Considerations for Hiring the Neurodivergent While Creating a Sense of Belonging for All 

with Shelly Dretzka, SPHR and Denise Schramens

 In a market where talent is at a premium and diversity is valued, there is an untapped pool of talented individuals – the neurodivergent. Where do you find these individuals? How do you engage them and integrate this new diversity dimension into your organization’s culture? Tangible best practices, compelling resources and examples of success stories. The challenge, of course, is understanding neurodivergence and how the diverse employee brings value to your organization without adding more compliance to your plate. In this session, learn from two mothers — and experienced professionals in their own fields of non-profit and Human Resources— how you can attract, engage and retain qualified neurodivergent employees, as well as the benefits of the addition to the team.

Learning Objective 1: Understand the difference between "neurodiverse" and "neurodivergent", and how to best interact with and engage neurodivergent talent.

Learning Objective 2: Learn how to improve your diverse culture with limited addition to your compliance tasks.

Learning Objective 3: Learn best practices and access resources to put into action immediately for attraction, retention & engagement.

Bio on Shelly Dretzka

Shelly Dretzka, SPHR is the mother of two young men, one a neurotypical college sophomore and the other a neurodivergent student teacher/coach. With her 25+ years of HR experience, she founded aHRrow Consulting in the middle of the COVID pandemic. Her style is personal, approach is upbeat, and objective is always the same—to be an HR business partner who is a seamless extension of her client’s team.

Bio on Denise Schamens

Denise Schamens is the Executive Director and Co-founder of nonprofit organization Good Friend, Inc. (Brookfield, Wis.), which is devoted to autism awareness, acceptance, and empathy. Her inspiration comes from being a mother of a child/young adult on the spectrum.  Her journey has taught more than 58,000 people how to better understand autistic neurology.

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