Laura Tidwell is a systems thinker who spent years building companies before turning her focus to the deeper structures behind human behavior, belief, and identity. Her work as a cognitive structuralist and researcher explores how perception is shaped—not by freedom or instinct—but by layered, often invisible systems of cause and effect.

Before writing and research became her focus, Laura founded multiple businesses, led a national multimedia agency, and was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young for her strategic innovation in technology and communication in the Southeast. Entrepreneur Magazine later recognized her in their Top 10 Entrepreneurs feature edition.

She brings that same strategic clarity to her intellectual work. Her writing blends neuroscience, psychology, and systems theory to expose the architecture beneath human thought. Her latest book, The Freedom in Knowing You’re Not Free, examines how determinism—not choice—governs experience, and how understanding this can radically change how we live.

Laura is also an accomplished fine-art photographer, known for landscape work that captures structural patterns in nature—often shot on extreme hiking expeditions. Her creative and intellectual work share the same aim: to reveal what most people overlook.

She writes, speaks, and consults on cognition, systems, and meaning.

Her central belief: When you understand the structure, everything changes.