1st Annual Global Neurodivergent Leaders Summit 2025

1st Annual Global Neurodivergent Leaders Summit 2025

 

This event spotlighted the brilliance of leaders who were once labeled as “disabled” simply because they think differently.

 

These trailblazers—CEOs, Global speakers, Executive coaches, and Industry Titans from Banking, Real Estate, and the Global Sales and Marketing —have leveraged their ADHD, dyslexia, OCD, and other forms of neurodivergence as superpowers that set them apart.

Let’s celebrate and elevate those who are changing the world—not in spite of how they think, but because of it.

 

Raymond Kemp

Title: Navigating with a Different Compass (Leading with ADHD in a Neurotypical World)

Summary: Leadership isn't reserved for those who think in straight lines. It's about clarity, self-command, and the courage to lead from exactly where you are. I want every leader in the room—whether neurodivergent or not—to walk away knowing that different doesn’t mean deficient. When you understand your wiring and Own the Helm, your unique perspective becomes a competitive advantage, not a compromise.

 

Kathy Marcino

Title: Coaching Through Conflict: Learn Strategies for Identifying Conflict Types, Successfully Navigating Workplace Conflict, and Turning It into Positive Growth.

Summary: “Disagreement holds the potential for deeper understanding.”

When conflict is managed effectively, it can drive innovation and enhance team performance. In this session, Kathy Marcino walks leaders through a structured path for transforming disagreements into shared goals and solutions. Drawing from her extensive coaching experience, she equips participants with a framework to recognize early warning signs, stay grounded in difficult conversations, and co-create lasting resolutions that strengthen team dynamics and performance.

 

Dan Dominguez

Title: Embrace Your Neurodivergent Edge: How Self-Awareness Fuels Resilient Leadership

Summary: When I first entered the military, I thought I had to be just like everyone else—follow the rules, fit in, and never let my differences show. But in the heat of tough missions, something clicked: the way my mind worked—my neurodivergent wiring—wasn’t a liability. It was my edge. Later, in the world of sales, I saw the same truth again: those traits I once hid—my intense focus, my out-of-the-box thinking, my deep desire to help others—were exactly what helped me forge real connections and close deals. It took self-awareness to stop fighting those parts of myself and start using them as strengths. In this talk, I share that journey, along with a simple framework—Recognize, Accept, Celebrate—to help others stop hiding and start embracing their own neurodivergent edge. My story is a reminder: your greatest leadership potential lies not in fitting in, but in owning and celebrating who you really are.

Paul McCarthy

Title: Drowning out the voices we need to hear. Why F.I.R.E.D. leaders are your 'hidden gems'

Summary: Two Options:Talk Summary 1

To survive disruption, organizations need leaders who possess disruptive leadership capabilities. So they hire them and then they fire them. Publicly, organizations say they want leaders to be innovative thinkers who challenge the status quo. Privately, conventional leadership culture wants nothing of the sort. Leaders with disruptive leadership capabilities often embody the very leadership qualities that organizations so desperately need to navigate disruption and adapt to the “new normal” of constant change, yet these leaders are being marginalized, ostracized, and even exorcised from today’s organizations. We will need a different kind of leader for the future and our organizations are unprepared for how to identify, recruit, onboard, and develop this kind of leader. Join us for a radical, refreshing talk with Paul McCarthy, as openly talks about the untalkable, questions the unquestionable, and reframes perceptions about the leadership we desperately need for our times. Paul will share insights from his own experiences as a leader with disruptive leadership capabilities, as well as from his global research and first best-selling book into how individual leaders can be identified, cultivated, and embraced for being disruptive. He will also help us to understand how we can identify disruptive leadership capacity and capability.

Talk Summary 2

Paul takes audiences on an exploratory journey to imagine a future where leaders who are currently perceived as 'not fitting in' or as 'bad culture fits' are the ones that organizations will increasingly need to thrive in a constantly changing environment. Yet these leaders are being marginalized, ostracized, and even exorcised from today’s organizations. Using his own personal experiences, as well as research, case studies and outputs of interviews, Paul introduces the F.I.R.E.D. Leadership Framework and shows organizations why we nee