Bio

Ms. Stringer is the founder and executive director of the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss. Her humanitarian efforts have served over 1,000 children with hearing loss and their families living in Vietnam.

Paige was born with bilateral profound hearing loss and has worn hearing aids throughout her life. Early identification and intervention enabled her listening and spoken language development. She was educated in mainstream classes throughout her academic years. She earned a tennis scholarship to the University of Washington. As a member of the U.S. Deaf Olympic tennis team, she competed in the World Games for the Deaf in Bulgaria in 1993 and in Denmark in 1997. She earned a BSc degree in environmental management at University of Washington and an MA degree in marketing at University of San Francisco. She held management positions at the Clorox Company and Amazon.com. She served as vice president of the board, and later as communications director, at Listen and Talk, a program for children with hearing loss in Seattle. Paige currently serves on the board of Rotarians for Hearing and is cochair of the Education Committee of the Coalition for Global Hearing Health.

During a volunteer placement in Southeast Asia, Ms. Stringer noted the universal shortage of resources for children with hearing loss. Accordingly, she stepped aside from her successful business career to establish the nonprofit Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss in 2009. The charitable organization provides leadership and vision in core focus areas of professional and family training, hearing aid distribution, outreach, and strategic planning in the provision of hearing services to children with hearing impairment in developing countries.

Paige has developed a unique model in Vietnam that spans audiology, early intervention, speech language pathology, and auditory-verbal deaf education for audiology technicians, medical professionals, teachers, therapists, and families. The objective is to help the Vietnamese identify and address gaps in the system of support for children with hearing loss. The effort involves 38 schools and two hospitals across 22 Vietnam provinces. Vietnamese professionals are enrolled in a comprehensive, multiyear curriculum to develop expertise and then are prepared to train others, making the effort exponential and sustainable. Paige has recruited a team of 40 audiologists, speech pathologists, and teachers of the deaf from Canada, Hong Kong, and the United States who contribute to the curricula development and travel to Vietnam throughout the year to teach the material. The Global Foundation has trained over 300 professionals and 220 families since 2010. Hundreds of hearing aids have been provided to young children. Ms. Stringer has developed relationships with the educational and medical communities across Vietnam that have garnered shared accountability to improve services to children with hearing loss.

Over 1,000 children who, like Paige Stringer, have severe hearing loss have benefited from her unswerving efforts to bring education, assistive technologies, and professional support into their lives. Further, her efforts have helped ensure that future children with hearing loss in Vietnam will benefit from services established through the Global Foundation. Her programs serve as a model for integrated support across audiology, education, and health care for hearing impaired children in developing countries. Her numerous contributions to improve the welfare of children with hearing loss make her an ideal recipient of this award.