Not your typical product people – Marton Gaspar and Saielle DaSilva on The Product Experience

A quick update to this episode:  Since we recorded this episode, one of our guests has made a change.  Eli Montgomery is now known as Saielle DaSilva and goes by the pronouns she/her. We’ve worked with her to update the links below, but we wanted to make sure that there wasn’t any confusion about the name for people just listening to it for the first time now.

Diversity at work comes in many forms, but neurodiversity is one that we don't discuss as much in the workplace. This week, we're joined on the podcast by Marton Gaspar and Saielle DaSilva, to give us two different points of view on the topic. Marton's recently been talking publicly about his experiences as an autistic person in product, while Saielle leads Cazoo's Diverse Abilities Employee Resource Group which advocates for disabilities and neurodiversity inclusion in the workplace.

In this episode, sponsored by Amplitude, listen to learn about:

• Neurodiversity
• Inclusivity in the workplace
• Autism and the Tech Industry

Quote of the Episode

Culture fit is the easiest way to discount someone and the people who do that very often cannot define what culture is. But what it boils down to, a lot of the time, is that they think they are Freud, and they see my facial expression or my body language and they mistake it for something else. You cannot apply the same principles for an autistic person because their face, their tone, their body language will not do the same things. (Marton Gaspar)

Related Links

• Follow Marton on Twitter, LinkedIn and his website, Product Whisperer
• Follow Saielle on Twitter, LinkedIn and her website, Intentionaut
• Resource base at Autism.com
• Forbeson Hiring Autistic Male Coders
• Acas on Neurodiversity In The Workplace
• SAP on HCM & Neurodiversity Inclusivity
• Harvard Business Review on Neurodiversity As A Competitive Advantage

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Our Hosts

The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.

Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Head of Innovation at Go Compare and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol (which now has 800+ members!) and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy is a product consultant and coach who has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. A recovering music journalist and editor, he launched Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, and has worked across sectors including museums and arts groups, online education, media and entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. Randy's book, What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19 is out now, with all profits going to COVID-19 relief efforts.