Trainings, Talks, and Workshops with Dr. Stephanie

I combine clinical expertise, humor, and lived experience to teach workshops on neurodiversity, LGBTQIA+ and gender-affirming care, Special Education, disability rights, and supporting complex mental health across systems.

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Areas of Expertise

Across trainings and consultation, my work centers on helping parents, professionals, and organizations better understand and support people whose needs are often misunderstood, overlooked, or unsupported within traditional systems.

Understanding High-Masking and Complex Presentations

Helping providers and systems recognize subtle or internalized neurodivergent presentations that are frequently missed or misdiagnosed, especially in high-achieving individuals and marginalized groups.
Supporting Gender-Expansive and LGBTQIA+ Individuals

Helping organizations create environments where gender and sexual minority individuals can access care, education, and employment safely and authentically.
Navigating Disability, Accommodations, and Advocacy Across Systems

Empowering families, clinicians, educators, and organizations to understand disability rights frameworks, laws, and translate them into real-world supports.
Working Through an Intersectional and Culturally Responsive Lens

Recognizing how culture, identity, systemic barriers, and lived experience shape how people access support and how systems respond.
Empowering Neurodivergent People Across the Lifespan

Increasing professional and personal understanding of neurotypes, reduce masking and burnout, and support autonomy, identity development, and meaningful participation in school, work, healthcare, and community life.

Most Requested Trainings

Helping professionals shift from deficits-based models to a strengths-based, neurodiversity paradigm that centers client autonomy and self-advocacy.
Participants learn how to:
- Apply the neurodiversity paradigm
- Implement neurodiversity-affirming practices to improve client outcomes
- Advocate for and support self-advocacy of clients across clinical, educational, community, and workplace settings
- Recognize neurodivergent experiences and challenges across the lifespan
- Recognize and reduce masking-related burnout and disengagement
Helping providers distinguish overlapping clinical presentations using a neurodiversity-informed diagnostic framework.
Participants learn how to:
- Identify high-masking Autism, OCD, and ADHD presentations
- Consider the impact of culture and gender on complex diagnostic experiences
- Differentiate neurodevelopmental experiences from trauma, anxiety, OCD, and mood conditions
- Distinguish between Austim-related anxiety and Social Anxiety Disorder or OCD
- Implement neurodiversity-affirming evaluation practices that center client autonomy and self-advocacy
Helping professionals confidently support trans and gender-questioning youth while navigating varying levels of family acceptance, religion, and cultural context.
Participants learn to:
- Provide developmentally tailored gender-affirming support
- Navigate family dynamics and caregiver adjustment from a culturally responsive lens
- Apply evidence-based gender development research
Helping organizations implement policies, practices, and environments that support LGBTQIA+ individuals across educational, healthcare, and workplace systems.
Participants learn how to:
- Implement inclusive, ethical, and legally sound policies and practices that benefit all genders and sexualities
- Support LGBTQIA+ students, employees, and clients across developmental stages
- Improve safety, belonging, and outcomes for gender and sexual minority individuals
- Translate inclusion values into sustainable systems change
How to foster a neurodiversity inclusive workplace that benefits all neurotypes and recognizes the unique needs and contributions of neurodivergent employees.
Participants learn how to:
- Implement neurodiversity-inclusive workplace practices
- Support executive functioning. and sensory accessibility
- Improve team collaboration across neurotypes
- Translate accommodation frameworks into sustainable practice
Helping clinicians, educators, and caregivers understand disability law and effectively advocate for student needs and access. Trainings are tailored to advocacy role as a clinician, parent, or medical provider.
Participants learn how to:
- Distinguish between medical diagnoses and legal educational disability categories
- Navigate 504 Plans and IEP processes
- Identify appropriate accommodations and supports
- Collaborate effectively across school and healthcare systems

I tailor each workshop, training, and speaking experience to organization and audience needs. I enjoy making content accessible and relevant for every audience, whether it is for families new to mental health concepts, company leadership eager to enhance inclusion, educators needing support, or fellow providers desiring to improve outcomes for complex clients.

Highlighted below are popularly requested trainings:

Past Partner Organizations

Selected healthcare, education, and community organizations where I have delivered trainings, workshops, consultation, or invited presentations.

“Bringing Dr. Stephanie to train our clinical team was invaluable. She combines expertise, warmth, and practical guidance in a way that resonates with clinicians and improves care for transgender and gender non-conforming youth. Our team walked away feeling better equipped and more confident in supporting this population.”

Dr. Oscar Widales-Benitez
Pediatric Psychologist and Assistant Professor University of Texas Dell Medical School and Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin

About Dr. Stephanie

Dr. Stephanie Adams Svendez (she/her) is a neurodivergent clinical psychologist, Nationally Certified School Psychologist, and National Register Credentialed Health Service Psychologist. Through her private practice, Empowered Together Psychological Services, she offers therapy and assessment ages 5 through adulthood, focusing on self-advocacy in an ableist world. Her research and clinical work emphasize support for LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent youth, and she trains professionals in providing culturally responsive, neurodiversity- and gender-affirming care.

Dr. Svendez holds a combined Ph.D. in Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology, along with two Master’s degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She completed a two-year APA-accredited postdoctoral fellowship at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and has over a decade of experience in behavioral health across various settings.

More About Dr. Stephanie