Working While Bipolar

In March 2023, Monty Ghitter and Jeff Brown opened the first room in a Clubhouse panel series on Bipolar in the Workplace. The format was deliberate: no experts. Just bipolar people, on stage, telling the truth about their jobs.

The premise: before you can ask what should employers do, you have to know what bipolar people actually carry into work — the strengths, the weaknesses, the strategies, the costs. Most workplace mental-health conversations start at HR. This one started at the worker.

Speakers came up from the audience one at a time. Some had disclosed at work. Some hadn’t. Some had been fired. Some were running their own companies because no one else would have them. Some were thriving inside structures that had no idea what they were getting.

The session was framed as the first in a series. Future panels would invite experts — employment lawyers, accommodation specialists, HR leaders, neurodiversity researchers — but only after this opening had set the agenda from below. The community would tell the experts what mattered, not the other way around.

Listen above. The recording is unedited.