DJ’s passion and expertise grows out of his deep personal understanding of learning disabilities. DJ has a significant learning disability which in school settings resulted in him feeling inadequate, stupid, embarrassed; and being ridiculed, teased, viewed as lazy and defiant. DJ enlisted in the Canadian Forces at the age of 17.  His time with the forces taught him one important lessons, he learns differently.  DJ attended Trent University.  There he discovered assistive technologies and was able to take his learning from the military of how he learnt differently and match that to different pieces of tech—and a door to independence and academic success opened—he has been a user of Assistive Technologies for the past 10 years.

His lifetime of experiences has resulted in him co-founding his company, LEARNstyle.  DJ currently leads a team of over 42 employees, all of whom have either direct or personal experiences with learning disabilities.

DJ’s pioneering vision for the use of Assistive Technology has grown and his philosophy denotes that although it is “truly necessary for some, it is also extremely beneficial for all”.

Now, DJ is revolutionizing the methodology for determining a student’s preferred learning style with a web-based, gamified inventory tool called PULSE which stands for Personal Use Learning Style Evaluation. When deployed PULSE will provide the possibility of substantial operational efficiencies for schools to achieve improved student success and achievement.

DJ is also currently featured as an Education Changemaker thru MaRS: http://marscommons.marsdd.com/education-changemakers-learning-differently/