Mission and Vision

Autism Empowerment is devoted to promoting a culture of acceptance, enrichment, and empowerment in the lives of children, teens, adults and families in Autism, Autistic and neurodivergent communities.

We offer innovative and inspiring programs, training, and services as well as opportunities for leadership and volunteerism for those within and supporting autism and disabilities communities. Our work is guided by our Four Foundational Pillars of Positivity:

• Accept
• Enrich
• Inspire
• Empower

The vision we work toward is an inclusive society that accepts and respects all youth and adults on the autism spectrum and empowers each person to reach their highest potential.

Everyone on our Board of Directors is on the autism spectrum or has autistic family members. We are proactive autistic allies that believe each one of us is an Ambassador for Acceptance of All Abilities in our home, in our family, in our community, and in the world. 

You will find us collaborating with and supporting other autism and disability-related organizations locally, regionally and around the world. We also work with people, businesses, and organizations that are not autism-related to help their members better understand the strengths and challenges of daily life for individuals on the autism spectrum. 

Autism Empowerment was founded in June 2011 in Vancouver, Washington by John and Karen Krejcha, a husband and wife team with two children. Karen and their children identify as autistic and neurodivergent. John is not autistic but he is neurodivergent.

What distinguishes Autism Empowerment as unique from most local and national autism-related organizations is that we proactively include autistic and neurodivergent people in key staff, program development, and volunteer roles.

Self-advocates are encouraged to identify with language that they choose and be respected for their choice.

Since June 2011, Autism Empowerment has been primarily disability-led and volunteer-based. We consider ourselves a passionate grassroots organization and desire to raise funding and build infrastructure that will allow for our programs to flourish, people in autism communities to thrive and for our staff and contractors to be fairly compensated with a living wage.

Everyone on the Board of Directors is either neurodiverse or has autistic family members. Autism Empowerment volunteers and staff are authentic and proactive autism community allies with a vision of a better world.

We believe if you want to meaningfully enrich and provide support to youth and adults on the autism spectrum, it is essential that individuals with autism be given a voice in the conversation throughout all facets of program, support and service development.

Using a self-advocacy perspective, we regularly collaborate with a broad range of autism and cross-disability organizations. We also educate parents, professionals and support providers from a self-advocacy perspective ways to better understand the strengths and challenges, sensory sensitivities and thought processes that can accompany living with autism.

• Each of the four main colors of our logo represents one of our four foundational pillars.  
• Green stands for Accept and symbolizes Autism Acceptance.
• Red stands for Enrich and represents Enrichment and Education.
• Orange stands for Inspire and represents Inspiration and Hope.
• Purple stands for Empower and represents Empowerment.
• The circle represents a globe and the person in the middle symbolizes individuals on the autism spectrum being accepted, enriched, inspired and empowered throughout the four corners of the world.

Want to learn more? Please check out our Goals and learn about our Core Values.