April’s #NADHandwave goes to Jamie Munro, who can often be found volunteering his time and services at deaf community events in the Rochester, New York area. He states, “Your community is as good as you make it.” The monthly #NADHandwave recognition program is an opportunity for everyone to meet an individual who has contributed greatly to the betterment of the deaf community.
Jamie, who originally hails from Ramsey, NJ, is a proud alumnus of Rochester Institute of Technology/National Technical Institute for the Deaf, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems in 1994. For the past eight years, he has been involved with numerous organizations of, by and for the deaf based in Rochester including but not limited to: Advocacy Services for Abused Deaf Victims (ASADV), Discovering Deaf Worlds (DDW), and the Deaf Rochester Film Festival. He also often participates in local community projects and organizational fundraising activities on a smaller scale.
Jamie has been active with the ASADV organization for the past seven years, including serving as its board president for four years. He recently retired as its Past-President elect. He was instrumental in helping transform the organization from an all-volunteer team to an agency supported with government grant funds.
In November 2013, Jamie was part of a DDW delegation that traveled to the Philippines for three weeks to partake in capacity-building activities with the deaf community there. As a way to ‘give back’ to DDW for this wonderful experience, he is now assisting with DDW’s major fundraising event in April 2014 as its volunteer coordinator.
“Those volunteering experiences gave me connections… which in turn, opened up new opportunities… which has been very rewarding personally,” he said. Jamie also said that he is no different than many of the wonderful volunteers in the Rochester community that give their time to the community many times over.
Professionally, Jamie is an Operations Manager for market research firm Nielsen in the Rochester office, where he manages eight internal project staff and programmers along with working with a programming vendor from India. When not busy working or volunteering, Jamie enjoys spending time with his family, including his wife, Adrianna Smart (also a graduate of RIT/NTID), and three boys, Bryan (student at University of Buffalo), Connor (4), and Trent (2). His hobbies include biking and family road trips.
The NAD thanks you Jamie, for all that you do!