10 CEOs with Learning Disabilities


Bangalore: Being a CEO is relatively a tougher job. CEOs assume their position in the firm as they prove themselves to be rare breeds casting enough impression in various aspects of the business management. They go for risk factor, try hard and mostly survive the crisis, when the rest of the world prefers to maintain the status quo.

So it is for sure that they conceive things differently. We can also thrive for such responsibilities as a CEO has to undertake. But most of us are diffident about their skills and they dig out their disabilities than making use of their abilities.

This is our topic of discussion gathers importance, as this article lists a number of CEOs who have achieved greater heights in their lives in spite of their disabilities. Instead of mourning over their negatives, they worked hard with their skills. They didn’t do different things; but they did it differently.

Here are the list of 13 CEOs who had suffered from different learning disabilities—dyslexia being the most popular one among these disabilities. These CEOs, most of them famous achievers, proved that perceived weaknesses can also be strengths.

Check Out the List of CEOs Who Suffered from Different Learning Disabilities:

#1 Richard Branson

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, the English business magnate born in 1950, is best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies.

Can you imagine this wildly wealthy Virgin head used to fail standardized tests in high school routinely due to dyslexia? Yes, this CEO had to struggle hard in his school days and when he started as alternative newspaper at his school and filled it with worthwhile content, the headmaster of the school said, "Congratulations, Branson. I predict that you will either go to prison or become a millionaire."

And his words came true. Branson is the 4th richest citizen of the United Kingdom according to the Forbes 2011 list of billionaires with an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion.

#2 Peter Kight

Peter J Kight had to start his own company due to his learning disability, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). The founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Checkfree, founded in 1981, said, "I would have had a great deal of difficulty if I had gotten into a staff job. I knew that. That's why I started a company. I was fearful to the point of being paranoid that I would end up working in a big company."