Dyslexia | Environmental Law Pioneer David Schoenbrod

David Schoenbrod is a pioneering environmental attorney on faculty at New York Law School. Since his start in doing anti-poverty community development under a program initiated by Bobbie Kennedy, he has used out-of-the-box dyslexic big picture thinking to trigger a cascade of changes at policy, corporate, and government levels that achieve  successes like removing the lead from gasoline and launching a massive clean up of the New York City Subway system.

David’s school wanted to hold him back in the third grade, but his mother tutored him over the summer and his math and science achievements would lead him to an undergraduate degree at Yale University. At one point a teacher told him that he was “literate in no language”, but he would find his voice fighting social and environmental injustice at multiple levels. Today all Americans owe a debt of gratitude for David for helping clean up the US.

“…studies were suggesting that the lead levels in even the average child in New York City in the 1970’s were causing a measurable, though small, loss in IQ. Other studies suggested that some children absorbed far more lead from gasoline than the average, enough to bring on death or severe brain damage. With the stakes so high, it seemed I should try harder, do more.” – David Schoenbrod