First things first… congratulations on the recent publication of your research manuscript! That’s exciting news!

Yes! I was so proud to see the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number… my own! The hundreds upon hundreds of DOI numbers I have had to type up in my references lists over the last six years… My research manuscript, “Paying Attention: Female ADHD Students Learning in Graduate School” has been published online ahead of print in Adult Education Quarterly, a Sage Publication. This journal is a benchmark for publication in the field of Adult and Continuing Education.

I’m really curious. You are a Senior Proposal Manger at OESC Group and have worked in government proposals for the last 15 years. How does this tie together?

I get this question a lot! The less long answer is that I loved school as a little girl, and I always wanted to earn the highest degree you could get in school. After becoming a teenage mother, I was really driven to reach that goal not only for myself, but for my two boys. I eventually earned a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies. After I had been in the workforce awhile, and working in proposals, I decided to go back and juggle a master’s degree in Educational Psychology. I was doing proposals by day (and sometimes night!) and doing school in the evenings. After completing my MS, I decided to continue for my PhD and I completed my doctorate in Educational Psychology and Research in Adult Learning at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in May of 2022, all while working full time. The research in the published article is actually from my dissertation study. The biggest thing that bridges my education and research with my work in proposals is that I have been given the opportunity to understand how people learn and operate. I often joke that working in proposals is like working for NATO. You have to build trust, solve problems, and prevent conflict. If the end goal is a winning proposal that the whole team can be proud of, you have to get everyone to the finish line with the best product and with as little scrapes and bruises to your colleagues and teammates as possible, because you will be working together again. Also, if the company does well, you do well.

Would you care to share the inspiration for this particular study?

The inspiration for this study is my 25-year-old son who struggled with ADHD as a child, despite testing as intellectually gifted. Once he entered college, he struggled to keep up with juggling the many credit hours that his engineering program required. It didn’t take long for him to be placed on academic probation and eventually dismissed from his engineering program. I watched what that did to him emotionally and I kept thinking about all the other young adults just like him. This was the catalyst for ADHD in adults becoming my research area. I have worked with individuals with ADHD, and I have seen what they bring to the workplace if given a structured and supportive environment to succeed.

Is that why this manuscript topic is meaningful to you? What have you found through the study about how adults living with ADHD are impacted?

This topic is meaningful because most people don’t realize that ADHD still impacts adults. In fact, 65% of children with ADHD will continue to exhibit symptoms of ADHD in adulthood. They are at a higher risk for adverse outcomes such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and lower quality of life; even though they have normal intelligence, and all because of a difference in how their brain processes information. Adults in college and in the workplace also have a deep fear of disclosing their diagnosis for fear of professors and supervisors thinking they won’t be able to handle their courses or their job duties. These fears are founded given that research shows adults with ADHD make less money on average than adults without ADHD and they are fired more often than in control groups. These are people that have a great deal of passion and experience to offer society, and so my study is a way to help shine a light on the experiences of just some of these brave and talented people. In fact, the very last line of my study is, “For adult learners with ADHD, we hope our study serves as a call to higher education to pay attention.” The play on the word attention in that last sentence is purposeful. Society keeps telling these individuals to pay attention and this study is flipping that to ask for society to pay attention.

It’s so beneficial to everyone that you have shed some light on the passion and experience of adult learners with ADHD. How has this helped you in your professional career when working with so many people in the proposal process?

The best part about accommodating individuals with ADHD is that those same accommodations benefit everyone in the workplace. No one wants to be so stressed out by unorganized and conflicting information and deadlines to the point that you actually feel like you might drown. Great managers know that they get the best out of their people when they keep things organized as much as possible and give their people agency and listen to their input. Proposals can be an incredibly difficult environment, a pressure cooker. Breaking tasks into smaller steps (chunking), setting clear expectations, offering mentoring, allowing some autonomy, and teaching organizational and time management skills can keep from overloading employees’ executive functions and helps build their self-efficacy.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?