Navigating change, leadership, and neurodivergence with Amber Anthony
From wrestling rings and trampolines to organisational systems and inclusion strategy, Amber Anthony wears a lot of hats—and wears them well. In this episode of The One That Works For You, she shares a uniquely grounded lens on behaviour, change, neurodivergence, and the very human experience of navigating it all while staying (mostly) upright.
Behaviour isn’t just about the action
Amber is a neuroinclusion consultant, behavioural change specialist, mum, and founder of the Neurospicy Collective. Her work spans consultancy, systems change, community services, and behavioural support—but at the heart of it all is a deep understanding that behaviour is never just behaviour.
Whether she’s helping organisations become more inclusive of neurodivergent staff, or supporting families with kids who might need different kinds of support to thrive, she always starts from the same place: what’s really going on underneath?
"My question would always be, well, what’s triggering that behaviour?" she says. "Because if we can get to the root cause of that, we can deal with that rather than trying to deal with the behaviour."
It’s a mindset shift that sounds simple but takes real work. Instead of jumping to manage surface-level issues, she invites us to ask better questions, slow down, and hold space for what’s not immediately visible. That goes for supporting others but also for ourselves.
Being a behavioural expert and a parent
A lot of what Amber knows about regulation and behaviour hasn’t come from training programs or corporate consulting. It comes from parenting. Specifically, parenting neurodivergent kids through what she lovingly calls “unsanctioned trampoline wrestling matches.”
“You learn a lot about regulation from a trampoline,” she laughs, before quickly pointing out that regulation starts with the body. That insight—that we need to come back to the body first, before strategy or logic—threads through everything she does.
She doesn’t see her personal and professional life as separate. Her parenting gives her deeper empathy, practical insight, and a sharper lens. It also keeps her honest. Because when you’re up at 6am refereeing wrestlemania and still trying to run a business, theory alone doesn’t cut it.
Change hurts but it doesn’t have to break you
Change is one of those things we’re told to love—pivot quickly, stay agile, reinvent yourself! But Amber reframes it with a lot more compassion.
To her, change feels more like grief. “It’s okay to honour the two and recognise that two opposing truths can both be true,” she says. “We can be excited about our new home... but also sad to be leaving this.”
It’s a permission slip we don’t get often enough: to feel conflicting things at once. And in business especially, that emotional nuance matters. Pivoting, evolving, taking on more or less work—none of it is linear, and none of it is easy.
“You’re going to miss this. You’re going to land—or not land—or you’re gonna fuck it up,” she says. “I’m gonna teach you how to land safely and how to bounce back up.”
That moment hit hard. Because most of us weren’t taught how to fall apart with any kind of grace. But Amber? She’s here for the fall, the fuck-up, and the bounce-back.
Resilience is a muscle (and it's tired)
She’s not here for the hustle narrative. She’d rather talk about capacity and more importantly, the things that drain it.
“We are going to get knocked down... the real work is in building the buoyancy to get back up from that.”
She talks about emotional labour, cultural weight, and executive dysfunction not as abstract concepts, but as real forces that impact how we show up. “We talk about workload as FTE,” she says, “but what about the mental load capacity? The cultural load capacity?”
Especially for neurodivergent folks in business, this framing is everything. It’s not just about how many hours you’re working. It’s about what you’re carrying. Because when you’re carrying systems that weren’t built for you, you need to think about capacity differently.
You might need more margin. More downtime. More slack in the rope. And that's not a weakness. That's wisdom.
Systems, self-trust, and the snacks that keep us going
Amber’s career has been built on systems but the ones she relies on most are the personal ones. “Trusting yourself has been a really good thing to learn,” she reflects. That trust helps her ride out the quiet periods, back herself, and show up without having all the answers.
She’s not trying to be perfect. She’s not pretending it’s all sorted. What she offers instead is honesty. The kind that comes with building the plane mid-flight and still managing to make it to the next destination.
And that “snack bitch” title? That’s her way of naming the unseen labour that keeps people going. The emotional snacks. The literal snacks. The check-ins, the holding-it-together-ness. The kind of care that often goes unnoticed and undervalued.
“They throw a lot of shade for people relying on you for their survival,” she says with a grin. But being that safe person, that steady presence? That’s strength.
This episode didn’t have a neat ending, thanks to a tech glitch that cut things off mid-flow. But maybe that’s the most fitting end of all. Because real life rarely wraps with a bow and this conversation is one we’ll be coming back to.
