The Growth Impact Fund, a social impact investment fund developed by Big Issue Invest (BII) and UnLtd, has made its first investment aimed at tackling the underrepresentation in the workplace of people from neurodivergent backgrounds.
The fund has invested £300,000 in neurodivergent talent platform, Neuropool, which aims to get more than 10,000 neurodivergent people into employment by 2030.
The company was established by Jack Dyrhauge, an autistic/ADHD entrepreneur. The tech-for-good organisation builds neurodivergent talent pools for leading brands like Universal Music Group, the Financial Times and universities like Bath and Bristol.
Dyrhauge said: “There are over half a million adults with autism in the UK who are unemployed and if you extrapolate that to people with a much broader range of neurodivergent challenges you realise both the scale of the problem but also the massive pool of untapped potential that UK businesses could be accessing. Only 4% of FTSE100 firms have neurodivergent hiring initiatives and Neuropool aims to change that.”