Redefining Autism Diagnosis: A Policy Framework for Autistic Girls/Women

The Feminine Intelligence Agency (FIA) has already sponsored research into how autism criteria are defined and how they fail to capture the lived experience of autistic girls and women—particularly how this leads to missed diagnoses and increased vulnerability to coercion and sexual assault. Building on this existing research, this project will: Map the Decision-Making Process : Identify the key players and committees (e.g., APA, DSM subcommittees, insurance lobbies) who shape diagnostic criteria and public messaging. Analyze Diagnostic Gaps and Biases : Show how the current DSM framework ignores autistic girls’ masking, trauma history, and vulnerability, and how it perpetuates a deficit model instead of a neurodivergent perspective. Conduct Interviews : Engage with key informants—such as clinicians, researchers, advocacy groups, and autistic women—to capture a 360-degree view of how these decisions are made and how they impact real lives. Transcribe and synthesize these interviews to inform the final report. Investigate Health Department Leverage Points : Explore how initiatives like the US Autism Registry could reinforce outdated deficit models or support a divergence-based approach. Propose Systemic Policy Changes : Develop actionable recommendations to shift from the deficit model to a neurodivergent framework, ensuring early interventions include social discernment skills that protect autistic girls from coercion.

Create prototype MVP for one of our projects

The Feminine Intelligence Agency (FIA) is an innovation lab building scalable, peer-to-peer tools for emotional wellness, relationship discernment, and digital safety. We have a suite of in-development products — each designed to prevent harm before it escalates — and we are looking for a team of engineering students to choose one and take it forward. This project is ideal for students who want to critically engage with real-world social challenges using engineering, design, and AI-based innovation. You’ll get to explore complex human factors (like trust, emotion, manipulation, safety), while applying your technical skills in areas such as product development, systems design, UX research, and AI integration.

Strategic Partnership Development Plan

The Feminine Intelligence Agency (FIA) is a groundbreaking initiative dedicated to equipping women with tools and strategies to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics and counter manipulative power moves. Through educational resources, innovative tools like the Agency Calculator, and tailored workshops, FIA helps women recognize and mitigate manipulation tactics, fostering autonomy and resilience. The Feminine Intelligence Agency (FIA) is a mission-driven organization seeking to expand its impact through strategic partnerships. This project focuses on designing a structured and actionable partnership framework to help FIA collaborate with organizations in education, technology, and professional development. By leveraging shared resources and co-branded initiatives, FIA aims to optimize its growth potential and align with high-value partners. MBA candidates will act as consultants, applying their expertise in strategic operations and project management to identify potential partners, design collaboration models, and create sustainability strategies. The project will culminate in a comprehensive report and presentation, equipping FIA with the tools and insights needed to develop impactful partnerships that drive measurable growth.

Empowerment Dashboard Design with Synthetic Data

The Feminine Intelligence Agency (FIA) is a social innovation startup that builds tools to help women and other vulnerable populations recognize coercion, build psychological resilience, and protect themselves in relationships, workplaces, and digital environments. We’ve developed a suite of educational tools based on years of psychological research, including: The Agency Calculator – A diagnostic tool that scores users on 20 dimensions of personal agency (e.g., boundaries, emotional regulation, critical thinking, autonomy). The BlindSpot Quiz – A self-awareness tool that reveals a user's potential manipulation blind spots or psychological vulnerabilities. The Player Identifier Chatbot – An AI-guided conversation tool that scores patterns in past or present relationships to detect early warning signs of coercive control. All tools are grounded in a custom-built trait scoring system, and the backend is currently being migrated to a graph database (Neo4j) to support interactive analysis and visualization. The Goal of This Project: Your job is to take our structured psychological framework and design a user-facing data dashboard using synthetic data . This dashboard should help users: Understand their strengths and areas for growth across the 20 agency traits See how their relationship history or quiz patterns affect their risk profile Get personalized suggestions for chatbot training modules or education content Track their learning journey or improvement over time This dashboard should be visually intuitive , empowering , and curious-user-friendly . Think of it as the bridge between psychological insight and actionable growth. Data Provided: You’ll be given structured synthetic datasets that mirror real patterns from FIA’s tools (no real user data, no PII). These datasets will include: Trait scores from the Agency Calculator (0–10 scale, 20 traits) Vulnerability cluster types from the BlindSpot Quiz Player-type pattern flags from relationship assessments Sample chatbot session logs (e.g., user selected “Egocentric Evan,” answered 6/10 confrontation questions) Suggested learning modules and growth paths (Optional) simulated session timestamps for visualizing progress over time