Senior Director of Career Connections & Employer Relations
A nationally recognized leader in neuroinclusive career development who spent a decade building pathways between neurodivergent students and the employers ready to champion them — transforming what it means to support a workforce that thinks differently.
Featured speaker at the Stanford Neurodiversity Summit, College Autism Summit, NACE, CEIA, Autism Speaks, and the Northeast Regional Higher Education Neurodiversity Coalition — delivering training on neuroinclusive hiring, strengths-based development, and career readiness systems to practitioners nationwide.
Co-authored a Routledge book chapter on fostering career connections among neurodivergent students, a peer-reviewed journal article in the Society for Advancement of Management Journal, and a chapter in Palgrave Macmillan's Managing for Social Justice — building the academic record for neuroinclusive workforce practice.
Built nationwide placements at Hasbro, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft, SAP, EY, Prudential, Equinix, Dell Technologies, and CAI Neurodiverse Solutions — vetting each partner to ensure genuine neuroinclusion. "It's rare I speak to a business just trying to fill a quota. Most employers are committed to actively recruiting our students."
Featured by NACE, Inside Higher Education, HigherEdJobs, Vermont Public Radio, Education Talk Radio, and the Divergent Conversations Podcast — bringing national visibility to the case for neurodivergent workforce inclusion and establishing herself as a go-to expert for journalists in the field.
Launched Landmark's first Neuroinclusive Career Fair in fall 2025 — welcoming 183 students and 15 employers including EY, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, and Stratton Mountain Resort. Employers joined morning training sessions on inclusive hiring before the fair floor opened, ensuring both sides of the equation were prepared.
Designed a signature scaffolded model — from on-campus Employment Readiness Experience through external internship to career placement — ensuring every Landmark student receives a dedicated career advisor alongside their academic advisor. "We ensure that every student receives personalized and scaffolded career support," much like professors do academically.
"When I first started, I was doing a lot of the outreach and pitch. Now employers contact me — they know the college, they know our students, and they are actively recruiting neurodivergent talent."
Jan Coplan, M.Ed., has spent more than 28 years in education, the last decade as Senior Director of Career Connections and Employer Relations at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont — the only fully accredited institution in the United States exclusively designed for students who learn differently.
Her career at Landmark has been defined by a single conviction: that neurodivergent individuals bring distinctive strengths to the workplace, and that the job of career services is to make those strengths visible. That conviction drives everything from her scaffolded career readiness model to her employer vetting process — which screens for genuine inclusion rather than compliance.
Over ten years, Jan transformed a regional career office into a nationally cited model — attracting employers, generating peer-reviewed research, and training professionals from San Francisco to Budapest. She is an architect, not just a practitioner, of neuroinclusive workforce development.