2024 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 17-19, 2024 • Denver, CO
Award Winner/Nominee Details 2024
Sherri Nighbert
What goes on behind the scenes to move the needle for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children to reach their potential of listening and spoken language with grade level literacy is something most people don't know about.
Sherri Nighbert has been and continues to be a pint-sized powerhouse and a tireless advocate for children who are DHH across the state. While the motivation for her work is personal, because she has a daughter with hearing loss, her work quickly progressed into the professional realm. She created a parent navigation program from scratch and ran a pilot program at the hospital in Atlanta that caters to very low-income families. She worked tirelessly to help individual families move through a very complicated system to help their children reach their full potential. She would follow up with a family when the baby referred on the newborn screening at the hospital. She would help them make the follow up appointment and if they were not able to get to the appointment, she would pay for the uber drive to pick them up and take them back home. If they referred again, she would follow up again and make sure they made it to the next appointment for a diagnosis then for the fitting of hearing aid and make sure they got into an intervention program. The success of this was so incredible that she was able to get the mobile audiology program under the Department of Education to adopt this practice for all children in the state. This is now a statewide program with 5 parent navigators.
Sherri serves on several state committees including the EDHI advisory board to help move the needle for children who are DHH in Georgia. She is relentless in her pursuit for better outcomes for these children and spends every waking hour fighting for children who are unable to advocate for themselves. She has an innate ability to connect with families when other professionals are unsuccessful. When needed, she pays for the Uber driver when families don't have a ride or giving them a pep-talk before therapy or even a “come-to-Jesus” meeting when they are in denial, she follows ups on their appointments and helps guide them in where they need to go. On top of all of that, she runs the Jason Cunningham Foundation which helps provide wrap-around services, hearing aids, and scholarships for therapy sessions.
She is a force in our community that we all need by our side. She has an unwavering commitment to serve families zealously and the ability to get families to believe in themselves and teaches the family how to be successful.