José Velasco

José Velasco spent twenty-three years at SAP working across product management, consulting, development, strategy, and go-to-market before turning that experience toward a question most large companies had not seriously asked, which was what it would take to actually hire and keep autistic talent rather than simply say encouraging things about it.

From 2014 through 2020 he led SAP's Autism at Work program, and in 2016 he founded the Autism at Work Summit, an annual gathering that brings industry, government, academia, and the autism community into the same room to work on employment rather than talk around it. He has served as a panelist at the United Nations for World Autism Awareness Day, testified before Congress on the global challenges of autism, and worked on corporate social innovation with the World Economic Forum.

Today he is Senior Vice President of Operations at the Autism Society of America, where he sits on the national team and the strategic planning committee, carrying thirty years of technology experience across Fortune 50 companies, startups, and the public sector into an organization doing very different work.

Professional and Personal

He and his wife Deya are the parents of two adult children on the autism spectrum, which means his understanding of neurodiversity was never only an initiative he ran at work. It is a subject he has lived inside of, and that shows in how he talks about it, without the careful institutional distance that usually creeps into these conversations.

He knows how to keep a conversation focused without flattening the person he is in conversation with.

At the Summit

José will lead the fireside conversation with Dr. Temple Grandin, and this is one of the sessions we are most looking forward to. He knows Temple, he holds a deep and unsentimental respect for her as a world thought leader.