A Human Connection Expert and Behavioural Translator who’s supported over 400 children, young people and family members, trained more than 70 specialist practitioners and built an online parent community of over 5,700 people, this month prepares to launch her new podcast, Wild Ways: Chaos, Coffee & Compassion in Time for ADHD Awareness Month.
Suzan Issa, 52, from Loughton, Essex has spent more than two decades helping people ‘understand themselves and each other well enough to actually get on’ in an array of settings including education, boardrooms and for clients such as’ Action for Children, MIND and The Globe Theatre.
Now she plans to bring it all together in ‘Chaos, Coffee & Compassion’, which will be airing weekly from 1st October 2026, to coincide with ADHD Awareness Month, co-hosted with Rosalind Walker, a key figure behind The WildWays Foundation.
Having herself received a late diagnosed autism assessment in her 40s and spent much of her own life feeling misunderstood, Suzan recently took to the TEDx stage to share her experiences around masking and the loneliness this brings, and as a result was inundated with messages from people saying they’d love to talk about this more.
Founder of The WildWays , which offers support to families and young people struggling to make sense of neurodivergent behaviours, Suzan has been on a knowledge sharing journey for many years and an author of ‘Raising a Wild Child’ has already helped so many, but she felt that launching a podcast was an even more accessible way to reach others struggling.
Particularly created for parents, as Suzan is keen that no parent should ever feel like they are struggling to be heard, Suzan sets out to lead conversations that normalise experiences, and emotions around neurodivergence that can often make families feel isolated. Released across the major podcast platforms the show sets out to mostly explore the lived neurodivergent experience and challenges of behaviours such as PDA.
As a behavioural translator, Suzan spends her working life naming what is really happening beneath the surface of a strained relationship or a moment that just feels off, and the podcast brings that same lens to families: curiosity rather than judgement, and understanding the need underneath the behaviour rather than trying to ‘fix’ it.
“Nobody hurts anyone on purpose,” says Suzan. “The key is understanding the needs void, to enable us to live, work and grow together more harmoniously.”
“There’s always a moment in a real conversation where someone says ‘oh, I thought it was just us’, and you can see the shame lift a little. That’s the whole thing, really- what I’m here to do.”
Built on Suzan’s own ‘no shame, no blame’ philosophy, the podcast comes from a career spent watching families get stuck in the gap between what a child needs and what the people around them are able to give, not because anyone is failing, but because nobody has named the gap yet. Suzan believes the more real scenarios she and Rosalind can put out into the world, the more people will recognise themselves in one of them and realise they were never doing it wrong, they simply hadn’t had the right lens yet.
The show also features a dedicated Q&A element, with parents, carers and others invited to send in questions about understanding their child, school becoming impossible, PDA, burnout, or situations they have struggled to make sense of.
The tone, as Suzan puts it, is simple: “No judgement. No quick fixes. Just an honest conversation about what’s really going on.”
Following the podcast launch, Suzan is also introducing donation based, pay what you can Q&A sessions, so that support is never locked behind a price tag that shuts people out before they have even had the chance to ask their question.
“It’s a chance for people to get to know me behind the work,” Suzan explains, “not just the ‘no shame, no blame’ framework on a page, but the person who lives it, and sometimes trips over it, day to day.”
The launch comes as new figures show why the conversation matters more than ever. Over 270,000 people in England are currently waiting for an autism assessment, with nine in ten waiting longer than the recommended three months, while Department for Education figures show severe school absence at a record high. A recent survey of more than 9,000 teachers found more than half do not feel equipped to support children with emotionally based school avoidance.
“That’s not a diagnosis crisis, it’s a support crisis,” says Suzan. “Support shouldn’t be locked behind a piece of paper.”
A former headteacher and self-described master in the art of being misunderstood, Suzan was stabbed by a student on her first day in a specialist SEN classroom -but instead of running from this, she built an emotional regulation programme tailored to every individual child in that room.
She later quit the teaching profession altogether when the system stopped her from helping a child in crisis and set up a family support business instead, which grew into The WildWays, the organisation she runs today.
She has now spent more than two decades translating human behaviour in an array of settings from education to boardrooms, working with individuals, families and clients such as Action for Children, MIND and The Globe Theatre.
