Financial services firms have long struggled to close talent gaps, yet a substantial pool of skilled candidates remains largely untapped. Justin Nelson, Managing Director and Head of the Asset Management and Financial Principals Coverage Team at J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Connecticut, is pushing the industry to reconsider who it hires and how it manages those employees once they are on board.

Nelson oversees a team responsible for more than $15 billion in assets. That professional vantage point, combined with personal familiarity with the barriers neurodiverse individuals encounter at work, has shaped his thinking on what better management practices should look like.

The Communication Gap

According to Justin Nelson JP Morgan , the core difficulty neurodiverse candidates face is rarely a lack of ability it is communication. “For neurodiverse candidates, the biggest challenge is typically communication, their ability to interact with people,” he explains. In interview settings, that challenge can make an otherwise exceptional candidate appear unprepared or disengaged, causing employers to pass them over before their actual skills are considered.

That filtering effect represents a missed opportunity. Nelson notes that communication difficulties often accompany uncommon cognitive strengths, particularly in areas like analytical processing and creative problem-solving. These are exactly the traits financial services firms prize in roles built around data, risk assessment, and client portfolio management.

Rethinking Hiring and Day-to-Day Management

Nelson’s framework calls on employers to restructure both recruitment and ongoing management. Rather than relying on conventional interviews, firms should design evaluation processes that allow neurodiverse candidates to demonstrate their abilities in more structured, task-oriented settings. Once hired, managers should break broad assignments into clearly defined steps and ensure each task is connected to a larger plan.

“If you can lay out the rules and know how to work and communicate with that group of people, you probably have some of your best employees,” Nelson says. Justin Nelson also supports organizations like Adelphi University’s Bridges Program and Broad Futures, which help match neurodiverse jobseekers with employers willing to adapt their practices. His argument is clear: small changes in process can yield outsized returns in workforce performance. Refer to this article for more information.

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