Famous people with LD and AD/HD

By GreatSchools Staff

Explorers and adventurers

• Ann Bancroft, an honoree in the National Women's Hall of Fame, was the first woman to travel to the North Pole and lead an all-woman dogsled team to the South Pole.
  

Legal and political figures

• David Boies, a runner-up in 2000 for Time's Man of the Year, is a prestigious lawyer involved in high-profile cases.
• James Carville is one of the most famous U.S. political consultants. According to E. Clarke Ross, CEO of Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), "Mr. Carville is perhaps one of the best-known people in Washington, and he lives with AD/HD." Carville is also an author, restaurateur, and cohost of radio and television shows. Today he concentrates on international political and corporate consulting.
• Gavin Newsom is the youngest mayor of San Francisco in 100 years and has dyslexia.
• Nelson Rockefeller served as governor of New York for 12 years and as vice president of the United States under Gerald Ford.
• Peter Wright is an attorney and advocate who represents children with special educational needs.
  

Medical professionals

• Harvey Cushing, M.D., (1869-1939) a world renowned neurosurgeon, had dyslexia.
• Helen Taussig, M.D. (1898-1986), was a successful cardiologist who struggled with dyslexia, which made school difficult for her. Even so, she graduated from Johns Hopkins Medical School.
• Delos Cosgrove, M.D., is a cardiothoracic surgeon, inventor of several medical devices, and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic. He says, "I didn't know I was dyslexic until I was 33 years old. I went all the way through medical school without knowing it."
  

Musicians

• Harry Belafonte is a famous singer, actor, entertainer, and political activist who, even into his seventies, uses his position as a celebrity to promote human rights worldwide.
• Jon Finn is active in the music business as a musician, songwriter, and engineer/producer.
• Stephan Jenkins is a former University of California at Berkeley valedictorian and the singer-songwriter for Third Eye Blind, a rock group with two platinum albums to its credit.
• Jewel is a young pop-music sensation who recently wrote an autobiography of her life growing up in Alaska.
• Phillip Manuel, one of the country's leading jazz vocalists, was diagnosed with AD/HD in 2000 and says only then did his life journey begin to make sense to him.
• Bob Weir, a guitarist and vocalist, formerly with the Grateful Dead, is now bandleader of RatDog.
  

Scientists, engineers, and technology experts

• Engineer and inventor William "Bill" Hewlett (1913-2001) co-founded with David Packard the Hewlett-Packard Company in 1939, which became the second-largest computer company in the world.
• Dr. John (Jack) Horner is a famous paleontologist, or dinosaur expert, who advised Steven Spielberg on films such as Jurassic Park and The Lost World.
• Don Johnston, CEO of Don Johnston, Inc. His mission is to support diverse learners with proven instructional models, effective literacy strategies, and innovative technologies to help them reach grade-level performance.
• John Roberts, CEO and co-founder of SugarCRM, is seen as a pioneer in commercial open-source software applications that businesses use for tasks such as managing sales and keeping track of customers.
• Richard Rogers, one of Britain's most-admired architects, is known for his many stunning buildings and his pioneering views on sustainable cities.
• Bill Wilson, a fire investigator with a "seventh sense," has a reputation for solving the unsolvable in car crash mysteries.