New Global Head of the Office of Disability Inclusion Is Taking Care of Business

On his desk in Plano, Texas, Bryan Gill has several guitar picks from Graceland with the initials TCB, which stand for Taking Care of Business — a personal motto Elvis Presley adopted in the early 1970s.

The motto has personal meaning for Gill, the new Global Head of the Office of Disability Inclusion for JPMorgan Chase. He and his team are creating a comprehensive strategy for cultivating neurodivergent talent with structured, tailored processes for support and career development.

“Taking care of business is a mindset I’ve always had,” Gill says, “because there are times when you’ve just got to put your nose down, get in there and get things done.” 

And this is one of those times.

Gill was named global head of JPMorgan Chase’s Office of Disability Inclusion in October 2022. Previously, he served as the firm’s first global head of Neurodiversity and led BeST (the Business Solutions Team), a program to increase opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).

A 19-year veteran of the firm, Gill is operations focused. While working as National Operations Manager for Commercial Banking Wholesale Lending Services, Gill was tapped in 2018 to help a team explore a question from a client: Could colleagues with IDD do value-added work aligned with the firm’s culture and how it does business?

After a year of research and benchmarking with other employers, the team wrote a business plan, submitted it to the HR Operating Committee and gained their approval. Then, when a position was posted to lead BeST, Gill knew he couldn’t pass up the privilege of being considered for the role.

“By that point I’d spent time with the community and understood the amazing opportunity we were missing, so I was compelled to apply for the job,” he says. “It was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my career.”

Fast forward to 2022: BeST has been rolled out in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago markets, and the firm’s Autism at Work program is established in nine countries. In addition to moving those programs forward, Gill is using his operational mindset to better enable and support the firm’s neurodivergent community as a whole.
 

Gill points out that JPMorgan Chase has a responsibility to make the workplace the best it can be for people who think differently, regardless of whether they choose to self-identify their disability status with the company.

“A colleague may not self-disclose as being neurodiverse, and that’s a very personal choice that I respect,” he notes. “But this colleague needs to know how and where to get help when they need it. Conversely, if they do self-disclose — which we advocate — then we’ll work with their manager and support framework to help ensure they get what they need to be successful.”

Gill and his team are continually evaluating the firm’s global “ecosystem” — in other words, resources ranging from Health and Wellness and the Employee Assistance Program to Recruiting and Global Real Estate — to identify not only opportunities for support but also gaps for improvement.

“My goal is to amplify, elevate and enhance the amazing resources we have that support all employees, and ensure they take into account our neurodivergent colleagues’ needs,” he says. "The way I view my job is to remove barriers and enable talented neurodivergent colleagues to enter the workforce and thrive here, and to scale the firm’s neurodivergent hiring efforts more rapidly."

Gill notes that neurodiverse job candidates first have to be qualified to do the work before being considered for employment. And he emphasizes that the strategy being honed is not charity-focused or a marketing play — it’s a business strategy.

“I’m an operations practitioner, so I think about everything in terms of process and process improvement,” he says. 

Gill admits that you can have all the talent engagement processes in the world, but if they’re not driving results — and, in this case, tapping underrepresented talent segments — then the work is for naught.  

He credits his small team for being the “secret sauce” — operational practitioners who are skilled at matching people’s capabilities to business needs and running the strategy like a business. And they know the value of fostering a company culture that treats people with respect while appreciating their different ways of thinking.

“The colleague you encounter at the coffee bar may process information differently than you, but you expect to meet diversity here at JPMorgan Chase,” Gill concludes. “If more of us can position ourselves as patient coaches and engage with our colleagues in a way that supports them, then this will be a better place for everyone.”

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Learn more about how our Office of Disability Inclusion is creating opportunities for qualified people with disabilities, and explore our Careers site for open job opportunities at the firm.