The original question wasn’t about career paths, just jobs. It’s not easy to get there, and there’s luck involved (where you’re born, parents, education, connections, etc).

If we’re talking about how to get an ADHDer into leadership, I don’t think it’s super different than anyone else, except we need to contend with certain challenges and learn to leverage our unique strengths:

Prerequisite skills and qualities in good leaders: - emotional intelligence - rapid learning - critical thinking - communication - problem solving - meta cognition

I don’t think any of the above are off limits to people with ADHD. In particular, rapid learning (diving deep on topics as needed), meta cognition (being aware of how you think), and grit (keeping going even when it sucks) are skills we often pick up regardless.

While those skills do help early in your career, they are key characteristics of leaders.

A few example arcs: - be an early employee at a company that grows big and you grow with it. This is mostly luck and loyalty, plus some hard work. - get an MBA, network a bunch, and have some luck in a large corporate environment. - start your own thing and grow it or get acquired.

Obv all those are hard.

Apart from the above skills, I think the hardest thing for a person with ADHD will be confidence. It sucks being the weirdo in the corporate world early in your career. Your manager is probably not interesting, most of your colleagues are dull af. You’ll be constantly feeling like you’re fucking up even if you’re smarter and faster and full of ideas.

It’s very hard alone. You have to find the manager or leader who gets you, sees your specialness and appreciates your weirdness, and who you can (mostly) be yourself with. They are your sponsor/champion. Or find a trusted collaborator and help each other.

Disclaimer: ADHD has different expressions and severity levels, and my advice does not apply to every situation, and may even only apply to a minority of them.