Robert Litan: An unusual way to boost entrepreneurship

What do enormously successful entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, John Chambers and Charles Schwab have in common? Of course, they are highly intelligent. But I’ll bet you’ll never guess what else they share: Each is also dyslexic, a genetic disorder that makes it difficult for those who have it to read and to interpret visual cues, such as charts and graphs.

The business superstars aren’t alone. One 2007 study by Julie Logan, an emeritus professor at the City University in London, found that 35 percent of American entrepreneurs show some signs of dyslexia.

Theories abound as to why, but most center on the fact that dyslexics tend to be highly creative, forced by their disability to come up with unconventional solutions – just the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that can lead to entrepreneurial success.

One Wichita education pioneer, Jeanine Phillips, knows this to be true firsthand. Phillips didn’t learn she was dyslexic until a Wichita State University professor told her she was dyslexic, based on her written expression ability. Later Phillips learned her youngest son was profoundly dyslexic, and also discovered there was a genetic component to the disorder.

Her quest to help her youngest function changed her life, her child’s life and many others in this city.

Phillips quickly learned that no one in the Wichita public school system was able to help her son. By sheer luck and with the help of another Wichitan, Gretchen Andeel, Phillips searched out solutions for her son, traveling to Texas, the nation’s mecca for dyslexia education.

She spent six years traveling to Dallas and Houston to be trained, and ultimately certified, to teach educators how to recognize young children who have dyslexia as well as how to teach these children to read and to learn.

Her son’s story has a happy ending. His early diagnosis led to early intervention that eventually enabled him to graduate from Wichita Collegiate School. He later successfully graduated college with majors in chemistry and biology.

But Phillips’ story doesn’t end there. In 2001, she and Andeel co-founded the Fundamental Learning Center to help parents and teachers assist dyslexics. In 2014, the center established the Rolph Literacy Academy, a school for children with dyslexia and other learning disorders, focused on ages 5 through 9.

The school provides young children the skills they need to be mainstreamed into schools of their parents’ choice. As a private school that charges means-tested tuition, FLC relies on donations to fund about 80 percent of its costs.

FLC, which recently moved to a beautiful new facility on Opportunity Drive (2220 E. 21st St.) near the WSU campus, has trained thousands of educators and parents in how to help kids with learning issues be successful in school and in life.

FLC is not only saving the lives of the children it teaches, but it enables all educators to teach children who otherwise would be lost within a conventional school classroom. These are precisely the kids whose creativity this city and this country need if we are to recapture the entrepreneurial mojo that established our nation.

This story was originally published March 24, 2016 at 7:01 PM with the headline "Robert Litan: An unusual way to boost entrepreneurship."