What percent of CEOs are dyslexic?

Reshoring Initiative Needs Creative Thinkers to Transform Advanced Manufacturing and the Future of Work

The COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and related global recession of 2020 have created a highly uncertain outlook for the labor market. This phenomenon has accelerated both the arrival of the future of work and the reshoring of well-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

A world of new technology is fundamentally changing how people work. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, demonstrates how the required skills, abilities and tasks, called competencies, are shifting because of automation and labor force transformation initiatives. Their findings indicate:

• Processing, manual, and transaction-type competencies such as coordination and time management, management of costs and finances, material resources and reading, writing, math and active listening are declining.
• Creative, problem-solving and social competencies such as analytical thinking and innovation, active learning and learning strategies and creativity and initiative are trending up.

To cope with this fast-changing world, businesses need more creative and out of the box thinkers to manage digital age disruptions. The country will require more people like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell. All were innovative thinkers and businessmen who were or are dyslexics.

Human Resource (HR) departments must learn how to adapt the hiring and on-boarding process to take full advantage of creative thinkers and dyslexic candidates, by not rejecting them because they do not fit the standard new applicant model. By using those outdated standards, they have been rejecting bright minds who are part of the next generation of inventors, designers and makers.

See how a young person with Dyslexia attempts college acceptance by requesting that they give him an opportunity to prove himself.

“I am dyslexic. I used to think it was a liability; that someone had to “take a chance on me” to give me a job or “let” me into school. I encourage you to think about how you measure ability. If you are using a process that relies solely on reading and writing effectively you are eliminating people who would be your best problem solvers. If you want new, different, better ideas you need someone who thinks differently. And for that you need someone with a brain that is wired differently”.

Although each person with dyslexia will have unique strengths and weaknesses, the learning difficulties are best known for causing challenges with reading, writing and spelling. Once thought of as being an impediment to a successful career in business, countless high-profile CEOs and entrepreneurs are helping dispel the misconception that dyslexia is a negative condition.

Dyslexia Handicap or Advantage?

Dyslexia is far more common among entrepreneurs than the general public. A study by Julie Logan of the Cass Business School in London showed that 35 percent of U.S. entrepreneurs—more than twice the national average—identified themselves as dyslexic. In a survey reported by CEO Magazine, 69,000 self-made millionaires and 40% of entrepreneurs were found to show signs of dyslexia.

Dyslexia affects about 15 percent of Americans. But this apparent weakness can also be a covert strength, especially in business. Shark Tank stars Daymond John, Barbara Corcoran and Kevin O’Leary all have dyslexia, and say it has helped them be better entrepreneurs.

So, what is dyslexia? Dyslexia is a genetic difference in an individual’s ability to learn and process information. Focusing on the changing demand for competencies expected to emerge in the future, shows how a typical dyslexic capability could support the required shift in effort in the workplace. New collar jobs will be created that match closely to the strengths of dyslexic thinking and could provide an opportunity for organizations to bridge the skills gap of the future.

However, the traditional approach to dyslexia in the workplace is typically directed at the remediation of dyslexic challenges. An alternative approach based on skills could allow for organizations to focus on both the remediation of learning difficulties and harnessing of strengths, better aligning a deeper understanding of dyslexic skills with organizational values.

33 Dyslexia Statistics & Facts: How Many People Have Dyslexia?

70-80% of people with poor reading skills, are likely dyslexic. Here are the most up-to-date statistics and facts about Dyslexia.

Steven Zauderer
December 14, 2022
min read

Top 20 Dyslexia Statistics And Facts

1. It is estimated that 1 out of 10 people have dyslexia.
2. The world has roughly 7.8 billion people living it in, where 780 million of them are dyslexic.
3. More than 40 million US adults have dyslexia, with only 2 million of them receiving a diagnosis.
4. Between 70% and 80% of people harboring limited reading proficiency suffer from dyslexia.
5. 1 out of every 5 students, representing 15% to 20% of the total, have a learning disability centered on language, with dyslexia being the most common disability.
6. About 60% of people with dyslexia are men, with women representing a similar percentage.
7. People from different economic and ethnic backgrounds suffer from dyslexia at about the same rate.
8. Children that grow up in poverty are 40% more likely to have reading and language learning difficulties.
9. Between 70% to 80% of kids attending schools with a large minority population have poor reading abilities.
10. Based on recent studies, about 38% of 4th-grade students read at a level that’s below average, or below 40% of their peers.
11. Countrywide, about 20% of all elementary school children have problems learning how to read.
12. 5% of all adults in the US are functionally illiterate.
13. About 25% of adults read at an elementary school level.
14. The high school dropout rate for kids with reading problems is 62%.
15. 89% of students with an individualized education have problems reading, with 85% of them having dyslexia.
16. Kids with ADHD account for 30% of those that are also dyslexic.
17. One of the most famous scientists, Albert Einstein, was dyslexic. Furthermore, there is no correlation between dyslexia and IQ.
18. Although false, 80% of people assume that dyslexia is linked to mental retardation.
19. Dyslexia is not just about getting numbers or letters mixed up or out of order.
20. More than 50% of NASA employees are dyslexic.

What Percentage Of The Population Has Dyslexia?

It is estimated that 1 out of 10 people have dyslexia. That means that with a 7.8 billion global population, there are around 780 million people with dyslexia globally.

Below is an illustration which shows what each side of our brains think about. Our brains are very complex and can remember many things — more than you think.

• People with dyslexia live and work all around the world, the condition being detected without regard to language or culture. It impacts between 9% and 12% of the world’s population, with between 2% and 4% of people having severe symptoms.
• About 20% of kids going to school in the United States have dyslexia.
• When the correct teaching methods are appropriate, children with dyslexia can successfully learn over 90% of the time.
• NASA employs a workforce where over 50% of the people are dyslexic.
• Dyslexia is proven to run in people’s families, whereby parents with the disorder are likely to have it passed down to their children.
• Over 80% of dyslexics have problems with organization, planning, prioritizing, being punctual, and staying focused on background noise being heard.
• People with dyslexia have a 60% greater chance of being able to connect ideas well and use alternative methods to solve problems.
• Dyslexic people represent 20% or more of workers employed in professions like computer science, art, drama, economics, mechanics, math, and sports.

How Many People Have Dyslexia Worldwide?

The world has roughly 7.8 billion people living it in, where 780 million of them are dyslexic. This total includes people both diagnosed, undiagnosed, and misdiagnosed.

1. It is estimated that 1 out of 10 people have dyslexia.
2. The world has roughly 7.8 billion people living it in, where 780 million of them are dyslexic.
3. More than 40 million US adults have dyslexia, with only 2 million of them receiving a diagnosis.

How Many People Have Dyslexia In The U.S?

More than 40 million US adults have dyslexia, with only 2 million of them receiving a diagnosis. Between 5% and 15% of Americans, which represents 14.5 to 43.5 million kids and adults, are dyslexic.

What Is Dyslexia?

• Dyslexia is classified as an unpredicted level of problems in reading comprehension, typically among people that should be able to read better than they do. It’s often due to problems with the phonological processing of words. The difficulty is shown in how words are understood, their appreciation, and how the variations of sounds made are interpreted. it can impact one’s ability to read, speak, spell, or even learn another language.
• The most prevalent learning disability is dyslexia, individuals with the condition have problems processing language the same way other people do.
• One out of every five people has dyslexia.
• Between 70% and 85% of kids that are enrolled in special education for a learning disability have dyslexia.
• Not mirroring any defects in language on its own, dyslexia is more of a localized imperfection with parts of the brain that moderate the human ability in phonetics. This is where sounds emitted when speaking a language are combined to create words or when they’re broken down into individual sounds.
• Creativity and intelligence are very high in people with dyslexia.
• Dyslexic people rely more on the right side of the brain for language processing.
• Kids are twice as likely or at a 50% greater risk of being dyslexic if at least one parent has the condition. If both parents are dyslexic, their child has a near 100% chance of having it as well.
• There are different severities of dyslexia, with about 40% of individuals also having an ADHD diagnosis. People with dyslexia also burn much more energy when attempting to complete specific objectives. Such tasks would seem mundane to others.
• As dyslexia isn’t a disease, there isn’t a cure. As a learning disorder, it’s characterized by problems using and processing different codes of linguistics, symbolism, and letters that represent sound variations or numbers.

Is Dyslexia More Common Among Boys?

Dyslexia affects both boys and girls at about the same rates. However, boys are more often sent for evaluation for dyslexia than girls are, though this could be related in part to puberty, particularly for preteens.

What Percentage Of Dyslexic People Are Successful?

• In one UK study, researchers discovered that around 40% of millionaires classified as self-made are dyslexic.
• At least 25% of most CEOs are dyslexic, even though they may not be aware of it.
• About 70% of people with dyslexia graduate and receive their high school diploma.

Sources

• American Dyslexia Association
• The International Dyslexia Association
• The Dyslexia Center
• The Dyslexia Foundation
• The Child Mind Institute
• https://www.dyslexiacenterofutah.org/Statistics
• https://austinlearningsolutions.com/blog/38-dyslexia-facts-and-statistics
• https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-dyslexia
• https://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexia/dyslexia-faq/

Steven Zauderer

CEO & Founder

CEO of CrossRiverTherapy — a national ABA therapy company based in the USA.

Dyslexic entrepreneurs – why they have a competitive edge

“T he most important thing dyslexic people want to prove is that there’s something else they can bring to the table,” says James Banister, the CEO of FXecosystem, a company that provides services to global money exchange markets.

Banister, 49, was diagnosed with dyslexia aged seven. He received some support at school but “couldn’t wait for it to end”. He’d already shown evidence of an entrepreneurial spirit, washing neighbours’ cars and cutting grass from the age of eight or nine, but his paper qualifications – a single cookery CSE – weren’t going to get him far. Banging on doors, however, did secure him a job at a local photocopier company, in sales.

Sales patter and problem solving

Most people detest coldcalling but Banister discovered he was good at talking to potential customers. It required virtually no writing skills: “I just needed to get the address down right.” Suddenly, he was good at something. Better than good: successful.

That was three decades ago, but in the years since, Banister has discovered that being dyslexic has advantages in business. “Its strengths are ones which are particularly useful in building a strong company – problem-solving abilities, strong reasoning and being able to picture how circumstances will evolve,” he says. “I consciously focus on the wider picture and likely consequences, for example in formulating my business strategy. Dyslexia doesn’t impede my ability to see and analyse things – I may simply see them differently from other people.”

Famous dyslexic entrepreneurs

Lord Sugar, Anita Roddick, Richard Branson, Jamie Oliver and Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad overcame their dyslexia to create hugely successful businesses, and research suggests dyslexics are disproportionately represented among entrepreneurs. Julie Logan, emeritus professor of entrepreneurship at Cass Business School, in London, says that 20% of the UK’s business self-starters have the condition. Her research into the US market showed that 35% of company founders identified themselves as dyslexic, compared with 15% in the general population. She then compared the traits, attributes and early experiences of people who identified as dyslexic from a sample of entrepreneurs who were not dyslexic.

“Dyslexic entrepreneurs reported as good or excellent at oral communication, delegation, creative and spatial awareness tasks, whilst non-dyslexics reported as average or good,” Logan says. People with dyslexia, she found, tend to compensate for things they can’t do well by developing excellence in other areas: oral communication, delegation (because they must learn to trust other people with tasks they can’t do from an early age), as well as problem-solving and people management.

Entrepreneurship provides independence

Being the boss of your own organisation makes a lot of sense when it enables you to shape a working environment that suits your skills – and supports you in areas you’re not so good at.

Sharon Hewitt, 50, left school with the words of a teacher “that if I worked really hard I might be able to get a job as a shop assistant” ringing in her ears. She was lucky, she says, to get a receptionist job in an estate agency and soon became a top-performing estate agent. Despite starting with little confidence, she realised that her ability to talk and listen, empathise with clients’ aims and discover what they really wanted from their house move gave her an edge. “It was the time when there were secretaries,” she says. “I could dictate all my letters, and delegate the things that were difficult.”

Hewitt was headhunted by Nationwide at a senior level, and by the end of her twenties was being employed specifically for her strategic and communication skills. On her return from maternity leave, she decided to go it alone. Her award-winning company, Chiltern Relocation, offers a bespoke employee relocation and home-finding service.

So how has her dyslexia affected the way she runs the business? “I get people to speak to people, not focus on email,” she says. “Because I’m so concerned that my grammar and writing are poor l write really curt emails, so instead I always pick up the phone.” For a company whose purpose is to grasp the holistic needs of its clients and their families, this focus on listening and understanding has been integral to its success.

But it’s not all about the chatter: “We do an enormous amount of detailed work in the office but we have developed strategies for coping, such as reading material out loud and being obsessed with making sure we are getting things right,” says Hewitt .

She’s always had to delegate, so she depends heavily on a team she’s personally recruited for skills that complement her own. Her determination to achieve, to confound people who have told her she won’t, means Hewitt is ambitious, driven by new ideas and keen to look at the wider global picture where she can see potential for growth. Last year she sought out business in China, outlined her vision, briefed her team, and let them get on with the detail. Three months later they were meeting Chinese clients.

A nurturing workplace

Building a supportive environment is of prime importance to dyslexic entrepreneur Hugh Robertson, 47, who founded his award-winning marketing agency RPM 22 years ago. But his previous experiences of being employed in a corporate environment – not altogether happily, if often successfully – means he is determined this should extend to everyone he employs. “I want everyone to work in a culture that’s supportive,” he says. “Clients actually buy the people.”

As with so many others with dyslexia, Robertson was written off by the formal education system and emerged from school with battered confidence, which only began to improve when he realised his people skills were far better than many of his peers’. After turning around a failing events company in Scotland – a job he fell into in his early 20s through a contact – Robertson realised he’d found an area he excelled at. “My emotional intelligence is very high,” he says. “Agencies are very much about their relationships with their clients [and] I can understand where they are feeling challenged and what excites them. That means I can work in an unstructured way that plays to my skills and has real value for the business.” His priority now he has his own business, however, is to foster a supportive values-based company.

None of these self-starters has had it easier than any other entrepreneur – sometimes the opposite. But each has consciously grasped that in order to fully realise their talents they need to take charge and mould their work environment to their personal skillset. Perhaps it’s no wonder that so many people with dyslexia are entrepreneurs: being the boss means they call the shots.

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