Beyond Performance: Building a Personal Brand with Hearing Loss
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Being great at your job is important—but being recognized for your value is just as important.
Many professionals with hearing loss are high performers who consistently deliver strong results, meet expectations, and make meaningful contributions. Yet performance alone doesn’t always translate into greater visibility, career advancement, or leadership opportunities.
Reduced access to informal conversations, challenges in group settings, and misunderstandings about communication styles can create a visibility gap— and impact how individuals are perceived in the workplace.
In this webinar, we’ll explore how professionals with hearing loss can move beyond performance and intentionally shape their personal brand to support career growth, leadership readiness, and increased visibility.
Beyond Performance: Building a Personal Brand with Hearing Loss will explore:
- What is a personal brand? Understanding what it means and why it matters for career growth.
- The visibility gap: How hearing loss can affect access, visibility, and perceptions in the workplace.
- Making your value visible: Strategies for communicating your strengths, accomplishments, and expertise.
- Authenticity, disclosure, and self-advocacy: Finding approaches that feel right for you while building confidence and credibility.
Whether you’re looking to advance in your current career, step into a leadership role, or simply increase your visibility at work, this conversation will offer practical insights and strategies to help you move beyond simply doing great work—and make sure your value is seen.
Panelists: Ibrahim Dabo, Lisa Yaun, Ryan Walters, and Theo Shomsky
Moderator: Tori Carapello
See panelist information below. This complimentary online event is open to the public, live captioned and recorded. Register at the red link above today!
Panelists:
Ibrahim “Ib” Dabo
Ib Dabo is a leadership and resilience coach, keynote speaker, and advocate dedicated to empowering individuals to rise above challenges, embrace authentic leadership, and break through barriers for personal and professional transformation. His journey—from being a refugee to navigating hearing loss and leading global teams—gives him a unique and powerful perspective. A former international journalist and Board Member for the Hearing Loss Association of America, Ib currently serves as a Commissioner for the Georgia Commission for the Deaf or Hard of Hearing. He is committed to fostering inclusivity and advocating for individuals with hearing loss. His career spans journalism, communications, IT, and public service, where he has led global teams through crises and driven meaningful change. Through transformative coaching and strategic guidance, Ib helps leaders develop the clarity, resilience, and confidence to inspire teams, navigate challenges, and create lasting impact. His mission is to equip leaders with the mindset and tools to lead authentically and leave a meaningful legacy.
Lisa Yaun
Lisa Yuan has been actively involved with HLAA for 20 years, serving in leadership roles with the Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County, Maryland chapters. In 2022, she joined the HLAA Task Force for Accessible, Inclusive Employment. Lisa has a master’s degree in Assistive Technology & Human Services and completed HLAA’s Network of Consumer Hearing Assistive Technology Trainers (NCHATT) program and Gallaudet University’s Peer Mentoring program for people with hearing loss. Since July 2025, she has worked at Mayo Clinic as a senior communications specialist, after nearly eight years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in public health communications roles. Prior to NIH, she spent 25 years in entertainment advertising as a production artist in Los Angeles. She has had hearing loss since age 20 and uses a cochlear implant and hearing aid.
Ryan Walters
Ryan Walters is a finance strategist advising CFOs and CIOs in the middle-market, and a bilateral cochlear implant user following a 2012 injury that caused profound hearing loss. His personal experience navigating hearing loss in high-stakes professional environments led him to become an accessibility advocate. Ryan helped launch Deloitte’s accessibility ERG and accessibility-focused client services and continues his advocacy today through board roles and speaking engagements centered on inclusion and access.
Theo Shomsky
Theo Shomsky identifies as an individual living and working with hearing loss. His experience with the challenges of navigating the workplace with a disability led him to pivot his career path from sales and service to accessibility technology. He is now an enterprise digital accessibility technologist and Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC). He utilizes his personal and professional experience with accessibility to help create a more inclusive environment that allows those who live with disabilities, to bring their whole self to work and become the best version of themselves. He is an active member of the HLAA Workplace Employment Task Force leadership team, is actively involved in his workplace employee business resource group that advocates for those impacted by disabilities and a crew member of Mission Astro Access, a nonprofit focused on disability inclusion in space.
Moderator:
Tori Carapello
Tori is the founder of Hear 4 Hope, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting individuals living with hearing loss. She is a member of HLAA’s Board of Directors and serves on the HLAA Employment Task Force, is involved in building and supporting HLAA community efforts in Hawaii, and serves on the HLAA–Los Angeles Steering Committee. Tori experienced sudden hearing loss in 2021 and is a unilateral cochlear implant user. She brings both lived experience and advocacy to her work, with a focus on expanding access, opportunity, and inclusion for people with hearing loss.
Helpful Tips
- Zoom. The webinar will be held on Zoom. After registering, the Zoom meeting link will be emailed to you. Please save your email and make sure to check your spam or junk folder if you have not received the meeting link.
- Use a computer. If possible, attend the webinar on a computer rather than via a smart phone or iPad. This will give you the best layout to view the captions, as well as other meeting features.
- Install or update Zoom. Make sure you have Zoom installed.
- Captions. All HLAA webinars are free with live captions available.
- Check your time zone. This meeting will take place live at 2 p.m. Eastern. If you are in a different time zone, please adjust the time so you do not miss the meeting.
NOTE: HLAA does not offer Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for participation in our webinars.
Questions? Feel free to email us at webinars@hearingloss.org.
