Before becoming a coach for neurodiverse individuals with ADHD, Justine Capelle Collis had a successful advertising career. She worked in Australia and the UK, and also across the US and Canadian markets. Her clients have included Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.
And she achieved all this without realizing that she has ADHD.
That realization came when she became a mother. Both of her sons were diagnosed with ADHD, and she started asking questions. “How do I advocate” and get “the system to bend” for them, rather than having them “fit into the system and then break?” she asked.
She then went on a personal journey to retrain. Collis enrolled in post-graduate study, and went through a specialist coach training in neurodivergent coaching. But along the way, she received her own ADHD diagnosis.
Being a mother of two sons with ADHD required “a different way of parenting,” she says. It also highlighted the feeling that something was off.
“I couldn’t make sense of it,” Collis recalls. “I can have a successful career, I can achieve all of these incredible things. Why am I failing at this thing that I’m biologically wired to do: which is to have kids?” A conversation with a coach friend of hers, who was also practicing to be a neurodiversity coach, revealed some ‘penny-dropping’ moments.
The reason she was able to succeed in her professional career, she explained, was that she had freedom and agency to design her working life in a way that aligned and worked for her. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case with other neurodiverse employees, who are often forced to survive in a world that is not designed or conducive to them doing their best.
But some companies are turning to coaching in an attempt to address this.
