A Conversation with Bryan Gill of JPMorgan Chase

About 30% of the world is neurodivergent and these are major untapped talent pools. With some minor adjustments and accommodations to workplace processes, we can enable these colleagues to work in this industry, be their very best and create an inclusive culture.

In the latest episode of our SIFMA DE&I podcast series, we sat down with JPMorgan Chase’s Global Head of the Office of Disability Inclusion, Bryan Gill for a discussion on the firm’s investment in neurodiversity, bringing intentional effort to be inclusive in this community and the superpowers that they can bring to a firm.

He also highlights the advocacy work being done to remove barriers from archaic regulations, how allyship in the workplace can support neurodivergent colleagues, leading with empathy, and the cultural impact it has on an organization.

For more information on fostering and expanding workforce, client, and supplier diversity equity and inclusion, please visit www.sifma.org/diversity.

Transcript

Edited for clarity

Jennie Jacoby: Thanks for joining us for the latest episode in SIFMA’s DE&I Podcast Series. I’m Jennie Jacoby, Managing Director and Associate General Counsel at SIFMA. Today I’m speaking with Bryan Gill, Global Head of Neurodiversity, about JPMorgan Chase’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and their efforts to reduce, recruit, and retain neurodiverse colleagues in the financial services industry. Bryan, welcome.

Bryan Gill: Thank you. A pleasure to be here.

Jennie Jacoby: Thanks so much for joining us. To start us off, can you share a little about yourself, your career, and how you found yourself in your current role?

Bryan Gill: I’m a 30-year veteran of financial services, about 20 years with JPMorgan. Most of my time with JPMorgan, I spent in a commercial bank in operations. I had the unique opportunity about five years ago to work as a volunteer as an operations executive to do a viability study on how JPMorgan Chase could employ colleagues from the IDD community, so intellectually and developmentally disabled. As an extension of our neurodivergent hiring into our firm in a way that was aligned with our culture and values. I spent some time with some other amazing employers, Walgreens and Bank of America to name a few, to understand how that model worked. We built a model and turned it over to our HR operating committee, and they agreed that it was an amazing opportunity for us. The outcome was that they posted the job for someone to have the privilege to lead that initiative and I applied and was fortunate to have been given that opportunity. So, four years ago I started what we call the Business Solutions Team, which is that expansion of our Neurodivergent Hiring.

Jennie Jacoby: Wow. Bryan, so as an industry, we talk a lot about our commitment to improving diversity and inclusion efforts, but oftentimes it just feels like the inclusion of neurodiverse employees gets sadly overlooked. How do you define neurodiversity in the workplace and what are some of the things JPMorgan Chase is doing to create a more inclusive environment?

Bryan Gill: Yeah, that’s a great question. The first way I define neurodiversity is superpowers and a competitive advantage for our firm. The fact that I am the global head of neurodiversity for JPMorgan, and the fact that we have a head of neurodiversity is a statement about our commitment to this space.

It’s a competitive advantage for our firm. These are communities that we want to serve in the bank, right? We want clients, certainly clients. If you think about it in the context of kind of the universe, about 30% of the world is neurodivergent. When I use the term neurodivergent, it includes all the communities, dyslexia, autism, ADHD, ADD, etc. All in, it’s about 30%. So as JPMorgan is kind of a global employer and we are seeking an inclusive employer, we believe that about 30% of our staff are neurodivergent. It’s never a question of if we’re going to have colleagues who process information differently. The question is, how many do you already have? We’re actively sourcing talent from these communities. How many additional will you have very shortly? I kind of view the neurodiversity space like this. One, there’s nothing charitable about this. It’s a bank, a competitive bank. We want the very best talent for our firm. The unemployment rates are underemployment rates in neurodiverse communities. You know, autism could be 75, 80%. IDD is probably closer to 90%. These are major untapped talent pools. With some minor adjustments and accommodations to our processes in our workplace, we can enable these colleagues to come work here and be their very best and compel our business and add and help create an amazing culture-amazing inclusive culture.

Jennie Jacoby: Bryan, just mentioned culture, so I have to ask about allyship, right, because that seems to be a huge component. How does JPMorgan Chase promote allyship in the workplace to support these neurodivergent employees and colleagues?

Bryan Gill: There are a couple of ways to look at this. I always start with a conversation around empathy. I think empathy is probably the single strongest manager attribute of a manager who will be successful in an inclusive work environment. We start with empathy and when we think about having colleagues or employees, if you’re a leader that is maybe neurodivergent, and we’ll put neurodivergent in the category of kind of non-apparent disabilities, right? Colleagues don’t need to tell us what their label is. They don’t need to disclose if they’re not comfortable. That’s a very personal choice. However, managers who lead with empathy think about everything from a needs-based perspective. For example, if we have a new employee who may not identify as a member of the neurodivergent community, your conversation will be, welcome to JPMorgan Chase, what do you need to be your very best? You have a colleague who joins on the first day and they may self-disclose as a member of one of the neurodivergent communities. Welcome to JPMorgan Chase, what do you need to be your very best? It’s the same conversation. Leaders who lead with empathy, their job is always come more than halfway across the table and make sure that their colleague has all the tools and resources they need to be their very best. That view of accommodations should be much more expansive for the diverse communities we’re sourcing talent from. For example, if you have a neurodivergent colleague, they might have a preference for a seat location where there’s less noise or distractions. They might have some sensory or environmental accommodations they need, so maybe a seat near a window or where there’s no traffic behind them. Colleagues from other communities like ADHD organize their work a little differently. They might do two or three days of heavy intensive work where they get five, or seven days of work done, but then they might need a day of training or decompression where you adjust the intraday break schedules as well. All of it is around how you provide the very best environment so colleagues get the support they need to be their very best when they come to work.

Jennie Jacoby: So Bryan, when we’re talking about allyship, what we’re saying is how do we remove those barriers to employment and the workspace generally? Can you tell us a little bit more about JPMorgan Chase’s advocacy work here? Can you give us an example of your commitment?

Bryan Gill: We’re operating on all fronts, both inside and outside of the firm. I’ll give you an example of advocacy. We realized early on when we were hiring colleagues from the IDD community, and again, it’s intellectually and developmentally disabled, that many of them rely on social security benefits as a safety net for disability benefits. Unfortunately, the asset and income limits still enforced for eligibility are decades old, I believe in 1979.

When we have colleagues here contributing to JPMorgan, we recognize our colleagues with salary increases and other compensation. We have colleagues who are working with these outdated assets and implements. You can’t have more than $2,000 in assets, which would include a 401k and free money from JPMorgan, and the average is you can’t make more than $1,380 a month. We recognize colleagues for their performance, they cut their hours back to ensure that they’re mindful of those archaic asset and income limits to ensure they have their safety net. We published a policy brief last April taking a formal position, and JPMorgan Chase taking a formal position that this is just unacceptable. Our colleagues can’t pursue self-determination. They can’t pursue their career aspirations. We are very fortunate that a couple of Ohio senators picked up on it and even referenced our policy brief in some legislation they’re advancing to eliminate that savings penalty. They’re out of Ohio, Portman and Brown. That’s an example of operating outside of our walls, and that would certainly elevate the entire disability community, at least in the United States. In conjunction with that, we’re working with other like-minded employers including Microsoft, Bank of America, Capital One, and Prudential, to name several like-minded employers to create a group of employers to bring this forward as the paradigm shift that the equity issue is just as important, but decades old, we now have a business problem. As employers, we want access to the amazing talent in these communities. This barrier to employment created by these outdated asset income limits, is problematic for us.

Jennie Jacoby: Bryan, you’re hitting on something I want to drill down on even further because it’s something that we like to say at SIFMA often is that a strong commitment to DE&I isn’t just the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, there’s also a clear business imperative as you’ve been kind of laying out for us. Can you share with us the value proposition of empowering neurodiverse individuals in the financial services industry and perhaps provide an example?

Bryan Gill: I will unequivocally say this is good for business. There is a value proposition. Nothing about any of this work is charitable at all. We have a number, first, we want to be the employer of choice, but we also want to be the bank of choice for the neurodivergent and disability communities. The first part of the equation is having representation from these communities, their diversity of thought, their lived experiences, and their perspectives help us understand how to provide products and services for the communities we want to bank. The second part of the equation is, and it’s specific to the neurodivergent space when you have colleagues that have a slightly different operating system and process information differently, and we’ll call this a superpower, and can look at our old problems in new ways and new problems in new ways and provide a unique perspective on how we’re conducting business- that is absolutely a competitive advantage. The third layer of this, and I’ll give you a great example, is when we can match the neurodivergent superpower to a specific transaction, that’s where we have amazing outcomes, both empirically, and I’ll talk a little bit more about cultural impacts. Here’s a case study:

We develop artificial intelligence as a firm, just like every other major enterprise does and we have a data scientist who writes the algorithms, and these return millions of data attributes. You can’t automate training the automation. Somebody has to review the values and 80% of them are in a high or low probability of match. So you’re reviewing two data attributes. Do they match? Or two data attributes, do they not match? So our data scientists were doing this. It’s iterative. It’s not a good motivational fit. It doesn’t align with their aspirations or how they perceive they add value and when you have that poor motivational fit, fit match with any type of transaction, you have bad outcomes, terrible quality, morale, attrition, and attendance. All those things are byproducts. We decoupled that part of the job and we matched a colleague from the neurodivergent community, or 10 colleagues actually from the neurodivergent communities, centric to IDD. I’ll give you one example. We have a colleague who is deeper in his autism spectrum. He’s mostly nonverbal. The way he presents on the street, you probably wouldn’t say he would do a great job working at JPMorgan on AI development, but we matched his talents to our business needs through one of our support agencies and his superpower is he stems on the process. His focus seems to renew with each item. He’s done 60,000+ transactions and he has not made a mistake.

That is an alignment of a superpower to a business need with an empirical outcome and that is just amazing. That’s an example of the value proposition. We’ve been able to do this in several areas, five different lines of business, and we’re entering our fourth major US market for that program, the IDD-centered program as we speak.

Jennie Jacoby: Bryan, I’m sitting here thinking, if I were another firm, where do I start? Where does the firm start in forming this ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy when it comes to neurodiversity like you all have done and spearheaded at JPMorgan? How do you define success?

Bryan Gill: I’ll start with a success question and I’ll back into it. So success is when we have diversity of thought, diversity of lived experiences, and diversity of perspectives integrated into all of the areas at the firm. There are often these kinds of stereotypical roles associated with, I’ll use autism as an example, that you think technology. Well, 60% of our autistic colleagues are actually in operations and other roles outside of technology.

We don’t limit ourselves, but it’s about success having representation across all areas of the firm. That’s the first one. How do you do it? These programs started I think six years ago and we did start small. We started with carve-outs. You identify a hiring manager who’s kind of aligned with the concept and they select a couple of jobs and you use some community partners or agencies to help match talent and those agencies provide other supports like training and matching the talent to your business and they provide supports in that way but you start small with carve-outs. What I would encourage any company engaging in this space to do is to truly understand the inherent value and think about this less about what you think you need to start with a program, but it needs to evolve into a strategy. I don’t refer to any of our activities programs. These are integrated business strategies and we think about ensuring that it’s embedded in the ecosystem and not off the side of the desk. Here’s a good example. We’re not going to go out and have an autist hiring fair. We’re going to have hiring fairs, and we’re going to include autists.

Jennie Jacoby: Right, exactly.

Bryan Gill: So it’s integrated into how we conduct business and the disability community, including the neurodivergent community, is not a competing demographic with any other community. All of our other work efforts are around, Advancing Black Pathways, or Veterans, or LGBTQ. We have a lot of amazing work across the firm. We are an integrated demographic in every single one of those other spaces and one of our major strategies is this kind of multi-integrated strategy where if one community is going to engage for hiring or advocacy work, we add in layers and include the other areas. It starts less about office programs, but it evolves into strategy.

Jennie Jacoby: Bryan, it sounds to me like intersectionality is critical here. Is that right in your opinion?

Bryan Gill: It’s absolutely right. We’re not a competing demographic, it’s an integrated demographic into all the other great work the firm is doing. So absolutely, that’s a crucial component.

Jennie Jacoby: That’s incredible. Let’s look toward the future. Where are the next opportunities to advance diversity, equity and inclusion among neurodiverse individuals across the industry?

Bryan Gill: We’re moving on a couple of fronts. One, we want a stronger global presence. We’re working on scaling to all the regions. JPMorgan Chase is across the world so that’s one important component. Each region has its unique operating model and challenges and opportunities. We’re working through that. We also want to have a stronger presence. We’re working on advocating for disability-owned businesses and providing coaching, business coaching for entrepreneurs, founders, and maybe members of the neurodiverse community. That’s another segment of our work. As I mentioned earlier, we want to be the bank of choice, so we continue to push on why JPMorgan should be your first choice. We have accessible products. We’re thinking about adding additional projects and products as we’re informed by our internal communities to make sure that we’re meeting the needs, the banking needs of the neurodivergent and disability communities. I would say growth. We have an amazing platform to scale from, but growth is my primary focus.

Jennie Jacoby: I’m excited to see what you all do next. Let’s close it out, Bryan, and what would you leave the listeners? What should they take away from this podcast, if you can think of one thing?

Bryan Gill: I want everyone listening to this podcast to understand how the employment of these communities may feel like it’s the right thing to do, and it is the right thing to do, but is the right thing to do for your business. If you understand the value proposition and the power that these communities can bring to your firm, making a very intentional effort to be inclusive to this community will do nothing but yield benefits. Culturally, the thing that I grossly underestimated about inclusion in these communities was the cultural impact. When team members, particularly with the IDD community, when team members step back and understand, it’ll reflect on how I can be a supportive colleague, and a supportive patient coach, when I think about leading with empathy, that tends to translate to the rest of the team. We’ve seen team dynamics improve, less drama, less kerfuffles, and overall the health of the organization has been improved.

Jennie Jacoby: Bryan, thank you so much. We are so lucky to have you in your capacity at JPMorgan and as an advocate for these communities and all communities. Thank you for everything you’re doing. Thank you for joining me today. It has been my pleasure. To learn more about SIFMA’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, please, visit sifma.org/diversity. Thank you to all our listeners for tuning in to this incredible series. We hope you’ll join us for our next episode of the SIFMA podcast. Thanks so much.

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Bryan Gill is Global Head of the Office of Disability Inclusion of JPMorgan Chase

Jennie Jacoby is Managing Director, Federal Government Affairs and Associate General Counsel of SIFMA