Hi, I’m Ali.  I live in Indianapolis, IN, with my rescue dog, JD.  My parents are literally next door to me and my brother is a couple hours away in Louisville.  I moved here in 2010 after spending 11 years in beautiful Colorado.  I grew up in Vermillion, South Dakota, and did my undergrad at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Professionally, I’ve been a web developer/graphic designer/database consultant for over 20 years.  I currently work for Blackbaud, an amazing company that provides software and services to nonprofit organizations.  This works well for me, as I have a Master’s in Nonprofit Management from Regis University in Denver.

I’m also a singer and musician, which as you can imagine has led to some interesting times as a mostly deaf person.

I was also recently Board Chair of Hear Indiana for two years, an organization that support individuals and families of children with hearing loss who use spoken language as communication…people like me.  I lost my hearing when I was 25, and was never great at languages, so don’t know ASL, and am completely ingrained in the hearing world.  So for my 40th birthday, I got myself the gift of a hearing evaluation to determine whether I am eligible for a cochlear implant.  This blog is about my experiences with that process.

If you’d like to chat, you can find me on Twitter at @dreamwell_ali or on LinkedIn – I do keep the rest of my social media private, but comments are always welcome here.