Specialisterne

The youngest son of Specialisterne founder Thorkil Sonne, Lars, was diagnosed as having "infantile autism, normal intelligence", at age three, denoting an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Sonne became active in the Danish Autism Association, then president of a local chapter of Autism Denmark, for three years, where he learned that people with ASD seldom have a chance to use their special skills in the labour market. After 15 years working with IT within telecommunication companies, Sonne knew the value of the skills he saw in people with ASD. With the support of his family, Sonne founded Specialisterne in 2004, based on a home mortgage and his family's belief in his vision. == Today ==

, Specialisterne has over 600 employees and has operated in 26 countries, with offices in 13 of them: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the UK, and the United States. Services offered by Specialisterne include software testing, quality control, documentation, data entry, and logistics with a high attention to detail and accuracy for customers including TDC A/S, Grundfos, KMD, CSC, SAP, Microsoft, Parexel, Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle. Specialisterne maintains a focus on transferring knowledge on how to turn disabilities into abilities. Speeches, workshops and courses are based on the method of positive thinking called The Dandelion Model. (The dandelion was symbolically chosen as a beneficial weed found in unexpected places, akin to the ethos of ASD including valuable skills.) In October 2010, assisted by funding support from a European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme called the Leonardo da Vinci programme (project number 2010-1-IS1-LEO05-00579), The following year, the Minnesota organization became Specialisterne USA, based in Delaware, and the company also opened an office in Canada. An Australian branch was founded in 2015, which then formed a partnership with the Dandelion Program The same year, a branch was founded in Milan, Italy. It has also opened branches in a number of other countries. ==See also==