Angela Kingdon

Around one in six workers today identifies as neurodivergent. These employees are often among your highest performers and your most valuable analytical talent. In the 2026 Neurodiversity Index, up to 80% of employers feel ready on neurodiversity, while about a third of neurodivergent employees feel safe enough to disclose. Awareness has outpaced delivery, and the next step is giving managers the practical skills, language and tools to turn good intentions into consistent day-to- day leadership.

Dr Angela Kingdon speaks to business leaders from both sides of the table. She built a $50M+ company with Inc. 500 recognition and was diagnosed Autistic as an adult, so she knows high- performing, numbers-driven cultures and the neurodivergent experience from the inside. She turns lived insight and hard-won business experience into practical, jargon-free tools leaders can put to work the next morning.

Ideal for CEOs and senior leaders, People and HR directors, heads of L&D, DE&I and wellbeing leads, and employee-network chairs across corporates, professional services, tech, the public sector and membership organisations.

Attendees gain:

• A way to spot and keep the high-value analytical talent competitors are losing.
• Concrete changes to feedback, meetings and expectations that get more from everyone.
• Practical guardrails that lower your risk of a tribunal, from hiring through to exit.
• A simple sensory check to add to onboarding so new hires do their best work.
• Skills to keep cross-team communication clear and constructive.
• The link between a neuroinclusive team and better service for neurodivergent clients.
• Tips for matching deep-focus people and big-picture people with work that energises them.

High performers are often the people organisations rely on most. They bring intensity, speed, loyalty and problem-solving, and they keep going when everyone else is overwhelmed. Many of them, neurodivergent employees especially, also spend enormous energy masking: adjusting how they think, work and communicate to fit expectations that stay unspoken. That hidden effort is the Masking Tax, and it is one of the biggest drivers of burnout and turnover among your best people.

In this practical keynote, Dr Angela Kingdon shows leaders how to treat burnout as a design problem with design solutions. Drawing on more than 25 years as a CEO, communications expert and psychology researcher, she shows how to lower the Masking Tax so talented people can sustain high-quality work for the long term.

Attendees gain:

• Awareness of why high performers are often most vulnerable to burnout.
• A clear understanding of masking and its cost to your business in energy, retention and performance.
• Insight into how meetings, urgency and unspoken expectations drain talent.
• Strategies to reduce unnecessary demand while keeping standards high.
• A framework for building systems where people do their best work for longer.

Most leaders want motivated, loyal, high-performing teams. Many workplace systems accidentally reward overwork and mistake compliance for commitment, and neurodivergent employees often feel this first. People perform engagement while their energy, creativity and trust quietly drain away.

Drawing on her experience as a founder who supported nearly 2,000 entrepreneurs and thought leaders, and on decades studying communication and psychology, Dr Angela Kingdon helps leaders see what drives performance across every kind of mind: clarity, autonomy, trust, meaningful work and conditions that support sustainable contribution.

Attendees gain:

• A fresh understanding of what motivates neurodivergent and neurotypical people at work.
• Insight into how loyalty grows when people feel understood and well supported.
• Strategies for leading high performers so they stay energised.
• Practical ways to strengthen trust, feedback and psychological safety.
• A leadership lens that supports performance, wellbeing and retention.

Every team runs on unwritten rules about feedback, urgency, hierarchy and ownership. Neurodivergent and neurotypical colleagues often bring different rules to work, and ordinary differences in communication start to look like flaws in character. One person sees confidence; another sees disrespect. One sees organisation; another sees rigidity. In Atlassian research reported in February 2026, 83% of UK workers said misinterpreted messages had caused workplace consequences.

Drawing on a PhD in Communications and her perspective as a late-diagnosed Autistic woman, Dr Angela Kingdon helps audiences recognise the unwritten rule behind a judgement and ask a better question before acting on it. The session combines stories with practical tools people can use in their next conversation with a colleague, employee or client.

Attendees gain:

• A way to separate what someone said from what they assumed it meant.
• Awareness of the unwritten rules that shape feedback, urgency, hierarchy and ownership.
• Questions that make expectations explicit early, while issues are still small.
• Ways to adapt communication across neurotypes with respect for each individual.
• Practical tools for agreeing ownership, deadlines, handovers and updates.

A June 2026 Lilac Centre report found that 76% of UK neurodivergent entrepreneurs started a business to work in a way that suited them, and 79% face workload or burnout challenges as they grow. Growth and sustainability can work together when the business is designed around the people who run it.

Dr Angela Kingdon built a business that generated more than $50M over 15 years, and she knows the true cost of growth that outpaces the person at its centre. In this session she shows founders and leaders how to design ways of working that fit their capacity. She introduces the Automation Tax, the hidden demands that new tools and systems create, and shows how to judge any change by the usable capacity it gives back.

Ideal for founders, business owners, leadership teams and entrepreneur communities, including neurodivergent founders and the organisations that support them.

Attendees gain:

• Awareness of the early signs that a business is outpacing the people who run it.
• A practical way to spot hidden demands in tools, processes and commitments.
• Strategies for reducing unnecessary demand while keeping growth on track.
• Tools for designing workflows, meetings and boundaries around real capacity.
• One practical change to make straight away.