Sara Sanders Gardner has worked with TerraPower as a speaker for our Diversity Program. Sara spoke with our team, in a highly effective virtual format, about navigating a neurotypical world as a neurodivergent individual and helped our team to identify ways to be more inclusive in our workplace and ways to identify ableism in the community. Our team was blown away by Sara’s expertise and ability to get the audience engaged. As a direct outcome of the presentation and engagement with our team, we saw an increase in inquiries into our accommodation process. We’ll look forward working with Sara again.

Sara has been our training partner since 2015 for the Microsoft Neurodiversity Hiring Program. This includes leading trainings for over 2,000 interviewers, managers and teams across Microsoft globally. Sara understands Microsoft’s culture and the goals of our program and is able to personalize each training by incorporating in shared experiences as well as innovative ideas and solutions to questions that come up. The feedback we get from teams is always appreciative of Sara sharing her lived experiences and helping all our employees be more inclusive of one another. Having a training partner who is well respected in the field and has strong connections in the Neurodivergent community is something that we value and find very important.

As the Chair of the Faculty Commons at Bellevue College, our Teaching and Learning Center, I have had the pleasure of working closely with Sara Sanders Gardner, Director of Neurodiversity Navigators Program, on many projects. In particular, we have co-constructed online, hybrid, and on-ground workshops for faculty. Sara is highly adept at creating novel workshops that are both accessible and challenging to all faculty. Sara makes the trainings engaging by including a meaningful mix of videos, readings, assessments, projects, and discussions. As a facilitator, Sara is responsive, collaborative, and supportive. Faculty rate Sara’s workshops highly in terms of what they’ve learned from her as a subject matter expert, and the positive learning environment Sara creates for them. Some of the topics we have worked together on are accommodations, implicit bias, Universal Design for Learning, and culturally responsive practices. Sara is an invaluable expert in her field and colleague to all.

Sara has been such a fantastic support and wealth of knowledge for the Microsoft Autism Hiring Program! Her experience as a trainer and expert has been very helpful for all of our interviewer, manager and team trainings in the Microsoft Autism Hiring Program. I consistently hear feedback from attendees how valuable the information is and how it will apply to their job with both autistic employees or any team member. Sara has been very open to feedback and working with us as changes to the program come up, particularly as employees have started coming forward to disclose to their managers and want to have their peers learn more about autism and support at work. I have also been in trainings where the new autistic employee is present, and how welcoming and supportive Sara is for the new team member and assisting them to share their own stories and how to be best supported in their roles. Sara is a valued partner in our program and I strongly recommend her expertise and guidance.