‘This doesn’t end well for Jason Arday’, I told friends 11 days ago. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who had that thought – and I didn’t expect his death to be so soon. But, having watched the unsettling growth of the ‘lived experience’ speaker circuit over the past five years, I was sure someone would pay the ultimate price for the story that has unfolded over the past two weeks – most likely, Arday himself. ‘I’m not sure how someone bounces back from something like this’, I wrote in a WhatsApp message.

I don’t know much about universities, but I do know about DEI. As the host of This Isn’t Working (a podcast about modern workplace dysfunction), I have written for spiked before about the alarming lack of standards or scrutiny in an industry that jumped the shark some time ago.

But I held back on the Arday story. Yes, it was a fascinating (and, then, funny) tale – but it also felt dangerously out of control. And, crucially, I sensed it was unfinished. Where was Arday? Was he okay?

Arday’s mental health was not sufficient reason to stop his work from being scrutinised, his claims from being investigated, or commentators from discussing the scandal surrounding his career.

But it was a worry for those of us who have feared for some time that people who monetise their lived experience (whether true or embellished) are dicing with death.

If you’re unaware, LinkedIn is awash with people – usually young people – declaring they are making a good living through the cottage industry known as the lived-experience scene, as Arday appeared to be doing, when he wasn’t working at Cambridge University.

Corporate gigs are especially lucrative. For example, we know Arday spoke at the UK offices of French bank Societe Generale. The partner of an employee said Arday’s talk provided false hope that their autistic child’s future might be brighter than they feared, given Arday’s claims that he overcame crippling autism as a child.

The impact on audiences must surely be considered more carefully. But another – almost entirely undiscussed – issue is the impact on the person holding the microphone, baring their soft underbelly to strangers for money.

Back on LinkedIn, lived-experience trainers regularly complain of the emotional toll of discussing their pain in public. Some say they long to do other work. But what?

And I’ve seen them admit they don’t always tell the truth – because they know what audiences want to hear. Most commonly, they insist they are happier and healthier than they really are, especially those pushing a ‘triumph over tragedy’ story arc, such as those who have adopted a trans identity, survived deprivation, trauma or addiction, or who claim to have learned to accept a behavioural condition.

Money isn’t the only reason to fib. This isn’t just financial, it’s emotional. The enraptured faces of strangers don’t just represent an income. Those people also provide guaranteed adoration – seductive for people whose sense of self is shaky.

And, crucially, those enraptured faces never ask any tough questions.

I never saw Arday in action, but my day at the Stonewall Workplace Conference in May 2025 comes to mind. The speakers were presented to us as quasi-spiritual leaders, especially – it must be said – those who were black.

The content was paper thin, but nobody noticed. The audience was all in before the speaker said their first word. What a rush. What a sense of power. What a strong temptation to embellish there must be.

Speaking about lived-experience trainers who cover disability (including autism, ADHD and other behavioural issues), the disability-rights campaigner George Fielding told me in an interview last year:

‘I actually think it’s incredibly unfair to expect somebody who is often very young, who hasn’t got much experience at the workplace, to broadcast their life and their vulnerability and their anxiety to the world – and to make that their only route to business. I think it’s extremely superficial and psychologically damaging.’

My take? People who are drawn to this line of work are already wobbly. For a while, the adoration and affirmation gives them strength. Then it starts to do the opposite.

If and when their career collapses, they’ll find they have nothing. No skills, no contacts, no decent experience. And they certainly don’t have the resilience to handle the humiliating aftermath.

How will Jason Arday be remembered? I would like him to be the man who ended the dark corporate trend for paying people to share their pain in public. Whether or not their story was true.

Tanya de Grunwald hosts the podcast This Isn’t Working, and runs the business network This Is Working.