Why Isn't Neurodiversity Near the Top of the DEI Agenda?

Every agency pitch deck has a slide about disruptive thinking. Every award show speech thanks the "misfits or weirdos" and the "passionate" who made the work sing. We built an entire industry on the premise that different brains produce better ideas. Full disclosure: I count myself among the weird ones.

So why is neurodiversity nowhere near the top of our DEI agenda?

A digital designer works on a graphic tablet at a well-organised desk, surrounded by design tools and a colour chart.

The industry built for neurodivergent minds

Think about what the job actually asks of people. Pattern recognition under pressure. Lateral connections nobody else sees. Hyperfocus for eighteen hours on a pitch, then a dead week with nothing to do. Intense client onboardings, feast, famine, repeat. If you were designing a job around the cognitive strengths that show up in ADHD and autistic brains, you'd accidentally build advertising.

And yet the industry runs on exactly the conditions that make that same wiring unsustainable in the long term. Structure, what? Predictability, who? "We're like a family" in lieu of PDs or meaningful KPIs. Burnout dressed up as passion. The job asks for the neurodivergent brain's gifts but where is the scaffolding for it to work?

We already know the industry bleeds people at very predictable moments. People who don't come back post parental leave. The well-documented exodus of thirty-somethings heading client-side, in-house, anywhere else... We talk about these patterns like they're just the way it is. They're not. They're what happens when an industry runs on adrenaline instead of infrastructure.

Advertising is often the industry everyone else watches. The first calls on tech, culture and trends. And with reason. Which makes it worth asking: For a business that sells “different thinking” why are we in the same DEI spot as everyone else?

The research says the same thing, just with citations

This isn't just a vibe. To put it plainly: neurodiversity programs still lag behind DEI work focused on race, gender and sexual orientation. Here in Australia, research from the Australian HR Institute found only 33% of organisations see neurodiversity as a workplace priority. There's also no legal requirement in Australia to even measure it, so most companies simply don't. And we all know you can't fix a gap you've never bothered to count.

Globally, a 2025 Career Development International synthesis of neurodivergent career research found only 25% of neurodivergent professionals feel truly included at work. One in four. That means three in four don't feel seen, heard, or included. That's not a rounding error. And that number's conservative. Women get diagnosed later, less often, usually after years of masking their way past it. So, the real rate is much higher.

The industry I used to call home, in three snapshots

I went looking at three of the bodies steering this conversation for Australian advertising and media. None of them are ignoring this. But all three, to different degrees, have folded it into something broader rather than given it room of its own.

ACA is genuinely doing the most of the three. Their Create Space census has measured neurodiversity since 2022, they list a dedicated neurodiversity training partner, and their D&I certificate has a full module on it. What neurodiversity doesn’t have is a seat at the main table. Of the six priorities that made it into their actual action plan, the one closest to home is "disability," and neurodiversity isn't named inside it.

IMAA leans on that same ACA work rather than building its own. Their four pillars are cultural diversity, age and gender, LGBTQI+, and disability and accessibility. Neurodiversity sits inside that last one, represented by a single ADHD Australia link, and their further-reading list points straight back to ACA's Create Space hub.

MFA is doing real, credible work in its own right. Lived-experience essays from neurodivergent staff. A data partnership with Roy Morgan to actually start counting who's out there. It's a genuine parallel track to ACA's, but on their own inclusion hub it still doesn't get the same standalone billing as other DEI pillars.

Three bodies, one shared pattern: neurodiversity is present, sometimes well-resourced, and still nobody's given it a pillar of its own. And it's not just me saying it. Lorraine Woods, Chief Investment and Trading Officer at Atomic 212°, wrote last year about sitting at a Cannes Lions panel on neurodivergent talent and asking herself where the Australian voices were. A year on, the industry's own diversity bodies are still working that out.

What actually moves the needle

The research isn't short on answers, and none of them are complicated. Build strengths-based practices instead of deficit-based accommodation. Take diagnosis, disclosure and identity seriously as things that happen across someone's whole career. What someone needs at 25 isn't what they'll need at 45, and support that doesn't flex with that is already out of date. Train leaders and teams to be neuroinclusive by default. Fix the structural stuff, like hours, hybrid models and expectations. These things make the job easier for everyone, neurodivergent or not. And measure outcomes that matter.

None of that requires reinventing the industry. It requires admitting the industry has a blind spot in its greatest strength.

We built a business model on different thinking. It's time to build the workplace to match.

Sources: Danaeka Wilkes, Neurodiverse Workforce: The Invisible Diversity (doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland Global Campus, 2024). William Donald, Elizabeth Cook & Nimmi Mohandas, Fostering an Inclusive and Sustainable Career Ecosystem, Career Development International, 2025 (citing Kirby et al., EY Global Neuroinclusion at Work Study, 2025, for the 25% inclusion figure). Amaze & Diversity Council Australia, Neurodiversity Data at Work, 2026 (citing the Australian HR Institute's 2023 State of DEI in Australian Workplaces research, and Doyle). Advertising Council Australia, Create Space Census and Action Plan. Independent Media Agencies of Australia, Diversity & Inclusion page. Media Federation of Australia, Media For All inclusion hub. Lorraine Woods, "The Neurodiversity Opportunity: Why Australian Media Agencies Can't Afford to Wait," B&T, June 2025.