Beyond Gifted: Helping Gifted and 2E Adults Design Meaningful Careers - Meet Emmaly Perks

In this episode, Nadja sits down with Emmaly Perks, founder of Beyond Gifted Services, for a conversation about what it actually takes to design a meaningful career as a gifted or twice-exceptional adult. Emmaly shares how she moved through gifted programming without ever being formally tested, how a psychology degree followed by a master's in gifted education finally gave her language for a lifetime of feeling "not the rule follower," and how a childhood spent choosing Gloria Steinem over George Washington for a fifth-grade history project was an early, comic signal of a mind that could never leave things at their simplest version. She talks candidly about being the verbal, argumentative, justice-sensitive girl who was seen as disrespectful rather than understood, and about the particular way gifted women learn to weaponize or mask their intellect depending on what the room will tolerate. The conversation turns toward Emmaly's own career, which she describes as a portfolio career built from neuroscience research, K-12 gifted education, academic administration, and now a full-time practice that includes a weekly Substack newsletter, family and IEP advocacy, teacher training, and SENG-facilitated community groups for gifted adults that she co-runs with Erin Krellwitz. Nadja and Emmaly spend real time on the particular career trap of identity foreclosure, the pattern where a child prodigy or "the math kid" gets locked into an identity before they've had the chance to choose it, and how that shows up decades later in doctors, engineers, and other high achievers who feel stuck in a path they never fully consented to. Emmaly's antidote, drawn from her book The Curious Career Workbook, is iteration: small, low stakes tries before another degree or another decade gets spent on work that no longer fits. A significant part of the episode addresses who gets to call themselves gifted, and why that question matters for career design specifically. Emmaly is direct that no one needs a 130 IQ score or a formal assessment to take these ideas seriously; self-identification is enough, and she notes that a test score reflects opportunity, schooling, and privilege as much as it reflects innate ability, which is part of why she works from what she calls a biopsychosocial model of giftedness rather than a single number. She and Nadja also spend time on the distinction between giftedness and high achievement, pushing back on the idea that eminence is required to be considered gifted, and naming the many gifted people who build quiet, modest careers without that changing what they are. Nadja brings her own scientist's skepticism into the conversation, describing how the gifted space initially felt "a little woo-hoo" to her epidemiologist brain, and how she worked through the impostor feeling that she needed a psychology credential before she could host these conversations at all. Emmaly reframes this directly, pointing out that inviting experts onto the podcast is itself a form of borrowed credibility and effective knowledge translation, echoing her own frustration with paywalled academic journals that gifted educators and families never actually get to read. The episode closes on two concrete resources Emmaly has built out of exactly this gap: a free, worldwide gifted provider directory at Beyond Gifted Services for anyone looking for a therapist, coach, or doctor who actually understands giftedness, and her ongoing work with the Mensa Foundation's steering committee, focused on connecting researchers, providers, and the lived experience community that so rarely get to speak to one another directly. Emmaly leaves listeners with a simple reassurance: designing a meaningful career as a gifted adult is possible at any age, and being rare doesn't mean being an outsider. Send us Fan Mail Would you like to work with me 1:1 as your gifted and 2e coach? Please send me an email at hello@giftedunleashed.com or find more information about my coaching offer on my website giftedunleashed.com/coaching Support the show https://www.giftedunleashed.com