Sadie Gillett is a thought leader in neurodivergence, with a focus on autism. She has 25 years’ experience working with autistic young people, their families, and their schools.

Sadie has a strongly neuroaffirmative ethos and is passionate about positive autistic identity and making education settings work for autistic students. She is rethinking the narrative on autism, encouraging all she works with to see autism as a natural and needed difference, not a deficit.

Sadie challenges ideas around the school curriculum - ensuring that content and delivery are autism friendly and that social communication differences are supported via a strengths-based approach. She is a firm believer that environments and attitudes are the key adjustments needed to create autism friendly schools, in particular heightening awareness of sensory triggers, regulators, and responses. Through setting up neuroaffirmative structures within schools, Sadie has been able to support hundreds of autistic young people to recognise their unique strengths, advocate for themselves, and connect with other neurodivergent peers.

Sadie taught in special schools, mainstream schools, and specialist facilities for 17 years, before becoming Brighton & Hove Council’s Autism Lead (for education). She also works with the University of Sussex on research led by the autistic community. Sadie is also parent to a neurodivergent teenager.

Sadie understands the need to work in partnership with families, schools, other professionals and, most importantly, the young person themself.

She regularly liaises with neurodivergent thought leaders, to ensure that her thinking and practice constantly evolve as the narrative around autism shifts and changes.