ACSD Presidential Award

On March 28th 2026, I was honored with a Presidential Award from Atlantic County Society of the Deaf, an organization that I’ve been proud to be a member & on the board for.

I should preface that in the last couple years, I’ve made some big strides for them, which wouldn’t have been possible without their trust in handing me the keys to our entire IT infrastructure and technical operations.

As their technical admin, I’ve spearheaded projects such as creating our own Member ID card system, built their website, created some fairly involved automation workflows to streamline our operations to lessen the burden on our volunteers, revamped internal documentation, and many more. I also built a new DINGO app to replace their aging software, which ended up being picked up by several other orgs in the nation.

In the Deaf community, these kinds of contributions can feel invisible to some - especially in our larger demographic of not-so-technical senior folks, but the board recognized the improvements that surfaced within the organization. It also translated to very positive results for all of the events we host, saving a lot of time by cutting out manual labor (one example being tearing off tickets for 50/50s or door prizes during admission) by digitizing the entire process and saving money.

Even with all of the work I’ve dedicated to the organization, I truly did not expect much because it felt nice to be able to fill in such a technical void with the skills I already had - which helps out a lot of Deaf people in the process in some ways. It costs nothing to be kind and this type of volunteer work can be expensive in terms of time investment, but it’s a lasting investment regardless.

For that reason, they elected to give me the Presidential Award, and I am thankful for their recognition.

A close-up of the ACSD Presidential Award

I’m not one to enjoy putting myself on a pedestal or seek validation, but I wanted to write about this to remind people that whether a reward may be in it for you or not, it is always worthy of your own time if you can find a community that resonates with you and you contribute back to it.

It could lead to some pretty great things and perhaps some amazing results - you never know.

Cheers.