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Keitha Boardman

Operations Manager and Chair of the Diversity/Inclusivity Committee

Diversity has been with me all my life; inclusivity is something I am still learning about. I am an adult hearing child of Deaf parents who had to use Sign Language to communicate with her parents. My first language is American Sign Language and my second language is English. I am in my sixties now so when I went to school, I didn’t have the benefit of educators normalizing my bilingualism and knowing about its impact on my learning process. Growing up, I was embarrassed because my parents had to use their hands to communicate and I thought I was not smart because the other kids seemed to know what those English words meant and I didn’t. Of course, what I didn’t know and what no one told me was that I did know those words; I just didn’t know the English labels. I only knew the sign labels.

So, here I am today a member of EFR’s Diversity/Inclusivity Committee. It is my mission to seek out as many diversity issues as I can and explore how to expand inclusivity. It is more than just learning to be tolerant; it’s about embracing diversity and making my world bigger.

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