NICEC / Cutting Edge Event 5th March 2026 - At The Cutting Edge
Supporting Neurodivergent clients; insights for career professionals
At The Cutting Edge: Supporting Neurodivergent clients; insights for career professionals.
Thursday 5 March 2026, 2.00pm-4.00pm
The CDI and NICEC continue our collaborative Cutting Edge webinar series with our bi-annual seminars. This event is free to CDI Members & NICEC Members. You will be asked for your membership number upon booking.
If you are a NICEC member and do not know your number please email [email protected] to get this information.
Rationale and purpose of this session
Neurodiversity has gained significant momentum and recognition, and neurodivergent people are typically over-represented within the population of those who seek career support.
This At the Cutting-Edge session will set the scene by sharing some contemporary research on the topic of neurodiversity and encourage an approach of intersectionality. The session will explore some of the challenges that neurodivergent individuals have faced and how those issues continue to impact upon their career development, illustrated through the sharing of stories and cases.
We will explore some fundamental questions including:
- What are the strengths of Neurodivergent clients?
- What are some of the unique challenges that they face?
- What is the benefit of taking a neuroinclusive approach in learning environments, workplaces and society as a whole?
- What are the ethical boundaries that we might want to consider when working with Neurodivergent clients?
- What are some practical actions that we can take when working with neurodivergent individuals or those presenting with neurodivergent traits?
This two-hour session will comprise a series of four short input sessions, where highlights are shared from both research and case studies of working with neurodivergent clients, as well as some practical suggestions and structures for supporting our work with this group.
In addition, this session will be interspersed with interactive, small group discussions in break-out rooms, combined with whole group discussion and sense-making. Here we will reflect upon: what this means for our own careers practice? What questions are we left with? The session will culminate in a signposting to additional relevant resources and events to help us to continue with our CPD.
As hosts of this session, NICEC Fellows Dr Cathy Brown and Kate Mansfield will guide us through our agenda; they look forward to seeing you there.
For further information or to book a place please click here.
| AGENDA |
| 2pm Welcome – Kate Mansfield / Cathy Brown Warm welcome, personal introductions, scene setting group poll. Walking through our agenda for today. |
| Introduction - David
Morgan, Chief Executive CDI Emphasising why this topic is so relevant for us today in the careers field. |
| Structural barriers: How learning wounds may impact neurodivergent individuals - Dr Tania Lyden Learning wounds are mild or significant traumas from an injury that takes place due to experiences within complex educational systems, and which divert a learner’s development. These injuries can be perpetuated over time and through changes to that person’s self-identity that are surfaced later in other environments, including higher education, career coaching sessions and at work and therefore impact both the individual and society. This presentation will use systems theory framework and social cognitive career coaching theory, along with examples, as ways of dissecting how such wounds develop and how practitioners might support individuals who present with a learning wound. |
| Designing Career Development Practices for Neurodivergent Inclusion - Aretha Rutherford Neurodivergent individuals can encounter systemic tensions at work because many workplace systems are built around neurotypical ways of thinking, communicating, and relating. Career-development and coaching practices, including the working alliance, can unintentionally repeat these problems when they treat the individual as the main thing that needs to change instead of looking at the environment. Aretha will explore how a practitioner’s positionality and power can influence whether the support they provide helps to reduce systemic barriers or ends up reinforcing them. Using ideas from the Social Model of Disability, Person–Environment Fit theory, Cognitive Load Theory, and the Double Empathy Problem, along with real case examples, the session will show how career practitioners can recognise and reduce systemic friction by paying reflexive attention to how they design their practice. |
| Break-out room
discussions
What does this mean for us in practice? |
| Plenary discussion followed by short comfort break |
| Creating inclusive careers provision: how to successfully collaborate with
neurodivergent individuals to enhance your support - Keren Coney Keren will discuss recent UK graduate destination data showing that autistic graduates are the least likely to secure employment among disabled graduates (AGCAS, 2025), a pattern well documented in the literature (Vincent, 2024; Remington & Pellicano, 2019) and indicative of the ongoing marginalisation of autistic people in the labour market. Drawing on insights from a PhD participatory action research study, Keren will reflect on over five years of collaborative work between neurodivergent students and careers and employability colleagues, through which tailored careers provision and co-created resources were developed to better support students’ transition into the workplace. The session will outline the key achievements of this work, share practical recommendations for careers practitioners, and highlight the wider benefits of co-creation, including enhanced understanding, improved practice, and increased empowerment for both students and staff. |
| Supporting neurodivergent clients with career decision-making - Tamsin Crook Supporting career decision-making is a core component of the role of a career practitioner. Growing awareness and understanding of neurodiversity means that there is impetus for us to better support this community with career goals and ambitions for progression. We know that neurodivergent clients tend to be over-represented in career coaching or advisory settings due to the challenges that they often face within employment - but with the right support and in the right environment, they can thrive. There can be a cognitive and emotional complexity to the experience of neurodivergent decision-making, and this session will introduce you to some of the issues that may be holding your clients back. Tamsin will also explore ways of moving forward through use of a co-created career decision-making framework. |
| Break-out room
discussions Given what you have heard, what is occurring to you? What questions are you left with? |
| Plenary discussion This session will culminate in a group discussion, where we share and make sense of our collective responses. Finally, we will move into a wider discussion, exploring how what we have heard might influence our practice and encourage us to develop a more neuroinclusive approach. |
| 4pm: Conclusions -
Cathy Brown and Kate Mansfield
We will conclude by considering our main take-away, sign-posting to further relevant resources and events and looking ahead to our next At the Cutting Edge Event. |
Biographies
Dr Cathy Brown, NICEC Fellow
Cathy is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, career practitioner and writer. Over the last 20 years she has run her own consultancy business, Evolve, where she has supported individuals, teams and organisations through transitions and change.
Cathy completed her MSc Occupational Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London, and her MBA from European School of Management in Paris. More latterly, she completed her PhD explore career mobility at University of Derby. Cathy is a guest lecturer on Masters programmes at several UK universities. She speaks at seminars, and has been featured in the media for her work including Radio 4, Leadership Today, Career Matters, People Management and Career Development International. She writes and publishes practical guides to support individuals through life transitions, under the brand: Testing the Water®. These are available on www.amazon.co.uk, Waterstones and other leading book sellers.
Cathy’s client list includes, amongst many others: Akzo-Nobel, Avis, BBC, Boots, Career Development Institute, Co-operative Bank, Co-operative Food, Costain, John Lewis, Lincolnshire County Council, Loughborough University, NHS, PepsiCo, Saint-Gobain, Shell, Travelodge, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, University of Nottingham. Cathy is a NICEC Fellow.
Kate Mansfield, NICEC Fellow
Kate is a qualified Career Coach, trained by CCS & with an MSc in Organisational Behaviour & Postgraduate Certificate in Career & Talent Management from Kingston University. She is also a qualified Career Coach Supervisor with Oxford Brookes, and Lead Tutor on CCS's Accredited Career Coach Training.
She coaches clients individually, with a particular interest in the career paths of women. Many of her individual clients are mid to senior level female professionals wishing to construct their careers successfully on their own terms. Typical focus includes how to identify and leverage strengths at work; overcoming issues of impostor syndrome; how to build personal brands in ways more aligned to values; career development goals and career planning. Her earlier career included 13 years in executive level HR Recruitment and Interim Management recruitment. Kate became a Fellow of NICEC in 2024.
Dr Tania Lyden
Tania is an Associate Professor and Course Director in the Career Studies and Coaching team at the University of Warwick. She has worked in HR for Thames Water and PwC and subsequently moved into career practice where she spent 25 years at the University of Oxford and University of Reading before completing her PhD and moving to the University of Warwick as an academic.
As Course Director for the Career Education, Information and Guidance in Higher Education qualification, run in collaboration with AGCAS, she oversees the programme content including issues of inclusivity. Her research has focused on various forms of social justice, including career mentoring of students from lower socio-economic status backgrounds and gender/STEM related research. She is currently undertaking research into career and employability professionals in the third space and contributing to research on green guidance. She has personal experiences of supporting neurodivergent family members through education and is collaboratively writing about the learning wounds created through the friction of structural inequalities in education and the impact of this on individuals and society.
Aretha Rutherford
Aretha Rutherford is a coach, educator and researcher interested in how people build sustainable work within systems that weren’t designed for them. She works with neurodivergent, racialised and creative professionals to make sense of their experiences and create careers that feel true to who they are.
Her coaching and workshops create room to breathe, reflect and imagine work differently. With an MSc in Career Development and Coaching and an MA in Design and Branding Strategy, she brings together research and lived experience to inform her practice.
She has worked across education, media and design with organisations including the BBC, University of the Arts London, Birkbeck and the University of East London. She is also a published contributor on supporting neurodiversity in the workplace (Holistic Career Coaching, Routledge, 2025)
Tamsin Crook
Tamsin Crook is an independent ICF accredited career coach at Making Careers Work, with a particular focus in working with neurodivergent clients. She is also an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London and co-facilitates the Post Graduate Certificate in Neurodiversity Coaching with Prof Almuth McDowall. She has MScs in Psychology and Career Management & Coaching; her research has focused on ADHD career successes and strengths, and the ND experience of career decision-making. She has three teenage boys and a dog to wrangle, so finds relaxation and focus in her work, gardening, and walking with friends.
