We hired Tricia because she was exceptionally good. We’ve worked with a lot of designers before, but her talent and skills were different – she saw things differently, had more focus, and had great work ethic. With Tricia on board, we are able to roll out and realize the vision of our projects much faster. Everyone had to adjust to Tricia and not the other way around. Hand and Heart helped the team communicate with Tricia better which also made the team become more aware of making sure she is included in everything - in meetings, company gatherings, or training. While companies take for granted the deaf and don't include them in their hiring process or structure, we believe they are not just missing out on skill and talent, but also on creating a kinder company culture.

- Mel Nava, President 1Export

We are a family business with several companies on one roof. Our Deaf employee started out as an office assistant for my company. She was very diligent and took note of every single instruction not wanting to get anything wrong. Later on, my mom discovered her, found her dependable, trustworthy and would always look for her for very important errands. Berna never complained about anything asked of her. She did not mind being pulled to help out in other departments and companies in times of urgency and lack of manpower. Today, with more departments and other companies discovering her, she’s been in demand in the sense that my aunt, my mom, my sister and other employees would always look for her to fill in crucial tasks. My mom now says to train her for a higher position.

- Elyse Go, PG&S Group of Companies

Jamie is very serious in terms of focus on what she does and it paid off really well with her performance where she got a perfect score last month, not to mention that she's now a regular employee. While the struggle to keep up with the hearing ones is still there, she is thriving to be more independent and takes the challenge as a learning process-one day at a time. She also gets pretty well with her teammates and has her fair share of funny moments with them. While communicating with her is a quite a challenge, it did not stop her from reaching out for help and express her thoughts and feelings towards work and her teammates. Having deaf agents in my team is really challenging and rewarding at the same time

- Ash Asis,

Hiring a Deaf employee must be one of the best things the team has decided to do. When it came to hiring, we never thought of the limitation of a person, what matters for us the most is the capacity to do their job, and have the heart for it, and willingness to learn. Tricia is our first hire who is Deaf and has been able to teach the team more things than we could have imagined. We were able to be more diverse and aware of the challenges they face when it came to looking for a job and overall, how tough life can be for them, since they don't get equal opportunities as we do. Tricia was more than able to go beyond our expectations when it came to work, and she only raised the bar higher and could never have or wish for anyone better.

- Marco Jose Ladios, Product and Innovations Lead 1Export