Collaboration has always been one of the hardest parts of my career, and not because people are incapable or unwilling, but more often due to conditions make good collaboration difficult for those challenged with neurodiversity. Remote work, distributed teams, time zones, conflicting priorities, overloaded calendars, along with , personality mismatches, unconscious bias, power dynamics, and differing communication styles all get in the way. Even when everyone has good intent, meaningful collaboration can feel fragile, exhausting, or inaccessible…especially in deeply technical roles where thinking time matters as much as meeting time. Over the years, I’ve learned that the biggest barrier to…
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We organizers just wrapped up the Data Platform DEI Neurodiversity Day, which I helped host while battling a pretty major illness. During two sessions especially, one by James Reeves and another by Itzel Yagual, I had a bit of an epiphany about how my brain works and I thought I’d share. I’ve long known that I’m wired differently as a neurodiverse individual. I give the term multitasking a run for its money, as a professional once described my brain as having 25 McDonald’s drive-thrus, all taking orders at once. My daily goal, as someone with AuDHD, is to manage that…
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Recharging, Exploring, and Sharing Knowledge So My Kevlar Stays Intact The world is always moving fast for me, so it’s easy to overlook the importance of self-care. We often find ourselves caught up in work, deadlines, and the constant drive for productivity. However, taking the time to step away, unplug, and recharge is vital. Not only for my mental and physical well-being but also for my creativity and professional growth. Recently, I had the incredible opportunity to spend a couple of weeks traveling through Europe, exploring the vibrant cities of Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Trieste, and finally, the charming coastal…
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I’ve just returned from Data Saturday Oslo and Data Saturday Dallas, and tomorrow I’m off to Oracle Cloud World. Both Data Saturday events were amazing, even with the little hiccup of my lost luggage in Oslo. The experience was made even better by the incredible gluten-free options provided by my gracious hosts—special thanks to Johan for that! At the Dallas event, in addition to presenting on the benefits of leveraging instant extracts with Azure Fabric, I led a session on thriving with ADHD. The room filled up quickly, and while some may have been surprised by the large turnout, I…
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“Kellyn, how is it you always find the bullies/narcissists if there are just a few bad apples?” I was asked this question this last weekend at an event, and I’ve often wondered what it is about me that drives some individuals, particularly workplace bullies and narcissists, to implode shortly after working with me. It’s a great question, so let’s dive into it— We often think of bad apples as rare, but it’s really about percentages, personalities, and work culture. Encountering a bully, or even a narcissist, is something I expect at least once every one to two years. How I…
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So, this last week I had the opportunity to speak and attend at the SQLbits conference. This was high on my list after attending an Oracle event last year where even attendees and organizers there mentioned that they admired the conference and the way that it was run. I fully admit to running the full gambit of either hyper-aware or completely oblivious and with SQLBits, I’d been a bit of the latter and I wanted to change that. Now I want to preface this post with saying that I refer to this month as “March madness” and that means that…
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Each person’s experience with a diagnosis is going to be as unique as the individual and when it comes to ADHD, this is exceptionally true. Although diagnosis gave me an answer and a sense of relief, it also caused me confusion when I was presented with common challenges that ADHD folks experience. I was diagnosed after the age of 40, which means I had over three decades to build out coping mechanisms, accommodations/work arounds or simply battled an ADHD tendency into surrender. These are the traits that I neatly fit into the box when someone imagines ADHD: Folks with ADHD…
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I’ve recently become a Co-organizer for the Data Platform DEI community, representing women in technology and individuals with Autism/ADHD. I’m joining some awesome people in the Microsoft community- Tracy Boggiano, Deepthi Goguri and Kay Sauter. Today, I want to share more about my journey with Autism/ADHD (AuDHD), a condition that made me feel different from my peers since childhood and led to challenges such as bullying. Understanding and embracing this aspect of my diversity has been a continuous journey and where I wanted to be anyone other than me as a child, that’s a distant memory and I can’t imagine…
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I’ll be speaking along with a slew of fantastic other presenters on mental health and wellness as part of the Women in Tech Data Platform on May 7th, 2021. This is a day we all come together to recognize the importance of self-care in our lives, but especially during this unprecedented time of the pandemic. I’ll be presenting a session titled, “Turning ADHD into “Awesome Dynamic Highly Dependable” It’s a long time coming, as I’m so often asked how I make ADHD look so easy. As most folks know, I don’t consider ADHD a disorder, but a unique wiring of…
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It was brought to my ADHD attention, that one of our community members is leaving after she was made to feel unwelcome by some who, (IMHO) have insecurities so deep, that they have nothing else better to do than do harm to others. Correcting others on preferred pronouns or even more challenging, transitioning is something I can’t imagine the difficulty around. I’ve only had the experiences as a parent of a gay son and one gender non-identifying child- the unintentional and intentional cruelty of others was impactful enough. I had more than one occasion of a child returning home, embarrassed…
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The first of three books that I’ve been working on this year is out! From Melody Zacharias’ “Let Them Finish” series, this is the Stories from the Trenches, a collection of stories about diversity in tech and how to survive and overcome the challenges. The book can be picked up via hardcopy from Amazon and a Kindle version is around the corner, if like me, paper is against your religion. 🙂 I want to thank Rie Irish for recommending me, Melody Zacharias for allowing me, an Oracle girl, to contribute to this book, and Tracy Boggiano, Angela Tidwell, Brian Carrig,…