Chris Estrin, newly elected NAD Vice President, carries a résumé thick with executive titles—former NAD President (2012-2016), current Chief Experience Officer at ZP Better Together, and board chair at both the Florida School for the Deaf & the Blind and NTID Foundation. Those credentials scream institutional fluency, not grassroots activism.

The red flag? He publicly labeled Tucker Maxon School as a “Deaf school,” when records show it has always been an oral-only program that suppresses ASL. That mislabeling is not a footnote—it is a tell. If the nation’s top Deaf-rights leader can whitewash an oralist institution, we must ask: will he amplify Deaf culture or continue to soften the edges for hearing-dominated boards who prefer “deaf-friendly” over Deaf-led?

Estrin’s track record is boardrooms and fund-raising galas, not picket lines or student walk-outs. His 30-year career maps neatly onto what C. Wright Mills called the “power elite” circuit—rotating chairs among foundations, corporations, and non-profits, trading social capital while the rank-and-file trade stories of language deprivation.

NAD’s own minutes show him seated on the Finance Committee, guarding budgets, not barricades. So before we toast “representation,” let’s interrogate aspiration: Do we want a vice president who mistakes oral schools for Deaf centers, or one who can name the difference—and fight for the latter? Trust must be earned, not assumed. The Deaf community deserves a leader who signs with clarity, not spins with corporate polish.

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   TheLastHiccup

   3 weeks ago

   ReplyTo:   Ridor9th