Neurodiversity | Talent the sustainability sector cannot afford to ignore

I was told I was as thick as two short planks. That I was worthless. That I would amount to nothing.

I left school with no qualifications. I have never been to university. I worked as a cleaner. And in November 2024, I found myself standing at the United Nations in Geneva, addressing global leaders on the climate crisis, inclusion and to act for vulnerable communities, as Gill Mulroe CEnv, CMgr, CWRM, FISEP, FCIWM, FCMI.

You read that right!

Not because it is an unusual story of triumph over adversity, though perhaps it is. But because I need you to understand what was nearly missed. Not just for me. But for every room I have since walked into, every strategy I have built, every person I have mentored. All of it was nearly lost to our sector.

Not because the capability wasn’t there from the beginning. Because nobody thought to look for it.

I am neurodivergent. And for a long time, the things that make me exceptional at this work were treated as inconveniences, and a problem to be managed rather than strengths to be unlocked.

• A mind that would not stop making connections was labelled as unfocused.
• A relentless drive to ask “why?” was called disruptive.
• The ability to see the gap between what was being said and what was actually happening, and highlighting risk and exposure was someone who was negative.

You need people who think differently, like me. Urgently.

And the good news is we are here, ready, and capable of more than you might have previously considered possible.

Why neurodivergent thinking is the sustainability sector’s greatest untapped asset

The sustainability sector prides itself on systems thinking. And yet, when it comes to the people doing that work, there is an extraordinary opportunity most organisations have not yet seized. Neurodivergent professionals bring precisely the cognitive toolkit the climate crisis demands. Not despite their neurodivergence. Because of it.

Complex problem solving, holding multiple variables, timescales, and stakeholders in view simultaneously, is not a competency that sits easily in linear thinking. When your brain has always processed the world differently, holding complexity is not a skill you acquire. It is simply how you function.

Broad thinking, the capacity to see that a decision in procurement touches biodiversity, carbon, social value, and supply chain resilience all at once, is not taught in a single qualification. It is a way of seeing the world that many neurodivergent people recognise as simply the way they have always seen it. We did not learn it. We just finally found a profession that needed it.

Spotting gaps and inconsistencies, asking why the data does not add up, why the policy says one thing and the practice does another, is exactly the kind of scrutiny that drives genuine progress. It is also, in less enlightened environments, the kind of behaviour that gets labelled as difficult. I have been called difficult more times than I care to count. I have also been right more times than I care to count.

The organisations that actively build for neurodivergent talent will have a genuine competitive advantage in solving the most complex challenges of our time. That is not a diversity and inclusion argument. That is a business performance argument.

What professional recognition gave me, and what it can give others

Being honest about my path through professional recognition, it wasn’t linear. It was not always well supported and at times, unbearable. There were moments where I genuinely questioned whether I was trying to fit into a system that was not built for people like me, and times where that little voice crept back in and whispered that maybe they had been right all along. Maybe I was kidding myself, but I kept going anyway, which is, I suspect, a familiar experience for many neurodivergent professionals reading this.

Pursuing Chartered Environmentalist status through the Society for the Environment gave me a framework for understanding my own practice. For a neurodivergent professional who had spent years being told to shrink, seeing the full scope of what I was contributing was not a small thing. That was enormous.

I now hold triple chartered status, CEnv, CMgr and CWRM, and triple fellowship status as a Fellow of the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professionals (ISEP), a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM), and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). Multiple professional qualifications at Level 6 and Level 7. Every single one self-funded, alongside full-time work, while raising children alone.

Every one of those achievements opened a door, the continuing professional development that broadened my knowledge, networks that cut across sectors and hierarchies, working groups where the person who sees the gap everyone else missed is not sidelined but listened to. For someone who left school with no qualifications, those structures were a legitimate route to the table. One that did not require me to pretend I had taken a path I had not.

Professional bodies have a profound opportunity here. Examining whether assessment processes, networking formats, and membership pathways are genuinely accessible. Positioning professional recognition as a route in for people who came to this work through unconventional roads, would change who feels they belong in this sector.

An invitation

The sector needs systems thinkers and pattern recognisers. People who ask questions that make the room uncomfortable. Professionals who can hold complexity without needing it to resolve into something neat, because the climate crisis is not neat, and pretending otherwise has cost us decades we did not have.

Many of those people are neurodivergent, many of them are looking for a profession that finally makes sense of the way their minds work. The sustainability sector, more than almost any other, is that profession. Build the conditions that make your organisation the obvious destination for the most creative, connected, complex thinkers in the room.

Because I was told I was as thick as two short planks, and then I went and I spoke at the United Nations.

We are not a problem to be managed; we are a strategic advantage you have not yet fully realised. It is time to let us in.