After a short hiatus, NIB’s Heard & Empowered podcast is back with a new host, Dean Thompson, who has an extensive background in television and radio.
Thompson has been an interviewer and producer for the majority of his adult life. He moved to New York from Cincinnati after graduate school and has worked for ABC News, Joko Films (John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s personal film company), and CBS News. For the past several decades, he has run his own production company in New York City.His connection to NIB goes back 15 years, when he first met Marianne Haegeli – director of learning and leadership at NSITE, NIB’s talent management enterprise – who then worked at Booz Allen.
Thompson said meeting Marianne resulted in a life-long friendship. “We’ve worked together on and off over the past 10 years, and she brought me in to advise and be a key presenter for NSITE’s Entrepreneurial Initiatives Program.”
Haegeli called Thompson “an integral part of the program.”
“He has been not only a regular presenter, but has functioned as a mentor to participants, made connections to relevant potential business contacts, and has made himself available for business plan reviews and practicing sales pitches,” she said.
As the host of Heard & Empowered, Thompson talks with guests who have either helped facilitate career readiness for others or have navigated sometimes challenging paths to build a career they’re passionate about, as well as pin-pointing the tools they utilized – whether it’s taking advice from a mentor, completing NSITE programs and trainings to expand their skill set, or both – to attain success.
It was losing his vision as a teenager that, ironically, led Thompson to a career in film and television. “I lost most of my vision at age 14, well before Cincinnati doctors knew much at all about inherited retinal vision loss, let alone my condition, Stargardt’s. In fact, I went 10 years before I was ‘officially’ diagnosed at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York,” he said. “As a result, I spent roughly a quarter of my life ignoring or denying that I have roughly 4% usable vision.”
After learning in high school how to live as a person with greatly reduced vision, Thompson went to college to study radio.
“I felt a career in radio would work well for a glib, mildly funny person who is blind,” he said. “Then, in my senior year, the University of Cincinnati built a TV studio, and I discovered that ‘radio with pictures’ was even more fun.”
The college TV studio helped him learn the basics, but it also offered far more than that: opportunity.“No one sat me down and advised me that a career in the visual arts might not be the wisest marketing move for someone with my condition,” Thompson said. After college graduation, he moved to New York City, where public transportation allowed him to navigate without a car, and there he thrived.
Thompson has worked in TV, mostly producing, directing, and interviewing. “Television,” he said, “like most industries, is a team sport. This is a point I continue to stress with anyone I meet who has a visual issue, regardless of what career path they want to take.”
He reflected that, “Like so many with vision loss, I spent, at first, a lot of my time avoiding the ‘blind’ community. That has changed in the past 20 years. Now, hosting Heard & Empowered, I look forward to talking with all kinds of folks who’ve overcome vision loss and other obstacles. I have always loved hearing others’ stories, and I especially relish interviewing, so this experience has been amazing.”
Listen to Heard & Empowered wherever you get your podcasts, or visit HeardandEmpowered.org