September 26–27, 2026 • Virtual • Live summit access is FREE
*
September 26–27, 2026 • Virtual • Live summit access is FREE
September 26–27, 2026 • Virtual • Live summit access is FREE * September 26–27, 2026 • Virtual • Live summit access is FREE
MEET THIS YEAR’S
NEUROQUEER CAREER™
summit SPEAKERS!
Real neuroqueer humans taking the mic. Career advice that hits different.
This isn't a summit about becoming better at tolerating systems that aren't working for you. Join us and explore examples of careers that don’t follow the expected trajectory.
summit speakers
finding your path
〰️
working sustainably
〰️
advocacy & systems
〰️
financial futures
〰️
finding your path 〰️ working sustainably 〰️ advocacy & systems 〰️ financial futures 〰️
deanna seymour
she/her
Kasen Elrod
he/him
ash chudgar
he/they
Shana Sumers
she/her
Dr. Quynh-Huong Nguyen
She/They/Chi/Chanh
Ella Dawley
she/her
Adrienne Marcellus
THEY/SHE
Miyabe Shields
They/them
Angela Rockwell
THEY/them/she/her
Divinica LeBlanc
SHE/her
Praxie Osong
she/her
Ginelle Testa
they/them
Liz Massey
she/her
caitlin liz fisher
tHEy/THEm
Rae Trigg
HE/THEY
Say Hello 👋
to Your Host
& Keynote Speaker
Liora Natania (they/she) is the founder of Colorful Futures, a career coach, and an entrepreneur with 7+ years in recruiting. AuDHD and queer themselves, they help neurodivergent and queer folks build careers that fit their brains — whether that's landing the right job, going out on your own, or figuring out what you actually want.
They specialize in deprogramming the 9-to-5 brain and finding clients when "networking" makes you want to sink into the floor. No sugar-coating, no corporate jargon. Just honest, practical help building a career (or business) that makes your soul do a happy dance.
keynote session: Many Paths, No Wrong Turns
Your career was never supposed to be a straight line, and the detours, restarts, and unexpected turns aren't wrong turns. In this opening keynote, Liora traces her own winding path — design, coffee shops, recruiting, and eventually founding Colorful Futures — to show how every "sideways" move can stack into work that's actually yours. We'll get into why the old rules were never built for neurodivergent and queer folks, what success looks like when you stop forcing the fit, and how to build a career (and a life) on your own terms.
SUMMIT DAY 1
💜
SUMMIT DAY 1 💜
Schedule of Events
11:00–11:40 AM EST —🎤 KEYNOTE: Liora Natania — Many Paths, No Wrong Turns
11:50 AM–12:50 PM EST — 💬 PANEL — Know Your Needs: Unmasking & Self-Advocacy (Panelists: Ella Dawley, Kasen Elrod, Adrienne Marcellus, LCSW, Ash Chudgar, Miyabe Shields, PhD, Moderator: Shana Sumers)
1:00–1:40 PM EST — Liz Massey — The Life-Changing Magic of Cleaning Up Your Online Career Portfolio
1:40–2:25 PM EST — 🍴 Lunch + Regulation Break
2:25–3:05 PM EST — Shana Sumers — Hidden Job Market + 90-Day Networking Plan
3:15–3:55 PM EST — Miyabe Shields, PhD — Invisible But Important: Masking, Invisible Disability, Accommodations That Work
4:05–4:45 PM EST — Rae Trigg — Self-Employment Taxes & Deductions
4:55–5:40 PM EST — 🌕 Full-Moon Session, An optional intention-setting + prompted journaling session
6:00–7:00 PM EST — 🌈 FIRST CLASS Networking Mixer (FIRST CLASS only)
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Shana Sumers is a keynote speaker, career coach and professional athlete who helps women athletes build careers as powerful as their game to succeed in life beyond sports. Drawing from her experience of launching and scaling communities at startups and corporations and navigating career transitions as an athlete, she teaches relationship capital, confidence, and career strategy for professional success.
Connect with Shana:
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Ella Dawley, PMP, is the author of Guerrilla Mode: A Workbook for Strategic Liberation & Empowered Action and a humanitarian systems navigator and intersectional systems thinker. Drawing from her lived experience as a neurodivergent and queer professional and nearly a decade in complex professional environments, her work focuses on practical tools for self-advocacy, systems navigation, emotional regulation, documentation, protecting energy, and intentional decision-making. She helps people build tools they can use independently, with greater capacity, clarity, agency, and self-trust.
Connect with Ella:
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Kasen is a coach with a doctorate in occupational therapy and seven years of clinical experience. He's also a trans man and neurodivergent, having learned both of these aspects of himself later in life. That lived experience, combined with his clinical background, led him to found The Queer Hub. Through his work, he partners with queer and neurodivergent adults to navigate the barriers that make getting and keeping a job so much harder. That includes masking, sensory overwhelm, and executive function challenges that most workplaces were never built to accommodate.
Connect with Kasen:
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Adrienne Marcellus, LCSW, is an AuDHD therapist, clinical assessor, and educator with over a decade of experience in mental health. She specializes in Autism, ADHD, AuDHD, masking, late identification, and complex presentations often overlooked by traditional systems. Adrienne provides affirming clinical assessments and diagnoses for adults and teens. Through All for the Dopamine, they combine professional expertise and lived experience to explore neurodivergence, chronic illness, masking, burnout, and identity.
Connect with Adrienne:
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Ash Chudgar, Ph.D., is a coach and consultant who helps people and organizations communicate more skillfully in diverse communities. Their work is about restoring people’s freedom to communicate at every scale—in the world, in our communities, and especially within ourselves. Ash’s approach to healing and liberation draws on their experience as a cultural historian, a teacher of fiction and poetry, and a trained Internal Family Systems practitioner. They live in Northeast Minneapolis with their husband and two cats.
Connect with Ash:
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Dr. Miyabe Shields, PhD is a neurodivergent scientist, educator, and an advocate who has a nonlinear career spanning academic and industrial pharmaceutical research, disability services, community organizing, and public education. Miyabe is a professor as well as the co-founder of a 501c3 non-profit, the Network of Applied Pharmacognosy, where they aim to bridge the gap between the natural products research world and the community. Miyabe is an author, inventor, researcher, musician, and a queer, neurodivergent, stoner scientist and advocate.
Connect with Miyabe:
Panel Session
Know your needs: unmasking & self-advocacy
Solo Sessions
Liz Massey
she/her
The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up Your Online Portfolio
Finding Your Path
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In this presentation, neuroqueer professionals will learn why online portfolios are an emerging “game-changer” in the job search. We’ll also bust top portfolio myths, cover how to find a portfolio platform to match any budget, learn how to maneuver around portfolio roadblocks, as well as how to use a portfolio as a strategic tool to attract better job opportunities. And since a good portfolio is not a “one and done” sort of deal, we’ll also talk about how to update it easily.
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Liz Massey is a writer, editor and writing coach based in northern Maine. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas. For nearly 20 years, she was managing editor for two print magazines in Phoenix. More recently, she’s worked as a content marketer for FindLaw, which builds websites for attorneys. She has freelanced for, among others, Next Avenue, Writer’s Digest and Pierce Magazine.
A die-hard multi-hyphenate, Liz is also the owner of Bright Livelihood Career Design Studio. Liz loves helping people illuminate their unique career narrative and learn new career skills.
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Shana Sumers
she/her
Breakout Connections: Your Network is Your Net Worth
Finding Your Path
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85% of opportunities are filled through relationships, not job boards. Yet most professionals treat networking like an awkward obligation instead of a strategic business.
In this session, Shana Sumers, professional football player and community builder of 10 years, teaches you how to build relationship capital. Drawing from her experience at HubSpot and launching networks for underrepresented professionals, she breaks down the Five Plays to strategic networking: connect with intention, enter rooms with a strategy, and turn interactions into career-defining opportunities. Whether you're an introvert, an emerging professional or someone who's never felt like they "belong" - you'll gain the confidence to step into any room as your best self.
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Shana Sumers is a keynote speaker, career coach and professional athlete who helps women athletes build careers as powerful as their game to succeed in life beyond sports. Drawing from her experience of launching and scaling communities at startups and corporations and navigating career transitions as an athlete, she teaches relationship capital, confidence, and career strategy for professional success.
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Miyabe Shields, PhD
they/them
Invisible But Important: Masking, Invisible Disability, Accommodations That Work
Working Sustainably
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85% of opportunities are filled through relationships, not job boards. Yet most professionals treat networking like an awkward obligation instead of a strategic business.
In this session, Shana Sumers, professional football player and community builder of 10 years, teaches you how to build relationship capital. Drawing from her experience at HubSpot and launching networks for underrepresented professionals, she breaks down the Five Plays to strategic networking: connect with intention, enter rooms with a strategy, and turn interactions into career-defining opportunities. Whether you're an introvert, an emerging professional or someone who's never felt like they "belong" - you'll gain the confidence to step into any room as your best self.
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Dr. Miyabe Shields, PhD is a neurodivergent scientist, educator, and an advocate who has a nonlinear career spanning academic and industrial pharmaceutical research, disability services, community organizing, and public education. Miyabe is a professor as well as the co-founder of a 501c3 non-profit, the Network of Applied Pharmacognosy, where they aim to bridge the gap between the natural products research world and the community. Miyabe is an author, inventor, researcher, musician, and a queer, neurodivergent, stoner scientist and advocate.
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Rae Trigg
he/they
Self Employment Tax and Deductions
Financial Futures
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The presentation will be focused on the main tax differences between W2 income and self-employment income. We will cover what self employment tax is, tax deductible self-employment expenses, and quarterly estimated tax payments.
We will cover the home office deduction, mileage, and supplies in detail. There will also be a list provided for all other self-employment expenses that are tax deductible.
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Hi, I’m Rae (he/they), a queer, neurodivergent, trans man, and the proud Founder and Head Accountant of RT Accounting Services. With nearly 10 years of experience in accounting and tax, I’m passionate about making finances more accessible, affirming, and less intimidating—especially for queer, trans, neurodivergent, and other marginalized communities.
Outside of work, I enjoy supporting women’s basketball, cheering on the Philadelphia Eagles, traveling, trying new foods and recipes, and spending time with my wife and our 6 year old cat.
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SUMMIT DAY 2
💜
SUMMIT DAY 2 💜
Schedule of Events
11:00–11:45 AM EST — Ginelle Testa — Following Curiosity & Career Nudges (Under Capitalism)
12:05–12:50 PM EST — Caitlin Fisher — Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down: Embracing the Audacity of Neuroqueer Joy
1:00–2:00 PM EST — PANEL — The Art of the Pivot: Winging It on Purpose (Panelists: Praxie Osong, Divinica LeBlanc, Angela Rockwell, Moderator: Shana Sumers)
2:00–3:15 PM EST — 🍴 Lunch + Regulation Break
3:15–3:55 PM EST — Angela Rockwell — You Don’t Have to Be Sure: Neuroqueerness, Uncertainty, and Sustainable Career Decisions
4:05–4:45 PM EST — Dr. Quỳnh-Hương Nguyễn — What Keeps Happening? A Pattern-Based Approach to Sustainable Careers
4:55–5:35 PM EST — Deanna Seymour — The Anti-Elevator Pitch (and Other Things to Reframe About Networking)
5:45–6:30 PM EST — 🌈 FIRST CLASS Q&A with Liora + Caitlin (FIRST CLASS only)
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Shana Sumers is a keynote speaker, career coach and professional athlete who helps women athletes build careers as powerful as their game to succeed in life beyond sports. Drawing from her experience of launching and scaling communities at startups and corporations and navigating career transitions as an athlete, she teaches relationship capital, confidence, and career strategy for professional success.
Connect with Shana:
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Praxie is a mom to two sweet boys and a Cameroonian American Operations Specialist, Astrologer, and Producer. Astrology found her at 12 and primed her to have a radically intersectional voice. She built the byPraxie umbrella to carry that voice across her work: Divergent by Design Co, an operations consultancy for neurodivergent and creative entrepreneurs, and The Divergent Almanac, where she blends astrology with cultural criticism. That same intersectional advocacy shapes the original TV and media projects she is developing to give divergent voices more room.
Connect with Praxie:
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Divinica’s perspective is informed by her path as a trans, queer, disabled white settler in Sipekne’katik, an unceded Mi’kmaq territory within Mi’kma’ki. She has spent over twenty years working in construction, education, consulting, corporate leadership, and coaching, helping her relate to people with empathy and insight.
Through her coaching practice, Divinica helps neuroqueer professionals explore what becomes possible when they love their work, how they work, and who they are at work.
Connect with Divinica:
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Angela Rockwell (she/they) is the Founder & CEO of Tacocat Wellness, a somatic practitioner, educator, and MBA candidate. With 15+ years across disability services, mental health, education, nonprofit leadership, and entrepreneurship, her work explores what happens when nervous systems meet systems. As a queer, neurodivergent, disabled Filipina, Angela focuses on capacity, uncertainty, burnout, and building ways of working that create more room for human needs, agency, and sustainable choice.
Connect with Angela:
Panel Session
The Art of the Pivot: Winging It on Purpose
Solo Sessions
Ginelle Testa
they/them
Following Curiosity & Career Nudges (Under Capitalism)
Finding Your Path
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🎤 Live session alert!
This conversation is staying a little unscripted on purpose.
Ginelle is bringing their brain, their experience, and plenty to talk about—and you get to be there while it unfolds.
Come curious.
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Ginelle Testa is a Senior AEO/SEO Strategist, writer, and creative based in Massachusetts. Their career has taken a nonlinear path through sociology, higher education, startups, nonprofits, and now marketing in edtech. With an M.S. in Digital Marketing and more than a decade of marketing experience, Ginelle is especially interested in how curiosity, neurodivergence, and small career nudges can shape meaningful work. Outside of work, they're an event organizer, thrifter, meditator, yogi, and enthusiastic follower of whatever sparks a hyper-fixation next.
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Caitlin Liz Fisher
they/them
Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down: Embracing the audacity of neuroqueer joy
Finding Your Path
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Everything stinks. The job market stinks. The government stinks. Late stage capitalism stinks. But we can't control those things, so just let them stink. What we can control is how we choose to direct our mind, heart, and body toward a future based on hope, on justice, and on joy.
In 2026, the audacity of joy is itself a revolution. This session will validate and inspire the parts of you that are most human, your drive to play and create and dream. You'll leave feeling like a better world is indeed possible, with actionable strategies to keep yourself grounded in the vision of a joyful future.
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Caitlin Fisher is a recovering eldest daughter who is tired of character development and would like to chill out, play Zoo Tycoon, and make collages. They are the host of the Millennieldest Daughter Show (formerly the Neurodivergent Creative Podcast), where they talk about the intersection of developmental psychology, burnout, and late-stage capitalism. After a non-linear career ranging from higher education and specialty chemical manufacturing to luxury mattresses and houseplants, Caitlin quit working for "the man" and became a life, creativity, and career coach.
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Angela Rockwell
she/they
You Don’t Have to Be Sure: Neuroqueerness, Uncertainty, and Sustainable Career Decisions
Working Sustainably
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For neuroqueer folks, career decisions often carry extra layers of uncertainty. Asking for accommodations, changing careers, setting boundaries, returning after burnout, or starting a business can all raise questions about safety, capacity, belonging, and whether showing up more fully as ourselves will be supported or penalized. This session explores how uncertainty shows up in our bodies and behaviors, the line between accommodation and avoidance, and how to distinguish discomfort, capacity limits, realistic risk, and danger. Through teaching and private reflection, attendees will learn a simple framework for expanding agency without relying on grit, self-abandonment, or certainty first.
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Angela Rockwell (she/they) is the Founder & CEO of Tacocat Wellness, a somatic practitioner, educator, and MBA candidate. With 15+ years across disability services, mental health, education, nonprofit leadership, and entrepreneurship, her work explores what happens when nervous systems meet systems. As a queer, neurodivergent, disabled Filipina, Angela focuses on capacity, uncertainty, burnout, and building ways of working that create more room for human needs, agency, and sustainable choice.
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Dr. Quỳnh-Hương Nguyễn
She/They/Chi/Chanh
What Keeps Happening? A Pattern-Based Approach to Sustainable Careers
Working Sustainably
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Dr. Quỳnh-Hương N. Nguyễn spent years chasing a version of success that wasn't hers, built on her refugee parents' sacrifices, and the unspoken deal that achievement was the least she owed them. She got the degrees. She stayed busy, stayed "productive." And it nearly broke her. In this talk, she shares what it took to stop outsourcing her happiness to achievement, recognize the patterns she'd mistaken for ambition, and start asking a harder question: is the version of success I'm chasing actually mine? For anyone in the room carrying their family's hopes, their identity, and the pressure to prove themselves in spaces not built for them, this is permission to ask that question too.
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Dr. Quỳnh-Hương N. Nguyễn (she/they) is a Neurodivergent coach, founder of Patterns Pivot, and a queer, neurodivergent (late-diagnosed ADHD), first-generation Vietnamese American. Her coaching, workshops, and advisory work focus on burnout, identity, and intergenerational patterns, working from one question…What keeps happening? toward what's actually changeable for queer, neurodivergent, and multiply marginalized professionals.
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Deanna Seymour
she/her
The Anti-Elevator Pitch (and other things to reframe about networking)
Finding Your Path
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We all kinda "hate" networking, but if you lean into the idea of friendship-first networking, it's more about building a little community. You'll learn how to stop stressing about your intro, and reframe the whole idea of networking from a corporate, sleazy, schmooze fest to more of a scene, collective, or crew. Networking can absolutely be something that's inspiring, positive, and supportive rather than exploitive.
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Deanna Seymour is the founder of The Playhouse, a friendship-first networking and coworking community for founders, freelancers, and creatives, where you can be more productive and make connections that could become your next referral, client, or lifelong friend.
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Conversations,
Not Just Presentations
We didn't want to build two days of
Speaker talks at you → next speaker talks at you → repeat until everyone's brain becomes soup.
So the Neuroqueer Career Summit includes different ways of learning and participating.
Word to the Wise 🌻
By the wayyy...
Would having more time make this summit more accessible or useful for you?
If so, the FIRST CLASS PASS is for you.