My Toughest Challenge: Skip Howard

“I was diagnosed with dyslexia in the third grade. When I was graduating from J. J. Pearce High School, my mom and I met with the guidance counselor. Her professional opinion was that I needed to look for a minimum wage job. If I really wanted to push myself, I could perhaps look toward trade school. That’s the first time I ever heard my mom cuss. A few years later, when I graduated with a business degree from Texas Tech, I made sure to send my guidance counselor an invite. College is where I found my strengths. I studied C++ as a foreign language and fell in love with coding. I went from being told that I couldn’t do something to being told that I’ve just created the future of retail. Dyslexia is a cognitive tradeoff. You’re going to be deficient, but you’re also going to really excel. Sometimes you don’t see that until much later in life. Homework was always a struggle. It took me longer than my peers. But that suffering led to something good.”