

StrikeUP Connects: Building Businesses That Work With Your Brain
Neurodivergent women entrepreneurs are often building businesses while navigating systems, expectations and workflows that were not designed with their brains in mind.
This StrikeUP Connects session shares data-informed insights from a national research study on neurodiversity and entrepreneurship, exploring the unique experiences, challenges and strengths of neurodivergent women in business.
Grounded in both large-scale research and lived experience, the conversation will examine how women are creating businesses that support sustainable ways of working rather than pushing against them.
Together, we’ll explore:
• Practical strategies for reducing overwhelm and burnout
• Neuroaffirming approaches to productivity and business building
• Tools and supports that work with neurodivergent brains
• Ways to leverage strengths while building a business on your own terms
• Insights that can help shape more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems
Whether you identify as neurodivergent, support entrepreneurs or want to better understand diverse ways of working and leading, this session offers practical takeaways grounded in evidence and real-world experience.
Speaker
Dr. Jennifer Fane is a Lead Research Associate at Signal49 Research, where she leads the neurodiversity research portfolio. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD in education, public health and social policy from Flinders University.
With more than two decades of experience as a neurodivergent teacher, professor and researcher in Canada and Australia, her work is grounded in participatory, person-centered approaches that meaningfully engage lived experience.
Jennifer is dedicated to translating evidence into actionable insights that strengthen learning, employment and workforce outcomes for neurodivergent Canadians, ensuring research meaningfully informs practice, policy and systems-level change.