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According to “Business Insider,” Exceptional Minds in Sherman Oaks, Calif., is a “vocational school and animation studio that gives people with autism spectrum disorder a chance to learn animation and visual effects and put them to use in big-budget Hollywood films.” It started with a group of parents trying to figure out what would happen to their kids after high school, according to one of those parents, Yudi Bennett, the school’s operations director.

In 2009, that group of 10 parents raised $250,000, bought a few computers, and hired four teachers. Two years later Exceptional Minds opened its doors to its first class of nine students. In 2015, they opened an in-house studio, and today, the school has to turn away two-thirds of applicants due to limited funding.

Its 32 full-time students and 50 part-time students hail from both local and out-of-state areas, even as far as Alaska. Graduates of the three-year training program move on to work for one year as junior artists in the Exceptional Minds professional studio before moving on to become senior artists, notes the “Business Insider” article. They are paid employees, earning job experience and a paycheck, and they work on a range of post-production tasks, including green screen work, 2D animation, visual-effects cleanup work, titles and end credits, removing movie markers, and much more.

Apart from post-production work, Exceptional Minds places emphasis on developing interpersonal skills. Ernie Merlan, program director at Exceptional Minds, told “Parade Magazine” that students learn how to introduce themselves, conduct themselves in interviews, follow assignment instructions, arrive on time, and dress professionally.

As reported by “DisabilityScoop,” Merlan hired behaviorists and psychologists to work at the school and “created a work environment based on five tenets — appearance, attitude, organization, problem-solving, and conflict resolution.”

Exceptional Minds studio visual FX executive producer Susan Zwerman is responsible for convincing “industry bigwigs to hire her qualified-yet-quirky artists,” and hopes that Exceptional Minds will serve as an example to other employers, according to “Parade.” She tells the magazine that, in her experience, “people with autism are smart, detail oriented, and dedicated. They show up. They don’t quit. That’s what we need. From the bottom of my heart, it’s a no-brainer.”