It’s International Women’s Day today! And… Neurodiversity Celebration Week 2025 is just a few days away. (Find out why Neurodiversity Celebration Week matters for your organisation.) We wanted to mark both by making some space for seven neurodivergent women from around the world, each of whom has left a real mark on it.
Dr Temple Grandin (United States)
Dr Temple Grandin, who is autistic, is a pioneering animal behaviour expert and professor renowned for revolutionising livestock facility design. Grandin has authored over 60 scientific papers and introduced more humane, low-stress practices in the cattle industry using her visual thinking abilities.
Grandin was among the first autistic people to share insights from her own experience publicly. She has become an outspoken advocate for autism rights and the neurodiversity movement, and her own work in science and industry makes the case better than any slogan could.
In 2010, Grandin was named on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world, was the subject of an Emmy Award-winning HBO film starring Claire Danes, and delivered a widely viewed TED Talk.
Judy Singer (Australia)
An autistic sociologist from Australia, Judy Singer is credited with coining the term “neurodiversity” in the late 1990s.
In her 1998 honours thesis, she proposed viewing autism and related conditions not as deficits but as natural variations in how the brain works. You can read more about what the term covers today in our guide to what neurodiversity is and the different types of neurodiversity.
Inspired by biodiversity as an analogy, this idea helped spark a social movement that recognises the strengths of autistic, dyslexic and ADHD people and advocates for their civil rights.
Singer’s shift in thinking has shaped disability policy and how society understands neurodivergent people.
From her website: “Neurodiversity refers to the virtually infinite neuro-cognitive variability within Earth’s human population. It points to the fact that every human has a unique nervous system with a unique combination of abilities and needs.”
Simone Biles (United States)
American gymnast Simone Biles is one of the most decorated athletes in history, with 11 Olympic and 30 World Championship medals. Biles has ADHD and faced public disclosure of her diagnosis when hackers leaked her medical records in 2016. She responded calmly, saying on social media that she has taken ADHD medication since childhood and that “having ADHD and taking medicine for it is nothing to be ashamed of”. Our article on what managers need to know about ADHD medication explains why that message matters at work too.
Being open about it didn’t slow her down. She kept winning, and became a role model for young people with ADHD who can see their energy and focus as something to channel rather than hide.
Erna Solberg (Norway)
Erna Solberg, former Prime Minister of Norway, has led her country at the highest level while living with dyslexia. Diagnosed at 13, Solberg has always been frank about her lifelong difficulties with reading and writing.
Despite academic challenges when she was young, she rose to the top of Norwegian politics, becoming leader of Norway’s Conservative Party in 2004 and serving as Prime Minister from 2013 to 2021.
Nicknamed “Iron Erna”, she famously declared, “I am dyslexic, and I write it myself”, emphasising that she writes her own speeches. Dyslexia plainly didn’t stop her leading a nation, and her story reflects the strengths that come from being dyslexic.
Salma Hayek (Mexico)
Salma Hayek, a Hollywood actor and producer born in Mexico, has risen to international fame while living with dyslexia.
Diagnosed in her teens, Hayek moved to the US to pursue acting before she spoke English fluently, a bold step that meant overcoming both a language barrier and dyslexia.
She once told Oprah, “I didn’t speak English… I couldn’t drive, I was dyslexic”, recalling the hurdles she faced early on.
Hayek has said it might take her longer to read scripts than her peers, but she only needs to read them once to understand the material thoroughly.
Today, as an Academy Award-nominated actor and one of Hollywood’s most successful Latina stars, Hayek shows that dyslexia has not held back her creativity or career.
It may even have strengthened her determination and imaginative approach to storytelling.
Agatha Christie (United Kingdom)
Dame Agatha Christie, the famed British “Queen of Crime”, wrote 66 detective novels and has sold an estimated 2 billion books, according to Guinness World Records, all while living with learning differences.
Christie had severe dysgraphia (difficulty writing) and possibly dyslexia, which made spelling and handwriting very hard for her.
She often called herself the “slow one” in the family because of these differences, and even as an adult she couldn’t balance a chequebook.
She adapted by dictating her stories and relying on her extraordinary imagination and memory. “Living with learning disabilities didn’t stop [her] from becoming the best-selling novelist to date,” notes the University of Michigan’s Dyslexia Help Center. Not bad for the “slow one”. As the world’s best-selling novelist, she is a fairly convincing answer to anyone who doubts what dyslexic and dysgraphic thinkers can do.
Florence Welch (United Kingdom)
London-born Florence Welch, lead singer of the Grammy-nominated band Florence + The Machine, has turned her neurodivergence into art. At school, she was diagnosed with both dyslexia and dyspraxia (a coordination condition that often presents differently in women). These challenges made her feel “different from everyone else”, but they also fed her creativity, which you can see in her flamboyant fashion and her stage presence.
Florence received extra support at school for reading and motor skills, which helped her manage her studies. As an adult, she has said that her different way of thinking contributes to her songwriting and imaginative performances. Her poetic lyrics and theatrical shows are a good advert for dyslexic and dyspraxic thinking, and a clear signal to neurodivergent young people in the arts that being different is worth holding on to.
The power of neurodivergent women
Seven women, different generations, different countries and very different jobs. What they share is a brain that works differently, and careers that make a nonsense of the idea that autism, ADHD, dyslexia or dyspraxia hold people back. Most of them have also talked openly about it, which has done a lot to shift attitudes, and that matters as much as the trophies, books and election wins.
For more, read about 10 more famous neurodivergent women, or explore the signs of ADHD in women you might not know about.
How Enna can help
If your organisation is marking Neurodiversity Celebration Week, our Neurodiversity 101 session works well for a whole team, and our employee resource group training helps your neurodiversity network keep going once the week is over. Book a call and we’ll help you plan it.
If you’re job hunting yourself, the Enna jobs board lists opportunities with employers who value neurodivergent talent, and you can register for job alerts to hear about new roles first.
