Douglas Merrill, Entrepreneur & Author
Douglas Merrill has held top positions in some of the world’s most prestigious companies. A former chief information officer and vice president of engineering at Google Inc., Merrill oversaw all facets of the company’s internal engineering and technology, managed corporate strategy and business development in the Middle East and Africa, and presided over Google’s initial public offering in 2004.
Steve Mariotti, Founder & Former President of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship
Mariotti, who dedicates over eighty hours a week to NFTE, learned the importance of persistence and hard work at an early age, when he was diagnosed with dyslexia. He struggled with reading, mispronounced similar sounds, and was unable to alphabetize.
Daymond John, Entrepreneur
These days, Daymond John might be best known as one of the five savvy business executives (known as the “sharks”) who quickly mull over whether to invest their own money in the business ideas that budding entrepreneurs anxiously illustrate on the ABC hit television show Shark Tank.
Ari Emanuel, Co-Chief Executive of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment
Emanuel learned at an early age to be aggressive and stand up for himself. Raised in a family where education was a high priority, he had to read the newspaper every day to keep up with current events and defend his political opinions each night at the family dinner table. This posed no problem for his brother Rahm, former Obama chief of staff and now Chicago mayor, and Ezekiel, a breast oncologist and head of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. But for Emanuel, diagnosed in the third grade with dyslexia and ADHD, it was a monumental challenge. “I was on the ceiling,” he says. “The Ritalin helped, but reading was an enormous task.”
Tom Cavanaugh, Entrepreneur
Tom Cavanaugh was 71 before he saw his true reflection—not in a mirror—but in a movie. There he was, at 17, in a scene showing a high school student completely lost looking for his hallway locker, and then spinning the combination lock repeatedly, without result.
Nancy Brinker, Founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure
Nancy Brinker is perhaps best known as the founder of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, now known as Susan G. Komen for the Cure. But that is only one of her many accomplishments. Brinker has also served as U.S. ambassador to Hungary and as White House Chief of Protocol and is currently the Goodwill Ambassador for Cancer Control for the United Nations World Health Organization.
Diane Swonk, Founder of Diane Swonk Economics
Diane Swonk is an internationally recognized economist and a financial commentator on national and international television. She is also a resource for global business leaders and policy makers and a sought-after speaker for business and youth groups, “I can’t read a speech,” says Swonk, who is dyslexic. In speaking, she has found, it helps a great deal to plan her talk very carefully; “I write out the thoughts I want to cover and make an outline, but I never look at it while I’m speaking.
Stuart Yudofsky, M.D. Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine
Dr. Stuart Yudofsky has dedicated his career to helping people with mental illness. What few know is the dedication it took for Yudofsky, who is dyslexic, just to get through school.
Blake Charlton, M.D., Author & Cardiologist Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco
Blake Charlton would appear to have it all. A summa cum laude graduate of Yale University, a graduate of Stanford Medical School, and a published author, whose debut novel, Spellwright, was released to glowing reviews from the science fiction community and the publishing industry at large. The novel was the first of a nearly finished trilogy published by Tor Books. Set in a world where words can be physically peeled off a page and used to cast spells, Spellwright relates the misadventures of a wizard named Nicodemus Weal, who has a gift for producing magical language, but a disability that makes any text he touches misspell, with devastating consequences.
Beryl Benacerraf, M.D., Radiologist & Expert in Ultrasound During Pregnancy
A pioneer in radiology, particularly fetal ultrasonography, Dr. Benacerraf was among the first physicians to recognize the correlation between Down syndrome and physical signs, including an extra fold of skin on the fetus’s neck, as observed during an ultrasound. She is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine.
Danny Boome, Chef & Founder of The Better Fed Project
Danny Boome, 36, is a professional chef, a host, and guest chef on numerous television programs focusing on food and cooking, and is the founder of The Better Fed Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes healthy eating and fitness for adults and children. He also teaches classes in New York City for experienced cooks as well as novices and plans to open permanent cooking schools in New York, Montreal, and Switzerland.
Henry Winkler, Director & Actor
Henry Winkler has appeared on both the big screen and the TV screen, on stage, and behind the camera. Perhaps to many of us living in the 1970’s and ‘80s, he’ll forever be remembered first as the leather-jacket wearing, motorcycle-riding Arthur Fonzarelli, AKA, the “Fonz.”