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Bet on People
We talk to leaders and business owners about their journey learning the value of human-centered leadership and how betting on people isn't just good feels, it's smart business. We explore the career arc behind their evolution as a leader: where human-centered values showed up early and where they had to learn the hard way.
Bet on People
Bet on People with Haley Moss
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of the Bet on People, Keegan Evans, executive coach and AI Consultant at Euda and Limited Partner at Beyond Earth Ventures, speaks with Haley Moss, neurodiversity expert and founder of Haley Moss LLC, keynote speaker, lawyer, educator, and author of several books that guide neurodivergent individuals through professional and personal challenges, about building more inclusive workplaces for neurodivergent people. The conversation covers authenticity, boundaries, accessibility, disclosure, communication preferences, and how leaders can design work environments that support different ways of thinking and collaborating.
Haley brings lived experience as an autistic professional whose advocacy began as a teenager, later expanded through writing, law school, legal practice, speaking, and consulting. Her path from early diagnosis to workplace advocacy gives listeners a practical view of why accessibility should be built into culture and policy rather than treated as a one-person exception.
Key Takeaways
- How authenticity and boundaries work together: being open at work does not require sharing every personal detail, and leaders can model self-respect by choosing what stays private.
- Why accessibility belongs in policy: building flexibility into work norms reduces one-off accommodation requests and helps more people succeed before problems arise.
- The communication practices that reduce anxiety: simple working-with-me preferences, agenda context, and follow-up norms can make collaboration clearer for neurodivergent and non-neurodivergent teammates.
- How belief and support change outcomes: a person taking a chance, saying yes, or providing a safety net can make trying difficult paths possible even when others predict failure.
- Why disclosure becomes easier with strategy: framing disability through strengths, needs, and boundaries can help reduce stigma while protecting the individual’s choice to share.
- How AI can be both uncomfortable and useful: skepticism about creative harm can coexist with using AI as a practical tool for accessibility, templates, and skill-building.
Episode Breakdown with Timestamps:
00:00 - Teaser
01:29 - Introduction to Haley Moss and her neurodiversity work
02:36 - Authenticity, self-care, and showing up as yourself
04:19 - Autism diagnosis, early expectations, and entering advocacy
06:28 - Why disability rights law created empathy overload
13:03 - How virtual work exposed long-standing accessibility biases
16:11 - Inclusive policies, accommodations, and different work needs
23:46 - Disclosure, stigma, and strengths-based self-advocacy
28:22 - AI, creativity, and accessibility for the disability community
🔗Connect with Guest Haley Moss:
👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haleylmoss/
👉 Email: haley@haleymoss.com
👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HaleyMossART/
👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haley.moss/
👉 Twitter/X: https://x.com/haleymossart
🔗Connect with Haley Moss LLC:
👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/haley-moss/
👉 Website: https://haleymoss.com/
👉 Learn more through Haley Moss's books and publications: https://haleymoss.com/publications/
🔗Connect with Host Keegan Evans:
👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keeganevans/
🔗 More from Euda:
👉 Website: https://www.euda.io/
👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/euda-io/
🔗 Follow the Podcast on:
👉 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bet-on-people/id1882863281
👉 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5HgXTMbgkDsmuqzUiDGcXc
👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Euda-io
How do you define overall your approach to showing up in the world, showing up in the workplace and helping others?
SPEAKER_00I look at a lot of showing up is really about being authentic. I think that it is a great way to lead and inspire. I was diagnosed with autism back in the late 90s, especially for neurodivergent people. There's a lot of societal messaging of be yourself, but not like that. So trying to say no caveats to that is where I like to really start from above all else.
SPEAKER_01Our guest today is Hayley Moss, neurodiversity expert and founder of Hailey Moss LLC. Her mission is to challenge stigmas and stereotypes around neurodiversity to create inclusive and accessible culture change around autism while empowering other neurodivergent individuals. What is the worst professional advice that you've ever received?
SPEAKER_00To just keep your head down and smile. I think the things that are most important to keep going is recognizing that everybody works differently, and what you need to be successful doesn't mean it's the same as what everybody else around you is doing. There is a bravery in showing up as yourself and not being afraid to do that and being unapologetic about taking up space.
SPEAKER_01What changes about disclosure, either in accessibility requests or personal situation at the different levels within an organization?
SPEAKER_00For me, if you're starting your first job, that's always something that I struggled with is do I disclose, do I not disclose? I did anyway because Google would have done it for me otherwise. So I learned how to be on the offense with disclosure more so than defense.
SPEAKER_01Hailey, uh, welcome to the show. It's so nice to have you here.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01So you have such a just fascinating and great story. I'm gonna jump right in. But before we go right like all the way back to the beginning, which is important where it starts, how do you just define overall your approach to showing up in the world and showing up in the workplace and helping others?
SPEAKER_00I look at a lot of showing up is really about being authentic. I think that it is a great way to lead and inspire. I think a lot of what I do does come down to trying to help other people. That's always what I wanted to do above anything else. So for me, when I think about how do I help others, I have to be able to take care of myself and also show up as myself. If I am anything else, it just doesn't really make sense. Yeah. So I think that's really what a lot of it is grounded in is that idea of authenticity in order to do that. And especially for neurodivergent people, there's a lot of societal messaging of be yourself, but not like that.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So trying to say no caveats to that is where I like to really start from above all else. And then I think everything falls into place from that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I've heard some discussions recently in comparing the difference between showing up, bringing your full self to work versus bringing your authentic self up and how you decide what is what, and showing up, especially in different levels of leadership. Does that resonate or how do you react to that kind of a comparison?
SPEAKER_00I think that's really interesting to think about. I think in a way, we all have some sort of persona or mask that we bring with us to work. But also it's how do we balance what we feel comfortable sharing, honoring our own boundaries and still being who we are. I mean, I still find myself saying, I am just a kid who was very lucky to do these things, and I will talk about the things that I'm interested in, but I might not want to share as much about my personal life. That doesn't make me less authentic. It's just those are boundaries that sometimes I choose to set and feel comfortable with because as much as I'm an open book, I still value keeping parts of my life private. I think that's a beautiful thing, is realizing that there are things that are meant not to be shared with the whole world and that you can enjoy for yourself, especially when you are essentially your brand, for lack of a better description, is having that separation of personal and professional to some extent makes it that you can actually enjoy your life more and you're not putting all of your self-worth into what you do. I completely changed career paths or wasn't running my business, I would still have some sense of self-worth and accomplishment and self-respect outside of I am doing something that is my job, that is also who I am.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Speaking of that kid who just shows up, let's take it all the way back. Cause as we talked, as you shared with us, a lot of this journey started when you were a kid. And so I love that they're that you're still feel like bringing that and true to that. So tell us how this began for you.
SPEAKER_00So I was diagnosed with autism back in the late 90s. I was three years old, originally late speaking/slash non-speaking, depending on which terminology you feel comfortable using and how you like to describe how we acquire language and when we acquire language. Needless to say, that was a scary time for my family. And what we knew about autism then wasn't what we know now. So my family got the whole story of all the things that I would never do and never accomplish. They were told that I would be lucky to graduate high school, get my driver's license, make friends, all of these different things. And the only one that seems to really surprise people is that I got my driver's license. Because if you know me, you know that I don't really drive a lot. I have a lot of anxiety around it, but that is something that I would like to work on. It's been on my goal list for a very long time. But for me, I realized that I was able to get to this point because I had a bunch of people believe in me in that regard, and that when they were told this is what you will never do, someone else said, we're gonna at least try before we jump to that same conclusion. So that was really big. And I got into advocacy almost by accident. I got into the work that I do as a teenager, oddly enough. And I got into this because the folks who had originally diagnosed me and supported my family asked if I would be interested in sharing my story at a conference. And I was 13. And I agreed to do it because it was in Orlando and I wanted a free excuse to go to Disney World.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Needless to say, I was on this panel. I was the youngest person there, I was the only girl. And people were fascinated by what I had to say as a fresh graduate of the eighth grade. I had no idea that anybody would care what I had to say, and I was approached about writing a book then and there. So that's how I got into this advocacy stuff. I didn't think it would become my career. I thought it was just something that I cared about and that would be interesting to do as like a hobby or part-time or whatever it may be. I also had this value system of your education comes first, go to school, then figure it out. And that's how I ended up going to college and law school and all that good stuff. I thought I was going to be a disability rights attorney. I learned very quickly that was not what I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_01Okay. How did you learn that?
SPEAKER_00I worked in disability rights during my first summer in law school. And I felt an empathy overload. So the folks that I was representing weren't much different than I was. That it was just one major life event or situation that really separated us. The first client that I worked on, I remember her very, very vividly. It's been 10 years now since that summer. She was being evicted from her apartment building because she had an emotional support animal that would bark a lot. Her dog. She had a Pomeranian. I remember it was a Pomeranian. And she didn't know how to like properly registered, all sorts of stuff. So she had a bunch of very conflicting paperwork and she was always very nervous. And I remember anytime she used to call the office or one of her other family members would. We were maybe about a year apart in age at the time, too. I was always thinking she having a seizure, is she okay? And I would be thinking about her constantly. And those were the kind of experiences that made me think, I don't think I could do this for a career because I will burn out. I will feel too much. There are many stereotypes of autistic people that we don't really empathize or feel as deeply. I think a lot of us feel very deeply, and it's just not always expressed in the same way that other people do it. I realized it was not for me. And when I was in practice, I was in healthcare litigation and international law. So complete 180 because I didn't care what hospitals did after 5 p.m.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00And the international stuff was super cool since my firm's practice mostly did anti-terrorism work. So we were recovering on behalf of our clients from drug cartels and other terrorist organizations for harm that they've done to them or their families. And it was really fascinating to see how all of these different entities operated and were connected. And it always sounds very, very dangerous to talk about, is always what I tell people. It sounds so dangerous and interesting at cocktail parties. Except in reality, a lot of it is going through spreadsheets and finding out how all these different people, places, and organizations are connected.
SPEAKER_01That's fascinating. I mean, I was adjacent to anti-terrorism and and those kinds of things in my first career, of course, in the Marine Corps. But I also remember reading, I think it was Free Economics, had a chapter on how like inner city drug gangs were more like the corporate structure of McDonald's than not. And so that insight's really that's really powerful. So you have uh you've already published a book. You've found the taste for uh the advocacy work and you've gone and done the the values aligned pieces of getting the education and and trying the other pieces out. Where was the turning point for you from international and healthcare law to steer back towards more full-time advocacy?
SPEAKER_00So when I got to practice, my life story went viral, which is absolutely ridiculous when you say that out loud.
SPEAKER_01Was that on purpose to the extent that virality ever is?
SPEAKER_00I didn't think anything would really happen. So when I got sworn into the bar, my firm was really interested in the work that I did and really cared since my former boss had an autistic son. He wanted to be at the forefront of inclusion type stuff. We had one of the local newspapers that came to my swearing in. I think it was one of the legal publications, actually. And then the local newspaper called after seeing that. And probably like three days after it was in the local news, it got picked up by the Associated Press. I was at an event on a Saturday night, checked my DMs on, I think it was Twitter at the time, and I had like five different outlets asking if they could use my profile picture in a story. And I was just like, okay. And before I knew it, I had every outlet known to man basically blowing up my email and my phone. And I took two weeks off of work to grant as many interviews as possible because I thought it would just never happen again. And I thought it was really cool. It was such a wild ride of an experience. And that also got me back to advocacy because I didn't love the way other people were telling my story. That I wanted to be the one who told my story. I had always been a writer. I already had two books under my belt by that point anyway. I know how to write. I was very excited. So I was starting to essentially pitch my own story to the press instead of have them come to me to interview me. I was like, here's a story I want to tell about bias and lawyers with disabilities, whoever it was or neurodiversity is a competitive advantage. And then alongside this inspirational narrative coming out was also the story I was telling about an underrepresented population in the Washington Post with my name as the author. Like there were two very different things happening at the same time. The way it became my career path after my past life in law practice is I was being approached for speaking engagements when all this was happening, and I was using my PTO to take them because, you know, you think, okay, this is a cool adventure. This is going to die down. Life goes on after you are in the news type thing. Might as well, you know, enjoy it while I can. And I ran out of PTO real fast and hit kind of a crossroads of do I want to see where this takes me or do I want to just stay put? And I was like, you know what? I am 25 years old. I have nothing to lose. I will take a year off. And if I fail spectacularly at trying to build a speaking and consulting business, I will go back to practice and you know, we'll all just laugh about it and say I had a really cool life experience. Go along with it. I have no regret. I have been here now for a little over six years since I decided to quit. Wow. And I also had to weather COVID where everything shut down and a lot of in-person events shut down. My I got home from an in-person trip the day everything stopped, which was really wild. And that trip was actually kind of that big catalyst that made me take the leap, too. Is I had a trip planned for speaking that was on a state grant in Alaska. And it was a 10-day trip that is how they had it structured to visit all these rural communities and bring education. It was with, I think, their State Department of Education, if I recall correctly, was the funder of this project. Is they would bring a nationally known like autism speaker to do this for their they called it a road show. I want to go to Alaska for 10 days. I don't know if I'll ever get to go to Alaska again. That's so cool. Of course. And nobody's going to give you 10 days to go to Alaska. But I ended up going to Alaska and it was incredibly awesome. I got to see the start of the I did a rod race, which was not what I had in mind, but it was so cool. I saw glaciers, I saw snow for the first time on that trip. And I knew I was in the right place, even though the world shut down the next day. And then everybody discovered virtual events probably about two months later. And then I had even more work to do. So it ended up being the right time and the right decision. I just didn't think that it would end up being more than a year or two. And I'm so grateful that it is and that there is such a need.
SPEAKER_01When you talk about more work to do, expand on that, especially in the forced all virtual realm of 2020.
SPEAKER_00I think what happened in 2020 as well with all virtual is it really showed that accessibility in particular was a lot more doable than we ever gave it credit for. That there were so many people who did request hybrid accommodations or remote work accommodations, and they were always told it was unreasonable, too burdensome, too expensive, to this, to that. And it turned out that was just bias because we pivoted really, really fast. And for me, seeing that in action was actually from my law practice colleagues, because judges in courts in particular are very slow to adopt new technology. And court went to Zoom really fast, lightning speed fast. And when court did that, I just went, okay, there's so much to think about here. And when we were able to do more things with Zoom and video conferencing and virtual events, I was super excited. Not only was it less wear and tear on the body, but also you can hit a wider reach of people, that there's more opportunity and there's more accessibility features generally built in, like captioning and that you can watch a recording back, that you can have those visuals and go through them if you want to without having to maybe print them out. And then you can save the trees too. Like when we did accessibility. And that's also when now I see everyone talking about return to office yet again. I'm like, we came so far. We got so much done. And the education component was really necessary then, and it's still very necessary now. But that was definitely one of those moments that I remember being like, I didn't expect to be even busier, considering I was sitting there the first two months, like an entire year's worth of travel and conferences, just got wiped out. I am terrified of being unemployed. I said I'd stick it out a year or two, see what happened. And I also was kind of grateful because all that free time gave me time to write again. So I did end up writing two more books at the time. I thought that wasn't going to happen. I submitted a proposal to write for the American Bar Association about neurodiversity for lawyers the winter before, right before I quit my job, thinking, you know, that will be a fun project. The bar probably isn't going to want to hear from some 25-year-old kid to write a book, but I was wrong and they very much wanted me to do it. So I did it. And I had something else cooking at the time about independence and transitioning to adulthood. And then I ended up having to write these two different manuscripts almost simultaneously while learning how to exist in the virtual world. So it was very fascinating of a time, and I don't regret it at all. So once we got to 2021 and things started picking up again, I'm like, okay, I have two new books in the world, which is wild to think about. And I have to travel again and do all these things and still figure out how do I just keep refining this craft of speaking in education and getting people to care?
SPEAKER_01I really love your point about accessibility when forced on us through COVID, pushing knowledge work at least, all virtual, overcoming the biases and the slow change in response and seeing how it can be done. What are some things, even with a little bit of the pushback towards return to office, what are some of the things that are persisting that you celebrate and want to keep are really important to keep going?
SPEAKER_00I think the things that are most important to keep going is recognizing that everybody works differently. And what you need to be successful doesn't mean it's the same as what everybody else around you is doing. So if you are someone who needs asynchronous hours or you don't need to have your camera on, or you choose to communicate differently, that's acceptable. And it's up to management to help give those opportunities for access and accommodation, really. Because I look at it as accessibility really shouldn't just be this, we need to accommodate one person and just stamp out a bunch of little fires. I look at it as when we have better policy from the top, all those requests die down because it's already baked into what we're doing. I think about my academic colleagues in particular that would always go, I have so many students requesting extra time. Have you thought that maybe you're not giving enough time to do the assignment? And maybe it's not just an extra time issue, but maybe this time constraint is artificial or incorrect. And having once upon a time in my past life researched a lot about testing accommodations and extra time being offered, it's an artificial constraint more than anything. How do we kind of recognize these ideas that we have as either not really contributing, not really serving us, and how do we actually benefit more people because accessibility ends up helping all of us?
SPEAKER_01I really like thinking about and recognizing, and a lot of what we do at Uta is about kind of the individual combination of strengths and talents and joy and how that comes out. A lot of the work that I did in during the pandemic and future of work and what is hybrid going to look like also looked at the different kinds of relationships and connection building and how different interactions do. How do you balance and how do you resolve aspects of teams needing to build relationship and connection in the same conversation as individuals needing things like cameras off and that piece? How is that conversation flow for you?
SPEAKER_00So one of my favorite things to do with people is make them come up with a couple of bullet points about how they like to be communicated with or how they work best. It's one of those things that every time I've done it or have other people do it, it's really fascinating to see what they list. Or I had one colleague in particular who did this before. I really just told people to narrow it down to three bullet points who had like a full Google Doc about working with her. And I will just give three different bullet points, and my bullet points are always the same. And it's really interesting what I think is important if you know about working with me. I tell people that unprompted phone calls make me anxious. Sure. I tell them I'm not a morning person. And I also say if you haven't heard from me via email within 48 hours, please send me a follow-up. And I say all those things to help my brain, but also to put someone else at ease. That, and there's many different reasons these things work for us or don't work for us. I put the thing about unprompted phone calls because I don't want to feel like I'm in trouble. A lot of us have anxiety around the phone ringing or we need to talk. Well, what do we need to talk about? If I'm prepared for it or know how to prepare, that will help a lot. I remember in my legal career, we had this major assignment on a Friday, and there were four or five of us attorneys working on it. We got called into the office Monday morning all thinking we screwed up and got fired. And it turns out my boss wanted to talk about what happened on Game of Thrones the night before. And I was sitting there not only just happy that I had my job, but I was terrified as someone who had never watched Game of Thrones and now I was unprepared. So even having that extra guidance of we need to talk about X, Y, or Z goes a long way. I'm just not a morning person. I need more sleep than the average person. That's fine. I accept that about myself. And I also know that it's very easy for folks to accommodate. And there's lots of other people who need more time in the morning. Like if you're a parent or caregiver, or you are grumpy without caffeine. And there are many people I know who are grumpy without caffeine.
SPEAKER_01You're talking about it.
SPEAKER_00And the other one that I give about follow-up emails is people are always afraid to annoy me for some reason. They're always afraid they're being annoying if they follow up or just bumping to the top of your impact. I'm like, no, please don't apologize because I mentally hit send more than I physically hit send. That I will have things that sit in drafts. I am an inbox zero girl, which means I might read it and then I totally thought I responded and I did not. Or I will let you know of, hey, something is going on. That's why you haven't heard from me. It's kind of one of those safeguards for you and also a nice reminder for me. So then too much time doesn't lapse.
SPEAKER_01There's a significant element of clear communication in both directions. For you, it's identifying what are critical things that are pretty low lift that everyone should know, but this is just how I am and I asked to consider. And then asking for if a boss is gonna throw a meeting on, yeah, a pop-up meeting on the first thing in the morning, you don't even need a full agenda. A little bit more context can help. I'm a big Brene's already on the bookshelf behind me. You said earlier, as you were in even in childhood, for everyone who said that you were never gonna be you couldn't do something, there was someone who said, Well, let's see, and and and help push you along the whole journey in the arc here. What's an example of how that has come up to really make a difference for you?
SPEAKER_00I think a lot of it is just that there's always someone who has to say yes, whether it's you, whether it's somebody taking a chance on hiring you, or even when it's your parents saying, We think you can absolutely go to college and we're gonna make sure you're prepared for that. Any one of those moments is really big. And I think about some of the times that my family said yes when everyone else said no, that it was advised that maybe you go here for school. You don't go into this environment that might be more pressure or more social. And I was like, I still want to try. It was up to them and everyone else to help make it possible that we decided it was the best situation for me to go live away at the time, even though looking back, I don't think I was as ready as I thought I was. And I don't know if I would have made that decision again, knowing what I know now. But having someone else say yes in your corner with you, make sure that there's at least enough support to make it possible, that you're not just going to fall flat on your face if it doesn't work out. And I think that's what a lot of having someone believe in you. Really is is that if even if you do fall flat on your face, that there's still some kind of blanket or safety net to some extent, not the my face is now my jaw's like cracked open. It's like, okay, at least I landed on a pillow.
SPEAKER_01I like that metaphorical framing around we use words like mentorship or or have each other, you know, we call it podcast bet on people, but having that even at that individual relationship level. One last thing that I want to kind of tie here how it ties together for you is back to that authentic self. And along the way of the journey you've talked about, you've been in different environments at different levels of seniority, you've interacted with even more different levels of seniority. What changes about disclosure, either in accessibility requests or personal situation or things at the different levels within our organization?
SPEAKER_00For me, it gets better in how you tell your story, that you feel more confident and more comfortable advocating for yourself as you move up. That very first situation, if you're starting your first job, you might not want to disclose. That's always something that I struggled with is do I disclose, do I not disclose? I did anyway because Google would have done it for me otherwise. But I didn't have the strategies to be like, okay, how do I beat Google at this? And how do I do it in a way that if that's your first impression to me, I can help either course correct or affirm if it's a good impression from what you found. So I kind of learned how to be on the offense with disclosure more so than defense because I was very afraid of it. I still find it awkward sometimes because people don't know how to react more so than I'm ashamed or embarrassed that I have a disability. For me, it's more of like somebody's gonna say this really strange, mildly offensive or out-of-pocket remark. How do I handle that? And there's also all sorts of different policy safeguards around what people can and can't do. So if you're interviewing for a job and you disclose they really can't ask you too many questions under the Americans with Disabilities Act, other than can you do X, Y, or Z function with or without an accommodation, or how do you do that? They can't really go much deeper, but they try. I've been in those situations too where you're just constantly reframing from this strengths approach. And that's something that I've learned worked well for me was this strategy of strengths-based approaches because it also does help decrease that stigma. It makes me feel better, but I also feel like there's such a balance there too, because I also know folks who will immediately say, I have superpowers. And I don't think I have superpowers. I really don't, but I don't because I look at superpowers as a very literal thing. So that's kind of like that.
SPEAKER_01I'm watching, I'm watching the Marvel movies with my kids right now. So I I appreciate it. I like separating it from the colloquial metaphor for superpowers.
SPEAKER_00I got to see Supergirl a couple weeks ago at an advanced screening, and that was super cool. So that also is what I'm thinking about.
SPEAKER_01Awesome.
SPEAKER_00So and I'm like, no, I I can't fly, I can't do anything cool. My take on it is how do I get better at this and how do I also work to create environments that people feel comfortable sharing this if they want to? Because I think there's a lot of stigma and shame that comes with if you need something to be more accessible for you. There's this fear that maybe we're taking the easy way out or making excuses. There's, are they going to treat me differently? Which has happened before many times. And especially at networking events for me, that was always kind of awkward. If people didn't know or they did know and I disclosed and they knew that about me, sometimes people would treat me like I was a child, which was always kind of weird. And they love to do the thing where they like take your hand and they touch your hand. They're like, You're so brave. And you're like, I just want to hand you a business card. Is that's what's in the back of your head, but you're just sitting there thinking saying, Thanks. I appreciate it. Or you're thinking, I'm not brave at all, because I have also gone through phases where I don't think I'm very brave because I live in Florida and I'm scared of all the wildlife. But there is a bravery in showing up as yourself and not being afraid to do that and being unapologetic about taking up space. I've come to learn there is a bravery in that.
SPEAKER_01Haley, thank you so much for all of that. Are you ready for some uh lightning round uh questions?
SPEAKER_00Let's do it.
SPEAKER_01All right. Uh, what's a personal goal that you have for yourself this year?
SPEAKER_00I think this year I am hoping to get to travel internationally for work. I think it would be really cool to get to be on a stage in a different country. That's something professionally, at least I'm thinking about. Personally, I would like to get my driving skills under wraps. I'd like to actually get better at it and develop some more driving confidence.
SPEAKER_01What is uh the worst or just some generally bad professional advice uh you've ever received?
SPEAKER_00To just keep your head down and smile. And everything that has to do with some of the random dress code stuff, because that was something that happened a lot when I was in practice, is I had observed court once and was given a hard time because I wore pants and not a skirt. Mostly because I had my own body image issues and I thought the skirts just weren't flattering on me. And it turned out it was just sexism at its finest because there was nothing wrong with marrying pants to court. All of those types of things is how do you still balance what you're told versus respect? And I thought learning more about respect was more important than oh, you have to do this.
SPEAKER_01That's a good, I think that's a good flag. Who sits in your mentor hall of fame?
SPEAKER_00That is such an interesting question because professionally I feel like I've struggled a lot to find good mentors. I remember getting assigned a mentor when I got to law practice, and my assigned mentor did not really have time for me, and I thought that I did something wrong the entire time, and I wish she had just been honest that she didn't have the time or didn't feel like there was a connection. I spent the entire time wondering what I did wrong, and I didn't even get a chance to meet with her for lunch, and that's all I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So mentorship has always been hard for me. So I try to be available to help others if I can, but I also don't always have the bandwidth for it, and I feel really guilty. So mentorship's kind of a strange thing for me, and I think a lot of it comes down to communication differences. But there's also just a lot of people I look up to and kind of have my hall of fame of like, wow, I really love what you're doing, and I need to learn more from what you're doing because it seems so thoughtful and well done.
SPEAKER_01Who from Atlist should our listeners go check out and also look up to?
SPEAKER_00Some of my favorite people to follow aren't always in my space. One of my favorites in my space that I've recommended is Tiffany Yu. I love the work of Blair Ramani, who is an educator and an author. And she's really big on social media, but I learned something new every time about some kind of social justice or civil rights issue. I think she's absolutely fascinating to learn from. And the way that platform was built was so incredibly smart to me. And I just find myself geeking out a lot.
SPEAKER_01All right. The because it's 2026, so we're not going to not ask this question. What's your honest relationship with AI right now?
SPEAKER_00My relationship with AI is not very good.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Mostly because one of my past lives, I was an illustrator and I don't like what AI does with artists in particular. But I'm trying to learn how to embrace it more as a creative partner because there are things I am not good at that I think AI could do well. So, like even making certain templates look prettier. And maybe that might not be when you need an artist, but it's just like, how do I design a PowerPoint that doesn't look standard? That's sometimes the things that I can rely on AI a little bit more for. But generally speaking, I do feel kind of awkward about it. I also recognize it has so much potential to be a great tool, especially for the disability community, whether it's an accessibility thing or learning different skills. I feel like my relationship is a little bit skeptical, but I still also come from an industry and education that is so human-centered that for me it's very strange to think about AI possibly getting in that path.
SPEAKER_01From the work that we do, you are far from alone in that relationship with AI. And wrapping it up, what's uh what do you have for a media recommendation for our audience and as a reminder, not leadership or business related?
SPEAKER_00So the last book I read was The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and I very much enjoyed it. I love me, a good romance, trashy something or other. And I am a sucker for also like young adult novels and things like that, too. And as far as like podcasts and stuff, I don't listen to a lot of them because I need the transcripts, honestly, to really be able to follow along. But two of my favorites have always been you're wrong about. And I also really enjoyed maintenance phase, which was kind of breaking down all the health and fad diet trends and things that really was like, hey, a lot of what we've learned about diet culture and health has been wrong. I find that really fascinating since I have been on a health journey for the last year and a half and trying to kind of feel better about my body and myself. So that's been my kind of that was my personal goal. If you asked me a year ago, I would have told you of like getting in shape and all that good stuff. But now that I feel like I'm at like a body neutrality of like this is all good now. And I got feel like I got my confidence back in some way, shape, or form there. I'm like, okay, now I just like to learn to see how much we're having to work through. I love getting to learn something new. People that want me to challenge, something that I believe in or thought about and make go, maybe there's something deeper here. There's a lot of context behind how we got to this point.
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much. For everyone as a reminder, Haley Moss is a lawyer, neurodiversity expert, keynote speaker, educator, and the author of several books that guide neurodivergent individuals through professional and personal challenges. Haley, we're gonna have all this linked in our show notes, and I know that you have a different response uh based off of our pre-show. But where can people find you? And what else do you want our listeners to check out?
SPEAKER_00You can say hi to me on whatever social media platform feels most accessible to you. I am on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook, you name it. And you can also visit my website at hailymoss.com.
SPEAKER_01All right. And because she's too humble to say it, we will also have some links to her books in the show notes. Haley, thank you so much for joining us.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01Follow, like, and subscribe to Bet on People on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. If you want to learn more about how we think about leadership at Utah, visit EUDA.io slash executive coaching. Bet on People is presented by Uta. Our producer and lead researcher is Molly Bantuzer. Our host is Keegan Evans. Special thanks to our editors at GHA Marketing.