Dyslexia IRL: More Than Just a Reading Challenge

When we began imagining what a conference about dyslexia could look like at Harvard, we started with students’ experiences. Maya, the co-founder of the student-run HGSE Dyslexia Club, saw a gap in the way conversations were happening that was both personal and urgent.

Our world is missing out on so much talent from youth with dyslexia and other learning disabilities because they struggle to navigate traditional education structures and career transitions.

Conversations about dyslexia — even those at HGSE — seem to focus only on early childhood and learning to read. But these miss the importance of the career transition period in a young adult’s development: even the most prepared students with dyslexia frequently get caught off guard when they get to college or start a career, where there's more reading, writing, and self-advocacy skills required in times of high pressure.

Lynn, a fellow at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, wanted to help Maya bring her vision of a conference on dyslexia to life. She supported the student team in shaping a gathering that could hold many things at once: research, personal storytelling, practical tools, career pathways, creativity, and community.

On April 24, the HGSE Dyslexia Club welcomed 333 people, online and in-person, to the Harvard Graduate School of Education for the first conference of its kind at HGSE focused specifically on adolescents and young adults with dyslexia. Attendees included students, parents, educators, counselors, researchers, family members, advocates, and dyslexics with lived experience.

From the beginning, Maya wanted this to feel different from a traditional academic conference. We spent months on calls talking to potential speakers from a range of backgrounds in all parts of the country, trying to make sure every side of a young person with dyslexia’s story was being told.

During our planning process, we were finding it difficult not to veer too much on the side of either celebrating or pitying dyslexia but hold space for both of those feelings being part of its range of human experiences. Our biggest goal for the event was for it to feel authentic, like a place where people could be their whole selves and feel comfortable asking anything that came up in that process.

The opening community panel set that tone. Assistant Professor Phil Capin facilitated a conversation with high school student Sophia Pagan and HGSE students Regine Celius, Ed.M.’26, and Princess Emeanuwa, Ed.M.’26. The panelists spoke with honesty about their own range of experiences across multiple countries, including in identification, school systems, family advocacy, mental health, teaching, belonging, and what it feels like to be understood.

A post-conference reflection from Capin captured the spirit of the day: “Parents, educators, and teenagers often have the same hopes and anxieties for the kids they love, but those emotions can be expressed in very different and sometimes opposing ways. Conversations like this one give voice to those tensions to navigate paths forward,” he said.

Building a career is a scary thing for everyone involved, and that spirit of real conversation carried through the day. Presenters and panelists included researchers, educators, entrepreneurs, artists, students, filmmakers, and professionals across fields such as the University of Alabama Birmingham’s Caroline Richter and John Chambers, former CEO and chairman of Cisco Systems. Sessions explored stress, stigma, mental health, peer mentoring, practical learning strategies, assistive technology, strengths-based identity, school-to-prison pipelines, youth voice in education policy, restorative practices, career-building, storytelling, music, and personal stories of living with dyslexia.

As the day drew to a close, a few key takeaways consistently came up in conversations:

• If you have met one dyslexic person, you have only met one dyslexic person. No two stories sounded the same. Dyslexia showed up differently across school, family, language, identity, mental health, work, and creativity.
• Success is rarely linear. Many speakers described frustration, misunderstanding, exhaustion, or stigma. But they also described the people and supports that made a difference: a parent who kept asking questions, a teacher who noticed, a mentor who made the future feel possible, a school that understood, a tool that opened access, or an interest that helped a young person keep going.
• Resilience matters, but it does not have to mean doing everything alone. People thrive when environments are designed with them in mind, when support is available without shame, and when strengths are recognized alongside challenges, but life transitions can alter those situations completely. Self-advocacy skills can help in building new support networks in new places.

What stayed with us most was the energy in the room. People wanted to talk. They wanted to connect. They wanted to compare notes, share resources, ask better questions, and keep building.

One attendee expressed dismay that there were so few mentions of literacy in the programming, but another six thanked our team for not making it a core focus. They said it was refreshing to finally be in an environment where dyslexic teenagers were discussed as more than a reading score, and that some of the insights they got out of the day were life-changing.

To us, that is one of the clearest signs that the original vision resonated. Dyslexia IRL did not end with a single answer. It ended with people wanting more: more stories, more research, more practical tools, more shared language, more connection, and more attention to the lives of adolescents and young adults with dyslexia.

We hope Dyslexia IRL helped build a shared understanding across students, families, educators, researchers, employers, and institutions. Most of all, we hope it helped uplift the next generation of dyslexic students and young adults as they define success for themselves.

Maya Povhe, Ed.M.'26, is a graduate of the Education Policy and Analysis Program and a multidisciplinary researcher. Her work and publications span education, economics, digital policy, food systems, global affairs, and sustainability.

Lynn Margherio, founder and former CEO of Cradles to Crayons, is passionate about empowering children and youth to access the resources and opportunities they need to thrive. She will be a senior fellow at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative beginning in August 2026.