By Matthew Kredell
Brandon De Bruhl graduated from high school without knowing how to read or write. What he did know was that school was not for him. A severe case of dyslexia made education so difficult that it took a special exception from the school district for him get a diploma with a 1.9 grade point average. He was excited never to spend another minute in a classroom.
Fifteen years later, after overcoming self-doubt and figuring out a system to do what comes naturally to most people, De Bruhl completed a Master of Public Policy degree from the USC Price School of Public Policy and has continued on to a prestigious Google Policy Fellowship.
“Between the ages of 14 and 20, I felt very much like I was useless,” De Bruhl said. “I just kind of assumed that’s the way it would always be. If I thought back to how I was when I was younger and where I am now, I would have no idea I’d be capable of it. I would not believe it.”
De Bruhl – who turned 33 a few days after the May 15 commencement ceremony where he was given a special recognition by Dean Jack Knott – went through six rounds of interviews to beat out 3,000 applicants for one of 14 spots in the Google Policy Fellowship program.
On June 1, he headed to Washington, D.C., to fulfill the 10-week fellowship with host organization the Center for Data Innovation, a leading think tank studying how data-driven innovation can help advance social and economic progress.
“It’s commonly accepted that the next iteration of the economy is a digital economy, so I’m fascinated by how we develop policies to facilitate that digital revolution,” De Bruhl said. “I was excited not only to win the fellowship but to get in with the host organization that most interested me.”
His interest in technology was spurred by his efforts to overcome dyslexia in his early 20s. Psychologists told him he had one of the most severe cases they had ever evaluated.
“The way I describe it is, it’s like watching a fan move,” De Bruhl said. “You can kind of see the form but the letters are flipping and moving around, and it’s hard to hold them in place. When I look at writing on a page, it’s kind of like in the movie The Matrix when the code is flowing down the screen.”
After finishing high school in the state of Washington, he worked service jobs at Starbucks and as a manager for an AMC movie theater while trying to learn how to better deal with his dyslexia. He always had an interest in public service, and he took advantage of a Starbucks travel grant with Northwest Harvest where he helped distribute food and other perishables around Washington State.
The only way to overcome such a complex disability was with technology. It wasn’t until he was 26 that he perfected reading and writing with a system he compares to using computer code. He then went to Seattle University and earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science.
USC Disability Services and Programs worked with him to provide assistive software that translates text into spoken word and vice versa, so he doesn’t have to write or read long passages. It can still take him 10 minutes to put together a short email.
“USC has been so wonderful and connected with the fact that I have a learning challenge,” De Bruhl said. “I always felt supported here.”
De Bruhl had been extremely active during his time at USC, serving as a graduate student fellow for the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, where he surveyed administrators of water districts in Southern California on digital tools utilized. The project aims to find ways to build greater efficiency in water management.
He also was involved with the USC Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) and was treasurer of the Homeland Security Student Organization. Through a Department of Homeland Security Career Development Fellowship, he worked on a project about the military use of underwater drones in defense of harbors, and he plans to take advantage of being in D.C. to gather more information and interviews for that paper.
De Bruhl particularly valued the international exposure he got at USC Price, taking courses that traveled to Dublin and Mexico City. He called the Dublin Lab transformative for teaching him how to be a consultant.
When he signed up for the lab, he didn’t realize that most of the course outside of the two weeks in Ireland would take place online, making it the most difficult adjustment he had with his disability. Yet, it wasn’t until midway through the class that the professor, Dora Kingsley Vertenten, became aware of his dyslexia.
“Brandon is one of those mature guys who puts his head down and figures out an issue, and then helps everyone else figure it out,” Kingsley Vertenten said. “He’s argumentative and inquisitive, challenging and creative, and really one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen — to think of the struggle of how that mind was trapped and having trouble communicating.”
At the end of the Dublin trip, the students made a presentation of their report at City Hall. The city manager was asking tough questions about how he could apply the findings in the study, and the room went quiet.
“Brandon stepped up and gave the answer,” Kingsley Vertenten said. “He made it really specific to the city manager and his role, and the city manager liked the answer and was all smiles. The crowd erupted. It showed his ability to think on his feet and empathize with the client, presenting material not only in an academic way, but an actionable way.”
The Google Policy Fellowship will offer De Bruhl a $7,500 stipend to go along with invaluable experience.
“My primary goal is to understand the advocacy portion of public policy from a non-biased, think-tank approach,” De Bruhl said. “I want to know how to talk about technology as a public good, not just as means for people to make billions of dollars but to improve the quality of life for people.”
He’d like to be a facilitator to develop systems that apply technology to help people, and to advise decision makers on sound choices regarding technology. In the long run, he hopes to run for office and be one of those decision makers.
“I used to feel like no one was going to recognize my ability because I couldn’t demonstrate it, so it wasn’t even worth trying,” De Bruhl said. “How it feels now is if someone doesn’t recognize my ability, that’s OK; the only person who needs to is me.”