The University of Arizona Alumnus / Winter 2010
Eyes Wide Open
M.B.A. student Alex Lynch uses his gift of deafness to find alternative ways to listen in businessby Renée Schafer Horton
Jacob Chinn photos
Alex Lynch spent his childhood as a “business brat,” the trajectory of his father’s management jobs pulling the family from state to state as he climbed the corporate ladder. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that the 28-year-old is pursuing an M.B.A. at the University of Arizona Eller College of Management; business appears to be in his genes.
Neither might it seem unusual that a young man whose childhood required making new friends every few years now serves as the social chair for the MBA Student Association. After all, each family move required more extroversion.
And his upcoming exchange to the Vienna University of Economics and Business and the two courses he teaches in the College of Humanities could probably be chalked up to the overachiever DNA common among business-school graduate students.
Except Lynch isn’t your standard-issue MBA student: He’s deaf, which makes his goals and accomplishments a little more impressive. But you won’t find Lynch seeking recognition for the extra hurdles he’s crossed in life’s journey.
“I don’t feel deafness is a burden,” Lynch says, his American Sign Language translated by an interpreter from the UA Disability Resource Center (DRC). “For others, maybe it is. People seem afraid to try to talk to me sometimes. But I view it as a gift because it has helped me to do things differently. I use my eyes more, so I’m a lot more observant of people’s body language, which is important in the business world. I’m part of a different culture — the deaf culture — and that makes me more open-minded to other cultures. Everybody’s hearing, OK, but when I show up, there’s a deaf person, and I’m memorable. People remember me — ‘Oh, you know, the tall, deaf guy.’ I think I have the best of both worlds.”
That positive attitude in the face of what many might consider overwhelming challenges makes Lynch stand out as a person of possibilities.
“Alex is so remarkable as a human being that I hesitate to describe him in terms of his deafness,” says Barry Goldman, an associate professor in the Eller Department of Management and Organizations. “He’s got a lot of energy, a positive affect, and he’s high on emotional intelligence. His positive mood is infectious and his refusal to be held back is a great example to everyone that so much of success in life is a reflection of your attitude. He’s just a great student, a great person.”
The challenge of succeeding in one of the world’s top-ranked M.B.A. programs while not being able to hear or speak aloud is made decidedly easier with aid from the UA DRC, Lynch says.
“One of the main reasons I chose Eller is because of the DRC,” he says. “I have a friend who works at Dartmouth, and I looked into applying there because they have a great business school. But they had recently laid off all their interpreters, so it wouldn’t be possible for me. A lot of the universities I looked into were laying off interpreters to deal with budget cuts. Here, they have five full-time staff interpreters with a great coordinator, so they could meet my expectations.”
Those expectations include providing sign-language interpreters for 20 to 30 Eller-sponsored events or classes Lynch attends each week, as well as Computer Assisted Realtime Translation (CART) for especially difficult courses.
Additionally, a DRC interpreter will accompany Lynch when he travels with his classmates to Chile and Brazil in January as part of Eller’s global business perspectives course, and approval for an interpreter for the Austria exchange program is in the works.
Goldman credits the UA administration for the foresight to support students with special needs.
“I have to give the university credit, because in this time of budget cutbacks it is easy to cut back on aid to people with special challenges,” he says. “But society is better off in the long run if we provide this assistance because we have more highly qualified individuals coming into our schools and out into the workforce.”
Lynch, who graduated magna cum laude from Boston’s Northeastern University with a psychology degree, is the second deaf M.B.A. student in Eller’s history and will be the first deaf student to attend the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Like all Eller students, Lynch already has received local exposure through projects done for businesses that partner with the college to give Eller students hands-on business experience.
One of the projects Lynch completed last spring was helping develop a Web site sustainability business plan for Rangelands West, a service of the Agriculture Network Information Center.
“I knew Alex as part of the group working to research and develop our plan,” says Barbara Hutchinson, director of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Office of International Programs. “They had to do numerous presentations for us, and each team member did part of the presentation. What I noticed is that, at the first presentations, I watched Alex’s interpreters as they translated. And as the presentations went on, I found that Alex was so intensely involved in the process, so clearly in command of the topic, that by the latter presentations I was listening to the translator but I completely focused on Alex signing because it was obvious he was the one who was talking to us.”
Lynch doesn’t sugar-coat his disability and he concedes that, in the eyes of many, he has a strike against him right off the bat.
“Yes, I have to work twice as hard to prove myself,” he says. “I have to make sure I’ve practiced my presentations with interpreters so everything is perfectly smooth. I have to arrange for interpreters, for CART, whatever. It takes more time than a hearing student, sure. But just because I have to do all these things doesn’t mean I give up. It’s harder for me, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
Lynch hopes to work in marketing once he completes his M.B.A., and he has a keen interest in global business branding, which he’s worked on with Raytheon, one of Eller’s community business partners. He sees his time in Austria as a chance to get more comfortable on the international stage and increase his multicultural cachet.
“Before the bad economy, I thought I knew what I wanted to do,” he says. “Now, I’m more of the belief that you don’t necessarily pick your field, your field has to pick you. Life happens, you know, and you never know where it’s going to lead you. When the time comes, I’m going to look at jobs everywhere. Maybe in Austria, something will affect me and change my life course. Who knows? I’m just trying to keep my mind open.”
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