I am the learning design lead at Play-i (play-i.com). We build robots to teach kids ages 5+ how to program. I am a cognitive and developmental psychologist. I did my PhD in how early language input from parents affect kids' readiness to learn number and math concepts before a postdoc on applying cognitive science to middle school science education and another postdoc on how 2D and 3D block building affects geometric and spatial cognition and later math performance. I joined my first educational gaming startup in 2011. It imploded within 6 months, but that's another story ;)
This is what I recently recommended to new employees at my company. The three authors are highly respected researchers in the field. Here is a TED talk by Alison Gopnik (the main author) for a sense of her work on babies' and young children's natural readiness and ability to learn: http://www.ted.com/talks/alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think
Missed the part about being unusual. Unusual being rare or uncommon, yes, but one of the first questions people always ask is if they have a learning specialist on board. This means different things to different people, but for me, I feel really lucky for a lot of reasons to land where and how I did.
