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Quintessential Career Profile of Kerri Laman
Having the courage to be at the right place at the right time pays career dividends for blind-from-birth Kerri Laman
by Kerri Laman as told to Katharine Hansen
Kerri Laman has been blind since birth. "I was a premature baby weighing only 1 lb., 7 oz.," says the 25-year-old, who grew up in Colorado. Her earliest ambition was to be a meteorologist. Up until her last year of college at Colorado State University, she wanted to be a teacher "until I figured out I didn't really want to teach kids anymore," she recalls.
Kerri doesn't hesitate when asked who was the single biggest
influence on the direction of her career. "That is easy," she says.
"The biggest influence was my first guide dog, Gina. If I hadn't
traveled to Columbus, OH, and Pilot Dogs [a non-profit organization
that trains dogs in a "seeing-eye" capacity] to receive her, I
wouldn't have discovered I liked this city so much, and wouldn't have
moved here to find a job! So I owe it all to Gina!"
Indeed, after receiving her bachelor's degree in human development and family studies, Kerri decided she did not want to live in Colorado, but instead in Ohio, where she had received all of her guide dogs.
"While in Colorado," Kerri notes, "I had been working with Colorado's Division of Vocational Rehabilitation so they could help me find a job after I was finished with school. They informed me they could not help me find a job in Ohio because they lacked the resources that Ohio rehab would have.
"But Ohio rehab informed me I would have to live in Ohio before they could provide services to me," Kerri says. "So you can see why I was anxious to move to Ohio."
"Moving to Ohio without a job was tricky, though, and luckily I had a friend who said I could move in with her until I found a job," Kerri relates. If Gina the guide dog was Kerri's initial inspiration, her Columbus friend who allowed Kerri to move in with her gave Kerri her luckiest break.
Once she had moved, Kerri began working with "a wonderful vocational rehabilitation counselor" under the Bureau for Services for the Visually Impaired. "She referred me to a small job-training service [Greenleaf JTS, Inc.] that works exclusively with people with disabilities," Kerri recalls. "I became a consumer, and they began working with me to help me look for a job.
"My job developer and I met each week, filling out applications, and following up job leads, with not a whole lot of luck," Kerri says. "Then one day she came in and said, 'How would you like to work for us?' I was ecstatic! Here was my dream job! I would get to not only work with adults, but also build a program from the ground up!"
Kerri does indeed attribute her success to being in the right place at the right time, but also to having the right qualifications and an extremely helpful support team.
She considers moving to Columbus and making it successfully -- "even when people told me I wouldn't be able to do it" -- to be her proudest accomplishment.
In her job as an in-house trainer, Kerri guides consumers through five of eight modules: Occupation Finder, Budgeting, How to Market Yourself, Interviewing Skills, Mock Interviews, Community Resources, Empowerment Training, and How to Locate Jobs. The class runs for three hours five afternoons a week.
Her goal is to get the program publicized throughout the Columbus area and make it as strong a program as it can be. "I would like to see me teaching the maximum number of classes, and I would also like to develop more programs in the future."
What else would she do if she had no obstacles in her way? "I love this job and wouldn't trade it for the world," she says. "But if I could somehow do this job and help the trainers at Pilot Dogs work with the dogs, that would be really cool!"
Kerri says the job is working out extremely well. "My co-workers are great. We laugh, because isn't it ironic that the very people that were supposed to help me look for a job ended up offering me one! That doesn't happen very often!" In fact, it is her terrific working relationship with her colleagues that inspires her advice for young people just starting out in their careers: "You don't know everything the first day you walk in, and you won't know everything even 20 years down the line. Use your co-workers as team members."
To read lots more about Kerri, her figure skating, her guide dogs, how she communicates on the Internet, and more, visit her Web site.
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Quintessential Career Profiles features visitors to Quintessential Careers who have interesting career stories to tell. Did you obtain a job in an unusual way? Has your career path been out of the ordinary? Have you held one or more unusual jobs? Has your job search been especially troublesome, inspirational, or remarkable? We'd like to tell your story. Tell us a little about your career saga, and we may contact you for a full profile. Write us at kathy(at)quintcareers.com and let us know about you.
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