She’s Opinionated

Leanne is on a mission to close the neurodivergence gender gap in ADHD and autism diagnosis, raise awareness, widen access to support and create equal opportunity.

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“She’s opinionated” empowers other women with knowledge, female allyship, and a space to be verbal about the challenges we face as neurodivergent women, non-binary and AFAB.

About Leanne

🎓 PGDip Applied Positive Psychology & Coaching Psychology
🧠 Female founder, neurodivergent leader, creative problem solver, researcher, group facilitator and positive psychology coach

Leanne is a late-diagnosed neurodivergent (woman!) and a positive psychology coach. She is proudly AuDHD, and a brave survivor diagnosed with CPTSD.

Leanne is the founder of More Human. We help neurodivergent humans flourish. More Human is on a mission to close the gender gap in ADHD and autism recognition, widen access to a medical diagnosis, support and create equal opportunity.

In her coaching practice, Leanne helps clients increase their wellbeing, wellness, mental performance and growth mindset. Her areas of deep expertise include facilitating creativity and collaboration, empathy and emotional intelligence, understanding dark personalities and toxic relationships, resilience and burnout recovery, mindfulness and yoga.

Leanne has trained in coaching with the VIA strengths framework and the Penn Resilience programme; designed by Dr Martin Seligman and colleagues for the US military to buffer against stress, anxiety, depression and PTSD. Leanne has also trained as a yoga teacher and in mindfulness.

A highly experienced 1-1 and group facilitator and coach, Leanne holds a PGDip in Applied Positive Psychology & Coaching Psychology. She is currently working toward her MAPPCP and the highest level of coaching accreditation with the EMCC.

Story

Aged 34, Leanne had a debilitating burnout and breakdown, leaving her unable to function or work for two years and chronically suicidal. She was diagnosed with severe depression and CPTSD. A personal epiphany led to an ADHD and autism diagnosis at age 36. Suddenly, everything made perfect sense.

The Papageno effect holds that survivors of sexual assault or suicidality who tell their stories and specifically how they coped lower the suicide rate. A conversation with her psychiatrist led her to decide to productise her brain and share everything she has learned on her journey to recovery. Leanne founded More Human to help other women stay hopeful and resilient and empower them with knowledge.

Her blog “She’s Opinionated” aims to empower women with knowledge, support female allyship, and offer a safe space to be verbal about the challenges we face as neurodivergent women. “Flourishing with ADHD or autism” is a 10-week coaching programme designed to bring neurodivergent women together to share knowledge and learn strategies to thrive in a world designed for neurotypicals.

Click here to follow Leanne on LinkedIn

Achievements

Leanne is currently pursuing a Master's in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology. She holds a PGDip.

In 2021, she was engaged by an anonymous organisation to design a psychological intervention programme to moderate leadership and ingroup narcissism, increase prosocial behaviour (kindness), and improve employee resilience and wellbeing. She received a double distinction for unpublished academic papers.

In 2024, after two years out to burnout, she conducted the first large-scale sample study to understand the strengths of ADHD and autistic women - you can read about it here. She learned that not only are neurodivergent women super kind, but we are also high in trait empathy.

Before burnout, Leanne was a service design leader. Leanne was forced to leave her career because of severe illness, and discrimination, exclusion, exploitation and abuse of women in the design industry. She hasn’t looked back.

Leanne remains passionate about helping organisations co-design better products and services and putting people at the heart. With 15 years in “design”, she has improved customer experiences and transformed public services in the UK, AUS & NZ. Human-centred in her approach, she works tirelessly to deliver products and services that positively impact people’s lives.

NEW ADHD and autism self-screen service for adult women, non-binary & AFAB

Leanne is currently co-designing the world’s first ADHD and autism self-screen and service for adult women, non-binary and AFAB with 176 fired-up women. It recently tested with a 100% detection rate with diagnosed women. Leanne is hoping to conduct a peer-reviewed study with a neurotypical control for her Master's research, Subject to ethics approval,. If she succeeds, it will be the first prediagnostic screening instrument co-designed by neurodivergent women, with neurodivergent humans, validated to gold standard.

Gender bias in ADHD & autism diagnosis

Leanne’s story is not unusual. Autistic and ADHD girls and women are more likely to be missed, misdiagnosed or later diagnosed than men. 80% of autistic women are undiagnosed by age 18.

3x as many men are diagnosed with neurodevelopmental conditions, typically as boys. Women are rarely diagnosed before having a burnout, child or menopause (when they are at high risk of depression).

Harmful sex stereotypes (extreme male brain theory) and gender bias in healthcare have led neurodivergent females to be excluded from studies, overmedicated, missed or misdiagnosed with mental illnesses such as BPD, bipolar, OCD, and schizophrenia.

The current diagnostic criteria are gendered and based on dated research about autistic boys and men. There is poor awareness of what ADHD and autism look like in females. We are going to change that.

WHY does this matter

The impact is devastating. Without early recognition or a diagnosis autistic and ADHD women are at high risk of victimisation, abuse and gendered violence throughout their lifetime.

According to one 2022 study, 9/10 autistic women have been sexually assaulted. Most multiple times. 56% before the age of consent. (Cazalis et al., 2022)

Autistic and ADHD females subsequently experience high levels of mental illness, burnout, school dropout, unemployment, homelessness, and suicide.

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