Joining me today is Nancy Parkin-Bashizi. She is a program manager at Vision Rehabilitation Services of Georgia. While being asked about her career, she explains it is similar to a physical therapist or an occupational therapist but to aid blind people to get back to their normal life. When someone’s functional eye condition has decreased, they cannot drive, continue with their job or continue with their daily living the Vision Rehabilitation Specialist steps in and prepares a plan and helps their clients to execute on it.
We talk about the path to becoming a Vision Rehabilitation specialist, what inspired her to choose this career and the educational requirements. We also talked about the demographics of the clientele, the joys and challenges of the job and what she’s learned along the way.
One of the things Nancy and her team does is help people who are vision impaired to figure out what they can do to support themselves and have a meaningful career. The first part of that process to start with a list of what they like to do and what they are most passionate about, then they brainstorm about the things that that they could do with those ideas to make a living. The next step might be to do an informational interview with someone doing the same job to ask more questions and then finally to arrange some volunteer time to see if it’s a fit for their abilities.
This is a great approach for anyone trying to figure out what they might like to do for a career and Nancy encourages anyone considering a career in Vision Rehabilitation to reach out to her or other specialists in their field to explore more.
More about Nancy:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-parkin-bashizi-2065657/
