Alumna speaks on being deaf in corporate world

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Pamela Siebert, a software engineer at IBM and an RIT/NTID graduate, will speak at RIT on April 25 as part of the Lyon Memorial Lectureship Series.

As a deaf person working in the corporate world, Pamela Siebert believes in the power of persistence and networking—both of which she attributes to helping her land a software engineering job at one of the world’s largest technology and consulting companies.

She will share her insight when she returns to Rochester Institute of Technology as the featured speaker for The Edmund Lyon Memorial Lectureship Series.

Siebert, a software engineer for IBM and a National Technical Institute for the Deaf graduate, will present “Be Your Own Advocate as a Deaf person in the Corporate World” at 7 p.m. April 25 in CSD Student Development Center, room 1300, Lyndon Baines Johnson Hall. A question-and-answer session follows the free presentation, which will be delivered in American Sign Language. Interpreting services have been requested.

Siebert, who was born to deaf parents and raised in St. Paul, Minn., will discuss her background and career path, how she adapts to continuously evolving technology, and how she works with many different people all over the world. She graduated from RIT in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in information technology from the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and earned her master’s degree in software development and management from RIT. She volunteers for the Kansas Association for the Deaf board and was Miss Deaf Kansas from 2005 to 2007.

The purpose of the Lyon Memorial Lectureship Series, established in 1980, is to bring distinguished speakers to RIT/NTID to share expertise and scholarly contributions that stand on the cutting edge of advancement in the education and career success of deaf persons. Edmund Lyon (1855-1920) was a noted manufacturer, inventor, humanitarian and philanthropist in Rochester, who served as a trustee of both RIT and the Rochester School for the Deaf.

For more information about the Lyon Memorial Lecture Series, email Karen Beiter at kjbndp@rit.edu.