July 18, 2019 - Born in Thailand, Mai Vue and her parents later moved to America in 1980. She has four siblings and is the only Deaf in her Hmong family. After moving to the USA, her family lived in various states, then she settled in Minnesota in 2009. She graduated at American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Connecticut. Then she majored in Administrative Support Technology and graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), in Rochester, New York in 2001. Then she went to Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC) to major with an emphasis in education and graduated in 2014.
Mai currently works at ThinkSelf as a Learner’s Advocate, to serve Deaf adult students who are typically over the age of 21. She is able to communicate with very fluent ASL and homemade signs that accommodates each learner. The students, who Mai assists, are both Deaf American-born and Deaf immigrants from other countries. She ensures that their needs and accommodations are met. Mai empowers them to develop independence and self-advocacy skills. This includes meeting with the students one-on-one as needed or requested.
At ThinkSelf, she educates the Deaf adult students on: Driver’s Education, daily life skills, learner’s self-advocacy, and citizenship. Mai’s position includes ensuring that the learner’s have full access to ThinkSelf’s services until they accomplish their goals successfully. She also supports teachers as needed and gives them each learner’s brief information when new learners enroll in their classes. The average class size is 5 to 15 students.
In her spare time, Mai volunteers as a community advocate. She mentors young adults between the ages of 18-22. She often uses role-playing in various situations as needed. For example, she practices doing mock job interviews with them.
As a Deaf Hmong role model, she is a proud Deaf Hmong-American woman. She strongly encourages the hearing Hmong families to believe in their deaf child. For if they believe in their deaf child and his/her abilities, then a deaf Hmong child will succeed later in the real world! If hearing Hmong families don’t believe in their deaf child or overprotects him or her, then he or she will not succeed as much later in real life, due to one’s lack of self-confidence, self-advocacy, and independence.
Mai is a people person and a fighter for what she strongly believes in. Her strong value is that she loves helping people in need. Additionally, she is passionate about working with various populations of people. Students, immigrants, people of different multicultural backgrounds and experiences. She likes to learn endlessly, collaborate and partner with community resources and agencies. Seeing that a learner’s goals or needs are satisfied with a smile on their faces, shows Mai that her efforts were worth it, which makes her happy.
Mai’s advice to others is to take a free career self-assessment online to narrow down your best skills and abilities. Results from a self-assessment will help you find out what job/career areas fit your skillset the best. If you need to contact a person who has experience in a certain career field, Mai can connect you to someone or community resources that can assist you in the workforce. She also suggests exploring your career interests by being a volunteer at first, then discover which job position best suits your skillset. Another way to prepare entering into the workforce is to develop job skills (job search, resume development, mock job interview, accommodations, etc.), Mai can assist you with hard and soft skills that relate to employment and finding a job.
The #CanDoAnything campaign showcases people who are deaf, deafblind, or hard of hearing at work, giving them an opportunity to share what they do at their jobs and explain how communication access works for them. This campaign shows what our community can do, which is anything!
