International Women's Day Stories: Kayleigh Davies

To celebrate International Women's Day and Neurodiversity Celebration Week, both in March, Greene Sky and Ability are sharing the stories and experiences of inspirational neurodiverse women at Greene King. In this edition, we're talking to Kayleigh Davies, People Systems Change Manager.

I joined Greene King in 2022 as a Transformation Business Analyst working on Central Ops projects, then 12 months ago a People Systems Change Manager role came up in HR, and that is where I work now.

It's funny, until the last few years and seeing more information on ADHD in women and becoming more aware of what some of those patterns and behaviours were, I wouldn’t have recognised my symptoms as neurodivergent. I guess I just thought I was a little different, but that it was more of a personality or a competence thing. For example, I was just bad at certain things and those were the things that other people just made look really easy.

What I can recognise from my early years, so school age, but have been unable to articulate until recently, is that I struggled with time keeping, motivation, and perceived failure. So, unless there was a consequence attached to a task, such as a deadline, it was like trying to push a rock uphill to complete something. School probably provided the perfect environment for my ADHD to go unrecognised because there is structure and consequences to everything, all day, every day.

This did end up leading to a lot of burn out in my late teens, early 20’s and I feeling like I couldn’t cope, and I couldn’t identity why. I think this is where a lot of misdiagnoses can occur as doctors naturally lean to anxiety or depression as their focus is exploring and resolving recent symptoms with you and not looking further back for patterns of other things like neurodivergence.

It probably wasn’t until I had my two children, and I felt like the wheels really came off that I started trying to find more answers. The children really did take all my coping strategies I had subconsciously put into place over my lifetime and set them on fire! It became very clear all the little things I did instinctively, such as taking myself away from people or environments when they became too much, or having time alone to recharge, or being able to tell someone something without being interrupted so I didn’t lose the thought in my head, I couldn’t do anymore. This time, doctors and family leant into the issues stemming from postnatal depression or hormonal changes, but for me this didn’t really fit. It wasn’t until I started to see more and more content appearing on social media, and conversations about ADHD, but with a specific focus on women started coming up, and it was like everything suddenly made sense.

What I find most challenging now in my personal and professional life is the battle between capability and inconsistency, and starting to recognise and learn why my brain behaves the way it does in certain situations. For example, there are some days I feel like I am on fire, and my productivity and quality of work is great, then within 24 hours I am exhausted, unmotivated and finding it hard to write a simple email. Most days feel like there are 100 tabs open in my brain and I am constantly trying to prioritise them and the mental noise they create. What is hard for other people to understand is that the creative, very in the moment quick part of your brain is still very much switched on and running, so you can say and do brilliant things in the moment and then within a minute are not able to repeat what you just said or did.

Finally in 2025, I went for a private diagnosis with my ADHD, and a big reason for that was because I was starting to see it more in my eldest son, who's just turned eight. Male ADHD presents itself very outwardly, but I was noticing everything he was doing outwardly was a reflection of everything I keep in my head.

I don’t want him to struggle for years, feeling different or confused about the way his brain works, so I thought the easiest way to get him help was to get myself diagnosed so I can be there for him.

I have my diagnosis, and started on medication to begin with, but unfortunately that hasn’t worked for me. The physical side effects outweighed the benefits, but now I've got the diagnosis, it's much easier to go back and articulate why I work this way and be kinder to myself.

I think for women, it's really common for doctors and families to jump to the conclusion that it must be anxiety or depression or hormonal changes due to womanhood. I think it's also really common to assume it's also that when you're in your teens and late '20s, because it can be such a rough time for people.

After I had my children, I think it was the first time my outward behaviour changed, and the first time I couldn’t really keep it all hidden in my head. I noticed the feeling of overwhelm and overstimulation result in rage, or tears, because for the first time I couldn’t just remove myself from my environment. It is difficult as people think 'oh, well you've coped all these years, so it's postnatal depression, it will pass', but what people didn’t understand is that these feelings had always been there, just masked and suppressed.

I think the frustration of not being believed pushed me to keep going online. I felt like it had to be something else? I mentioned ADHD to the GP once, and it was very much dismissed as the standard ADHD questionnaire leans to typical male symptoms, that is why I started looking into private diagnosis.

For me, being neurodivergent wasn't something I ever really considered, so if you'd asked me five, six years ago about neurodivergence, I wouldn't have been able to articulate much around ADHD other than the stereotypical loud, naughty boy at school.

I just think the stereotypes are very limiting , but without them the awareness wouldn’t be there so it's hard because you want the awareness out there for women. I do think there's a lot of social media content that's really highlighted and shed such a positive light on ADHD and opened the conversations, and shows it's acceptable to be different, but at the same time, it narrows it and trivialises some of the more difficult things having ADHD brings.

I think what social media doesn't show is how symptoms and struggles aren't there all the time. The stereotype is portrayed as all ADHD people are a little wild, loud, and impulsive all of the time, but a lot of the time it is quiet internalised chaos to fit in, to keep on top of your life, children, and career.

I think Greene King has a clear vision for where they want to be in supporting neurodivergent employees. I think the visibility of neurodivergence is great from a company perspective, and the ELIG groups have opened up great conversations about how things could be even better.

I'm very lucky to have open, honest conversations with my manager. I was very worried about speaking to them about it, but when we did our Insights training as a team, a lot of the stuff came up on there that was compounded, and I was able to say, 'this is actually how I am, this is how I work, this is where I thrive best'. It isn't always a struggle; there are some absolutely brilliant traits of having someone with a neurodivergent brain on your team, and you have to know how to listen to it and harness it.

I think, to go even further, we need to extend our flexibility and support to pub teams, as it's not the same environment and a completely different set of roles.

I like to transcribe a lot of my Teams meetings, so I get all the actions and notes I need, and it really helps. I've also lifted my to-do list out of my diary and notepad, and it now it all sits on my online calendar. This means that if I need to move stuff, the list follows me, and it's all there for me to see.

As much as I can, I colour coordinate that as well, because what that helps me see is what I have to do, but also monitor how much I'm flicking between topics all day. Then if ever I start to feel burnt out, I can attribute it to why.

When I'm working from home, I like to go to the gym at lunch, switch it all off for an hour, and that mentality works really well for me. My lunch breaks are always blocked out if I'm working from home, and when I leave the house, I go to the gym, I do my thing for 45 minutes, and I come back.

I think interviews like this make a difference, as they give more visibility to other women and also show the strengths of neurodivergent women. We're so good at out-of-the-box thinking and very quick decision-making.

We're good in a crisis, and we can think on our feet. In meetings, our creativity and articulation are great, and we can be such bright, inspirational people.

I like to talk things through, and I like to have someone else to bounce ideas off, as that will bring way more great thoughts out of my head than if I try and sit there and do it in silence by myself.

The more of 'myself 'I feel like I can be, it gives someone else the opportunity to open up too.

I didn't find it hard to accept my ADHD myself. I found it harder to see people around me finding out and accepting me, and when you hear other people have those same struggles, it's nice to know you're not alone. It keeps you motivated, too.

When you've got a group of neurodiverse women who all totally get where you're coming from, you can celebrate the positives and accept that your brain works differently and sees things differently.