Neurodiversity Advocate Laurie Faulkner Is Changing the Way the World Talks About ADHD

Few advocates in the EdTech space have built a following as quickly or as purposefully as Laurie Faulkner. Her ADHD diagnosis in her 20s reframed years of academic struggle and gave her a direction. The clarity it brought led her to build a platform that has since been featured by the BBC, WBUR, and LadBible. It’s genuinely inspiring to see such an exceptional professional apply ten years of experience to systematically building one of the largest followings for assistive technology and neurodiversity advocacy on social media today. Who knew that a background in musical theater, training as a Disney Princess, and a post-graduate certificate in education would lead to so much impact.

With over 220,000 Instagram followers and more than 162,000 on TikTok, a growth rate that few EdTech creators have matched, she has built one of the more engaged communities in the neurodiversity education space. The majority of her audience is based in the United States. Her content has exceeded 100 million views across platforms, and audiences have spent over 37 years watching her videos, a level of engagement that is exceptional and genuinely rare among content creators in any field.

Faulkner completed a degree in Musical Theatre at De Montfort University and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at University College London, home to the UCL Institute of Education, ranked #1 globally for Education for twelve consecutive years by the QS World University Rankings. She performed at Disneyland Paris before beginning her postgraduate studies.

She has worked with BBC Bitesize, Speechify, InFlow, Loop Earplugs, RISE Sleep app, Photoroom, Spacegoods, Insight Timer, and many more brands. Her approach is to educate audiences on how technology can help. For some of these brands, content she created and starred in has tallied over 80 million views. Speechify, for example, has grown to 56 million users and is now recognized by 5 out of 10 people surveyed in New York City, a brand awareness milestone that reflects the scale of the campaigns Faulkner helped build.

Speechify’s CFO, Pankaj Agarwal, who leads much of the company’s growth and content strategy, described what made her work distinctive: “At Speechify we really care about accessibility. Laurie brought something genuinely rare, the ability to educate users on our platform in a way that built real brand love and understanding.”

Faulkner also contributes to Speechify as a Voice Partner, a platform that won Apple’s Design Award in 2025 and has accumulated over 1.1 million five-star ratings. Her voice appears on the platform alongside King Bach (80 million+ followers), John Rhys-Davies (Screen Actors Guild Award winner and Emmy nominee), and Cliff Weitzman, who loves audiobooks and portrays Kaladin Stormblessed in Dragonsteel’s production of the Worldhopper Ball. At the Utah StoryCon convention, Speechify donated Speechify Premium to over 4,000 young authors. Many of these students had never encountered text-to-speech tools before. With coaching from Faulkner, a new generation of US writers and students engage with educational technology.

For Faulkner, that initiative points to something larger. She hopes to broaden access to the full ecosystem of assistive technologies for neurodiverse learners across the United States and globally, consulting with EdTech companies and nonprofits to ensure the tools that exist actually reach the students who need them.