These neurodivergent students are helping each other build more
inclusive schools
[September 05, 2025]
By JAMES POLLARD
DENVER (AP) — Engineering student Tory Ridgeway buried his head.
Just finished with his Lockheed Martin internship and weeks away from
his final year at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the 22-year-old
from Maryland found himself overwhelmed by the solidarity he felt at a
neurodivergent leadership conference.
Having autism and ADHD, Ridgeway already knew there were plenty of
others like him. But he hadn't realized they shared the same negative
self-talk. He said he locked into focus when he heard The Neurodiversity
Alliance President Jesse Sanchez describe overcoming feelings of being a
“defective toy.”
“They talking to me,” Ridgeway said. “I felt seen. I felt heard. And I’m
gonna try to recreate this feeling wherever I go now.”
A peer-to-peer movement of high school and college students is hitting
campuses this fall to foster that same sense of liberation among their
fellow neurodivergent classmates, whose brains function differently from
what is considered typical. Known as The Neurodiversity Alliance,
they've increased the number of schools reached from 60 to more than 600
in the past year.
Building on the visibility that followed rising diagnoses and
pandemic-era awareness, the alliance says it empowers youth to build
more inclusive spaces together. In early August, more than 130 students
took up that mantle at a Denver summit. They exchanged recruitment
tactics, asked professionals about navigating “neurotypical” work
cultures and named their favorite neurodiverse fictional characters.
Throughout the week's sessions, many stimmed — making repetitive
movements to self-soothe — by building LEGO blocks, braiding yarn or
using fidgets.
David Flink, who 27 years ago co-founded what is now The Neurodiversity
Alliance as a Brown University student, called them “ambassadors of the
possible." Their ranks encompass many distinct learning and
developmental differences such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia. Yet they
are united by the shared experience of “masking,” or hiding traits to
gain acceptance in environments designed without them in mind.
“We hear all the time how much we can’t talk to each other across
difference," Flink said. "When I go to visit one of our clubs, I see the
opposite. And it’s because of love and curiosity.”
Students mentoring students
It often starts in the Art Room.
That's the name for wherever high school mentors meet with middle
schoolers to reframe their cognitive differences through crafts. This
program, called Eye to Eye, connects neurodivergent youth with similar
teens who show them success is very much within reach.
They discuss coping strategies by creating fortune tellers that identify
calming activities for specific emotions. A lesson on resiliency
involves writing down personal failures on colored paper and then
ripping them up to make new art with the fragments.
Myles Cobb, a 19-year-old African American studies major at Washington
University in St. Louis, said he didn't want to use extra time initially
after his ADHD diagnosis. But Eye to Eye helped him get comfortable with
accommodations. He began asking to sit up front and take notes on a
laptop so he could focus. He said mentors taught him “it is normal to be
different” — and served as examples alongside celebrities with ADHD
including Olympian Michael Phelps.
“I’m like, ‘They’re really doing it. Like, these guys are gonna graduate
with flying colors. Like, they’re really, really doing it.’ And for me,
that was enough,” Cobb said.
By helping others, mentors often find they are helping themselves heal
old wounds. Cobb felt it would be a disservice not to share that feeling
once he entered high school.
Katie Gelshenen, 20, considers herself fortunate that her middle school
supported her dyslexia. But there wasn't a mentorship program where she
could see firsthand that she could thrive. Even when her college Eye to
Eye chapter had difficulty getting off the ground, she still felt an
urgency to give others what she knows would've benefited her.
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Dasha Zubareva, left, of New York City, confers with Zala Klemenc of
Louisville, Colo., at a workshop during The Neurodiversity Alliance
summit on the campus of the University of Denver Friday, Aug. 8,
2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
“To be able to provide for people
that are struggling with the same things that you went through --
it’s almost like you are providing that support for your younger
self at the same time," said Gelshenen, a senior studying political
science at The College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
Reframing neurodivergence and taking action
Student groups are encouraging classmates to embrace their
diagnoses. They see their cognitive styles as ways of being that
must be supported — not deficits to be fixed.
Campus organizations are hosting sensory-friendly events and
securing physical spaces with quieter sounds and dimmed lighting to
reduce overwhelming stimuli. By insisting that systems adapt to meet
neurodivergent peoples' needs rather than expect them to assimilate,
their goal is to uproot shame and promote inclusion.
Ridgeway's campus doesn't have a Neurodiversity Alliance chapter
yet. Lately, though, he's noticed nearly quadruple the number of
students at the distraction-reduced testing center where he receives
up to five hours on finals.
The rising demand prompted a three-day notice requirement for
scheduling appointments, according to Ridgeway. He said he's happy
to see so many people “not only embracing the fact that they're
neurodivergent,” but “advocating for themselves.”
“I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot trying to deny what I
have,” Ridgeway said of their outlook. "I’m going to get the
accommodations that I deserve so that I can level this playing
field.”
Amber Wu, 25, found herself putting in the same academic effort as
others but receiving worse results in high school. Acting “normal,"
she said, was emotionally draining. Finally, at age 18, she was
diagnosed with autism.
Wu expects she would have felt greater belonging if she had the
support then that she is building now. She plans to take on a
greater leadership role at Penn State, where she is pursuing a PhD
in chemistry and astrobiology.
She's been especially glad to connect with more women and girls
through the alliance, considering they often go overlooked due to
diagnostic criteria that was historically based on the behavior of
men and boys.
“It's no longer so stigmatized, male-dominated,” she said.
Funding true youth leadership
Many folks profess to care about people who are neurodivergent,
Flink said, but there's never been a meaningful amount of money
behind those statements.
The disability rights space overall gets just one penny for every
$10 granted in the United States, according to a 2023 Disability &
Philanthropy Forum report. Some advocates fear the need will
increase as the Trump administration's Education Department overhaul
threatens to decrease special education resources and loosen
regulatory enforcement.
Sanchez said the burden is falling even more so on everyday students
to stand in the gap.
“While the scaffolding of support is being pulled away at the
federal level, we're building something stronger from the ground
up,” he said.
Their grassroots efforts got a tune-up when Flink won a $300,000
grant this May from The Elevate Prize Foundation to reach a wider
audience.
Other funders include the LEGO Foundation, the popular toy brand's
philanthropic arm. LEGO Foundation Program manager Hannah Green said
the non-tokenizing, student-led approach stood out.
“In the philanthropy world and the nonprofit world, child
participation is often spoken about as a core element," Green said.
"But taking it from speaking about it to a reality is very difficult
and is not always done.”
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