2023 Presenters' Bios

Henri

I'm Henri, 27-year-old man from Helsinki. I have found it difficult to find permanent employment, but I have done various jobs in the fields of media, hospitality and security. On my free time I do stand-up comedy. My goal in life is to do stand-up comedy professionally. I like to speak publicly because I have a lot of experience from different work environments and cultural contexts that I enjoy sharing.

Janine Booth & Kate Fox

Janine Booth and Kate Fox are two of the UK's leading autistic poets. Both perform regularly and their poems have been published extensively in journals, anthologies and books.
Kate and Janine co-edited NeurodiVERSE, an anthology of poems by neurodivergent writers, published in 2022 by Flapjack Press.
Both are also experienced in running workshops that are participatory and engaging.
Janine and Kate are both active and experienced autistic advocates, through writing, campaigning, training and consultancy, as well as through poetry.
More about Kate: https://katefoxwriter.wordpress.com/
More about Janine: www.janinebooth.com

Jorik Mol

Jorik Mol (he/him) is an actually autistic activist, author and educator on autism and neurodiversity. In increasingly high demand as a speaker and writer, since going freelance in 2020 he has spoken for a wide variety of organisations.
He also works as a DSA-mentor to autistic students, fights to end conversion therapy/ABA, is involved in a variety of activist projects and autistic-led research, facilitates queer autistic support groups and runs queer neurodivergent writers' groups.
When people ask him what he does for a living, he says 'I'm professionally autistic.'
Find Jorik at: https://www.jorikmol.com

Kalen & Rin

Kalen has been managing a multiply-neurodivergent household for over 20 years. She has a background in cognitive neuroscience and currently studies autistic inertia - difficulty doing things - at the University of Manchester. She has a long history of organising Autscape and giving presentations there.
Rin also likes to organise small events. They actively work on strategies for effectively managing objects and information, and shares those strategies with other ND young people.
Rin and Kalen have developed many strategies for coping with disorganisation and chaos that comes up easily in our house, and we would like to share them more widely.

Laura Hellfeld Neurodivergent Nurse Consulting & Autistically Scott

Laura Hellfeld is an AuDHD (Autistic, ADHD) health care professional, consultant and advocate. Her education includes a Masters in Nursing (RN, MSN), licensure in Public Health Nursing (PHN) and certification as a Sleep Consultant. She works as an independent Nurse Consultant to support the neurodivergent community. This includes individuals, families and professionals at school settings, charities and businesses. Laura specializes in PDA, distress behaviours and self-care like eating and sleep. She is also passionate about supporting Autistic mental health by helping build in-person and online community spaces. Laura is also Co-Director of the upcoming magazine publication, Autistic Revolution.
Scott is an Autistic trainer, mentor and consultant based in Scotland. They have over 25 years of personal experience as an Autistic person, in addition to over 5 years of professional experience supporting Autistic people and their families within various settings and organisations. They now do this under their training and consultancy ‘Autistically Scott’. Scott is passionate about informing society of Autistic experience and culture. Their training aims to help professionals and groups to shift towards Neuro-affirming approaches that nurture Autistic identity. One of their main missions is to help Autistic people discover themselves and embody their authentic Autistic expression.

Maureen Selina Laverty

Maureen is a fashion and product designer. She is currently in her 3rd year of a practice-based PhD at NTNU in Norway. She spent 3 years in London as a tailor on Savile Row and at Alexander McQueen menswear, 5 years developing medical wearable technology in her native Ireland and the Netherlands, interlaced with masters studies in product design engineering.

Meloe Gennai

My name is Meloe Gennai. My pronouns are they them and I am a writer, visual artist and performer from Switzerland. I am a British Swiss and Italian national. I was a spoken word poet for a while when I graduated in law. And then I became an artist, etc.
Of course there is so much work to be done for performing spaces to be accessible still. But I want to share this journey and I hope to meet interested parties. Ow I've been working with Barak Adé Soleil and Amanda Carvallo and Jerome Ellis who have been my mentors.

Nat Titman

Nat, also known as Aly, is a middle-aged multiply neurodivergent autism trainer, IT consultant, musician, artist and former podcaster with what seems to be an ever-growing collection of labels and diagnoses. They have been giving presentations on neurodivergence at community conferences for over 20 years.
Their most recent diagnosis is a complex dissociative disorder for which they are receiving long-term therapy, but their awareness and self-advocacy around this predates their recognition of autism by over a decade. Their first talk advocating for a non-medicalised understanding of this dissociative response was at London BiCon, August 2003.

Pavan

Pavan is an autistic person who works for several organisations advocating for autism and mental health, some of these include working at the Council for Disabled Children as an advisor for the Department for Education's SEND reforms and the National Autistic Society as a young ambassador. They have spoken at several conferences both regionally and nationally, presenting on a range of topics including "Making nature more accessible for autistic people" to "The importance of language when talking about autism". They have a sizable following on social media.

Pippa Hennessy

Pippa Hennessy is late-diagnosed autistic, and one of the lead writers on Beyond the Spectrum. In 2019 she published a series of poems inspired by quantum theory and she is now experimenting with digital poetry. She works for First Story as a programme manager and for Five Leaves as a publisher, and she was a software developer in a previous life.

Rachel Moseley

Dr Rachel Moseley is autistic and a Principal Academic in Psychology at Bournemouth University. Her research focuses on autistic mental health and suicidality. With her co-author, Professor Julie Turner-Cobb, Dr Moseley conducted the first ever research on autistic experiences of menopause. Their findings that autistic people may experience menopause differently from non-autistic people have set off a chain of academic interest in this field. Dr Moseley and Professor Turner-Cobb are leading efforts to raise awareness of the support needs of autistic people at menopause, and hope to help autistic people navigate menopause from an informed position.

Yo & Josh

Yo is a legal and autism trainer and consultant in England. She develops and delivers training for local authorities and other organisations on law and autism. She is autistic and a parent of autistic children, and is strategic lead of the National Autistic Taskforce.
Josh has been working in health and social care for autistic people in various roles for fourteen years, including supporting a range of autistic people. He is autistic himself. He was a committee member of Autism Rights Group Highland from 2017-2023. His academic background is philosophy and is currently studying law in Scotland.