The entrepreneur’s advantage (with Rakia Reynolds from Actum)

Entrepreneurship rewards people who see opportunities that others miss. Rakia Reynolds joins Nathan Friedman to discuss how ADHD shaped her leadership style, fueled her creativity, and helped her build a thriving business. 

From masking at work to embracing pattern recognition as a superpower, Rakia shares why some of the qualities that once made her feel different in school and traditional workplaces became her greatest strengths as a founder. 

Together, they explore what leaders can learn from entrepreneurial thinking — and why workplaces that embrace neurodiversity are better equipped to innovate and grow.

Nathan Friedman: Welcome to "Minds at Work", the podcast for leaders who embrace neurodiversity in business. I'm your host, Nathan Friedman, co-president and chief marketing officer of Understood.org, the leading nonprofit focused on helping those who learn and think differently thrive. Each week, we're here exploring how neurodiversity sparks innovation and how we as leaders across industries can create a more inclusive future for all.

Today's guest is Rakia Reynolds. Rakia is a brand strategist, a business leader, and one of the most respected voices at the intersection of culture, creativity, and business. She was the founder of Skai Blue Media, a full-service strategic communications and creative marketing agency, and is now a partner at Actum, helping some of the world's most influential companies, creators, and changemakers build brands that resonate and endure.

She's been named to the Forbes Next 1000 list of business leaders aiming to change the world and the New York Women in Communications Matrix Award. And I'm grateful that Rakia is also a member of Understood's Women's Council, where she helps us build community and advise our work for neurodivergent women. I'm so delighted to be speaking with you today, Rakia. Welcome to "Minds at Work".

Rakia Reynolds: Thank you so much for having me.

Nathan: It's so great to see you, and especially in our home here in New York. And I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about Skai Blue Media, the company you founded in 2008 and was actually bought by Actum about a year ago. Why'd you start your own company? What led to that?

Rakia: Well, I think to get into why I started my own company, you need to know younger Rakia. And younger Rakia — since we're talking about neurodivergence and neurodiversity — I was diagnosed with ADHD between fourth and sixth grade. I say between fourth and sixth grade because I had a teacher who kept talking about it in fourth grade, but I had a teacher in sixth grade who actually made me get tested.

And she made me get tested — and listen, I'm not going to say my age, but I think times have changed and teachers didn't have the language back then. Children also didn't have the language. But she kept telling my parents that I was always speaking out of turn, and her big thing was Rakia can't sit still. Have you all had her tested?

And I applaud her for making my parents do this because there were all of these natural remedies that my parents tried to do and it was like, listen. And so the teachers were really good at partnering with my parents on this is what she needs to do. And they were accommodating. And I would say even from things like writing papers — and this also played into how I became, I guess, maybe grew into a creative.

Because my sixth-grade teacher, when I had to write a paper, she was like, "Well, what's the way that you want to produce this paper? Like, how do you want to tell everybody about..." — and it was something, I don't know, maybe "The Boston Tea Party", I don't remember what it was. And I said, "My dad just bought a camcorder. Can't I just act this out?"

And it was the first time that instead of handing in loose-leaf paper, I handed in VHS tapes. I thought it was just I was learning differently. And we couldn't explain it because teachers were like, "She's really cerebral. She's super, super smart. She speaks faster, she thinks faster than anyone in the classroom, but when it's time for her to take a test, she can't sit still." And we just didn't know what that was.

Then when I got into my 20s and I got into college, I got retested because obviously things advance, things are different. And that's the first time I was like, okay, I've gotten diagnosed with ADHD. That's the first time I had heard the "H". And then it was, you know, I was prescribed some medication, which still wasn't great for me. And I'm still figuring out: Do I want to be medicated? Do I not want to be medicated?

But I've learned all of these tools now that I'm nestled in my 40s. I've learned all of these tools to say here are the things that I need in place for business, for management, for leadership, for all of those things. So when I started my company, I had been studying counseling psychology. And I think a lot of people, when you're grappling with something, you're like, I want to be that thing to save myself.

So I was like, I'm going to be a counseling psychologist. I'm going to work with people that are differently abled or have challenges. And if I study that, maybe I can fix myself. And so did that for five years in higher education and then got recruited to work for MTV because they were looking for someone who understood the nuances of these scripted television shows.

So Nickelodeon, Noggin, "The N", were trying to do these shows that were with the writers of "My So-Called Life" and "DeGrassi High". And they were like, "We need people that really understand the nuance and complexity of all of the things we're talking about."

Nathan: I mean, that's when people started seeing themselves in TV because they could relate to the characters because they were so nuanced.

Rakia: Yeah. And so that's where my career in sort of cultural storytelling began to take shape. So worked in television, was a producer. Then I got recruited because I was working in television and magazine at the same time. And a magazine — "Lucky Magazine" from back in the day — they had profiled me as this producer who was spending her time in Philadelphia, New York, in LA, and doing all of these things in creative.

And a PR company recruited me. They said, "Hey, can you come run our Web 2.0 department and build the future of communications for us?" And that's what I did. I did that for about a year. And then I was like, you know, I've done all of these things. I've written for magazines, I've produced editorials, I've produced television shows. I want to start my own multimedia communications agency.

Not finding anything that really fit me per se, it was like, I wanted to do these things, I wanted to produce content, I wanted to storytell, I wanted to have traditional media, I wanted to do things in style and fashion. And so I said I'm going to build my own company, and I did just that.

Nathan: It's amazing. I mean, a lot of your story mirrors some of what I've experienced, but what a lot of people experienced who are of a certain age. You know, I was beginning to be diagnosed in the mid-80s and that journey took years. Being dyslexic and having ADHD, trying to figure out how to write papers, take standardized tests, do things to fit into whatever somebody else wanted me to do was really hard. And I know you just recently started talking about your ADHD diagnosis, actually on our friend Laura Key's podcast, "ADHD Aha!". Why was it important for you to talk about it there?

Rakia: You know, I had masked for so long, and I think being a Black woman, for me it was like I didn't want something additional for someone to say, "Oh, and she's, you know, ADHD." And as people know, as an entrepreneur — I'm not speaking for black women everywhere, but the road to entrepreneurship is quite complex and you are constantly swimming upstream.

I applaud my educational journey because I think I had been exposed to educators who actually knew the complexities of neurodivergence. They weren't using that language, but they were accommodating to say, "Rakia, you should do a presentation," which got me great in the world of public speaking. "You should study business — maybe not chemistry — but if you study risk management insurance, marketing, and international business, you will be a beast."

And I will tell you when you talk about superpowers, I like to call them my zones of genius. My zone of genius became pattern recognition. I think pattern recognition was something that I had mastered as a child. So much so that people start to think that you're intuitive or they think that you're a psychic.

And it's like, no. When someone raises their left eyebrow, I know that they're lying. If they look to the left, I know that they're unsure about what they're saying. If they raise their finger, that means that they don't have the context clues to finish their sentence. And so as a communications professional, it became something that made me a unique value proposition in any room that I walked into.

06:33 Using pattern recognition skills to solve complex problems for major global brands.

Rakia: So in three years, I started to work with major companies like Uber, Dell, HSN. I got a call — and we're talking about Serena Williams now — I got a call from her manager five years into business and they were like, "We love the way that you talk about social media and communication on television. Can you come work with the Serena Williams brand for HSN?"

And I got calls by all of these CEOs and my work started to snowball. And because I'd masked for so long, I'm like, oh my gosh, I finally made it. I can't tell anyone that I'm ADHD. I can't tell anyone that I'm differently abled or I have this challenge because then they'll judge me. And it wasn't until like two years ago until I did the "Aha" podcast where I was like, I can actually tell people. And then when people listened to it, they were like, "Rakia, we already know. We already know, we just were waiting for you to say something."

Nathan: Speaking about those superpowers and things that have really stood out, what has helped you leverage your strengths? Like, have you any tricks you can share of whether it's supports or things you do? I know we just talked about, "Hey, how do I sit still before this podcast came on and we started taping," but what can you help the listeners understand to help themselves?

Rakia: Yeah, I think for me — I'll speak from an analog standpoint. From an analog standpoint, before we had all of the tools to make us smarter, faster, better, I always made sure I had someone with me. And for me, it was never a question. Throughout my entire career, I've always had an assistant. And that assistant is my thought partner.

So I speak and think very, very quickly. And I would tell people my brain works a little differently. I may be 13 steps ahead, so I need you to write all of these things down, I need you to catalog these things. And so much so that I started to see a therapist at one point because at one point I was gaslighting myself.

I'm like: Am I psychic? Because I feel like I'm predicting all of this behavior. And I hired a therapist to work with me as well, and she started to document my thoughts. And she said, "Rakia, from a pattern recognition standpoint, you're about two years ahead. So I need you to slow it down and make sure when you're talking about things, you're talking about future-proofing."

Because at some point I started to get really upset when I'd say something to someone and I'm — as a consultant, you know this — you're like, "You should be doing this." And then it took them — it never failed — every client, every project that I worked on, people would start to catch up maybe a year or two later. And I'd be like, "But I said that! What happened?"

And they'd be like, "Rakia, once again, we were too late. We need you to slow down." It's always been Rakia, we need you to slow down. Now because we're in the world of smarter, faster, better, it has become a little more advantageous to me because paired with technological tools, I've also started to use AI to match my workflow.

So things like Codex — it's a workflow tool — it can actually monitor the ways in which you work. It takes screenshots of your computer, sees where you have lulls and says these are the skills that you need to build. So my tech stack is how do I take all of the things that I've been able to predict and synthesize that in a way that catches up with people in today?

11:29 The business advantages of predictive intelligence and the use of AI to match workflow.

Rakia Reynolds: So if I'm predicting business outcomes and things one or two years out, I can now synthesize those things and say here's the road map to get there. Where before I may not have had the road map, I just said, "Hey, this is what's going to happen. The way that you all have been doing things, in the next two years this workforce is going to look like this, this person is going to quit, this is going to be the external compounded stress that we're suffering from right now might impact your business this way."

And now I can do those things and synthesize them by utilizing technological tools and say here's the road map to get here. So I'm not actually slowing down, I'm just summarizing in a way that people that are not neurodivergent can understand.

Nathan Friedman: I think there's — I think back on the feedback I've gotten throughout my career, and a lot of it is centered around partly slowing down, but also you need to let people catch up to you. And it took me a while to reconcile that and being like, wait a second, I think differently than they think. So what I've solved in my mind between Speaker 1 and Speaker 3, people are still needing to go and do other meetings to figure that out. And I'm like, that's a waste of my time.

Rakia: You know what? I feel so seen. I just want to say that. I feel so seen because I've always felt like — you remember the teacher from "Charlie Brown"? Womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. I've always felt like that's how the rest of the world was moving. Like womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, and I'm just moving so quickly.

And that has always been the feedback: Rakia, you're too ahead of us, slow down. And that's a challenge, it's something I'm still figuring out. I probably talk about it a lot because I'm like, why can't you just get it? Why can't you just get it right away? And I think I do think it's something that I wish we would talk more about in the workplace, especially people who are leading companies.

Because it's already lonely at the top and you don't really get to talk about these things. And you don't want to be talking about these things in the conference room or the boardroom or to the person sitting next to you on your flight.

Nathan: No, you don't. And I was talking with some leaders and they're like, "We have to do it this way. We have to do this by the playbook. And this is how we bring people on." And I'm like, that — I get itchy in with big companies. And they're like, "We're going to talk to these people, then we talk to those people, then we do workshops, then we break out, then we come back together." I'm like: I could have saved you the $50,000, exactly. Pay me the $50,000 that you just spent on that and I'll give you the Cliff Notes version in five bullets.

But I think something you just pointed out here too, a few seconds ago, was about visibility. And visibility of leaders, not only advocating for the neurodivergent community, but also talking about what it's like to live as a neurodivergent individual, right? And I know, unfortunately, we see a lot of men lauded for their being "idea men" or "I'm a thinker." Why do you think there are so many men and not women? And I know that's an emotionally charged statement, but that needs to change. And part of the reason why we've constructed the Women's Council at Understood. So do you think it's changing? Why do you think there are some barriers to that?

14:47 The unique barriers women face in disclosing neurodivergence and the power of finding community.

Rakia Reynolds: Listen, I think every time that we take two steps forward, we take 10 steps back. And where we currently are right now, I just think in this geopolitical environment, we have taken 10 steps back. I'd say maybe five or six years ago, I was a bit more confident just in terms of where women were progressing towards in the neurodivergent community.

However, now I just think because of where we are, I'm not even talking about it as much. I'm talking about it with you all, but I'm not broadcasting this from the rooftops of being in meetings or anything like that because I think because we live in the patriarchy and just societal changes.

I'm going to be honest, I don't think things are getting better. And I am an optimistic person. I believe that the glass is always half full, I believe that the sun is always shining when I see clouds in the sky. But this is probably a moment in time where I can say no. And I think community is more important than anything.

You build the community before you need the community, and be within your community so that you have safe spaces so that you can talk about things. I think because I work in the spaces of experiential communications and experiential marketing, I'm seeing more highly curated spaces to talk about things like ADHD or to talk about things like not being able to complete tasks or whatever it is that people need to talk about in the workspaces.

I'm seeing that in experientially curated spaces. I recently went to a conference where it was for people that worked in the world of event marketing, but they had very special sessions for folks that were of the neurodivergent community. And I had never seen anything like it.

They put special carpeting down. They had clay and fidget spinners and things. And for me in the ADHD community, one of the things that always ticks me off is people like slurping and chewing. And they talked about — oh my gosh.

Nathan: The chewing that, for me, it's the fork on the teeth.

Rakia: Oh my gosh. My husband and I have been married — we just celebrated 21 years of marriage. And I'm like, sir, I don't know how we made it because the way you chew on hard candy sends me to the moon every single time.

Nathan: I just got the — yeah.

Rakia: You know it. And so he always says he's like, that's your ADHD side.

Nathan: Styrofoam for me. I can't stand the touch of it, the sound of it.

Rakia: But I did want to say one of the other things you had — I want to go back to some of the other tools. I know that I move around a lot. And there are instances where people are like, "Why is Rakia sitting crisscross applesauce?" Well, that's something that I have to do to keep myself still and to center myself so that I'm paying attention and I'm super present.

And boy, does it look strange when you're in a meeting with someone in a suit and I'm like, okay, let me just sit here so that I can center myself and I can pay attention. But it took me a really long time to get there. And I would say even now, I'm a good reader of the room.

So I know if I walk into a room — from a pattern recognition standpoint, from the deductive reasoning, and there's probably some intuition there — I know who I can be comfortable with and who I can't be comfortable with.

18:13 Reading the room and using unique grounding techniques to stay present in high-stakes environments.

Nathan: Have you seen anything around the difference in generations' acceptance or talking about or engaging with neurodiversity, particularly Gen Z and I guess Gen Alpha now because Gen Z now has kids? Which is wild to me.

Rakia: Wild.

Nathan: But have you seen any changes in how generations are talking about this?

Rakia: Oh my gosh, online! And I would say because I'm a mom and I have three children, and my children are 16, 18, and 23. So when you have children at that age, you see the way that they're talking in schools, you see how they're advocating for themselves. And typically from what I know — and I can't say this for all — but folks that are neurodivergent will typically have neurodivergent children.

Nathan: It's hereditary. This is not caused by Tylenol. Please.

Rakia: This is not caused by Tylenol. Yes, please dispel that myth. But so I've seen it in my children. And it's actually making — it made me take more note to figure out what accommodations could look like. So I first started seeing it in my eldest child. And again, she was deemed a creative. And she is a creative, she is a fine artist.

And she was able to go to college and graduate at the top of her class because I knew when I saw it in her, I'm like, okay, this is the way that we should be shifting because it happened to me. Whereby my husband is not a neurodivergent person — at least I don't think — he's not been diagnosed. But listen, there are some things.

But with my first child, I saw it. And then she was able to talk to my middle child to start advocating for herself to say I may need a little longer for test-taking after school. And they used the word "accommodations." Like, I need accommodations! I'm like: You use that word in school?

Now my 16-year-old, as an athlete, and he's not been tested or anything, but you can tell. As a mom, you know. When you know, you know, and when we get there, we will get there. But I do see the lexicon has shifted because certain taboos have been removed and people are a little lighter about it.

Whereby me, I was masking and not talking about it. And you know, my teenagers are like, "Oh yeah, I'm probably ADHD and I just need to tell my teacher that I need a little, you know, extra time on a test or I need these accommodations." And my children — oh my gosh, I just want to say I feel so grateful and blessed that my children have an easier ride than me.

They're not swimming upstream, they're swimming. And they're swimming because they have all of the tools because someone recognized early on to say, okay, when this is challenging to you, maybe you sit here and you don't make decisions after this time. Maybe you work in the light, maybe you sit at an ergonomically designed desk.

There are so many things that you can be doing and there are so many tools and resources out there where you can read and do the things. So I would say net-net, I just hear the lexicon has shifted and I'm so happy that the lexicon has shifted. I am a little irritated that it's so loosely used, though.

Nathan: I'm a little — that irritates me. ADHD is thrown out everywhere now.

Rakia: It is, it's almost like, oh, it's an excuse versus a real diagnosis and that reduces sometimes the severity or the importance of that actual diagnosis and what that can do for people. We don't need to go into all that, but there's a lot of things that are misinformation that are fed by social. And I should have started by saying Dr. Rakia because you are a professor.

Nathan: Well, unofficial.

Rakia: Unofficial doctor, but yes, I did a two-year residency as Professor-in-Residence at TikTok, which was so much fun. And they brought me in — they had chosen two people in the entire country to be Professor-in-Residence at TikTok. And essentially what it meant was: Hey, we're TikTok, we do a lot of advertising on platform, we do a lot of storytelling on platform.

We need storytellers that understand cultural fluency on the platform. Whether we're bringing in a television studio or we're bringing in a really large restaurant chain or we're bringing in a big beauty company — I mean, it ran the gamut. So for two years I was speaking in Brazil, Mexico City, all of the hubs where people are digitally native or digitally forward-thinking, some of the top TikTok markets.

I was speaking and doing keynotes in front of hundreds of people, sometimes thousands of people who were — their lives were committed to the world of storytelling and talking to them about the storytelling. Talking to them which I break down is storytelling, storyselling, and storyyelling. And that was my talk track as a Professor-in-Residence at TikTok.

Nathan: I mean, that's amazing work. And I'm sure you all — you gave information out, you talked about that, but you also absorbed information while you were there.

Rakia: Oh my gosh, so much.

Nathan: So we've wide-ranging conversation. We've talked about growing up, we talked about kids, we talked about work, creativity. Anything else we missed that you feel is important and is on your mind that you'd like to discuss?

Rakia: I would say thank you for the space. I think spaces like this are important, especially for — and I'm speaking for myself — folks that sit in that C-suite leadership space where you're leading and you're guiding companies. And you have to be your best self so that you can equip the next generation of folks to be their better selves.

And then they can, you know, pass the baton and do all of the things. I think because times are changing and we do have a little bit of agency to talk about how we shift, how we learn, take up space to do that. You know, you have the agency to do it, so take up the space.

Nathan: And you also have the platform to do it. Everybody can talk about that publicly now, right? Whereas 20 years ago or however old people are, wasn't there.

Rakia: It wasn't there, I know.

Nathan: And you couldn't see people like you. You relied on other people to tell that story through media or through another channel, which is kind of one of the benefits of modern society.

Rakia: Yes, absolutely.

Nathan: Well, thank you for coming. Where can people find you by the way?

Rakia: I am all over the internet, so Rakia Reynolds, R-A-K-I-A R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-S. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, LinkedIn — you can find me on all the platforms.

Nathan: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much again for coming today and thank you for your partnership with Understood.

Rakia: Thank you. Thank you. This was great. This was fun.

Nathan: Thanks for tuning in to "Minds at Work". I hope today's conversation inspired you to think differently about how to harness the power of neurodiversity in business. If you want to know more about our guest today or the work we're doing here at Understood.org, please check out the show notes.

For those looking for resources to better advocate for themselves and others, please visit u.org/work. "Minds at Work" is brought to you by Understood.org, the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia.

To help us continue and expand our work, please donate at u.org/donate. That's the letter u.org/donate. The show is produced by Julie Subrin, Alison Hochlander, Max McKenzie, and me, Nathan Friedman. Mixing is by Justin D. Wright. Briana Berry is our production director and Laura Key is our executive director.

And I'm your host, Nathan Friedman. Please join us next time when we'll continue exploring how difference can spark connection and shape a more inclusive and creative future of business.