Track one
Lived experience
Invisible disabilities, neurodivergence and disability justice — what a room owes the people it was never built for. For care teams, EDI programs, wellness events and conferences.
See the six talksThe position
Two tracks, one argument: the margin is where the next version comes from.
Ryan Perez is a Black autistic keynote speaker, author of two books, a novel and a manual, and founder of Bow Tie Kreative — a Calgary digital agency he started in 2013. He was diagnosed at 40, after four decades of being read as defiant instead of distressed.
He does not speak about how that felt. He speaks about what it exposed: every system has someone it fails first, and that person is holding the specification for the version you have not built yet.
89.6M
Impressions
4
Titles published
Choose the track
Same speaker. Two entirely different rooms.
Track two
Systems & intelligence
Neurodivergent pattern recognition as an innovation method, and the AI infrastructure built on top of it. For operators, founders, product teams and innovation programs.
See the six subjects300K+
Followers across platforms
2.6M
TikTok likes, lifetime
17.92%
Peak engagement
12.3M
Best single video
Track one · Signature talks
Not a resilience talk. A build manual.
Neurodiversity, authenticity, and the ways care spaces can better honour people's full identities. Grounded in disability justice, it moves the room past access and accommodation toward autonomy and belonging.Delivered to CAMH staff · June 2026
Mental health, chronic pain, ADHD, autism, learning disabilities. Ryan names the negative feedback loop — misread, then punished, then withdrawn — and shows the three places an organization can actually break it.Delivered at Saskatchewan Blue Cross · Saskatoon, 2025
Three mechanisms, not three feelings. Expression releases the ideas a culture filters out. Acceptance ends the energy tax of masking. Joy makes both compound. Together they are a bandwidth argument, and it is measurable.Best as a 60-minute keynote
Wired differently is not broken. Pattern recognition, hyperfixation as mastery, and alternative processing are competitive advantages your hiring process is currently screening out. Includes what to change on Monday.Keynote or half-day workshop
Homelessness twice, a late diagnosis at 40, three published books in 2025. Not because Ryan is extraordinary — because when systems fail you repeatedly, you either build a door or you do not get through. This is the mechanism, not the moral.The story talk · conferences and youth audiences
Accommodation asks how to let someone into a room that was built without them. Disability justice asks who should have been in the room from the start. Built on the movement's own principles — collective access, interdependence, cross- disability solidarity — this talk gives DEI, HR and leadership teams a working practice, not a poster.Keynote or half-day workshop
Change the room, not the person standing in it.
Both tracks end with something the room can act on.
Track two · Systems & intelligence
A brain that had to build its own operating system.
Six subjects for rooms that want the method rather than the story. All of them come out of infrastructure Ryan actually runs.
The Second Brain
A 446,628-node personal knowledge graph that turns twenty years of lived experience into queryable intelligence. What it took to build, and what it can answer.
Morphological processing
The Digital Stem Cell Process — 216 structured alternatives per function, so a team stops brainstorming and starts enumerating a solution space.
Building from the margin
The System Architect framework: design around the most excluded user first and the innovation falls out. Disability justice as an engineering method, not an add-on.
AI and automation for small teams
What a four-person shop can automate this quarter, what it should not, and where the money actually leaks. Built from agency work, not from a vendor deck.
Pattern recognition as a method
Autistic pattern recognition, made repeatable and teachable. How to find the signal your category has been walking past for a decade.
Algorithms, virality and creator economics
From Social Media Uncensored — the real mechanics behind reach, engagement and monetization, and how platforms price creators out of their own work.
How a talk gets built
Assembled, not adapted.
No stock keynote gets a new title slide. Every talk is built out of the archive against what your room is actually trying to fix.
- A discovery call on what is actually breaking
- The talk assembled from the archive, against your stakes
- Delivery, Q&A, and a written artifact the room keeps
How a talk opens
"Does it look like I have autism? Because people say — oh no, you don't have autism."
Opening line · Saskatchewan Blue Cross · Saskatoon · September 2025
The formats
Seven ways to put Ryan in the room.
45–90 minutesKeynote
Half or full dayWorkshop
Moderated · 45 minutesFireside
Any timezoneVirtual
Multi-speakerPanel
EDI & care teamsTraining
Schools & assembliesYouth
Before you ask
FAQs
Directly through this page, or through the Speakers Bureau of Canada, which represents him. Either route reaches the same calendar — direct is faster.
Based in Calgary, speaking across Canada — recent rooms in Saskatoon, Toronto and Calgary — and virtually anywhere. Travel is quoted separately from the fee.
Fees depend on format, audience size, travel and how much custom build the talk needs. Send the date and the room, and you get a number back — not a range and a phone call.
Yes, and it is expected. Healthcare, insurance, post-secondary, government and small business have all had their own build. The discovery call is where that happens.
There is, and it is short. Ryan sends his own access needs with the contract and asks for yours — captions, quiet space, content notes — so the session is built accessible rather than retrofitted.
Internal recording and post-event replay are usually fine. Public distribution is agreed in writing beforehand, per clip.
Take it with you
Get the speaker one-sheet.
One page: signature talks, what the room gets, selected stages, and how to reach me. Give an email and it downloads immediately.
Ready to talk dates? Go to the booking form →