Sophia Boccard and her partner Socrates.
By Yishane Lee
With Thanksgiving here, we’re feeling especially grateful. Thank you for being part of our Hearing Health Foundation community. All of us—researchers, Board of Directors, scientific advisers, and staff—truly appreciate your partnership in advancing hearing health.
Please click here to watch our special thank you video from board member Sophia Boccard. Sophia has shared her journey about raising a family while living with Usher syndrome, a rare genetic condition leading to combined hearing and vision loss, and speaks for all of us in expressing gratitude for our community’s support of science.
Rachel N. Levin, Ph.D., and her hearing dog Locket.
During a family trip to California this summer I was fortunate enough to meet several members of our community, including two contributors to the Fall 2025 issue of our magazine. Rachel N. Levin, Ph.D., shared a story about her journey with hearing loss that includes balance issues, and is a professor emerita at Pomona College. We spent an enjoyable several hours talking about her research, her (very patient) hearing dog Locket, and so much more at Harvey Mudd College, which is part of the same group of Claremont Colleges.
We have had amazing responses to Rachel’s story. One reader wrote to her, “Congratulations on your wonderful personal story published by Hearing Health Foundation. You beautifully describe your personal journey and provide a great way for hearing folks to better understand deaf experience.”
Another was so moved by her story that she called us to ask for extra copies of the magazine to share with her church group in Pennsylvania. We are gratified to be able to share her story, which if you missed it, you can find here.
Tremmel Watson and family.
I was also thrilled to meet our Fall cover story author Tremmel Watson along with his family in Sacramento. I saw firsthand how he uses AI captioning technology, Caption Companion, to communicate in a group setting. In the same issue Tremmel coauthored a story with Chelle Wyatt on the benefits of captioning, as access isn’t one size fits all. (I realize that the steep price tag for Tremmel’s preferred method of captioning likely makes it out of reach for many, so here is a link to a blog post on captioning options from friend of HHF Katherine Bouton, which includes many apps that have free basic programs.)
Stefan Heller’s lab at Stanford.
My family and I also toured the Stanford University lab of our Hearing Restoration Project member Stefan Heller, Ph.D. (who is also a former Emerging Research Grants scientist). Special thanks to Ayse, a postdoc in his lab, for showing us around!
Finally we wanted to give a shoutout to another California-based friend of HHF, our motion graphics creator Ben Radatz, who created our “Listen Up People” and “Love Your Ears” broadcast TV PSAs for our Keep Listening prevention campaign. I was able to meet up with him and family in San Diego over a fun barbecue lunch.
With Ben Radatz and family in San Diego.
Ben’s super creative work continues to raise awareness of the risks to hearing from listening too loud and/or too long, and we’re so grateful for our partnership. (And special thanks to Helen Garrett and Steven Lawrence for finding him; see the full list of credits on the YouTube links above.)
So, as we head into Thanksgiving, we are so grateful for our community. Please know that your support makes it possible for us to continue our work to prevent, research, and find better treatments and cures for hearing loss, tinnitus, and related hearing and balance conditions. We are truly grateful. Thank you!
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With Thanksgiving here, we’re feeling especially grateful. Thank you, truly, for being part of our Hearing Health Foundation community, some of whom I was fortunate enough to meet over the summer and fall.