a licensed marriage and family therapist practicing with Insight Therapy Group PC. They use they/them pronouns, and their work sits at the intersection of neurodivergence and queerness, honoring the reality that these identities are not separate threads to untangle but a single, integrated way of moving through the world. Dr. Neubauer brings a neurodiversity affirming lens to clinical practice, rejecting deficit models of neurodivergence and gender in favor of frameworks that center authenticity, structural analysis, and the lived experience of the people they work with.

As a board member and thought partner within the neurodiversity justice movement, Dr. Neubauer contributes clinical depth and conceptual rigor to conversations about proof of concept, abstraction, and real-world application, the kind of grounded thinking that keeps ambitious initiatives tethered to the people they are meant to serve. Their perspective as a neuroqueer therapist offers a critical and necessary lens: one that insists neurodivergent and queer identities be understood together, not as parallel issues but as a shared site of liberation.

BOARD MEMBER

Sierra Grandy identifies most as an adventurer, and that framing runs through everything she does. Her main quest is working as a professional speaker on neurodiversity, disability, and mental health recovery, helping workplaces and communities build teams that are more inclusive, effective, and accessible. She is the founder of Questify Your Life, a storytelling studio and creative guild where she supports fellow adventurers through the Adventure Party, her gamified coaching program, through executive coaching built specifically for neurodivergent professionals, and through her work as a professional Game Master for corporate team-building role-playing games that highlight the skills related to psychological safety in the workplace. Sierra brings a neurodivergent, disabled, and policy-minded perspective to her work, and she has carried that same perspective into public life: in 2026, she ran as a Democratic candidate for Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, a campaign she pursued alongside her ongoing commitments as a speaker and advocate.

Sierra is also an avid volunteer, advocate, and advisor in her community. She is a licensed attorney in the state of Minnesota and occasionally practices pro bono through some of her favorite organizations. She serves in leadership roles with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Minnesota State Advisory Council on Mental Health, and the Minnesota Disability Bar Association, and she is a proud member of the Neurodiversity Coalition of America. Her work across every one of these roles is rooted in lived experience as a neurodivergent and disabled person and as someone in long-term mental health recovery, and she brings that grounding to every keynote, coaching relationship, and advocacy effort she takes on. She is also a co-host on The Trouble With Being Good podcast.

BOARD MEMBER

Rebecca Tarrant is the neurodivergent mother of an Autistic child and the founder of Autistic Youth International, formerly known as Autism Kids. Founded to expand representation, inclusion, and support for Autistic and Neurodivergent youth in Charlotte-area schools and beyond, the organization has grown from a local mission into one with international partnerships, and it now provides inclusive resources, youth-led advocacy, and community programs that celebrate neurodiversity and disability pride for young people from birth through age twenty-four. She holds a law degree from Northern Kentucky University's Salmon P. Chase College of Law, and she brings that legal training to her work as a nonprofit founder, advocate, and speaker dedicated to advancing autism acceptance.

Rebecca is also the author of The Inclusive ABCs, a children's book written from her perspective as a neurodivergent mom of an Autistic child, which introduces words familiar to all children alongside language specific to neurodivergence and disability, with all proceeds benefiting her nonprofit's work in inclusive books and neurodiversity pride. Her organization serves as a North Carolina affiliate group of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and her writing and advocacy consistently center autistic voices and neuro-affirming initiatives rather than deficit-based framings of autism. Rebecca brings a rare combination of parental lived experience, legal training, and grassroots organizing to the neurodiversity justice movement.

BOARD MEMBER

Dr. Adam "Dutch" Hazlett is a tenured professor of humanities at Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Michigan, where he has educated students at the collegiate level for over twenty-five years. He is a Fulbright Specialist in Education, honored in 2025 for his international leadership in universal design and neuro-affirming learning approaches. He holds two master's degrees and a doctorate in humanities, along with certifications in Disability Inclusion from the University of Michigan and Neurodiversity from Florida State University, and he combines this academic foundation with practical expertise in equitable design and user experience. Diagnosed as autistic, Dr. Hazlett discovered his own autism while raising his child, and that personal journey continues to inform his professional work.

Dr. Hazlett is the founder of Humanities 101, an organization founded by and for autistic people with a mission to normalize neurodivergence in all its forms, focused on autism and neurodiversity outreach and education through workshops and community discussions. He is also the host of NACHOS, the Neuro-Affirming Conversation Hour for Outreach and Support, and he has developed the PB&J framework, built around predictability, balance, and joy, as a practical guide for supporting neurodivergent people in moving beyond survival into genuine thriving. His background in public relations and Fortune 500 companies, paired with his training in disability inclusion and user experience, allows him to present neurodiversity and disability accommodation with both insight and humor, and he brings that same combination of academic depth and lived experience to his role on the board of the Neurodiversity Coalition of America.