Suzanne Wright, a co-founder of Autism Speaks, a charity that fights for the autistic and teaches people how to spot and deal with the disorder, died on Friday at her home in Fairfield, Conn. She was 69.

The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, an Autism Speaks representative said.

Ms. Wright took on autism as a cause after her grandson, Christian, stopped speaking when he was two and a half years old and soon received a diagnosis of autism. No one, she found, could adequately advise her and her husband, Bob Wright — at the time the president and chief executive of NBC — on how to help Christian.

“We knew nothing about it,” Ms. Wright said in an interview with CBS News in 2011. “I said to Bob, ‘How could this be, that nobody is talking about autism?’”

They founded Autism Speaks in 2005. (Mr. Wright retired from NBC in 2007.) Initially, Ms. Wright said, they struggled to find broad support because so little was said about the developmental disorder. But she guided Autism Speaks toward a receptive audience.