Alex, who is profoundly deaf in both ears and wears digital hearing aids, attended Clarke’s preschool and elementary school programs in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “Clarke has been a big influence in shaping my deaf experience as a youth, and it was a great place for me to take speech therapy,” he recalls. “I have fond memories of my time at the school and am grateful for all the speech therapists who made it a positive experience for me.”

At the age of 10, with the support of an oral interpreter (now called an oral transliterator), Alex transitioned to a local mainstream elementary school, continuing his mainstream academics through high school. After high school, Alex attended Northeastern University in Boston. With support from American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters, he graduated with a BS in civil/environmental engineering and a minor in environmental science. In 2014, he completed his MS in environmental engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Alex has enjoyed the past decade as a project manager with the Coast Guard Research and Development Center in New London, Connecticut.  “I’m mostly involved with oil spill response research, and work with other federal agencies as well as private organizations to improve our spill response technologies or strategies,” says Alex.