Especially Everyone is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit building a more connected world through music that celebrates neurodiversity.
In an era where loneliness affects people across all demographics, music becomes the bridge for authentic human connection.
We believe music is a right, not a privilege, and that neurodiversity, understood fully, is essential to healthier, more vibrant, and more connected communities for everyone.
Through our neuro-informed, universal design approach, we break down barriers and build bridges so that everyone has the opportunity to connect to and through live music — reimagining cultural spaces for the full spectrum of human experience, where inclusion isn't just an accommodation, it's the inspiration.
Why We Built This
Especially Everyone began with a simple realization: The very people who need community the most are often the ones least able to access it.
For more than 15 years, Pete worked alongside individuals with developmental disabilities and watched the same pattern repeat itself. When structured support systems ended, meaningful social opportunity often ended with them. As a professional musician performing in mainstream venues, he was living in two worlds simultaneously — one where isolation was the norm, and one where music brought people together effortlessly. He couldn't stop asking why those two worlds never met.
Especially Everyone grew out of that question.
Jill arrived at the same question from a different vantage point. After more than a decade leading operations in live events and concert production, she had seen firsthand how powerful shared music experiences could be. Music had been one of the greatest gifts of her life, and she had built her career around making sure more people could share in it. A pivot into public health during COVID, leading regional testing and vaccine operations, sharpened the question further: how do you bring people back together safely, meaningfully, at scale? Returning to live events through that lens — and through her own lived experience as a neurodivergent leader — she saw what Pete saw, from the other side. This wasn't a programming gap. It was a design problem. Social spaces had been built with one way of participating in mind. Changing that design could change who gets to belong.
Together, they began building a model rooted in a different premise: connection can be intentionally built. And when inclusion is embedded into the structure of a live music experience, the result isn't accommodation. It's transformation.
