“I bring ideas, creativity and an understanding of how everything is connected”

Ronan McGovern, FCA, barrister and Stanford Scholar, talks about his experience living with ADHD and why more support is needed for neurodiversity at work 

He is a Chartered Accountant, barrister and strategy manager with one of Ireland’s biggest banks but, for Ronan McGovern, the title he is most proud of is Stanford University Scholar.

It was while studying for his MBA at the prestigious US university in 1996 that McGovern was first diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

And it was through his continued work with Stanford that McGovern would go on to discover what he calls his “life purpose”.

“In 2019, I was invited to work for six months on the Stanford Neurodiversity Project at Stanford Medical School, and it changed my life,” he explains. 

“I discovered my unique offering to the world – what I was put on this earth to do; to be a neurodiversity champion and innovator.”

His path to learning he had ADHD and discovering the world of neurodiversity was a long one, however. McGovern was already well into his thirties by the time he received his diagnosis.

Although, these days, he views ADHD as the fuel powering “all the amazing things I have done in my life”, his experience growing up with the condition was not always positive.

“I have been given these amazing gifts – academic excellence, creativity, ideas, energy, productivity – I stand out and I am authentically myself. I think differently but thinking differently wasn’t a good thing in the Ireland I grew up in,” he says.

“In Irish society in the sixties and seventies, there was a very homogenous culture. Being different generally meant you were punished.”

Early years

McGovern grew up in the west Dublin suburb of Palmerstown and started primary school in 1965. 

“It was long before there was any recognition of neurodiversity and I have to say I learned very little because my mind was always wandering,” he says.

“Everybody’s mind wanders, but for an ADHD person, the inattention and mind-wandering are pronounced. The teachers had no idea I wasn’t learning anything. I just basically sat in class not telling them.”

By the time he was ready to progress to secondary school in 1975, corporal punishment was still very much part of “the school culture” in Ireland, McGovern says. 

“Some teachers saw me as what, in those days, they might have called a ‘a bold boy’, disrupting the class and with no apparent interest in learning,” he reflects.

“During my time at secondary school, I would say corporal punishment was used on me maybe four or five times more often than my peers.

“There was also shaming of different descriptions – I remember being put outside the door of the classroom as punishment – but that kind of treatment wasn’t exclusive to my secondary school at that time.”

Despite this, McGovern’s academic performance remained strong throughout his school years with his exam results “ranging from average to top of the class”.

“I believed in myself,” he says now. “Sometimes I was made to feel ‘less than’; I was shamed and ridiculed for being honest and straightforward, but throughout it all, I always believed in myself.”

Path to diagnosis

After leaving school, McGovern went on to train with a small accountancy practice and joined PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Dublin office in the early eighties.

“In 1993, I was accepted into the MBA programme at Stanford Business School. The tuition at that time was about €30,000 per quarter so I decided to apply for a transfer to PwC New York for the sole reason of earning the money I would need to join the Stanford programme,” he says. 

McGovern began his MBA studies in 1995 and was about eight months in when he was approached one day by one of his classmates. 

“She said to me, ‘Ronan, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever heard of ADHD?’ I said no. She explained the condition and said that she had been watching me in class and believed I may have it,” he explains.

“She was a doctor, and she knew a lot about autism and ADHD. She gave me a reference to the Stanford Medical Centre and told me they would point me in the direction of an educational psychologist who could assess me.” 

Following a 10-hour assessment by an educational psychologist in Palo Alto, McGovern received a 15-page report. 

“It told me that I had what was called Combined ADHD; a combination of hyperactivity and inattention. That was in early June 1996,” he says.

“At the time, I felt a bit of sadness over the fact that I had not been diagnosed earlier, but I also felt a bit of relief and then excitement. My final observation was: Let me see what I can do in the future now that I have this diagnosis.”

In the years since, McGovern has come to view his ADHD as “a gift”. “I bring creativity and ideas to the table,” he says, “an understanding of how everything is connected, be it biology, business or machine learning. That has really stood to me in my life and work.”

Stanford Neurodiversity Project

McGovern took a six-month career sabbatical in 2019 and returned to California to take part in the Stanford Medical School Neurodiversity Project.

Led by Dr Lawrence Fung, the aims of the Stanford Neurodiversity Project include maximising the potential of neurodiversity and establishing a culture that treasures the strengths of neurodiverse individuals. 

It defines neurodiversity as “a concept that regards individuals with differences in brain function and behavioural traits as part of normal variation in the human population” and says, “the movement of neurodiversity is about uncovering the strengths of neurodiverse individuals and utilising their talents to increase the innovation and productivity of society as a whole”.

Following his six-month stint on the neurodiversity project, McGovern took part in Stanford Rebuild Innovation Sprint, launched in 2020 to help develop solutions for the challenges and opportunities society would face in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Stanford invited alums and others to initiate an entrepreneurial project aimed at rebuilding society,” he explains.

“Professors gave their time to assist volunteers and I volunteered to do something on neurodiversity in business and formed a core team with Susan O’Malley, an Irish Stanford business school alum, and Tiffany Jameson, a neurodiversity consultant. 

The group recruited 50 other volunteers and, “over three months in the summer of 2020, we all co-authored our Stanford Rebuild Report,” McGovern says. “When our Rebuild project drew to a close that August, we formed NDGiFTS to prevent this work coming to an end.”

NDGiFTS stands for Neurodiversity Giving Individuals Full Team Success and is, McGovern explains, a movement dedicated to building a “global community whose aim is to increase the inclusion and celebration of neurodiversity at work”. 

To this end, NDGiFTS has produced a 78-page report, available at ndgiftsmovement.com, with input from 70 contributors and insights from 300 stakeholders worldwide.

NDGiFTS’ mission

“The mission of the NDGiFTS movement is to prove that neurodiverse individuals are worth investment from organisations who stand to reap the reward of innovation,” McGovern says.

“Our core belief is that the neurodivergent individual, when appropriately supported and embraced, brings cultural and economic advantages to the workplace, including creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial energy.” 

According to McGovern, as many as 20 percent of people worldwide have neurodivergent conditions ranging from ADHD and autism spectrum disorder to dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia.

“Even now, all these years since my diagnosis, the sad truth is that society has not yet built the structures to support and service people who are neurodiverse,” he says.

“This applies as much to the business environment, apart from a very small minority of companies, Goldman Sachs being a particular exception to the rule.”

In 2019, the US banking giant launched the Goldman Sachs Neurodiversity Hiring Initiative, an eight-week paid internship for people who identify as neurodiverse.

“It went on to hire more than 50 neurodivergent people over three years. Every one of the participants in that internship programme was made a permanent employee,” McGovern says.

As it stands, however, Goldman Sachs remains the outlier with few organisations having made the same strides in neurodiversity inclusivity.

McGovern is, meanwhile, once again partnering with Stanford University to publish a book in 2024 that will detail his experiences growing up and living with ADHD.

“My own experience of work was that my experience at school carried through to my professional life. When I was challenged to progress in a certain role, I found the perception was that I didn’t fit the mould of my other colleagues,” he says.

“My message now is that we need to focus on the intentional recruitment of the neurodiverse talent base, similar to the Goldman Sachs model.

“I would like employers to look at my personal journey and start thinking seriously about neurodiversity and the potential of people like me. 

“My story is not unique, but I think I can help to open a serious conversation about neurodiversity in Ireland and around the world. We should not have a society where people spend all their time swimming against the tide.”

Written by Elaine O’Regan