Rachel Kolb: Navigating Deafness in a Hearing World

In the United States, two-thirds of hearing-impaired people do not complete High School. In this talk, Rhodes Scholar Rachel Kolb who was born deaf shows what is possible through family support and self-belief, and proves that what is assumed about you and what you can actually achieve don’t always match up.

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ABOUT Rachel Kolb

Rachel Kolb is a native of Albuquerque, N.M. She sees effective communication as essential to ideas, creativity and progress. As someone who was born profoundly deaf but spends virtually all of her time in a mainstream environment. She has had to come to terms with the feeling of being in between worlds or categories.

Rachel still uses sign language in certain situations as well as interpreters in the academic setting. While she values its visual richness and cultural significance she rarely participates in the larger Deaf community. However, she is clearly not a hearing person, either.

In the summer of 2010, Rachel got an Advanced Bionics cochlear implant, this has allowed her to explore her in-betweenness world. She aspires to be a writer, scholar and public disability advocate. She was named an American Rhodes Scholar in November 2012 and will pursue an MSc in contemporary literature at Oxford.

Rachel received a BA with Honours in English from Stanford and graduated in June 2013 with a co-terminal Master’s Degree in English. While at Stanford she was active in the Stanford Equestrian Team, Leland Quarterly, Stanford Daily and Stanford Power to ACT.

The VIDEO