Benjamin Foss
Winner, British Isles Debating Championship;
World Debating Champion

The first American to win the British Isles Debating Championship and the winner, two years later, of the World Debating Championship, Ben Foss has a way with words that belies his enormous difficulty with reading and writing.

Diagnosed with dyslexia in elementary school, it wasn’t until he reached college that he admitted he has a learning disability — before going on to win both Truman and Marshall Scholarships. Working on both an MBA and law degree from Stanford, he relied heavily on text-to-speech software and his “talking” computer, as well as on a proofreader, and additional time for tests.

Ultimately, he says, the real difficulty is emotional: “First you must come to terms with your disability; accept it and embrace it. Then you must deal with a world that sees, and often doesn’t know how to respond to your disability.”

Learning disabilities, he notes, “come in a million different flavors, and everyone, with or without LD, has their own individual strengths and talents.”