Paula Rosenthal, J.D. is the founder of HearingExchange.com. She is married and has three children. Paula has worn hearing aids since she was three years old and has a progressive hearing loss. Despite her profound hearing loss, Paula was a borderline candidate for a cochlear implant and received a Nucleus® 24 Contour device in July 2002. Her implant was activated on August 8, 2002. The cochlear implant has enriched Paula’s life in ways she had only dreamed of. To learn how Paula is doing with her cochlear implant, read her online journal here.

Paula communicates orally and attended mainstream education programs. She graduated from Emory University with a B.A. in Political Science and received her law degree from Pace University School of Law. At Pace, she received the Barbara Klein Memorial Award for overcoming adversity to achieve academic excellence with courage and dignity. 
 
An entrepreneur, Paula has worked in the areas of research, writing, public relations, sales and marketing in a variety of businesses. Currently, she enjoys her public speaking career and has spoken to many organizations and groups nationwide about her experiences as both a person with hearing loss and as a parent of a child with a hearing impairment.

Paula’s syndicated articles have appeared in numerous print and online publications including Alexander Graham Bell Association’s Voices, Deafness Research Foundation’s website, About.com’s Deafness, Pediatric and Parenting Special Needs sites. Her articles have been reproduced and used as handouts at schools, hospitals and workshops.

In 2006, she and her daughter were featured in the DVD, “Back to the Hearing World,” directed by Academy Award® nominee Josh Aronson and produced by Cochlear Americas. It has been translated into Spanish, French and Portuguese. In addition, Paula has been interviewed for Scienceline and Lexus Magazine as well as several other publications. 
 
As a mother of one daughter with hearing loss and two sons with normal hearing, Paula has faced new challenges in her experience with deafness. Born prior to universal hearing screening, Paula's eldest child was not diagnosed with her hearing loss until she was nearly two years old. Dissatisfied with the selection of local educational programs, Paula and her children joined the many families in the United States who relocate each year for higher quality special education programs and services.  
 
Her child was enrolled at the Moog Center for Deaf Education, an oral program in St. Louis, Missouri. The innovative and intensive program at the Moog Center is designed to reduce the significant speech, language and academic delays many children with hearing loss have and prepare them for a mainstream education. It has become an award-winning, model school and curriculum for several oral education schools around the U.S. as well as internationally.

Paula's daughter attended two preschool years at the Moog Center and "graduated" after her kindergarten year. During kindergarten, her daughter's language skills rose to the level of her same age peers with normal hearing and her academic skills in math and reading were at the first and second grade levels respectively. In September 2002 she was enrolled in first grade in her home school district in New York.

Like Paula's, her daughter's hearing loss is progressive and in April 2002, just prior to mainstreaming, her daughter received a Nucleus 24 Contour cochlear implant. In December 2006 she became a bilateral cochlear implant recipient and currently wears 2 Nucleus® Freedom processors.  
 
Firmly believing in the necessity of early access to accurate information on hearing loss, Paula founded HearingExchange in September 2000. HearingExchange is a supportive community for people with hearing loss, parents of deaf and hard of hearing children and professionals who work with them. It provides an open forum for the discussion of ideas and information on hearing loss and related issues. The comprehensive site includes current news, articles, resources, forums, chats, newsletters and much more. All communication methods and choices should be respected within all areas of HearingExchange. 
 
HearingExchange reserves the right to edit or omit inflammatory or derogative posts or comments that are not respectful of the choices of others.

We welcome your comments and suggestions. Write to us at info@hearingexchange.com. Our community has so much to offer and continues to grow because of the participation of its members.