KERRY MAGRO

Kerry Magro was diagnosed with PDD-NOS at four - what would now be described as autism spectrum disorder. As a young child, he dealt with real challenges in communication, sensory processing and motor skills.

His parents, Robert and Suzanne, spent years helping him communicate, participate and become more independent in daily life. Speech therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy were part of that support. So were the interests they noticed in him and kept encouraging.

Basketball and theater became especially important - two of the interests Kerry has pointed back to when describing what mattered while he was growing up. Basketball gave him a structured activity he wanted to keep returning to.

Theater worked differently. Talking with EvoAutism, Kerry described the nurturing and support around it as central to how he eventually became comfortable speaking on stage and using his voice in public.

As he moved into adulthood, disability advocacy and public speaking took up more and more of his time. His education includes a B.S. in Sports Management; an M.A. in Strategic Communications from Seton Hall University; and, in 2019, an Ed.D. in Educational Technology Leadership from New Jersey City University.

What he was good at showed up elsewhere: communication, writing, performance, basketball, working with people.

Public speaking eventually became his profession. Kerry has now spoken at more than 1,500 events, including two TEDx talks and a session at Google.

His books include Defining Autism From the Heart, Autism and Falling in Love, Supporting Your Autism Journey, Autistics on Autism, and Autistics on Autism: The Next Chapter. The two Autistics on Autism collections bring together first-person writing from autistic contributors with different backgrounds and different experiences.

His work now reaches into film and television. Kerry has consulted on Netflix's Love on the Spectrum U.S. and HBO's Mrs. Fletcher. He is also a television writer for PBS KIDS' Carl the Collector. That work puts him on the inside of a different question about autism - not just talking about it, but having a hand in how autistic characters and lives are shown on screen, and what audiences take from watching them.

Kerry also runs KFM Making A Difference, a nonprofit that funds college scholarships for autistic students and supports other disability programs. It has awarded 162 college scholarships to autistic students over twelve years. Kerry has told EvoAutism that grants from Walmart and TD Bank have supported parts of that work.

He also started a sensory-friendly Santa event in New Jersey that has now served more than 750 children with disabilities. Instead of asking children to adapt to a crowded, noisy environment, the event adapts the environment around them. The project later grew into a children's book Kerry published in 2024.

Kerry still deals with sensory overload. He's written about how hard it can be to read body language, and about eye contact - in a bright or loud room, holding it can take attention away from actually listening. After a long stretch of social interaction, he may need time alone to decompress.