A colleague texted me a screenshot: "Hey JD — I thought YOU were the Chicagoan leading at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity." A former employee, a few months out the door, had copied my personal tagline word for word onto his own LinkedIn profile — the one I'd built specifically to connect my PhD in organizational communication to decades of PE-backed sales work.

I messaged him. He replied within the hour, un-embarrassed: "Let me cut to the chase — you should hire me to run sales." No acknowledgment of where the line came from.

It's not really a story about plagiarism. It's that copying someone else's brand statement doesn't actually work as a strategy — boards and executive teams aren't screening for functional competence at that level, they're screening for genuine fit, the specific experiences and values only you have. Mine trace back to a White House internship that talked me out of law school. Yours will be different. But it has to actually be yours, or it won't survive the first real conversation.