Marlene Brady, Job Coach
By DeafHHCareer | December 8, 2008
Marlene with student
Marlene Brady works as a Job Coach at Hinsdale South high school in Illinois. Marlene is part of a vocational team that consists of two other Job Coaches and a Vocational Coordinator. The team works to prepare deaf and hard of hearing students to transition into competitive employment.
Topics: Counselors | 4 Comments »
Bryen M. Yunashko, IT Consultant
By DeafHHCareer | November 26, 2008
Bryen M. Yunashko is known as Yuko to his friends. For the last nine years, Bryen has been self-employed as a consultant in the IT field, specializing in open source software, especially Linux. “I focus on server set ups, file systems, email management, and desktop management,” Bryen explained. “At any given time, day or night, I could be discussing a project with developers in China, Europe, India, the U.S., anywhere.”
Bryen was recently elected to the openSUSE Community Board and is probably the first ever Deaf-Blind member of a Linux-based board. “I started using Linux some years ago after I got frustrated with some of the restrictions and limitations I faced on Windows. I also ran for board because I wanted to ensure that accessibility users also have a strong voice in the open source world.”
Bryen is actively involved in working with developers and packagers in making sure that all Linux-based software is accessible for people with disabilities. “I’m an active member and leader of the GNOME A11y Team,” Bryen said. “GNOME is a desktop environment in Linux and ‘A11y’ (A plus 11 letters plus y spells accessibility) stands for accessibility in computing. By getting into A11y, I’m taking charge of my own destiny. I want to be able to be sure I can continue to work with computers as long as I live.”
As a child, Bryen attended the St. John School for the Deaf until it was closed in 1983 and then transferred to a high school in Evanston. “Roycemore was a challenge for me,” said Bryen. “After eight years living at St John’s, this was a complete life change and culture shock for me at a young age. Not only was it more challenging in school, but the sudden loss of my Deaf family due to the closing was traumatic for me.”
Bryen was diagnosed with Usher’s Syndrome Type II in his mid-twenties. He has some central vision that allows him to view a computer screen, but no peripheral vision. During our interview, I asked Bryen, “What do you use to access the internet?”
“I use a computer!” he joked.
Ah, I walked right into that one.
“I use a large screen, 24-inch monitor and Linux is good about having built-in accessibility so I can resize what I need properly,” he explained.
Bryen entered college at the young age of sixteen, attending Gallaudet and California State University at Norridge. After college, he became involved with the Deaf Entertainment industry in Los Angeles and then worked in Database Management for UCLA. He left college before obtaining his degree, but hasn’t ruled out the possibility of pursuing formal education again. “There’s always continuing education, especially in the IT field. It is a never-ending challenge.”
What did your parents do right, when they were raising you? I asked Bryen.
“What a loaded question,” he said, with a smile. “I think the two things that stand out is that my parents always tried to ensure I had the best education possible, and my father, even at a young age, always engaged me in conversation about current events. I’ve had a love and appreciation for that ever since.”
Bryen has some advice to share with deaf and hard of hearing students who are considering career choices:
Keep your options open. Don’t focus so hard on just one career goal. Make sure you have diverse knowledge and awareness in multiple fields. The career of your choice today may not exist tomorrow and being well-rounded is key to sustaining yourself in the long run.
More about Bryen:
Bryen Yunashko’s Professional Website
Interview with Bryen and the OpenSUSE Board
OpenSUSE Elects Community Board
Topics: Computer Jobs | 2 Comments »
Mary-Beth Robie, Advertising Coordinator
By DeafHHCareer | November 13, 2008
Last year, I met Mary-Beth Robie at the Illinois Hands & Voices Mom’s Night Inn event. Mary-Beth grew up with Cued Speech and she currently works as an Advertising Coordinator. I asked her to share a bit about herself and her job:
I grew up in a rural area in northern Vermont and was the only known deaf cuer for most of my elementary and high school years. My parents learned how to cue through an audiotape narrated by Dr. Cornett, the inventor of Cued Speech. My two older sisters learned how to cue through osmosis as did I. To this day they still cue well even though they hardly ever practice cueing. My oldest sister would teach her friends some basic cues so they could communicate to each other in the classroom or around the school without anyone else understanding what they were saying. Since my parents cued all the time, I was able to access the same level of language as my siblings. My sisters also provided me with more language exposure through their cueing.
Cued speech requires lip movement when in use and I believe that has enhanced my ability to lip read people when I interact with random people in the real world on an occasional basis. While I had a hearing neighbor who learned how to cue at a young age, I didn’t meet any otherdeaf cuers until I went to college which inspired me to learn more about Cued Speech and how to give back to the community. I’ve become more involved by joining the National Cued Speech Association Board as regional representative of the Great Lakes region. I also serve as the
layout editor for the On Cue newsletter, a publication of the NCSA.
Tell me about your educational background growing up and going to college.
I was raised in a rural area in Northern Vermont. From K-12, I was mainstreamed with a Cued Language Transliterator (CLT). I attended SUNY Plattsburgh in New York for my first year of college, but discovered that the accommodations they promised me were not being provided so I decided to transfer to Rochester Institute of Technology. Again, once I arrived at RIT, I was not provided with a CLT so had to learn how to sign and be able to understand the sign language interpreters. Times
have changed since I left RIT and they have provided CLT’s for fellow students. So progress has been made on that end which is exciting for me.
What is your degree/s in?
My degree is in Digital Imaging Publishing and Technology, which is basically a Graphic Design degree.
Tell me about some of the jobs you have held prior to your current job.
I’ve been working since I was 13 years old, but through and after college I worked as a cashier at Target while searching for a full time job in the printing industry. I finally landed a job as a Production
Artist with a small printing company in Syracuse, NY. I worked there for three years before deciding I needed to move on in order to move up the ladder. I decided to accept a job in Oak Brook, Illinois starting out as a Photo Coordinator for an international printing company, RR Donnelley.
In my almost 2 years of working there, I have been promoted to Lead Photo Coordinator and was recently promoted to Advertising Coordinator.
What company do you work for and what is your position?
I work for RR Donnelley’s Facilities Management site at our customer location in Oak Brook, Illinois. I am currently making the transition into my new position as an Advertising Coordinator. As Lead Photo
Coordinator, I had to depend on a lot of internal communication to be able to coordinate digital images and the central database repository.
As Advertising Coordinator I will work closely with the Print, Merchandising and Advertising departments to ensure all information provided produced accurate retail content, required deadlines are met, and final client proofs and files to printers are provided.
Can you share a typical day on the job?
Before it used to be a lot of email communication and little interaction with co-workers, but they saw I had the potential to work with customers one on one, so with my new position there will be a lot more verbal communication going on. I have to ensure I meet the retailers needs as to what they want advertised in their store circular, posters, postcards, or any other type of print out. I enter a lot of information into the databases in which the artists depend on for accurate information in order to design to the retailers needs.
What are some of the challenges you’ve faced on the job?
Meetings are a big challenge for me. I always have to make sure I understand everything that was said. I personally don’t like to rely much on other people for assistance especially since we work in a fast paced environment, but I always realize at the end that teamwork is important and I am there to please the clients and the only way that can happen is if I step up to the plate and ensure I ask for repeats or for a handout or summary of what was discussed in the meeting. Our meetings are rarely scheduled in advance. They usually are a spur of the moment type where it’s impossible for me to request for a CLT or CART to be present within minutes.
What are some ways you’ve overcome any communication challenges?
I am now a big fan of follow-up emails. Usually after I meet with a client, my boss or someone important, I will ask them to kindly send me a follow up email with what was discussed in the meeting. I have built up the confidence to email people back especially if I feel I have missed something that was included in the follow-up email. I do take an extra minute after a meeting has come to an end to warn them that I may ask questions about what was discussed. I think that helps lighten up the situation before it happens. Before I would spend too much time trying to figure out what they may or may not have said. I can tell you that method doesn’t produce much success.
What advice would you share with a deaf/hard of hearing person who is considering career choices?
Be confident and honest. Tell human resources or your boss-to-be what accommodations you need and be willing to negotiate with them to a point where it works for both of you. Don’t come off too demanding or you will scare them away.
Topics: Marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Susan Elliott, Colorado Teacher of the Year
By DeafHHCareer | November 12, 2008
Susan Elliott rocks.
The Colorado teacher who teaches Social Studies at Highland Ranch High School has won the Teacher of the Year Award. Susan is deaf and teaches in a center-based program for deaf and hard of hearing students. Susan previously served on the board of Gallaudet University and currently serves on the board of Hands & Voices, a non-profit organization for families with deaf and hard of hearing children. Susan also served as a Commissioner for six years on the Colorado Commission of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing .
Check out the other news stories:
Susan Elliott, A Sign of Achievement
Deaf Instructor Named Teacher of the Year
**Photo courtesy of Hands & Voices.
Topics: Teachers, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Kathy Buckley, Comedian & Humanitarian
By DeafHHCareer | November 4, 2008
The first time that I saw Kathy Buckley on Comedy Central, I was blown away. There, standing on stage, was a hard of hearing gal firing off jokes and one-liners. Every now and then, I would see her throw in a sign or two, perhaps out of habit or perhaps to connect with the many deaf and hard of hearing people who enjoy her comedy routines.
Kathy is still involved with comedy and currently working on a routine called “Puberty at 50.” She is a speaker who is in high demand and every time that I talk with her, I find that she’s flying off to one place or another. I once saw Kathy speak to group of parents and professionals, and I watched how she connected to everyone in the room with her stories and slices of inspiration. She is indeed, a master at public speaking. Kathy is also on the Anthony Robbins Life Mastery Classes.
Take a look at the awards she has won throughout the years:
Reynolds Society
Ovation Award: Best Writing
My daughter picked up her book, If You Could Hear What I See
Check out a recent article about Kathy at Disaboom: Comedian Kathy Buckley Continues to Draw Laughs
Topics: Music & Entertainment | No Comments »
Milanka Dukic, Medical Billing Support
By DeafHHCareer | October 27, 2008
Milanka Dukic handles phone calls all day long. She works for Corvel, a company that handles workman’s compensation claims. Milanka works in the billing department, correcting information on medical bills and handling provider status calls.”At Corvel, we get claims from other insurance companies and we scan the bills– then we anaylize the bills to make sure the PPO reduction is correct before we send them for recommend payment,” Milanka explained. We’re also handle customer service for them and they don’t have to deal with providers, we do all the work for them.”
Milanka is profoundly deaf without her hearing aids, but is able to manage phone calls with an amplified phone. Handling the phone isn’t easy for her, especially when talking with someone who has a heavy accent. She will ask people to slow down when she has difficulty understanding them.
During staff meetings, Milanka sits at an angle so that she can lipread her boss and coworkers. ” I have to read lips, which I do most of the time, When I take out my hearing aid, I don’t hear at all, not even a loud thunderstorm.”Milanka graduated from Hinsdale South in 1985 and took some courses at a local community college. She ended up paying for an interpreter out of her own pocket (before the ADA took effect) and decided to go and look for work instead.
During her first interview at a local hospital, Milanka decided not to share any information about her hearing loss. Looking back, she felt that it was a big mistake, as she faced questions that she didn’t expect and wasn’t open to answering them. “I was scared to tell her I was hard of hearing, because I was afraid she might cut the interview short and send me home.” Milanka didn’t get the job anyway.
Milanka met a woman out of the blue who helped her get her first job as a Data Entry Clerk at the same college that she attended previously. During that interview, Milanka decided to be open about her hearing loss and got the job.
“When deaf or hard of hearing people are ready for an interview, make sure you tell them [the potential employer] ahead of time that you’re hard of hearing or deaf and they will work it out. Because if you don’t, that’s going to make it worse and they’ll be unprepared on how to communicate with you. You’ll be surprised–there are people out there who will open doors for you to work with them.”
Milanka has been working with Corvel since 2001 and she enjoys her work there. “I teach my co-workers sign language at work and they love it!”
Topics: Medical Coding/Billing | No Comments »
Dr. Carolyn Stern, Family Practice Physician
By DeafHHCareer | October 15, 2008
I can clearly remember the first time I met Dr. Carolyn Stern– I was filled with a million questions. “How do you listen through the stethoscope?” was one of the questions that I asked.
“I have an amplified stethoscope,” she explained. “I can also sometimes feel for blood pressure.”
Dr. Stern was the first doctor that I had ever met who was deaf. After chatting with her, I learned that there were many more deaf and hard of hearing individuals in the medical field. At one time, I wanted to go into nursing, but I was pretty discouraged by a well-meaning counselor who pointed out all the difficulties I would encounter in the medical field because I was deaf. This is why I feel it is so important to show deaf and hard of hearing youth today that they can indeed, do many things in many fields.
Today, Dr. Stern is the Medical Director at the Rochester School for the Deaf and she works in Urgent Care at St. Mary’s Walk-In Care Center. Dr. Stern is also the creator and founder of DeafDoc.org, a website that covers many different health care issues presented in American Sign Language and captions. I love the quote on her site: “The difficult is easy, the impossible just takes a little longer!”
To learn more about Dr. Stern: The Deaf Doc is In!
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Chris Wagner–Vice President of Marketing
By DeafHHCareer | September 30, 2008
Chris at the WSAD Picnic
Chris Wagner is the Vice President of Marketing for CSDVRS, a video relay company based in Florida. Chris is the company spokesperson and his job is to oversee media relations, marketing strategies and marketing materials.
Chris graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a social work degree and for twelve years, he worked in the field of mental health. In 1996, Chris developed the first nursing home in Florida to serve primarily deaf and hard of hearing consumers. The 60-bed facility was initially designed specifically for deaf and hard of hearing residents but is now open to other residents as well.
“I love what I do,” said Chris, about his job at CSDVRS. “We have fun together and the company is growing very fast.”
Chris also serves as the Vice President of the National Association of the Deaf. From their website:
With a background in healthcare administration, Wagner was responsible for the implementation of the first Deaf assisted living facility and a nursing facility for the deaf and hard of hearing in Florida. Largely responsible for the creation of the Florida Coordinating Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (FCCDHH), he was appointed by Governor Jeb Bush as the first member and chairperson of the Coordinating Council. He also serves on numerous boards, which include stints as President of Florida Association of the Deaf, Inc. (FAD), Vice Chair of the Governor’s American with Disabilities Act Working Group (ADAWG), and most recent, as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. Prior to his election as FAD President, Wagner served as the first president of the Florida Coalition for Disability Rights.
In 2004, Chris received several awards for his outstanding leadership and advocacy on both state and national levels, including the first Claude Seale Advocate Award from the Florida Independent Living Council ( <http://www.flailc.org> FILC), the Robert Greenmun Award for State Leadership Excellence, and the Knights of the Flying Fingers Award from the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).
Topics: Marketing | No Comments »
John Kinstler, Communication Technology Counselor
By DeafHHCareer | September 24, 2008
My first introduction to John Kinstler was on YouTube, where I came across one of my favorite John Denver songs translated into American Sign Language. I was immediately captivated by John’s interpretation of “Looking for Space,” for he signed it beautifully. You can view the video here and the lyrics here.
John Kinstler works as a Communication Technology Counselor at the Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing /UniversaLink in Wisconsin. The non-profit organization has a store and online catalog that specializes in products for deaf and hard of hearing consumers.
I work with a team of three others,” said John. “We assist customers with their questions about products that we carry and help them decide on what products to purchase by demonstrating them. We help them select products that will help alert them to their environment, such as the doorbell ringing, the phone ringing, or a baby crying .”
John grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, attending schools in the mainstream. “My parents did not want me to learn American Sign Language,” said John. “I went to NTID/RIT at the age of eighteen. I wanted to escape, to find my deaf identity.”
In college, John began to soak up ASL like a sponge. He discovered that he enjoyed acting and he loved signing to music. “I grew up on John Denver’s music. I first learned his songs in grade school. The teacher printed out the lyrics to ‘Country Roads’ and I was able to follow along with practice, listening to the songs over and over.”
For ten years, John dove into acting. He performed with the National Theatre of the Deaf, Sunshine Too and the Cleveland Sign Stage Theatre. John produced a DVD, Sign and ABCs
In 2005, John obtained a cochlear implant and then a second one in 2007. “My understanding of speech went from seven percent to eighty-eight percent,” said John. “Music became sharper and I was surprised to be able to pick out various instruments that I wasn’t able to hear in songs with my hearing aids.”
Today, John is working on a new career path: becoming a comedian. He is doing stand-up comedy and practicing his comedy skills in local comedy clubs.
Topics: Non-profit field, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sara Gould, Deaf Engineer
By DeafHHCareer | September 11, 2008
Sara and her coworker, Frank
Back in ninth grade, Sara Gould was trying to decide between becoming a musician or an engineer. She enjoyed playing the saxophone. She also enjoyed math and science—and envisioned someday designing roller coaster.
Then almost overnight, Sara ended up with a sudden, severe hearing loss in both ears, most likely due to a virus.
“The ENT actually told my parents that I might be faking it to get attention,” Sara recalled.
It was two months before Sara was fitted with hearing aids and went back to school. She relied on classmates to take notes with carbon paper and she collected those at the end of every class. “I had an FM system, but I never liked it because I had to go to the Health office to pick it up and it wasn’t good for class discussions,” said Sara. An itinerant teacher worked with her once a week to practice lipreading skills.
“I think I blocked most of high school out of my mind,” Sara said with a smile.
A major turning point was the day that her audiologist introduced her to Rochester Institute of Technology and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in New York. Sara went to visit the campus and immediately she knew that she wanted to attend college there. “NTID was great, because even though I had to explain that I didn’t know sign language, I never had to explain my hearing loss to people who had never met anyone deaf,” said Sara. “That was true of RIT too. There was such a high level of awareness there.”
After graduating with an Mechanical Engineering degree in 2002, Sara went to work for three different companies. She went on to obtain her Masters degree in Systems Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology. Today, she works as a Project Engineer for a company that welds ship interiors. “The engineers here mostly design and manage the projects,” Sara explained. “I work in the testing lab, doing medium-weight shock testing of desks, furniture, lockers, etc.”
Sara records information from shock testing to determine how much shock an item can withstand if a ship were hit by a torpedo. Using videos and photos, Sara writes up reports on her findings. “When I take notes from a test, I have to make sure I get everyone’s input in case I missed something they were discussing. But being in charge of notes makes it easier for me to be assertive about getting the information I need.”
Sara found another trick to help her obtain information during group meetings: she would snap pictures of anything written or drawn on the board and use the photos as notes.
“At one of my previous jobs, there were meetings all the time and I was left out of most of them,” said Sara. “For trainings or a really big meeting, I would try and get CART (Real Time Captioning).”
Sara also runs her own business converting slides into movies: Slides in a Flash. And as for that path to becoming a musician, Sara is glad that she didn’t listen to the ENT who cautioned her back in high school not to play in the band for fear of making her hearing worse. Today, she plays saxophone along with 80 others for the Charlottesville Municipal Band.
“The average age of everyone in my band is about 50. They all claim to be deaf too,” she said with a chuckle.
Topics: Engineering | No Comments »