Katie Laurent Moore

I'd give two pieces of advice. First, don't wait to burn out to avoid it. When you start in the field, you're very motivated and excited, and you try to go above and beyond. It's really hard to turn it off, and you're taking on the emotional stress and support of another person's child. If anyone ever leaves the field, it's never because of the children, it's because of something else. So being able to figure out those boundaries very quickly helps you stay in the field longer. The other thing I would say is, you know, there's this level of autism acceptance where it's very easy for you in your own little bubble to create an environment where you are aware of autism. I would encourage finding ways to make the environment in your community more accepting of others. Because our job is to basically take this child and adapt them to their environment, where I feel like it should be the opposite. We should be taking an environment and adapting to these individuals' needs. So I think talking about it more, and being around it more, and encouraging the environment to be more accepting for them to feel safe in these opportunities, instead of having to teach them to be like everybody else, when they could just be themselves.

The biggest challenge is getting everybody to remain child-focused instead of being data-centered. On one side, you have families where autism is still not as widely accepted as we would like it to be. Some families can be very embarrassed, shameful, or in denial, and for their own reasons may not seek help for their child or may not be giving them exactly what they're needing. So there's that realm to navigate to help provide that level of acceptance for a parent in order for them to be active participants in their child's development and support. But then on the other side, you have that bureaucracy and these internal motivations where places are using money as a motivator instead of really focusing on what the child needs. Sometimes they lose focus as to what's the plot here, and my job is to kind of bring everybody back to that center focus. The opportunity is in keeping people focused on what really matters, which is the child.

Authenticity is the most important value to me. In the field I work in, it's quite niche, so you're only really aware of the politics and reality of it if you're in it. A lot of places who are providing these services as private equity have a goal as a business that is directly conflicting with their ethical obligations. Being able to be out on my own and do this independently, outside of any of that, has really allowed me to be authentic in my purpose and my intention, where a lot of these traditional or more corporate or private businesses are not able to because of stakeholders and things. Professionally, it's really allowed me to be authentic, and personally, it's allowed a lot of balance in my life. I've been very fortunate to work for myself and work from home most of the time. I just recently had a baby, she just turned 9 months, so I've been able to be at home with her a lot, which has been such a wonderful experience. I'm still able to use my area of expertise in a much less stressful way, so it's just brought a lot of balance and has been much more fulfilling.