We recently connected with Jesenia M. and have shared our conversation below.

Jesenia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

In the U.S. 85% of autistic adults have a college degree, yet only 14% are employed. Discrimination is rampant (up 77% this year as reported by EEOC) and I want to change that especially for PGM autists! With my intersectional identities (Queer, Indigenous, Latine, 1st Generation, Disabled, AutiHD), I face many forces of systemic oppression. Asking for ADA accommodations at a healthcare company, after a year of stellar work, lead to retaliation and eventually being downsized with many other tech layoffs. I decided my business would not only serve underserved and underrepresented minorities, late-in-life realized autists, but it would also allow me to accommodate myself, and live into my abolitionist and anti-capitalist values. My unique lived experiences, tech background, and social justice production drives me to help supporting many different communities.

By centering disability justice principles, I intend to create a network of neurodivergent businesses to connect our communities, share resources, and uplift the most marginalized among us. As historically disenfranchised people, we have been kept out of the circles of funding & opportunities. My goal is to help dismantle inequities & dream of a better future together. We first need to dream & have hope before we can build rockets into space! I am offering that hope in my work each day.

Jesenia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am fed up with the unmitigated discrimination! The EEOC has reported discriminations reports are up by 77% in 2023. I launched NeuroSpicy Networking with the intent of goal of working with disabled BIPOC individuals and organizations, regardless of their ability to financially support my work. My work addresses glaring gaps in support & opportunities for neurodivergent & marginalized communities in need. I offer community facilitation, event hosting, engagement strategies, disability knowledge, networking skills, & consultancies.

I am driven by values of mutual aid, radical generosity, disability justice, & the prioritization of collective well-being over profit. My unique perspective as a neurodivergent Indigenous woman informs my work, shaping my mission to challenge the status quo. By offering tailored, inclusive, & empowering solutions, my impact is profound. I offer sliding scale services & am looking for support to continue to provide my services at accessible prices to those in need.

I am a grassroots organizer and I work to support groups around and outside of the systems of oppression. This has led to some amazing connections, projects, & me helping hundreds of disabled, & multiply-marginalized people in similar situations. We are all struggling to survive & we need solidarity & community to make it through.

I am a co-founder of One Free Community (OFC), a BIPOC- & neurodivergent-led, collaborative project working toward building an accessible, functional, & inclusive mutual aid network. I have been hosting small business support & peer to peer exchanges for the past year in the community to help us all find ways to continue to survive the ongoing systemic issues we face. I have offered my services & expertise for years free-of-charge or in exchange for mutual aid in the form of knowledge or skill sharing. This was subsidized by my tech job. When I was laid off like many others in tech, I have been struggling to find work. I launched my business with no capital to help myself & others through this time. I continue to offer my services for low to no cost. I am working to grow our network & support our community efforts.

We recently produced Accessible Virtual Pride to celebrate Queer & Disability pride in an accessible virtual platform. Many in our community were saddened by the lack of accessibility from local events due to lack of covid precautions & our event was the only way many were able to participate in celebrating PRIDE our community! I run program management & social media pages, manage & post event coordination, as well as offer consultations to our community members. I also work on finding partners to create cross movement solidarity & resource sharing across various groups! Together we are learning how to write grants, sharing knowledge, hosting workshops on donation based, & promoting small businesses.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

The intention of your use of social media is going to affect the way you build your audience. My intention is to create and connect to community and social justice producers. To accomplish this I focused on being authentic. This is difficult for so many reasons, being a late realized autistic, and a first generation queer woman, living in a patriarchal, heteronormative, white supremacist culture means that I am constantly fighting social platform suppression and systemic oppression. I share all parts of myself, the thought process, behind the scenes, raw emotions, I’m open to questions, I engage the audience and ask them to join me in community spaces. Showing the difference between masked and unmasked content, having difficult conversations, and being open to correction and call ins are part of authentic content, as well as responding and listening to my audience. I am not interested in numbers, I’m interested in relationships that go beyond a click. Sharing knowledge, hard earned wisdom, and giving people resources and ideas for collaboration, are just a few of the ways I build my social media presence. I am not a persona or a caricature of myself, I am my authentic self and seeking others who are aligned in praxis to dream of and build a better world together.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Everything we were taught was a lie. Unlearning the indoctrination of being born in the country of the global aggressors has changed my perspective of everything I thought I knew to be “true”. Our histories, our cultures, our communities have been distorted and destroyed to perpetual systems of oppression. Unlearning racism, ableism, and the overall dehumanizing of our fellow global citizens has been and will continue to be, the greatest lesson we all learn. How did I come to this understanding? Learning from and listening to people. The more I connected to the most marginalized people of the world, the more I found our stories to not only be connected but very similar to each others’. Living through and surviving the ongoing genocide of our people within this country, as well as learning and connecting to the people in other places currently being colonized, has truly shifted my understanding of what is, and what could be. Reconnecting to pre-colonized history and culture has taught me radical acceptance, cross movement solidarity, and the true meaning of being part of a community.

Contact Info:

• Website: neurospicynetworking.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neurospicynetworking
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeseniam/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@neurospicynetworking
• Other: TikTok: tiktok.com/@neurospicynetworking

Image Credits
Beyond Deconstructing for the Podcast Instagram photo, and Black Phoenix Organizing Collective for the hybrid event photo, One Free Community for the group zoom photo, Calling Up Justice for the Twitch Stream photo.