We have three experts joining us today. They are Sylvia Stinson-Perez, Kendra Farrow, and Stephanie Jensen. Here is a snapshot of their experience.

Sylvia Stinson-Perez is the new director of the OIB-TAC. She has been in the field of vision impairment and blindness for almost 20 years, including working as the Executive Director of the Lighthouse for the Visually Impaired and Blind (Port Richey, Florida) for 10 years (2008-2018). She has a Masters degree in Social Work, M.Ed in Visual Disabilities, and an MBA. She is also a Certified Vision Rehab Therapist. She has worked in direct service, program management, and administration. Sylvia is also visually impaired.

Kendra Farrow is a certified vision rehabilitation therapist. After completing her degree at Western Michigan, she worked for 14 years in direct service. In 2014 she joined the team at the National Research and training center (NRTC) on blindness and low vision at Mississippi State University. In this role, Kendra designs and conducts training activities, develops plain language summaries for the web site, is an integral member of the older blind technical assistance and training team, and leads several older blind program evaluation projects. Kendra’s personal experiences in working with a multi-disciplinary model have convinced her of the importance of providing quantifiable evidence for the results of services provided to individuals who are blind or vision impaired. She strives to promote best practice, contribute to the literature, and validate tools that will benefit direct service staff and their consumers.

Stephanie Jensen is the OIB program manager from Wyoming. As a state that contracts their Older Blind Independent living services she has been involved in contracting and contract monitoring for the past several years. Stephanie will be our moderator for today’s live forum.