When leaders disclose at work (Conversations from Davos)

Martin McKay is the founder and executive chairman of Everway, a global organization that helps companies build human-centered, inclusive workplaces. At the 2026 Davos Neurodiversity Summit, he spoke with Dr. Maureen Dunne about disclosing his dyslexia as a founder and senior leader. They discussed the importance of psychological safety for neurodivergent employees, and how organizations can move beyond inclusion as language to create meaningful, lasting change.

This special season of Minds at Work is brought to you by Understood.org and the Davos Neurodiversity Summit.

Nathan Friedman: Welcome to "Conversations from Davos," a special season of "Minds at  Work," brought to you by Understood.org and the Davos Neurodiversity Summit. Here we'll be unpacking the most important themes from this year's summit.

Dr. Maureen Dunne: I'm Maureen Dunne. I'm a cognitive scientist, an author, and the founder of the Davos Neurodiversity Summit. Today, I'm delighted to share with you a conversation I had with Martin McKay at this year's summit. Martin is the founder and executive chairman of Everway, a global organization focused on helping companies build more inclusive, human — centered workplaces.

Martin's work challenges traditional ideas about performance, offering new ways to think about belonging, productivity, and even leadership. In this conversation, we talk about some of Everway's groundbreaking partnerships, psychological safety at work, and disclosure. Specifically, what it was like for Martin to disclose at the highest levels of leadership and why he feels it's really important for other leaders to do the same. Here he is, live from the stage at the 2026 Davos Neurodiversity Summit.

(00:26) The reach and impact of Martin’s assistive technology company.

Maureen: So glad you could join us today. It really means a lot to see someone of your level, having built a successful company over decades and having lived experience and doing the amazing work that you're doing. So, yeah, pretty cool.

Martin McKay: Thank you. It doesn't feel like I've done anything yet, really. I just feel like I'm getting started.

Maureen: And I guess that's a good trait of a good leader, where you think there's always more to do. You're focused on what out there is still left to do.

Martin: Yeah, and it's not — I don't do the work. There are 700 people who do the work, so I just ask them to do things.

Maureen: So just so everyone knows for those of you who aren't familiar with Martin, he founded Everway in 1996. So there's not too many companies that have been successful and operating that long, which is in itself pretty extraordinary. Today, there's a large delegation in North America, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden — you're truly an international company — Denmark, Australia.

Martin: Not in Switzerland yet.

Maureen: Not in Switzerland. Okay, so anyone in Switzerland, take note here. But it sounds from what I understand you have 250 million people who are using your products.

Martin: Yeah, we made an assistive technology product. There's kind of low awareness of assistive technology, so we thought it would be a good idea to make an assistive technology product that could be embedded in someone's website so that people who struggle with reading or consuming information could just press the play button and listen to the website. 250 million people have used that tool, but I want to get to a billion.

Maureen: I think what's really important for those watching virtually and in the room, you've had a long career and you've been in leadership for quite a long time. So I guess I'm curious like — I'm sure you've seen moments where even the language around change — because there might be a difference between idealism and what we need to be doing, but then the reality of the slowness and just how large organizations adopt and change, and what does that look like?

And I guess the question I'd have for you is how do you know when an organization is generally ready to change its operating logic versus when it's simply adopting the language of the moment?

Martin: When I hear companies talking about neuro-inclusion, I often kind of don't really believe it until they have a budget for it. I much prefer seeing someone who has got responsibility to get the thing implemented and a budget line item.

I think in education, the thing that drives change is actually education policy and law. I've seen education has been transformed over the last 30 years and it's been driven by accessibility and disability legislation and the generation of kids who are leaving school now and going into workplace have been brought up in a much more inclusive world and they're thinking differently when they go into work.

But a lot of it just kind of stops. In the education system, there are advocates, like teachers are responsible to identify kids who think differently and support them and look after them. When people go into work, they have to advocate for themselves. 80% of neurodivergent people just don't disclose.

Because they don't disclose, their employer doesn't know and they're kind of unsupported and very often kind of struggling at work or are underemployed. They could be doing much better at work. So I think what I've found in the workplace, you've got to have an economic argument that says if you do this, if you implement this inclusion practice or in our case, if you get these tools to help your neurodivergent employees, your productivity will improve, your staff morale will improve. You've got to be able to prove that out. It is the hardest thing I've ever done. Education is easier compared to workplace. It's tough. It really is a slog.

Maureen: If you don't mind if I challenge you just a little bit because my journey — so I left high school early because it really didn't work for me in terms of having some sensory sensitivities. So I ended up leaving high school early and then in America, there's this wonderful thing called community colleges where I ended up at a community college.

Having been in leadership at a lot of educational institutions, education also seems to move very slow. So one of the things I did when I was in leadership as a trustee and president, being a former community college student, I was the first community college student to become a Rhodes Scholar and then ended up at Oxford.

But I guess the question I have for you is things are changing so fast, and so like I feel like having also been a trustee and been in leadership in higher ed, how do we get workforce and higher ed then working together to collaborate and make these changes that we need to be acknowledging to create these pathways that are going to lead to meaningful careers where more neurodivergent people can — because we know over 80% of neurodivergent people start at community colleges.

Martin: Yeah, you've had a really unusual path because very few people get from community college to PhD and the wonderful things that you've done. So, hats off to you. And it's also incredibly different for everyone. Everyone has their own experience.

I think a couple of things that we're doing — one angle that we've got is working with, like in New York State, we're working with the education system and the Department of Labor to try to bridge that gap. They've actually got — there are a few states that have got like a Department of Education and Labor now that are kind of joining those things up.

So that's one angle where we kind of go at it from the political side of things. The other thing that we're doing is partnering with large employers who have got a kind of geographic concentration. So Bank of America headquarters are in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district is their biggest kind of feeder district for young students.

So all of the students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg have access to our tools and then when they transition into Bank of America, the workplace version of the tools are there for them. And we're doing the same, hoping to do the same thing with Walmart. Every kid in Arkansas has got our tools.

Arkansas is like — the education leader there has done a really fantastic job. They've got this "Access for All" kind of program and they're thinking about it in a really interesting way. It's not just neurodiversity but kind of linguistic diversity — people who are learning a second language and so on — and just having a kind of generally inclusive approach.

Walmart wants to be the most accessible retailer on Earth. They've got sensory-friendly hours in every Walmart everywhere. And actually, they found that when they dim the lights and turn down the sound on the checkouts, more people come in because it's a more pleasant place to be. That's every Walmart store in the world. It's very good. We should have more of that.

(06:18) The value of leaders disclosing their neurodivergence

Maureen: Very interesting. So I guess a follow-up question to that is I'm curious what constraints leaders may have today, like implications or advice for leaders or future leaders or emerging leaders in terms of like — it seems like sometimes we are designing out of habit a lot and even though they might not apply and the future is different, things are changing so fast, accelerating.

How do we change when there's things changing faster in terms of technology and systems and there's not processes in place where people are really realistically able to adapt as fast as those technological changes? I don't know if you have any insights about that.

Martin: Well, first of all, I think we need more publicly disclosing neurodivergent leaders because I think that unlocks a better working environment. So I'm thoroughly dyslexic, right? I'm thoroughly dyslexic. I read incredibly slowly and my working memory is in a notebook on that table. I usually just kind of have to write during a conversation so I can look back.

But I'm better at other things. But when my marketing team comes to me with marketing copy, very often I say, "That is just too hard to read. We need to really make that simple." And I think if we had more people with kind of cognitive diversity in leadership roles and making sure that their products and services are cognitively accessible, they can actually access a bigger marketplace because there's like a bunch of people with dyslexia who just won't read complicated stuff and then they'll not interact with the website and they'll not buy the product.

So I think public disclosure — when I told my — everyone who's neurodivergent knows, right? But they just don't know exactly what. My daughter was diagnosed and she was explaining her experience through the education system and I was thinking that, "Oh my goodness, that is just like me." A common experience.

I kind of expected it and then I went and got diagnosed and I'm thoroughly dyslexic. But I decided at the next town hall to tell all our staff. I was quite relaxed about it because I'd already been successful and didn't really kind of feel like I was going to be judged by them.

But when I did it, 30 people — at that time we had about 450 staff — 30 people reached out to me to say, "Oh, I'm ADHD and I've never told anyone." So I think leaders who go public about it, that will help unlock the whole thing. I think that's super important.

Maureen: I'm so glad you mentioned that because part of the mission and motivation of even having this summit is because I've met so many leaders in C-suites — CEO, senior vice president roles — that will be private and say, "Yeah, I'm neurodivergent, but I'm afraid what would my board think?"

Martin: So I have private equity investors and I was really, really worried about do they think I'm not going to be a safe pair of hands to manage their investment? I was really, really worried about that. So when I think, can you imagine what it's like for a 22-year-old just out of university coming into workplace?

They're not going to say "I'm dyslexic" or "I've got ADHD." Most people think it's a career-limiting disclosure. So if you don't have leaders making it safe — hopefully, they're good leaders and if you've got good leaders saying "I'm dyslexic" or "I'm ADHD" or "I'm autistic," that will be a positive role model and people are much more likely then to disclose.

Maureen: Absolutely. And in your own company, have you seen other people throughout the organization given your leadership come forward and say, "Oh, I feel more comfortable disclosing and talking about this," because that's so important, that psychological safety to be able to talk about this.

Martin: Oh, yeah. There's some people in the senior team who have disclosed to me, but they haven't — they don't want it to be known more broadly. So I've got some work to do there still, but that just unlocks so much more potential in people, I think. It's a really good thing to do.

Maureen: So the last question. You have such an interesting combination of lived leadership experience, being a CEO, being a founder, running a successful company going through that path which is not easy. So you've seen a lot of change over the last 30 years.

Do you have any advice for maybe the younger people in the audience of what are next steps to get to this point where there are more leaders feeling comfortable disclosing and creating that level of psychological safety?

Martin: I just think more of us have to talk about it, which is the purpose of this summit, I suppose, to get it out there. But I think we need more — this shouldn't be — 30-something percent, 34% of CEOs are dyslexic. So I'm just a one-in-three person. So for people who know about it, it's pretty obvious. And you can tell.

Maureen: People generally know, but it's still hard to get to that point.

Martin: Yeah, when I thought about how I felt about disclosing it to my investors, who are a super friendly and supportive bunch of people — they're very, very good — I was really worried. Turns out they were fine. So, yeah. And that's wonderful because that's maybe not always the case.

But that's what we're all here working towards, building that world where people can be who they are and ask for what they need and be open and obviously, we're all different. But I think if there's one kind of policy change that I would like to get large corporations to implement, it would be to not require disclosure.

Because some people don't want to. And they shouldn't have to if they don't want to. But the support should just be there for everyone so that they can just get it when they need it without having to go and say, "Well, I'm disabled, I need a disability accommodation." Because I don't really think of it as a disability; it's just a difference.

So that, I think, if any of you are in influential positions in large organizations, the biggest thing that you can do is to have a policy change in your large organization to just make the supports available without people having to disclose.

Because what happens is 80% of people don't disclose and then 80% of people are kind of underemployed and unsupported in the workplace. And if it was a visible disability, it wouldn't be accepted. So why should it be accepted if it's a neurodiversity issue? I just think we need to — that's a social change that needs to occur.

Maureen: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here and this was a great conversation. Is there anything else you'd want to add?

Martin: No, I just like — this is a really good event and thank you for hosting it. I've had so many great conversations already and I'm looking forward to meeting more people over the next couple of days. Thank you.

Nathan Friedman: You've been listening to "Conversations from Davos," a special season of "Minds at Work" hosted by Dr. Maureen Dunne and brought to you by Understood.org and the Davos Neurodiversity Summit. If you want to know more about our guest today, please check out the show notes.

For those looking for resources to better advocate for themselves and others at work, visit u.org/work. And to learn more about the summit and Dr. Maureen Dunne, visit DavosNeurodiversitySummit.com.

"Minds at Work" is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

The show is produced by Julie Subrin and Alison Hoachlander. Mixing is by Justin D. Wright, with production support from Andrew Rector. Briana Berry is our production director.

From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key and Scott Cocchiere. And I'm your host, Nathan Friedman.