185: Haben Girma - The First Deafblind Harvard Law Graduate, Champion Of Change
The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
Ryan Hawk
4.9 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2017
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 185: Haben Girma - The First Deafblind Harvard Law Graduate, Champion Of Change
An internationally acclaimed accessibility leader, Haben Girma has earned recognition as a White House "Champion of Change", Forbes 30 under 30 leader, and BBC Women of Africa Hero. The first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School, Haben champions equal access to information for people with disabilities. She has been honored by President Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, and many others.
People with disabilities represent the largest minority group, numbering one billion worldwide. Reaching a group of this scale creates value for everyone. Organizations that prioritize accessibility benefit by gaining access to a much larger user base, improving the experience for both disabled and non-disabled users, and facilitating further innovation.
Watch Haben teach 4,000 developers the connection between Disability & Innovation at Apple's 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference.
Haben has been featured extensively in media round the world, including the BBC, CBS, Forbes, the Washington Post, MTV, NPR, and many more.
Haben grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where she currently lives. She holds a B.A. in Sociology/Anthropology from Lewis & Clark College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. In addition to her accessibility work, she enjoys salsa dancing, surfing, and traveling the world.
Episode 185: Haben Girma - The First Deafblind Harvard Law Graduate, Champion Of Change
Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher Radio
The Learning Leader Show
"Excellent leaders are honest about their strengths and weaknesses."
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
- Common themes to sustain excellence:
- Honest about strengths and weaknesses
- Great problem solvers
- High level of self-awareness
- Haben is Deafblind - she understands her strengths and weaknesses very well
- Her TED Talk - Advocating for others -- How and why she champions equal access to information for people with disabilities
- Communicating and hugging President Barack Obama
- How she communicates -- The use of braille. For our talk on this podcast, she had an interpreter listen to what I said and then type it out for her to read in braille
- What are the best ways to communicate with people who are deaf -- Haben helps me understand
- Why you should never tell her that her story inspires you
- How chocolate cake played a role in her becoming an advocacy attorney
- What advice given to others who want to go into advocacy? Start with yourself. Maybe there is a gender bias, religious, or racial. Build up from there...
- Haben describes how she experiences movies
- The best piece of advice she's received: Don't insist on doing something by yourself. Ask for help. Work smart. Sometimes it's better to be helped by others
- What she hopes people learn from her speeches? That she continually adds value to others
- Haben's thoughts on Helen Keller - She's brilliant
- Haben's brother is also Deafblind -- He works in technology
- How she actively makes a choice to ignore fear
- Why Uber denied her a ride 3 times and what happened
- Her Goals: Change our culture -- Disability adds value... Trainings & Workshops
Continue Learning:
- Go to Haben's website: habengirma.com
- Follow Haben on Twitter: @HabenGirma
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community
- To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12
You may also like these episodes:
Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon
Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL
Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions
Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why
Did you enjoy the podcast?
If you enjoyed hearing Haben Girma on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me.
Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell
The Learning Leader Show is supported by FreshBooks: FreshBooks is offering a 30 day, unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to FreshBooks.com/Learning and enter LEARNING LEADER in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:20.6 | What we, in terms of everyone being included and equal in value. So I try to move away from hierarchies, I try to move away from the word inspiration, which tends to carry pity. |
| 0:27.8 | Sometimes it's used as a disguise for saying, thank goodness I don't have your problems. I'm going to feel more grateful for my life because I don't have problems as horrible as yours. |
| 0:33.0 | That that's that perpetuates negative hierarchies. |
| 0:38.0 | Our leaders born or are they made. |
| 0:40.0 | Our host Ryan Hawk believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. |
| 0:50.0 | Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to the Learning Leader |
| 0:54.7 | Show with Ryan Hawk. |
| 0:57.0 | Pumped for our new sponsor this year it's Fresh Books. The working world has |
| 1:08.6 | changed with the growth of the internet there's never been more |
| 1:11.3 | opportunities for the self-employed. |
| 1:13.2 | To meet this end, Fresh Books is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their |
| 1:18.0 | cloud accounting software. |
| 1:19.4 | It's been redesigned from the ground up and custom built for exactly the way you work. |
| 1:24.7 | Get ready for the simplest way to be more productive, organized, and most importantly get paid |
| 1:29.9 | quickly. The all new Fresh Books is not only easy to use it's also packed full of powerful |
| 1:35.2 | features like create and send professional looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. |
| 1:42.0 | Set up online payments with just a couple of clicks |
| 1:44.7 | and get paid up to four days faster |
| 1:46.6 | and see when your client has seen your invoice |
| 1:49.0 | and put an end to the guessing games. |
| 1:50.9 | Fresh Books is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to my |
| 1:55.3 | listeners to claim it just go to Fresh Books.com slash learning and enter |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ryan Hawk, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Ryan Hawk and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.