POSTED FEBRUARY 2024
“I am living proof that a person can be lousy at diagramming sentences and still end up writing for a publication like Forbes!”
Dr. Bruce Weinstein has written or edited eight books.
He’s written columns for Forbes.com.
Weinstein has even offered keynote speeches for the National Football League, Ford Motor Company and the Western Australia Local Government. But before all that, and before becoming “The Ethics Guy,” Bruce Weinstein was a North East ISD student.
“If I had to name the single most valuable takeaway from my years as an NEISD student, it’s having maintained friendships with people from different religious, political and cultural backgrounds.”
Weinstein attended Harmony Hills Elementary School, Nimitz Middle School and graduated from Lee High School in 1978.
He was French Club President in his senior year, on the chess club at Nimitz, and in the band from sixth grade to his senior year.
“As a freshman at Lee, it was very cool to learn drum cadences from senior drummers and to be a part of that tradition,” said Weinstein. “I will never forget the taste of the icy Coke every marching band member got after performing in the halftime show at football games.”
Those icy Cokes made an impact, but so did teachers like Mr. Dyer at Harmony Hills, who tamed Bruce’s wild personality; Mrs. Loyce Collenback, who made calculus understandable; and every English teacher he ever had, especially Ms. McMullen at Nimitz. While the lessons learned in NEISD English classes certainly helped set Weinstein up for success in his future career, an assignment in Mr. Cartwright’s government class helped him find his passion.
“We were asked to choose three books that had something to do with government or politics and write reports on them,” said Weinstein. “One of the books I chose was Plato’s The Republic. I fell in love with philosophy, which led me to ethics, which gave rise to the career I now have.”
That career has led Weinstein to be known as The Ethics Guy. He writes and reports on business ethics. He’s the go-to ethics guy for many national news outlets. But he’s adapted the lessons he’s learned for kids in a book called, “Is It Still Cheating If I Don’t Get Caught?”
And the Cliff’s Notes version he would like to share with NEISD students is this:
“Do no harm, make things better, respect others, be fair and care.”
He added that his teachers at NEISD laid the foundations for many of those principles while he was a student.
If you want to learn more about Weinstein’s work visit, theethicsguy.com
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