We recently connected with Angela Locashio and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Angela thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
I have had many defining moments in my life. Of course, the personal ones intersect with the professional ones and vice versa. But this most recent on has been, by far, the most life changing thing that has ever happened to me.
Let me give you a little timeline of events to help understand why this has been such a pivotal moment in my life and career.
In 1998, at the age of 22, I was working as a medical assistant which, with insurance, allowed me to address my health for the first time in my life. I had been working with a healthcare team for a couple of years to address anxiety that I had for all of my life, but it felt like it was more than anxiety. Medication didn’t help; in fact, everything I tried seemed to make it worse. Therapy wasn’t helping either. Until, one day, it did. I met with a new psychologist and by the end of our session, he was shaking his head in disbelief that no one had considered it before. He wrote a letter to my primary care provider with the diagnosis of ADHD and recommended that I try medication to treat this as well as continue working with him to learn strategies to support my needs. I am forever grateful for him because things changed rapidly after that.
So many positive changes happened, like going back to school, becoming a parent, getting a masters degree, and having a wonderful career—even if it wasn’t what I had planned when I was younger. We will come back to that.
Through all of this, I used strategies that I had learned and continued to learn more. I went to a therapist to learn how to interact with my co-workers and be a leader. But there was something that was just not right. Something that I couldn’t put my finger on. I kept pushing through and was able to excel in my career but really struggled with personal relationships. Something was wrong with me, I just knew it!
Fast forward to 2019. My son was grown, I was married to an amazing person. I owned my identity as a queer entrepreneur, I went back to school again, and I finally realized my lifelong dream of becoming a board certified sexologist. Life was grand! Yet, that something was still looming over me. The sensory issues, the struggle to maintain meaningful friendships, the focus and concentration concerns were just getting worse and worse. So, back to a therapist I went. Self-advocacy—and big support from Molly Hicks, a fellow entrepreneur and now dear friend, who didn’t mind my quirks—for the win!
And this, friends, is when the defining moment happened. In 2022, I was diagnosed autistic. And, BAM! so much made sense!
I was lucky to have gotten the ADHD diagnosis 23 years ago. So many of the strategies for support that played right into my needs as an autistic person which allowed me to do things that may have been more difficult otherwise.
Learning that I am autistic, though, brought so much to light and allowed me to reach the biggest goal that I had set for 2022. I wanted to take my professional knowledge as a teacher and sexologist and my personal experience as a queer person with ADHD and align with a non-profit, either working with one which already existed or starting my own.
Knowing that I am autistic along with the ADHD pushed me even further toward this goal and was absolutely the defining moment of my professional life as, today, I am a founding member and Executive Navigator & CEO of Umbrella Alliance, a not-for-profit organization addressing economic insecurity of neurodivergent individuals by taking informed, organized, and focused action toward sustainable change. This career trajectory, and the community that comes along with it, truly feels like a dream.
What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc.
I can’t tell you how ridiculously proud I am to be working in this capacity. Even more, I am proud of the supporters who I have had helping me bring this dream to life. I thought that becoming a sexologist and having a successful coaching practice was the dream and it was. It just wasn’t the only one!
Everything that I learned in building that business supports what I do now navigating the non-profit space with UA. Even more, I have a unique skillset, expertise, and perspective as someone who is not only neurodivergent myself, but also someone who is informed and able to discuss the intersections of neurodiversity, gender, and queerness.
How many people do you know who have had the opportunity to combine all of their favorite subjects into their career?
Earlier I said that something didn’t feel right, that I just knew something was wrong with me, and that maintaining friendships was difficult. I also said that I was able to be successful in work or successful in personal relationships, but not both. I now understand that there wasn’t anything wrong with me! I also am able to be successful in both work and personal relationships because I am able to manage my energy differently knowing why things happen the way they do for me. Better yet, I am able to use both my lived-experience and my professional experience to support other people who have similar experiences and struggles! And I get to do it in a way that is creating sustainable change for this community that has welcomed me with so much love and acceptance.
2022 was spent creating the foundation for everything that we are doing and 2023 is dedicated to the #ND23 project. We are so excited to work together with the ND community and our allies to engage in Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) projects directly impacting and resulting in positive outcomes in education, employment, healthcare, and social protections for neurodivergent individuals and our community.
I absolutely love welcoming new members to UA, hearing their stories, listening to their ideas, and , for some, supporting CBPR they are (or want to be) engaged in.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
Oh, this is so fun! Angela (Ange) Loynd is the Founder, Executive Director & CEO (yes, we are co-CEOs; it is what works for us and UA) and we met in my capacity as a coach. I was invited to be a guest on “Mind Your Autistic Brain Talk Show” to talk about sensory integration and sexual identity. After meeting the host, Carole Jean Whittington, she tagged me in a post that Angela had made about needing support for both her personal coaching practice and Umbrella Alliance. I scheduled an appointment with Angela and within a few minutes of the conversation we took the conversation from marketing opportunities, to board membership, to becoming a founding member of UA. We still laugh about how neither of us had expected anything like what happened when we scheduled that initial appointment.
Angela, with her great connection skills, then introduced me to the other founding members, Donna Blackwell, Jessica Jahns, Benjamin Christmass, and Lucy Holland.
This just shows how taking risks to meet people in your field, building relationships with people who accept you for you,—rather than spending energy trying to relate to people who expect you to fit in a box that they create—knowing who you are as a professional/entrepreneur/
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
Community is everything. There is, of course, merit in independence and self-sufficiency; however, if you think that you will experience your ultimate potential without considerable support from others, you are definitely mistaken. As entrepreneurs, we can get bogged down in work which can become isolating and our mental health suffers for it. It’s important to have both independent working time and to be able to work alone. It is equally important to be able to recognize when you need support and to be able to ask for that support.
Do not let the self-care narrative make you believe that there is something wrong with asking for support. In fact, I would say that the #1 self-care technique is getting support when you need it. It can be difficult sometimes, but it is crucial to your overall success. Being an entrepreneur should not be lonely. If it is, please, please find a business group to join, hire a coach, or ask for support from other people you trust. You will not regret it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://umbrellaalliance.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/umbrellaalliance/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/umbrellaalliance
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelalocashio/
- Other: UA LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/umbrella-alliance
Image Credits
Gabriella Rankin