Deaf & Blinds Pathway Foundation chooses executive editor

After two decades of being a volunteer-run organization, Deaf & Blind Pathways Foundation has hired its first employee: Executive Director Dee Crowe.

A Morganton native, Crowe brings to the table a perfect blend of what the foundation was looking for: Someone fluent in ASL who has experience in the financial field and the world of nonprofits.

“Imagine finding an opportunity that really hits on all your strengths,” Crowe said, adding that all his previous jobs called upon some but never all of his strengths.

It just felt like it was meant to be, he said.

Crowe said that, unlike other nonprofits he has worked with, there has been no shortage of board involvement and volunteers to carry Deaf & Blind Pathways Foundation forward for the last 20 years. It’s impressive, he said.

“Everyone’s involved,” Crowe said. “But with that involvement comes a lot of ways that things could be done a little bit more efficiently. … (So) I think one of my first things is to harness that volunteer and board energy into a much more efficient and operational machine.”

Deaf & Blind Pathways, formerly known as The NCSD (North Carolina School for the Deaf) Foundation, rebranded in April to make fundraising and public engagement more transparent as it moves forward with expanding Alder Springs.

Alder Springs is an independent living apartment community geared toward the needs of the deaf, blind, deaf-blind, and hard of hearing.

The organization now has a board of directors with nine members and two committees: one for education, and one for housing and managing Alder Springs.

Although it was called the NCSD Foundation and continues to search for ways to financially assist students and staff at the school, the organization operates separately from NCSD.

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The job description for executive director is a perfect intersection of Crowe’s life experiences as a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), with an extensive career in finance followed by a position as operations director at a nonprofit neurodiversity-affirming school.

Crowe has deep ties to NCSD and the local Deaf community going back several generations. His Deaf grandfather and hearing grandmother were employees of the school, and both of his parents are Deaf. Because of that, he considers himself part of or at least adjacent to the Deaf community.

“I feel like I started adulting early in life because I was interpreting when our family was buying a car, or, I was brought into a lot of doctors appointments to do the interpreting for my parents,” Crowe said.

He went on to earn a degree in accounting from Wake Forest University and spent the majority of his career with Cox Communications in the finance department in Arizona and Atlanta. When the company was sold to Spectrum, Crowe took on a job as Director of Operations at The Hirsch Academy in Atlanta.

While he and his wife lived in Arizona, they adopted their daughter. Crowe said she spent four months in the NICU, and when she was released, doctors informed him and his wife that she hadn’t passed her hearing test.

It turned out their daughter was Deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other.

“When I heard that news, it was like … this is serendipitous that she kind of fell into the right hands,” Crowe said.

Crowe has now relocated to the area and is excited to take on the mantle of executive director for Deaf & Blind Pathways Foundation.