In ADD in the Corner Office: Five Top Executives Discovered that an LD can be a Capitalist Tool SchwabLearning.org provides a nice article on five prominent CEOs with ADHD, dyslexia, or both. Though David Neeleman (one of the ADHD execs) has recently been removed from his CEO post at JetBlue, his accomplishments in founding and running the company for as long as he did are fully impressive and inspirational. The article opens:

“As students, they seemed to be heading nowhere — fast. A teacher hurled an eraser at one of them, and asked, “Time passes, will you?” Another graduated at the bottom of his high school class and was strongly advised by his principal to go into carpet laying. A third was labeled lazy by her teachers because she had trouble memorizing basic math facts. A fourth was a whiz with numbers but found reading a book a difficult task. The last was always falling behind in his schoolwork and concluded that he was stupid. “How am I going to be successful in anything if I can’t read and write?” he wondered.

“You might say that these nowhere kids turned their lives around. They are, in order, Alan Meckler, chairman and CEO of Jupitermedia; Paul Orfalea, founder of the copying empire, Kinko’s; Diane Swonk, a world-renowned economist; Charles Schwab, a pioneer in the discount brokerage business; and David Neeleman, founder and CEO of JetBlue Airways.

“Besides having difficulty in school, these executives share another thing in common: They all suffer from AD/HD or learning disabilities. Neeleman has AD/HD; Swonk, Meckler, and Schwab have dyslexia, and Orfalea has both. Each managed to turn his or her liabilities into assets on their respective career paths. If you have difficulty with organization, reading, or remembering math facts, these entrepreneurs prove that such limitations don’t preclude a bright future.”

Click here for full article at SchwabLearning.org.