MEET LINDSAY
Turns out, my tired was different.
For 19 years, I powered through undiagnosed narcolepsy while building a career in some of the highest-pressure rooms in the country. I thought I wasn’t tough enough. I had no idea I was living with a neurological condition.
Today, I’m a speaker, writer, and sleep expert dedicated to changing the way people understand their sleep and helping them recognize when their tired may be different.
I built a career by pushing through.
I’d been on the fast track since I was 16, taking summer classes at Yale, arriving first, and leaving last. I wore my late nights like a badge and measured my worth by how much I could take on. We all did.
For nearly two decades, I powered through: Congress, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, the Television Academy, New York City Hall and the advance teams for President and Michelle Obama. The expectations were relentless, but so was I. I loved my jobs and what I was accomplishing.
Working at that level also made it easy to explain away how exhausted I was. Everyone around me was tired.
But I was sneaking naps in bathrooms, my car, any (semi) private place I could close my eyes. I didn’t see my colleagues doing that part.
I kept pace with some of the most driven people while quietly wondering why everything seemed so much harder for me. I thought maybe I wasn’t tough enough or didn’t want it badly enough. Everyone else seemed to work the same hours and come back fine.
At 35, I was finally diagnosed with narcolepsy.
After 19 years of symptoms and misdiagnoses, I had an explanation.
At first, I was relieved. The things I had spent years blaming myself for weren’t evidence that I was lazy, weak, or incapable. They were symptoms of a neurological condition.
Then came the harder realization: narcolepsy wasn’t going away and I was going to need to understand it better. So I did what I’ve always done. I got to work.
I received my certificate in Sleep: Neurobiology, Medicine, and Society from the University of Michigan, surrounded myself with top researchers and clinicians, and learned everything I could. The average doctor gets less than 3 hours of sleep education in medical school. I've spent years learning what they didn't.
And the more I learned, the more I realized how many people were still blaming themselves while waiting for answers.
My diagnosis became a mission I couldn’t ignore.
One in five people lives with a sleep disorder, yet most remain undiagnosed. People can spend years – or decades – believing their exhaustion is simply the price of having a demanding job, raising a family, getting older, or living a busy life.
I know what can happen during those years because I lived them.
Today, I use science, storytelling, and lived experience to make sleep easier to understand and persistent tiredness harder to dismiss. I’ve organized the first White House Sleep Equity Convening, spoken on Capitol Hill, advised television writers on accurate portrayals of narcolepsy, and helped people and organizations have better conversations about sleep.
Whether I’m speaking to a company, working with leaders, writing an article, or talking to someone who has been tired for a decade and doesn’t know why, the question at the center of my work is the same:
Is Your Tired Different?
Lindsay moderates Hollywood Health and Society’s panel on sleep disorders on TV.
How I do the work
Talks and workshops
Talks and workshops that make sleep relevant for real work and real life, helping teams feel better, think more clearly, and perform at their best.
Advocacy and strategy
I work with healthcare organizations, life sciences companies, and patient communities to help close the sleep disorder diagnosis gap.
Writing and media
I write about sleep, sleep disorders, and health, blending accessible science with humor and lived experience.
When I’m not talking about sleep…
I live in Marina del Rey, CA with my husband and our standard poodle, Sandy Sanders. You can usually find me sailing, scuba diving, or watching everything new on TV (seriously…I’m obsessed).
This work is deeply personal. But I believe serious subjects still have room for warmth, humor, and being fully human.
