Marie

Marie teaches the humanities to public school students in Canada, and is currently exploring how the theory of positive disintegration can inform her teaching and personal growth during this polarizing time.

Neil Barnes

Based in London, Neil's career has spanned computer programming, corporate banking, international sustainable development, education, and psychotherapy. He is fascinated by the role of autonomy and individual sovereignty in creating healthy communities. Neil is currently focusing on distributed cognition and cryptocurrency as models of network intelligence, and the intra- and inter-personal skills that afford creative problem solving in complex environments.

Katherine Burnham

Katherine is a writer, musician, and history buff who was born and raised in northern New England. After studying art history in college, she became fascinated with the psychology of creativity, and continues to study philosophy, sociology, and the power of human connection.

Adam Carrington

Adam lives and works in the Baltimore area where he participates in a house church, enjoys spending time with his wife and kids, and appreciates learning from others with deep knowledge. His creative outlet manifests in projects ranging from cutting boards to a self-designed and built cabin.

G.K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) is considered one of the great English-language essayists. We republish his works here because he is decidedly our sort of person, embodying the wit and exuberance that unite Third Factor readers, with a quality that we could not afford to publish, and are therefore delighted by the fact that most of his works are in the public domain. We here at Third Factor believe that G.K. Chesterton has something to say that still matters today, perhaps especially to our readers, and hope to help his work reach a new audience.

Foske de Kruijf

Foske is a psychologist and writer specializing in giftedness, parenthood, and education. As a writer, she also likes to focus on the art of living a happy life. She lives in Holland with her partner and their two sons.

Leon Garber

Leon Garber is a licensed mental health counselor/psychotherapist specializing in existential psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and trauma therapy. He is also a philosophical writer who blogs about death, self-esteem, love, freedom, life-meaning, and mental health/mental illness, from both empirical and personal viewpoints.

Boris Glebov

Boris is a physicist with deep affection and admiration for the arts. He currently lives in Washington, DC, where he resides in an apartment gradually filling with books, string lights, and tools.

Dan Greco

Dan Greco is an adjunct math professor, professional tutor, trivia geek, and beer drinker.

Ilana Grostern

Ilana is an enthusiastic wellness advocate and free spirit. With a certification from Concordia University’s ICF accredited program, she works as a Self-Attunement and Somatic Coach. Ilana has personal and professional experience in the health and wellness industry, and she uses her advanced understanding of the importance of body-mind communion to guide her clients and loved ones to integrated states of wholeness.

Rick Heller

Freelance journalist Rick Heller reported for the Lowell Sun and been has been published in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and a number of magazines. Rick writes a newsletter on Substack and tweets as @MindfulRick.

Benita Jeanelle

Benita Jeanelle is a writer, sailor, and permaculture enthusiast from Annapolis, Maryland. She especially enjoys connecting with people and learning how things work.

Hannah Klein

Hannah is a writer and student of the human condition. She is particularly interested in mental health and environmental sustainability, and believes the theory of positive disintegration can help shift the planet (and its residents) to a more viable future.

Krystyna C. Laycraft

Krystyna C. Laycraft holds a MSc in theoretical physics from the University of Warsaw and a PhD in education from the University of Calgary. She is a certified coach practitioner and professional member of the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. Krystyna offers assistance to troubled and gifted adolescents and young adults and helps them to achieve their potential. She delivers seminars and workshops that include topics related to their psychological development.

Andrea Lynn Lewis

Andrea Lynn is a writer from Alberta, Canada who is dedicated to seeking truth through intelligent discourse and fresh perspectives. She is a mother of three boys who show her how to find the wonder in life and to take things a lot less seriously.

Jason Littlefield

Jason Littlefield is an educator with a career spanning more than twenty years, four countries, and three continents. He crafted and curated Empowered Humanity Theory, a framework for personal well-being and societal cooperation to heal and bridge the present-day divide. He is the Executive Director of EmpowerED Pathways and a co-founder of Free Black Thought.

Deirdre V. Lovecky

Deirdre V. Lovekcy, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who has developed a deep understanding of the special social, emotional, and educational needs of the highly gifted in her over 25 years of practice. She is the author of Different Minds: Gifted Children with AD/HD, Asperger Syndrome, and Other Learning Deficits.

Jessie Mannisto

A divergent thinker who can't abide an echo chamber, Jessie has served as a CIA leadership analyst, a Google Policy Fellow, assistant the Consul General of Japan in Detroit, and a Segway-riding Mars Rover expert at the 2005 World Expo’s US Pavilion. She is now an independent writer, editor, and research analyst, helping private clients save little pieces of the world.

Maxwell Olin Massa

Maxwell Olin Massa is a novelist, policy droid, and former Chinese TV star.  His first book, House of Apollo, is available from Whisk(e)y Tit Books.

Elizabeth Mika

Elizabeth Mika is a Chicago-area counselor and therapist and a contributor to the New York Times best-selling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

Morgan Grace Milburn

Morgan Grace Milburn is a freelance writer based in Washington, DC. She  previously worked in finance, where she provided outsourced compliance support to Registered Investment Advisers with a combined AUM of over $7 billion.  She writes and edits a variety of materials, but her focus is on helping small businesses, start-ups, and individuals create meaningful and effective content.

Selena Ng

Selena is an Antipodean happily lost in Europe who has dabbled in string theory and the nuclear power industry. She's currently experimenting with how to morph our world into one where we all earn enough, doing work that matters, living undivided lives.

Karen Nilsen

Karen Nilsen is an author, poet, and mischief maker at large. She writes fantasy novels and slips away to other realms when her seven cats are napping.

Alexis Obernauer

Alexis Obernauer is a life coach and strategic communications professional. She seeks to help high-potential individuals opt out of restrictive social norms and instead pursue paths aligned with their gifts and interests. She supports Third Factor with strategic planning, ideation, and high-level editing, using acumen she developed through her international career in the financial services industry. Alexis holds a master’s degree in sustainable development and unites her experiences under the guiding belief that “to heal the world, you must first heal yourself.”

Roland S. Persson

Roland S. Persson, PhD, is professor of educational psychology at Jönköping University, Sweden, currently in the University's Human Resources Program. Once a Western classical piano performer, his interests developed into music behavior, talent and giftedness, and universal and cross-cultural behavior. He is a consultant to the Swedish and Hungarian governments on issues of talent and giftedness in education, and one of few devoted to giftedness, rather than talent, as a constituent of talent management.

Kelly Pryde

Kelly Pryde, PhD, is a neuropsychologist, coach, and mentor specializing in giftedness and mindfulness-based approaches to living well with intensity. She works with people of all ages to help them support their unique inner experience and thrive. Kelly is the founder of the Gifted Mindfulness Collective―an InterGifted partner project―that offers one-of-a-kind community, courses, and resources for intense minds and curious seekers.

Ralph Rickenbach

Ralph Rickenbach is a coach, pastor in exile, blogger, and iconoclast. His writings are around personality assessments and a new take on the biblical narrative. Ralph coaches and writes in English and German. He is the author of "The Unfiltered Thoughts of a Pastor in Exile: a toolbox to deconstruct your faith without losing it".

Frank Robinson

Frank S. Robinson is a graduate of NYU Law School, and was an administrative law judge (1977-97) at the New York Public Service Commission. He is the author of eight books including Albany’s O’Connell Machine (1973), Children of the Dragon (a novel), and The Case for Rational Optimism (2009). Robinson is a professional coin dealer; married to the poet Therese Broderick; and was the first man to walk on the moon.

Ian Simm

Ian Simm is a scientist and musician from England. Plagued by a sense of being different, he has researched giftedness, high sensitivity, and overexcitability. He is keen to keep learning and being creative, to promote equality and diversity, and to examine ways of making the world a better place.

Laura Stavinoha

Laura Stavinoha is a performer, composer, producer, writer, and coach with the voice at center. As a musician, she has explored styles from baroque to house music to contemporary classical to her own compositions. As a voice coach, Laura combines her knowledge of the voice as an instrument with behavioral therapy and personality theories to put voice coaching in a broader context. Photo: Jeroen van Amelsvoort Fotografie.

Bill Tillier

Bill Tillier studied with Kazimierz Dabrowski from 1976 to 1980 while working on his Master of Science at the University of Alberta. He worked as a forensic psychologist for over 20 years before developing inclusion body myositis. In 1995, he created the website positivedisintegration.com, which he maintains to this day; he also published a book on Dabrowski's theory in 2018, as well as a book on inclusion body myositis in 2022. He lives in Calgary with his wife, Angela, and his caregivers, Rene and Nancy.

Christina Waggaman

Christina Waggaman's passion is integrative medicine: finding ways to integrate traditional and natural therapies with modern treatments. She became a student of Eastern traditional medicine after ten years in public health and biomedical research, and holds master's degrees in public health and in biostatistics. Christina believes in an ecological approach to diagnosing and treating disease and that patients should be fully informed of the pros and cons of natural approaches compared with pharmacological approaches to treatment. She is also a Registered Yoga Teacher.

David Wakeham

David is an artist, writer and generally curious fellow. He drops things into black holes for a living.

Stephanie Winn

Stephanie Winn is an Oregon-based Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, writer, and the host of the newly launched podcast, You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. In her free time she enjoys music, dance, family, and the great outdoors.