For many leaders, the challenge is not learning what to do, but learning how they are wired to lead. For Kiran and Sarah Skariah, that journey of self-understanding was profoundly shaped by Arrow, long before either of them had language for neurodivergence.
Kiran completed Arrow in 2021, coming from a background in church and pastoral ministry. At the time, he had just stepped into running a newly formed not-for-profit, transitioning from almost a decade as a local church pastor into organisational leadership. “I went from a local church pastor telling people about Jesus to someone running a not-for-profit and not knowing what running a not-for-profit means,” he reflects. Arrow became a way to learn leadership frameworks while remaining deeply grounded in faith.
Sarah completed Arrow the following year through the Executive Leaders cohort, entering from a corporate environment where she held a people-leadership role at Westpac. She recalls that at the time, she was one of the youngest people in that role, and Arrow “definitely helped me a lot in getting some understanding around, okay, what are the things that I should be more attentive to versus the things that kind of came a bit more naturally.”
A Journey of Introspection
The Arrow Program is designed to help leaders understand themselves on a deeper level, not only spiritually, but introspectively. Both Kiran and Sarah describe Arrow as a catalyst for deeper self-reflection. “It was just really helpful to think outside of our norm for a moment,” Kiran explains.
A pivotal tool in assisting the couple in their introspective journey was engaging with the TMS (Team Management Systems) profile. Kiran describes the experience, “It was bang on. Like, you would think this person read my diary, but it was just from me answering a questionnaire.” For the first time, he could clearly see both his strengths and the areas where he needed complementary people around him.
For Sarah, the impact was equally significant. “It gave me a lot of understanding of the way that I actually operate,” she says. As someone who is highly analytical and structured, she found language for patterns she had long experienced. “I knew some of the strengths around like, you know, I’m very structured – that comes with the neurodivergence – but also the other side being because I’m so analytical.”
Discovering Their Neurodivergent Gifts
At the time Sarah and Kiran were doing Arrow, neither of them had a formal diagnosis. Yet Arrow gave them tools that later became critical as they began to explore neurodivergence more intentionally.
After hearing former Arrow CEO, Liam Glover speak openly about ADHD and leadership, Sarah began to recognise similarities between her behaviour and neurodivergent traits. From Sarah’s perspective, this became a practical leadership standpoint, and the impact was immediate. “It made me reflect and say, ‘okay, how is my ADHD potentially a challenge for my team in working with me?’”
For the couple, this was the first time neurodivergence had been named not as a deficit, but as something that could exist honestly within leadership. Rather than stopping at self-recognition, the moment pushed the couple toward a freedom to embrace how their brain works, and to lead more thoughtfully because of it.
Out of that insight came practical changes that now shape how Sarah leads. “I might need to structure how I do conversations,” she explains, particularly with an awareness that others on her team may also be neurodivergent, diagnosed or not.
Kiran’s leadership takes place in a more relaxed environment online. His primary community is a global one, formed through live streaming and daily digital conversations with people scattered across the world.
That space has become more than a platform for content; it has become a place of education, reframing, and accessibility around neurodivergence. Kiran is intentional about shaping how the conversation is held. “Helping to just lead the dialogue around what neurodivergence is and isn’t,” has become part of his pastoral and leadership calling.
In sharing his story online, Kiran regularly sees others recognise themselves in it. “There are numerous other people that hear this and can resonate with that.” For many, that recognition becomes the beginning of their own journey. “All of a sudden they’re on their own journey to look into that space.”
Looking back, they can now see how Arrow laid the groundwork for this understanding. The couple credits Arrow with shaping how they lead as neurodivergent leaders, and pursuing a formal diagnosis.
Neurodivergence and faith
Faith remains central to how they understand neurodivergence. “God made my brain this way,” Kiran says plainly. “He didn’t just go, ‘Oh, these are the oopsy people.’” Instead, he sees neurodivergence as part of God’s design, not a deviation from it.
The challenge, he explains, is not the wiring itself, but the systems built around it. “Most of the world’s systems are built around one person type, because that’s all we’ve really known.” When leadership, productivity, and success are designed with only one type of brain in mind, anyone wired differently is left feeling deficient rather than gifted.
“My wife came up with the clever line, ‘Scarred but not broken’,” a phrase they use intentionally and often. It holds a double meaning. One that resonates deeply with neurodivergence, trauma, and leadership alike. “Even though you might have faults and flaws and baggage and all kinds of things, mental, physical, emotional scars, whatever they might be, you’re not broken because there is a God that heals, restores, and puts back together.”
For Kiran and Sarah, this theology of restoration reframes how they see both themselves and others. Neurodivergence is not something to be hidden or apologised for; it is something that exists alongside God’s ongoing work of healing and renewal. “God has worked and has given me a brain that has allowed me to help more people than I could count, which I couldn’t have done had I been neurotypical,”Kiran shares.
In this way, their leadership, both online and offline, becomes an expression of faith that names differences without shame and offers hope without denial. To be neurodivergent, in their story, is not to be outside God’s design, but to be living proof that restoration does not require sameness, and that leadership can emerge powerfully from brains that work differently.
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