A foot in the door:

For an individual with autism, landing a first job can be a struggle. Bryan Siravo spent four years in vocational school learning skills such as information technology and repair of casino equipment. Despite at least 15 job interviews, he couldn’t find work. He came to the Dan Marino Foundation in 2011 for a summer internship, and later enrolled in an information technology program there. He learned etiquette and interview skills while doing coursework toward a Microsoft certification. The foundation’s staff helped him land internships with an insurance company and a trophy manufacturer. Finally, in 2014, he got a job working part-time at a storage facility.

Siravo says he didn’t mind the long commute by bus, or the fact that his role was closer to maintenance than information technology, but he notes that there were some difficult adjustments nonetheless. He and his supervisor “sort of had tiffs,” Siravo says. “She thought I was using my disability to make excuses, which I never do.”

Siravo was ready to quit, until Steffen Lue, a career services manager at the foundation, intervened. This issue came down to communication, Lue says: Siravo needed a set schedule, and his manager needed him to report back to her. Not only was the issue resolved, but Lue says the two “became best friends.” (The manager agrees.) When the foundation hired Siravo in 2015 to do tech support for its virtual interview program, people at the storage facility joked that the foundation had “stolen” their employee.

The program Siravo attended has evolved into a school called the Marino Campus, where students pay tuition for 10 months of classes in hospitality, retail or information technology, culminating in national-level certification exams. At the same time, they learn social and workplace skills, practice interviewing with both people and digital avatars, and go through two internships.

Staff members make sure students apply classroom skills during their internships, something people with autism often find difficult to do. Job coaches also help them figure out bus schedules, address family issues and role-play interviews. With clients on the spectrum, Lue says, it can be hard to predict all the topics to cover. He recalls picking up one client to drive him to an interview, only to discover that the young man had dressed in his lucky wizard outfit.

Of the first 16 students, who graduated last year, 9 are employed. This year’s class has 32 students. A second campus is scheduled to open this September at Florida International University in Miami.

Once the graduates get a foot in the door, Lue says, “they’re more motivated to work than a neurotypical. It’s the honest truth.” Even as interns, the students are invaluable, says Rebecca Bratter, shareholder at the law firm Greenspoon Marder in Fort Lauderdale, which has taken on about a dozen Marino interns over the past two years. The students take pride in their work and do tasks none of the employees want to, such as handling a backlog of returned mail, Bratter says. “[We didn’t] know how much we really needed them until we got them.”

Even people with severe autism who might not seem like good candidates for the workplace can do well if given enough initial support, says Paul Wehman, professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Wehman has been studying ways for people with severe autism and disabilities to transition into employment since the 1980s. Beginning in 2009, he led a randomized controlled trial in which his team placed 31 young adults with autism in a series of three 10-week hospital internships. “Some of these folks were pretty quirky,” Wehman says — nonverbal, or prone to outbursts.

The internships charged the students with tasks such as binding books, sanitizing equipment and checking expiration dates on drugs. The students also had classroom training. Meanwhile, 18 controls continued with their existing high school special education programs. Three months after their internships ended, 90 percent of the participants were employed part-time within the hospital; they had also become significantly more independent in the workplace, as measured by how much physical assistance, verbal instruction or other help they needed. Of the control group participants, only one person had gained employment in the same time period.

Wehman is in the third year of a larger follow-up study at four hospitals, which will have 80 to 90 people in the treatment group and a similar number of controls. He declined to reveal specifics before the study ends, but says that so far, the results echo the earlier study’s finding that supported internships can help adults with autism find and keep jobs. “Their learning trajectory is excellent when given the right training and support,” Wehman says. One participant was asked in a job interview what he liked about the workplace, and he simply answered, “Lunch!” But because the employer had seen the work he could do during his internship, he got the job.

Back at the Dan Marino Foundation, Siravo is finally working in the field he trained for — as support technician for the avatar program, called Virtual Interactive Training Agent.

A hidden human operator controls the virtual experience, moving the avatar to new questions as a student gives answers, says the program’s manager, Robert Ahlness. Instructors score recordings of the virtual interviews and discuss them in class. Six avatars, men and women of different ethnicities, appear in various moods and settings to give the students experience with the many types of interviewers they might encounter. George was set to ‘hostile’ when I met him. For a gentle experience, Ahlness uses an avatar named Kevin set to ‘soft touch,’ who gives encouraging feedback such as “Very cool” and “You’re doing great!” Using avatars is more efficient and consistent than role-playing with people, says Ahlness, and it’s also less stressful for students with autism, who may feel uncomfortable in social situations.

In a pilot study, the foundation found that four sessions with an avatar improved students’ interview scores by 80 percent. “The difference between beginning and end is amazing,” says the foundation’s chief executive officer, Mary Partin. The foundation plans to sell subscriptions to the program to other organizations that help people with autism or other disabilities.