I was diagnosed autistic at 55, which is when the pattern finally had a name.
By then I had spent 37 years in leadership positions across the Navy, two Fortune 100 companies and two companies I founded. I couldn’t read implicit systems, so I built explicit ones: written criteria, agendas sent ahead, decisions recorded with the reasoning. They worked better for almost everyone, and retention stayed near 95% across the teams I led.
I’ve been on both sides of it. I’ve run the company, and I’ve been the employee deciding whether speaking up was worth what it could cost. I’ve stopped speaking up, and I’ve left.
This site is where I write about that: perception, masking, burnout, and what it’s like to work inside systems built for someone else. There’s a short post most mornings. The essays run longer.
My work with organizations lives at ShieldPerception.com. It measures which people leave, what a company stops hearing before they go, and which systems cause both.
Books
The Perception Revolution: How to Turn Neurodivergent Insights into Competitive Advantage (Fast Company Press, 2026). Written for the person on the receiving end of these systems. Endorsed by Temple Grandin. Bookshop.org · Amazon · Barnes & Noble
The Projection Fallacy: Why Organizations Exclude the People They Need Most (Fast Company Press, April 2027). Written for the person who designs the systems. What the Projection Fallacy is
Background
- Navy Surface Warfare Officer (Gulf War)
- Fortune 100 director, Dell and Tech Data
- Founded two companies, both top 1% revenue in category, one exit
- CEO, Oransi: electric motor and air purifier manufacturing
- YPO alumnus
Research and teaching
- Co-author of an IRB-approved study of neurodivergent employees’ experience of leadership communication, with collaborators at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School and Bowling Green State University. Accepted for presentation at HICSS, January 2027.
- Guest Lecturer, University of Rochester, Simon Business School
- NSF steering committee member for a Virginia Tech project designing industrial robots that open manufacturing work to autistic workers