I didn't set out to become an expert in play.

I was trying to survive.

I spent most of my life not knowing I had ADHD. Diagnosed at 39, in the same year my marriage ended, a major contract collapsed overnight, and I was raising a young child alone on the other side of the world from my family.

My GP suggested antidepressants. I asked for an ADHD assessment instead.

What followed wasn't a neat transformation story. It was the slow, confronting realisation that much of what I had built: the hustle, striving, overachievement and constant performance had become an unconscious workaround for a brain that never fit the systems I was trying to succeed inside.

Then I read a line from Dr. Ned Hallowell that cracked something open:

"If you have ADHD, you need work that feels like play."

I cried because I realised I had already built it.

For over a decade, I'd been designing experiences around play, curiosity, experimentation, and human connection without fully understanding why my nervous system needed them so deeply.

That insight became the foundation of my work.

Today, I'm helping reshape the global conversation around adult play, adaptability, burnout, and what it means to stay human in a world increasingly shaped by machines. My work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, behavioural science, improvisation and lived experience.

I'm the Director of Organisational Play at the National Institute for Play, founded by play researcher Dr. Stuart Brown. I've collaborated on research into playful work design with RMIT University and a global toy company.

My book Full Stack Human, co-authored with Tāne Hunter of Future Crunch, is published by Wiley in 2026.

I've been told I'm bold, funny, emotionally honest and deeply insightful. I don't speak about these ideas from a distance.

I lived them.