Episode 337-From Classroom Insights To An Inclusive Social App with Britanny Moser

What if social apps actually met neurodivergent needs? That question drives a warm, candid conversation with educator-turned-founder Brittany Mosa as we dig into Synchrony, a new social and dating app for autistic and otherwise neurodivergent adults. Brittany traces the journey from a rural Queensland classroom to a Manhattan charter school, where practical inclusion strategies showed that supports designed for autistic students often help everyone. Those lessons—visuals, social stories, structured coaching—evolved into a product built to solve a quiet but urgent problem: the moment when a promising connection stalls because the right words or clarity just won’t come.

Synchrony’s heart is Jesse, an AI social coach named for Brittany’s cofounder’s autistic son. Jesse appears inside a live chat with three clear options: help me express myself, help me understand what’s happening, and protect my comfort. Instead of generic advice, Jesse looks at the actual conversation, offers concise interpretations, and suggests language that users can personalize. The goal is not to script people into neurotypical patterns; it’s to support authentic expression, reduce masking, and make room for different goals—whether that’s platonic friendship, romance, or simply a safe way to practice. Independence matters too: users can explore questions privately without leaning on parents or therapists for every step.

Safety and community design are built into the app. Synchrony uses government ID verification plus a vouching step from a trusted person to keep bad actors out and the culture strong. Available soon on iOS and Android, the team is focused on growing the waitlist so early members find real matches and conversations right away. We talk visibility, representation, and why autistic adults are not antisocial; they’re often underserved by tools that ignore their communication styles. Brittany also shares hopes for supported in-person events and partnerships to bridge app-based gains into daily life.

Want to help build an inclusive, responsive community from day one? Join the waitlist at joinsynchrony.com, share this episode with someone who needs it, and leave a quick review so more listeners can discover these conversations. Your support helps turn better design into better

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Chapters

• 0:00 Season Opener And Guest Welcome
• 2:20 Brittany’s Journey From Teacher To Founder
• 5:20 Inclusion Lessons From The Classroom
• 9:20 From Love On The Spectrum To A Solution
• 13:20 Parenting Fears And Real Communication Needs
• 18:00 Designing For Neurodivergent Communication Styles
• 23:00 Meet Jesse: The AI Social Coach
• 27:30 Independence, Privacy, And Skill Building

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

The SJ Child Show is back for its 13th season. Join Sarah Bradford and the SJ Child Show team as they explore the world of autism and share stories of hope and inspiration. This season, we're excited to bring you more autism summits featuring experts and advocates from around the world. Go to SJCilds.org.

SPEAKER_03: 0:24

The heart of the city, Janet Friday. Oh yeah. Stories of love and could each job to have that.

SPEAKER_01: 0:36

Well, hello. We are back. It's a beautiful morning here. It's fall. Oh, I just love fall. I think it's one of my favorite times of year. I don't know. The seasons have been pretty amazing this year. And you are um also here with me in the US, which we might not have been able to say that before. Um, I love to uh actually introduce some of my other Australian guests as my friends from the future. Um I think it's so much fun. It's so great to have you here today, Brittany. I'm really looking forward to getting to know more about you and sharing with my listeners. So, hello, listeners. Hello, Brittany. Hello, introduce yourself, let us know a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22

Yes, hello, Sarah, and hello to all your listeners. My name is Brittany Mosa. I am so excited to be here today and have this chat about synchrony, our new product launching, and just share a little bit about my background and how we got here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36

Yay, I love that. I know it's you know, the thing about um just community building in general is that there's so many resources that you want to get to everyone. You want everyone to have the opportunity to find the resources that fit best with them, that align best with their lives. And so I love being able to offer so many different voices to come on and and share their resources and their opportunities and things. So tell us a little bit about kind of what um you know got you started on your journey and we'll just go from there.

SPEAKER_02: 2:15

Yeah, well, I mean, so I'm yes, I'm from Australia. I was a teacher in Australia. I'm from a little country town in Queensland. Shout out to Kingaroy, and I have to say that because I know my dad will listen and he'll be proud. Hi Dad. Hi, dude! And so I started off as a primary school teacher in Australia and then I quickly moved over here to New York, New Jersey, because my husband is from here. And I was very, very lucky to start my career off working in a charter school in Manhattan that specialized in supporting kids on the autism spectrum or autistic kids in more of a mainstream classroom setting. And they did that in such a in such a unique way, where they really took the features and this and the struggles of those students, and they had a specialized program where it was all of these different supports that were in place to help with that integration and inclusion, but with the idea that any supports that we put in place that are helpful for our autistic students are going to be good for all of our students. And I really loved that. And so once I started teaching them, I just became really intrigued with how to support those students and how it felt like there were just clear, very tangible strategies and supports we can put in place that really do work, and there's a creative side to that as well, because you're understanding what are these social gaps that are happening, and like there's a there's a solution that we can pair with that. So it's like a lot of problem solving and a lot of creativity, but with kind of like a formula associated with it as well. And so I became really excited and interested in that. I very quickly signed on to get my master's in autism studies, and I did that um online through my university back home. And I just I just kept pursuing that. I kept, I went to the school and I had said, well, if we have coaches for ELA and math and science, why do we not have an autism coach given that that is a huge part of our program that we offer? And so then I took that position and went into more of a leadership coaching role for our teachers and creating resources, checklists, social stories, you name it, like any of those visual social supports we could put in place. That was like my my jam. And then one thing led to another, I just like kept going, kept going. And then eventually I had a bit of a career change, but I got that was the same time where Love on the Spectrum came out on TV, and I just fell in love with that show immediately. But as I was watching it, I mean, number one, amazing representation on television and just so beautifully put together an Australian founder TV show, too, which I've yeah, it's very proud of. Um, but yeah, and so I was watching that and I could see that there was a lot of foundational amazingness going on on that show that you would set people up who were probably compatible, and then you would get on this date, and everything, all of the coaching, all of the tools just kind of falling flat because we just there was a little bit of a gap there. We would just need a little bit extra support along the way while the interactions are actually happening. And then eventually, fast forward, I had met my now existing business partner, and we just shared a love of the show, and we had both wanted to make a dating app for autistic adults, and then we realized very quickly that you can't just fast forward to dating if you're also struggling with friendship and just general social connections, and started to piece together a solution for that. And now we are launching with synchrony next month, and we can talk a little bit more about that later. But that was kind of like the the long story of how we got to to coming up with how we could how can we solve this struggle that's going on in a way that fosters independence and social connection and belonging?

SPEAKER_01: 6:12

So important um on so many levels, let me tell you. Because first off, I have a teenager, you know, and we're going to be getting into those phases at some point.

SPEAKER_02: 6:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:23

Uh, you know, I'm not quite sure. And I'm okay with sharing this um with my listeners. I don't even know if I've ever shared this before, but this is a really, really great time, I think, to share this because I think this is a conversation you and I, I feel comfortable having with you. So bless your heart. Um, my son, uh up to this point, from what we can tell, we you know haven't had an actual conversation with him about this. I'm not quite sure what his level of understanding might be, but from what we are perceiving that it is a very asexual um situation, which to us is brand new. You know, here we are in our own heterose, you know, marriage. And um, our daughter also is um very, you know, is heterosexual. So it's so interesting to kind of in the past have the concern, the worry, the hope. Oh, I, you know, I want him to have friends, I want him to have a girlfriend, I want him to fall in love. And and he's had the opportunity to watch, you know, his dad and I be in love this entire time. And I he knows that he wants that. Like he has said to us in the past, oh, I want a girlfriend, I want to be in love, I want true love someday. Like he said that to us. But like you're saying, there's not even been an opportunity where he has had a cohesive conversation with another individual. No, you can't definitely go from that extreme to the next. Um, and there's this huge misunderstanding of first of all, of talking, language, communication, all of it like it is all so very different. And people just think talking, and then that's all they think, you know. There's oh my gosh, it's so complex when you have a semi-verbal, you know, communicator. And um, yeah, it just goes it goes so much deeper than that. So tell us kind of how you um have strategized ways to help on in all the different type of individual needs, I suppose you could say.

SPEAKER_02: 8:42

Yeah, well, I mean, I kind of want to go back to what you were just saying about just how your your fears, your hopes for your child, right? And I think that is a huge piece of what we've been trying to create, which is a space for neurodivergent adults to come in and meet people where they are. Where is your communication style? Where are your preferences, your interests, and how can you how can we support you to be expressing yourself and meeting other people who are similar to you? I think that's the biggest piece is it's like it's about being able to meet people where they are rather than trying to fit them into a box somewhere else. And like, listen, the whole world is built for neurotypical people. So we can have that, but we're trying to create something that is for a different group of people, that is for a neurodivergent group of people, so they can come in and just be met where they are, rather than trying to make them something that they're not, whether that be asexual and you're just looking for platonic friendship, or whether you are looking for a romantic relationship, but that is going to look different for you because you have different goals, wants, and needs. I think that's really important. So I think holistically that is that kind of answers your question a little bit about what we're trying to create. But in terms of the strategies that come within that, there's a few different things that we've employed. And I have to say, from the offset, we're so lucky that we have been creating this on this timeline than what we originally had planned for because of just natural delays and you know, everything takes longer to build than what you expect. Yeah. Like, oh my god, we had dreams of launching in September, and that didn't happen. It's already October, but that's okay because we are launching in January, that's for sure. But regardless of that, so we had originally planned based on what we were thinking when we were watching Love on the Spectrum, we were thinking, okay, we will have like a dating app or a friendship app or maybe a little bit of both, and people can talk and there will be like prompts on the side, generic prompts that we would have that people can access when they need them. Now the future has arrived, and we have had the the growth of AI and how much that has become involved in our lives, and we've been able to see the pitfalls associated with AI and where it can be safe, where it can be not safe. And we've been able to plan all of these different guardrails around that too, and to harness that as a very responsive, interactive social coach that we wouldn't have been able to have otherwise. So we ended up coming up with Jesse, which is our AI social coach, which is named after my business partner, Jamie's son, who is you know a bit of the the love behind this project. He's almost 21 and he's autistic and and he, yeah, he's a he's a real soul behind this project. I love that. Yeah, and so Jesse is our AI tool. And so basically how that functions is when you are messaging with another member that you've connected with, you can click Jesse whenever you're stuck. It's like a little icon, and up comes three different options. And these different options are AI prompts that we've already put together for our users because half of the problem with using AI is being good at the prompts. So when you look at that, it's based on the social communication difficulties of neurodivergent people. So you can click help me express myself, help me understand what's happening, like a little bit of social decoding, and protect my comfort. So some value in there. Yeah. Love that. And so what that does is it's not just gonna generate like just generate generic things to you, like as if you were talking to an airline chat bar. It's actually gonna go and look at the messages that you have been sending with that member, analyze based on what you're looking for, and give you some options, help you understand what's going on, help you actually interpret the social interaction so that the skill building aspect, but then also give you the language that you can use and personalize so that you can continue chatting with that member and hopefully just build skills and and human connection along the way.

SPEAKER_01: 12:54

Yeah. You know, as uh an autistic woman, using ChatGPT is priceless. Like I uh and I love that you have those different functions because it's not only in a conversation that it you might be thinking, oh, the prompts would be like what to say next. But I love how you've got like put those safeguards in basically to say, I'm not understanding this conversation. Help me clarify these types of things because I am a clarifier, I will ask questions and probably drive some people crazy. And in the past, I mean, when you're growing up and you're that way, um, and you know, hopefully our generations are changing, but it was why are you asking like don't ask questions, just shut your mouth and listen, basically. And it was just like, but but I have all of this. Um, and so I love that we're embracing that we need clarifications in some of these social situations, in some of these conversations, and um, that's just so beautiful. What a really thoughtful and um relatable thing, you know, a real like a real problem to solve, if you will. Um so I I think that that's just fantastic.

SPEAKER_02: 14:13

Well, I think a key piece to that too is the independence that comes with that, and so as kids grow up and become adults, before you've made that transition into adulthood, you will always go to your parents, or you'll go to your therapist, or you'll go to whoever and be debriefing these things or asking for advice or just expressing your confusion. But as we transition, we get older into adulthood, you know, many people don't want to have to go. And those things are private, and you could feel embarrassed by the questions that you have, or you know, you're not so inclined to go and ask mom what do you think that this girl means, or what do you think that this boy means when he says this to me, you know, those things just a little bit more it's developmentally expected, right? To to not want to share everything with your parents or another adult who's operating in kind of like a coach lens. So we, you know, I like the independence piece where you can you can be unfiltered, unmasked, and get to the bottom of how you're thinking, feeling, and expressing without having to, you know, showcase that to anybody else. It's just between you and Jesse.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

Oh, that's so lovely. What an amazing engine, like ingenuity. I I just I love it so much. What age groups are you catering to and opening this up for?

SPEAKER_02: 15:35

Yeah, that's a great question. We're doing 18 plus, so any adult, neurodivergent adult, um, can access this. We have a verification process in order to keep it safe and keep the community tight, and the people who should be in it will be in it. And so how that will work is it's very simple. It's like it's simple but with a necessary boundary, I will say, to keep people out that shouldn't be in there. And that is you can you log once you've logged in or you've created your account, you'll go through like a photo editing verif, um, sorry, not photo editing, a photo ID verification where you upload your government ID in a selfie. And then what it will do is it will you can elect somebody that you want to vouch for you to say, yes, they're a good fit for the synchrony community. Could be you, like it could be a parent, could be a friend, could be a therapist, a teacher, a trusted person, and you'll send off an email to them and they will read synchrony is and they'll indicate yes or no, and then you'll you'll be in and ready to go.

SPEAKER_01: 16:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:37

That's a different step to take.

SPEAKER_02: 16:39

You don't want it to be too complex of a process to have people log in and and be part of this amazing resource, but in but you also have to put some things in place because you know, anything that's on the internet, there's gonna be people that are trying to get in when they shouldn't be in there.

SPEAKER_01: 16:58

Absolutely. It tell me where it will be when it's up and running. Will it be an app, a website? Uh, I'm gonna put that up on the screen so everybody can see that.

SPEAKER_02: 17:09

Oh, thank you. So, yeah, it's going to be an app, it'll be available across all devices, Apple, Android. It'll be in all of those app stores. And the success really that's going to come from it is how quickly we can grow our audience, right? Like any sort of social group, app, program is only as successful as as many people as they have in there for people to be actually interacting with each other. So we are encouraging people to sign up for our wait list, which is on our website. I'll do a quick plug, which is joinsynchrony.com. And that way, join synchrony. So synchrony, like we're in sync s y n c r o n y perfect. We're like the bank. Yeah, we're competing with them online for sure. Yeah, you got it. Yeah, and so we are encouraging people to sign up for the wait list so that number one, they can get the most out of our free trial in the beginning for launch phase, but also number two, we want as many people to jump on there and start connecting with each other as possible so that we can have successful interactions and we just want to help and foster belonging. That's the big goal.

SPEAKER_01: 18:26

Love that. I mean, that's so important, and that's what uh so many people are wanting to find for themselves in their lives today, and um, such a huge difference for people when they find a community. When you find a little bit of support, it just makes such a big difference in their lives, right?

SPEAKER_02: 18:46

That's a whole well-being human need. It doesn't matter if you're neurodivergent or not, we all need it, and that's a huge stereotype for autistic people that I hate is that is that they're antisocial because we know that it's not true.

SPEAKER_01: 19:00

Isn't that yeah, isn't that the truth that it's not true? Funny, but yeah, it it's it's amazing, you know. I love that we are in this era now where the word autism itself is just in so many more eyes, ear, you know, ears, mouths, and it's been spoken about um regardless of its kind of the depth of what it might be spoken about. It's being spoken about. The word autism is is so is just more well known today than ever before. And I really, really hope that that we can uh take this opportunity as you know community members to really help nurture the understandings and like you said, um, really support the love on the spectrum, um, the representation. And I think that I I hope that they can maybe can you like match with them? Can you guys partner up with them or something? That would be dream come true. I got some friends, we can connect, we can make some connections right after this. Let's do this. Um, yeah, for real. I'm I've Danny Bowman, in fact, was on the show two years before she was Love on the Spectrum was on the SJ Child show before she was on Love on the Spectrum. I love she's amazing. I love her. I've had Kaelin and Devin and quite a few of uh some of the other um cast members. So it's just so much fun to catch up to see all the changes that's that have happened after the show for them. Oh my gosh, it's incredible. Um I'm so excited for for them and for, like you said, the representation that's um and and social media is, I feel now with all of these character cast members, I don't want to call them characters, cast members having their own socials, being able to push that advocacy even further. Um and it's incredible. What are your hopes and goals for synchrony moving forward? Like, where does it what is you know the end goal for everyone?

SPEAKER_02: 21:20

I mean, the end goal, I mean, we have some lofty goals of how we can expand it in order. I I want to change this. Is this sounds big? I want to change the world, and I know that sounds like you and me both. Exactly. And so I just feel like we just keep pushing towards visibility. Number one, I would love for the autistic population to be more visible in the public eye, and also the uh another part of this app is we wanted to build something so that our autistic users or our neurodivergent users as a in a broader sense can experience something like this just like everybody else, right? It's not designed in a way that is like that feels like a disability support app. It's designed in a way that is cool, that's fun, that's warm, and that I want our users to be able to just go about experience life, connection, love, belonging, just like anybody else would. It just maybe the path or the tools to get there is a little bit different, and that's totally fine.

SPEAKER_00: 22:25

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 22:26

And so for the future for Synchrony, I just want to number one, launch in January, get this up today, grow our audience space, and then let's see what's next. If that means that we have some in-person supported events, then that would be great if we could partner with some organizations so that we can bring some of these supports that are in-app into real life as well, so that there's not such a harsh transition from in-app into the real world, that would be amazing. Um, yeah, and it'll really come down to what does our audience want? What do our members want at the end of the day? Because uh not everybody wants to go on these in-person events, they're incredibly daunting. But hopefully, with the supports of Jesse and the successful and positive social interactions that the members have, hopefully that just builds confidence, skills, and overall positivity towards these kinds of relationships and connections.

SPEAKER_01: 23:21

I love that. I'm I really think that there is uh such a great future for this resource for individuals. And I'm so excited. I mean, I'm married, happily married 21 years, so I won't be as easy. Congratulations. I got kids that are gonna be there, and um yeah, I want them to have a safe place for themselves someday. And so something I'll definitely be advocating for. And I love to share, I have communities online, so when um the you know, when the information comes out and everything, please remember to share it with me so I can share it with all my community members as well. And excitingly, this will actually be coming out mid-December or beginning mid-December. So we'll really push that January launch and help do that for you. And hopefully at listeners, you know, if you have friends, family members, any, you know, co uh colleagues, co-workers that this is something that would be a positive experience for them, please support Brittany and this um wonderful resource synchrony. I'm gonna put it back up really quick so you guys can see that. Um, and then what is it, what's the the actual website address? So I didn't I was gonna type it and I didn't.

SPEAKER_02: 24:47

Yeah, the actual website is join synchrony.

SPEAKER_01: 24:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 24:50

Joinsynchrony.com. And you can access the wait list if you're interested. You can learn more about me, the other founders, what our mission is. And then our socials are just synchrony app. Great. You can find that it's on uh TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, all of those things. I've actually been having a really great time documenting the build on TikTok. I'm not, you know, I'm somebody who works on TikTok and loves to watch funny videos. I haven't created much myself, but I've been forced into that realm with this production. So that's been great. So if you're interested in what's like the behind the scenes of the app and just app building in general, I've been putting a lot of that up on TikTok too.

SPEAKER_01: 25:32

I'm definitely gonna be checking that out because I am actually working on um on a tech build myself. So I'm excited to share that.

SPEAKER_02: 25:39

Yeah, please, please share like vice aggressive. So please share anything that you're doing with us too, where we're just building that community.

SPEAKER_01: 25:47

Exactly. And that's what it's all about is uh building a community of inclusion. And we are doing that here today. We're doing that here in Utah, in New Jersey, we're doing it around the world, actually. So please join us. And it was so much fun to have you on today. I I really would love to stay in touch. Let's definitely go follow each other on socials so that we can stay in touch. And um, yeah, I I hope that the future of synchrony, I don't even hope. I know that it's going to be wonderful and um so valuable for so many individuals. And thank you to Jesse, who the loved you know, soul behind this all, for bringing this amazing resource to us. So please give him our special thanks.

SPEAKER_02: 26:37

Well dude, thank you so much for having me, Sarah. This was fantastic.

SPEAKER_01: 26:40

Yeah, so much fun. And I am looking forward to staying in touch and seeing where this all goes.

SPEAKER_02: 26:46

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01: 26:47

Yeah, thank you so much. Bye.

SPEAKER_03: 27:08

Oh, yeah, we are.