Dr. Emile Gouws is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Johannesburg (UNISA) and an internationally renowned disability activist that attends Commonwealth and United Nations higher political meetings. Dr Gouws has recently been elected as the president of the Board of ICDL and is only the 3rd person to hold this position. In his free time, Dr Gouws was recently the Vice-chairman of the National Executive committee of Autism South Africa and currently represents underrepresented groups on the Commonwealth Disabled Peoples Forum, In 2023, Dr Gouws have been nominated for the Commonwealth Youth awards and is the first and only elected as a member of Africa from the Autistic research Committee of INSAR (International Society for Autistic research). Dr Gouws has contributed towards a variety of international articles and research papers on neurodiversity including a published article in Forbes magazine Japan. He is married to a beautiful Alexic autistic lady named Sammi who is also a autism self-advocate. Together they do advocacy on relationships and being married as an autistic couple.