Smart Rooms

August 20, 2026

The most brilliant person I’ve ever known is my younger sister. We were wildly competitive growing up, probably unavoidable with less than two years between us and only one year separating us in school.

We bring entirely different energy into this world. She’s always been reserved and thoughtful in ways that travel outward. She knows everyone’s birthdays, gives thoughtful gifts, remembers the things that matter to people and is insanely smart. She’s wired much more toward science and math while I always leaned toward the arts.

With only a year there was so much crossover. Same sports teams sometimes, same people socially and even some of the same classes in high school. We also created weird competitions between ourselves because apparently regular sibling competition wasn’t enough.

Let’s memorize every US state and capital and see who can recite them the fastest.

Timed, obviously.

There was also a competition at school called Know Canada where we learned the most obscure Canadian facts we could find and collected them like prized possessions. Looking back I have an appreciation for both our innocence and our complete dorkiness. I’m not sure when knowing random facts about Saskatchewan became valuable currency but apparently there was a market for it in our house.

I think growing up around brilliance made me comfortable being in rooms where I was rarely the smartest person. I don’t remember that ever intimidating me. I liked knowing things and I really liked other people knowing things I didn’t. There was always something to absorb and I’ve carried that with me without really thinking about where it came from.

Adult rooms turned out to work the same way. I still lead with curiosity and have no issue saying I don’t know, usually followed by some version of please explain.

Years ago I acquired a department at work through circumstance, not application. It wasn’t an area I had experience in and at some point something came up involving one of the funders that I didn’t understand.

So I asked the person who did.

I remember leading with, so help me understand…

Then asked the question.

She looked genuinely surprised, which surprised me.

She had worked in the field for decades and told me I was the first manager she’d worked for who had asked a question of someone reporting to them while openly acknowledging they didn’t know the answer.

That’s insane.

She explained that managers obviously didn’t always know, and everyone around them knew they didn’t know, but they maintained the appearance that they did. Then decisions would get made around that false narrative.

That conversation stayed with me because I had inherited a department where I’d already come across decisions that made absolutely no sense logically. I kept trying to follow the path backwards to understand how anyone had arrived there.

Maybe sometimes there wasn’t a path.

Maybe somebody just didn’t know and didn’t ask as they wanted to be the smartest person in that room.

Which is such a bizarre thing when the person who does know is sitting right fucking there.

I’ve thought about that conversation many times since. I still don’t understand the fear around saying I don’t know. Pretending I know something doesn’t magically make the information appear in my brain, so now I still don’t know and I’ve removed the easiest route to finding out.

Seems inefficient.

I say I don’t know all the time. Explain it to me. Or I think I understand this part but I’m missing something here. Or hang on, why does that work that way?

And then I listen.

Sometimes I ask more questions. Probably most of the time I ask more questions.

I love people who know things I don’t. I love obscure knowledge and people who are ridiculously knowledgeable about one specific thing. I love listening to someone talk about something they understand at a level I never will. I’m not sitting there thinking about whether they’re smarter than me. I’m thinking keep going, I want to know this too.

I don’t think I’ve ever had much interest in being the smartest person in the room.

I like smart rooms.

Maybe that’s the difference.

Funny that I can trace some of this all the way back to my little sister and two kids aggressively memorizing geography for absolutely no reason.

She went on to get her PhD, so perhaps she won Know Canada after all.

Thank you, little sister PhD.

And no, I don’t call her Dr.

Let’s save that title for the outside world.