This article first appeared on 1 June 2026 in #NDChat, my newsletter on LinkedIn.

I was a serving headteacher. Fifty followers on LinkedIn. And a diagnosis I’d kept to myself.

What did I feel I owed to children, families, the teaching profession and myself?

The answer, in the end, was honesty.

Not performance. Not activism. Not a career pivot. Just the recognition that silence was becoming increasingly difficult to justify when I was standing in front of neurodivergent children every day, knowing what I knew, and saying nothing.

My diagnosis wasn’t a revelation. It was a long-delayed confirmation of something I had long suspected, and that those closest to me had recognised long before I did. What changed was the decision to stop treating it as a liability and start treating it as a responsibility.

I also owed it to myself. Disclosure didn’t come without costs, both personal and professional. To disclose is to accept being seen through a new lens. And depending on who is looking at you through that lens, an employer, a colleague, a parent, a governor, and what their lens looks like, you will be seen differently. But when you’ve felt different for a lifetime, that’s not entirely new, and the range of responses and consequences I received and experienced have proved invaluable in informing my own work and writing.

A year on…

Nearly 8,000 followers. 5,000 connections. Over 250,000 members reached. Almost 20,000 engagements. 2,500 newsletter subscribers. Over 20,000 article views.

None of it was chased. There is no algorithm strategy here. No content calendar. No growth hack. What there is, is a conversation about neurodivergence and education that genuinely needs to happen, and people, it turns out, have been waiting for someone to start it.

In January 2026, I founded HeadFirst Consulting and shortly after, #NDChat. I then became Education Lead for the national charity ADHD UK and an Ambassador for Ambitious about Autism. I became a contributing author for TES Magazine in March, the world’s largest educator network, and my first article was among the most read and shared the publication has produced this year. I also joined ASCL’s Neuroinclusive Leaders’ Community as a founding member.

I have met some great people along the way. Some truly inspirational. I have largely been met with support, encouragement and authenticity, and that has mattered more than any number.

My passion lies in bringing people together to move the conversation forward, academics, researchers, clinicians, policy makers, decision makers, educators, parents, with the needs of the child firmly at the centre. Developing a shared understanding. One that acknowledges and respects competing priorities and concerns. One that respects both the medical and the social model. One that doesn’t attempt to fix a problem but instead understand a difference. One that doesn’t place glass ceilings and obstacles in the way, one that listens and responds positively.

I recently sat down with Dale Pickles for an episode of The SENDcast. We talked about something I have been saying for some time: schools will never be genuinely inclusive for neurodivergent children whilst neurodivergence within the profession remains hidden and risk managed. The talent going untapped, in both students and staff, is one of the great unaddressed challenges in education.

What I didn’t expect, stepping into this work, was how it would feel…

For the first time in a long time, I am not contorting myself to fit a role or someone else’s idea of what should matter. I am not navigating a culture where the priority has become avoiding saying the wrong thing rather than doing the right one.

This work also has a deeply personal dimension. Two of my children are neurodivergent. One could not face school for almost an entire year. Headteacher or not, I was simply a parent trying to do the right thing without knowing what that was. That experience, sitting on the other side of every meeting I had ever led, changed how I see everything.

What I do now, training schools, working with families, writing for TES, building HeadFirst Consulting, is the most professionally fulfilling work I have done since teaching itself felt like enough. It reminds me exactly why I chose this profession in the first place.

I carry the responsibility of this work the way I carried the responsibility of leading schools. Seriously. Without performance. In service of the children, families and educators who need it most.

That’s enough for me.

To everyone who has read, challenged, shared or simply followed this past year, thank you. The conversation is only just beginning.