🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Robert Annis, Co-Founder, NEURO https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-16-2026/ In this candid episode of Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams welcomes Robert Annis, a London-based coach and organizational psychologist, and founder of NEURO, an inclusive charity built to make neuroinclusion a competitive advantage rather than a matter of ethics alone. Annis speaks openly about his own "late diagnosis" at 45 (he's now 47) as profoundly autistic, with co-occurring ADHD, prosopagnosia (face blindness), aphantasia, alexithymia, an absence of interoception, and severely deficient autobiographical memory, a lifetime of "masking" that finally had names. He explains why he founded NEURO after growing frustrated with charities focused on awareness alone: he wanted real social change, so he deliberately built NEURO to look and operate like a business consultancy, meeting leaders in the language of innovation, adaptability, and talent rather than moral obligation. It's a thesis Dr. Adams shares in his forthcoming book, The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion, that the resilience and cognitive diversity forged by overcoming barriers are exactly what organizations need to thrive. The conversation then turns to how NEURO actually drives change: the NEURO Standard, an accreditation spanning five organizational pillars and three tiers that lets employers and universities prove they are continuously investing in inclusion, and, in turn, attract the roughly one in six people who are neurodivergent, plus everyone who loves them. Annis shares early wins, a Great Britain Olympic rugby player who rebuilt her youth-coaching approach for neurodivergent kids, and final-year students in London and Manchester who used the NEURO Standard to audit their own universities as their capstone project, alongside fast traction for a charity registered only about two months earlier: three university partners (two UK, one Australian), local-council ties reaching some 26 high schools, a charity-of-the-year award, volunteers across three continents, and a first major client in a large energy provider. He closes with a borderless five-year vision, licensing the model to "commercial delivery partners" worldwide, growing a free NEURO Library of practical resources, and recruiting volunteers in a way that deliberately advances each volunteer's own career. TRANSCRIPT: Announcer: Welcome to Podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment, and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences, and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams, talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington — one of the sites for the World Cup. We had Egypt and Belgium yesterday, down the street from me, and on Friday it's the US and Australia, so football has taken over our city. And, coincidentally, I'm speaking today with someone from the United Kingdom: Robert Annis, who's based in London. Robert is the founder of NEURO, an inclusive charity seeking to make inclusion a competitive benefit to society — which aligns very closely with the work I do. Good morning to me, and good afternoon to you, Robert. Robert Annis: Thank you, Kirk — it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Dr. Kirk Adams: I'm glad you're here. I met Robert fairly recently through my good friend LinkedIn. As I said, Robert is the founder of NEURO, really focusing on working with organizations — companies, NGOs, governmental agencies — to help them understand that being inclusive of people with neurodiversity is a competitive advantage. I have a forthcoming business book that should be out soon; it's going into formatting right now, and it's called The Disability Dividend: Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion. So Robert and I have very similar views on the impacts of being truly inclusive of people with impairments — whether sight, hearing, neurological, or physical — and I'm really pleased to have Robert here today. We'll turn the microphone over to you; I'd love to hear the story. What's the journey that's brought you to where you are today with NEURO, and where are you going to take things? Robert Annis: Well, thank you, Kirk — that's a lovely introduction; I really appreciate it. It's really nice to be here. Getting to do something like a podcast is always a real pleasure, and it's always fascinating — you never know who's going to reach out afterwards and where it might lead, so I'm excited to see where this takes us. I think it's a really interesting topic you mentioned, around your book, my experience, and what we're doing with NEURO. The concept of being disabled is often seen as a negative, and I would never be the one to say it's a superpower — that's for sure. But there is an interesting point of view to be had: if someone can overcome the difficulties that society, and their own abilities, may put in front of them, then they develop a level of resilience and ability that can be very useful in organizations. It can create people who have exactly the sorts of skills organizations really need. However, we tend to have a bit of a lens over our view of people, so, quite traditionally, leaders will not look for people who are different — they look for people who are the same. Dr. Kirk Adams: Can we dig into the comment about the skills that employers need? Because that's certainly a conversation I— Robert Annis: I thought it might. Dr. Kirk Adams: I have a lot — and rather than lead with what I say about it, I'd love to hear what you say. You're talking to organizations about those skills. Robert Annis: I always try to think of it as a real-world example for them. A good one would be Covid, or artificial intelligence — massive, changing things that occur. Organizations, whether a school, a business, or an NGO, need to learn to survive through that, adapt, and ideally thrive. When you're going through those times, organizations need to be adaptable and flexible, and to do that, they need to be able to innovate and problem-solve. That is really fed by having multiple different mindsets and experiences — which can come from people of different age groups, different races, or different backgrounds of social mobility, but also different abilities, such as neurodivergence. So what we're helping organizations see is not to fear difference but to actually value it — to see that it brings things into your organization that can make you more successful. Critically, this means we're not going to organizations and leading with an ethical or moral argument; we're leading with a competitive one: that these people, like anybody, may have certain areas where they need help, but they also bring something rather special to the table, and that could be a huge differentiator for the organization. Dr. Kirk Adams: And what brought you to this work — your focus on neuro-difference? Robert Annis: Unsurprisingly, I was diagnosed as very neurodivergent indeed. I'm autistic — somewhere close to the edge of how autistic you can be. They were quite shocked when they did the tests; I think they said they hadn't seen a number that high, which I'm not sure is a compliment or not, but nonetheless. Dr. Kirk Adams: What age were you? Robert Annis: Yeah, I mean— Dr. Kirk Adams: How old were you? Robert Annis: It was about two years ago, so I'd have been 45. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, so recently. Robert Annis: Oh, yeah — very recently. 'Late diagnosis' is the correct term here, and that takes you on a certain journey. A lot of people who have differences, particularly in the brain — mainly because it's so complex that if there are differences, they have large-scale impacts — have comorbidity, meaning they have other things going on. So I have autism and ADHD, as I said, but also prosopagnosia, which is face blindness, so I don't remember faces or recognize people most of the time. I have aphantasia, so I don't have a mind's eye — I can't picture things, and I don't really dream. I have alexithymia, which means I struggle to comprehend emotions, both in myself and in others. I lack interoception, which is the ability to understand what's happening in your body, so I don't get hungry — I get ravenous: I'm fine, I'm fine, and then all of a sudden I'm eating the table, so that's entertaining. And I also have severely deficient autobiographical memory, or SDAM, which means I don't remember the past much. So all of these things come together, and they do make life quite tricky. Dr. Kirk Adams: Being diagnosed — given names for these things — when you're 45: does that explain a lot of your life experience before then? Robert Annis: Of course it does. I think the most fascinating thing about that, Kirk, is this: if you're unable to walk and so you need a wheelchair, it's very apparent — you're not surprised by it. But when it's something in your head, you're not aware of it, because as humans, growing up from children into adulthood, we're always just making sure we fit in and trying to understand the world around us and how we operate within it. So I knew I struggled with my memory and couldn't remember people, but that's not the kind of thing you vocalize and tell people, so I just put it to one side and tried to carry on. I became very good at what we call masking — using skills to effectively hide where I'm struggling. I would always let other people lead the conversation, and I'd try to avoid any topics about previous interactions. And I didn't alway
