Gifted Misfits - Punished for Brilliance & Career Sidelining

Calling all misfits, weirdos, and rebels. Have you ever been the smartest person in the room and been punished for it? Have you watched mediocre people get promoted while your ideas were ignored, stolen, or buried? Have you been called "too intense," "too much," "difficult to work with" — by people who couldn't keep up with you? Have you quit, been fired, or been quietly sidelined because you couldn't stop seeing what was broken and couldn't stop trying to fix it? I'm writing a book about people like you: gifted misfits who have spent their careers butting heads with organizations that weren't built for them. I'm looking for real stories. Gritty ones. The kind you've never told anyone because you were afraid of what it would say about you. I'm a researcher and former Naval officer with a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction. I've spent years interviewing the kinds of people that organizations call "problems" and discovering they're almost always the most valuable people in the room. If you've ever felt like a square peg in a round hole and wondered if something was fundamentally wrong with you—I want to talk to you! DM me. Interviews are 45-60 minutes via Google Meet. Completely confidential. *Here's the backstory, if you're interested:* Years ago, the US Navy hired me to figure out what it means for an organization to be 'intellectually ready' for rapid technological change. I began creating a psychological model. To do this, I interviewed dozens of people at NASA, SpaceX, Tesla, NVIDIA, GE, and beyond. I expected to hear about what makes great organizations great. Instead, I kept hearing the same story, over and over, across every industry, every sector, every kind of organization: Someone brilliant. Someone driven. Someone who could see exactly what needed to change, but was punished or discouraged or marginalized or sidelined for being themselves. The model of intellectual readiness became something else entirely. It became a book about the people organizations can't figure out what to do with, and yet can't afford to lose. THIS is what I'm doing with retirement. :)