About Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., PCC
I’m Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., PCC, an internationally recognized ADHD coach, educator, author, and speaker, and that combination of roles is the through-line of my work.
For more than two decades, I’ve helped people of all ages build real, meaningful friendships where they actually feel embraced.
How This Work Began
My work grew out of a simple but profound question I heard again and again about friendship, starting in the earliest days of my practice: Why is this so hard? After graduating from the ADD Coach Academy in 2005, I opened my private practice and, within six months, began working at the original Hallowell Center in Sudbury, Massachusetts. There, alongside clinicians serving children, teens, and adults with ADHD, I saw a pattern that others were missing. People could manage time, school, or work well enough, but they were lonely.
They didn’t have friends, and traditional advice wasn’t helping.
A Different Way Of Teaching Social Skills
From the beginning, I understood that teaching social skills couldn’t mean teaching people how to “act typical.” As a person with ADHD myself, I knew that blurting out, interrupting, oversharing, or missing subtle cues weren’t things done on purpose. They were traits that needed understanding, context, and practical strategies that actually fit how neurodivergent brains work.
Long before words like neuro-affirming entered the mainstream, I was already building an approach grounded in honesty, compassion, and respect for individual choice.
When you are neurodivergent, connection can feel confusing, inconsistent, and out of reach. But the problem is not who you are. It is that no one showed you how to navigate a world that was not designed for your brain. And that is something we can work on together.
My Mission
My mission has always been clear: to help people learn how friendships work, without asking them to erase who they are. That mission became the foundation of my award-winning book, Why Will No One Play with Me?. As a mom, this work has always been personal for me. I understand the questions parents ask and the worry that comes with wanting your child to feel connected and included, and that perspective shapes everything I teach.
The book began as my master’s thesis while earning my M.Ed. in Early Childhood Development with a focus on Social Emotional Learning at Lesley University. I’m grateful it has gone on to win multiple national awards and continues to help thousands of parents, educators, and clinicians coach social skills as people move through different stages of life.
Expanding The Work To Adults
Over time, my work naturally expanded beyond children and families to include teens, college students, and adults. I’ve never believed people outgrow the need for connection, or that belonging should get harder with age. Over and over, adults told me some version of, “I don’t even know how to make friends myself.”
That realization led to my forthcoming book, Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults (Balance / Hachette, April 2026). Rather than prescribing a right way to do friendship, I focus on what actually helps people move forward. I’m sharing tools I actually use, small experiments people can try, and ways of showing up that feel realistic, even if connections in the past have been hard, disappointing, or exhausting.
How I Work Today
Today, I see a small number of adult and young adult clients, focusing on more complex or nuanced situations that keep me sharp. I’m especially committed to the people who’ve been told, directly or indirectly, that connection just may not be for them.
My broader impact comes through training other coaches, developing social skills curricula for schools, universities, and community programs, and speaking to audiences around the world. I am also the founder and director of ADD Coach Academy’s Fundamentals of ADHD Coaching for Families, the only family-focused coach training program accredited by the International Coach Federation.
Speaking, Training & Media
I am a TEDx speaker and a frequent keynote presenter at national and international conferences, including the International Conference on ADHD. My work has been featured in U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, NPR, ADDitude, Attention Magazine, and WebMD. I am also the host of The ADHD Social Playbook podcast.