Our Story

Foreword by Carrie Hall, Founder

I'm often asked about the "Why" behind the Autistic Women's Alliance. It was really about peer mentoring, and here's my story.

I remembered that a mentoring program was in place when I was hired through a neurodiversity program in 2015. It was a nice mentoring program, just that it was limited in two ways: mentors were neurotypicals, and only offered mentoring with social issues.

It wasn't until I ran an autistic women's group at work I realized why and that group consisted of autistic women and neurotypical allies. The group was small and helpful, but I always felt that something needed to be added. Some of my neurotypical colleagues volunteered to mentor autistic women, in the group, although they were well meaning they didn't have the perspective we needed to learn to be successful as autistic women.

Let's Do Lunch

I remember asking my neurotypical colleagues about the dreaded "Let's do lunch" thing that women say to each other (it's my biggest pet peeve). As a literal thinker, I thought when someone said, "Let's do lunch" they really wanted to set up time to have lunch with me. This was a little/small thing that caused friction for me in the workplace and I was confused as to why.

This is when advice from neurotypicals misses the mark. When I asked my neurotypical colleagues about this, I was told that "Let's do lunch" is another way of saying, "See you around," that's all the advice I received.

The advice was very different from that of a few autistic colleagues; they suggested that the next time this happened, I should call that person on it. That advice was a huge game changer for me; I could ask that person what they meant by "Let's do lunch."

Since then, when someone says that to me, I now ask them, "Oh, do you mean 'see you around,' or do you want to have lunch later?"

That person's usually more than happy to clarify, and usually, their answer ends up as "I meant, see you around." This advice moved mountains for me like a huge light bulb went off above my head.

When I started meeting other autistic women at conferences, we shared similar stories like the one above. A neurotypical mentor suggested that I should look into ways that autistic women can help each other out. That’s when I started putting ideas into action, and that’s how the Autistic Women’s Alliance was born.

Now, we're a 501(c3) non-profit run by autistics with 500+ members.