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Meet Your Hearing Navigation Consultants

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“I can do things you cannot. You can do things I cannot. Together we can do great things.” 

--Mother Teresa  

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Cathy Creaser, M.Sc., Aud(C), Reg.NSCASLP

Co-Founder

I'm an audiologist, clinical specialist and business development manager who has almost 25 years of experience providing diagnostic and rehabilitative audiological services, particularly with regards to implantable technology, to adults and children.  I have experience liaising with businesses, government, and stakeholders with hearing loss to counsel, educate and improve the lives of individuals with hearing loss.

I can help:

  • translate audiological test results and educate regarding the implications of hearing loss

  • provide education regarding medical issues linked with hearing loss

  • navigate you on the next “best-practice” steps in your hearing journey

  • provide second opinions on hearing healthcare recommendations

  • help you advocate for your own hearing healthcare needs

  • provide referrals to key opinion leaders in the area of hearing healthcare

  • translate hearing healthcare research and what it means for you

  • assist in making the most out of your interactions and appointments with hearing healthcare professionals

  • educate audiologists, rehabilitative therapists and speech-language pathologists on hearing, hearing technology solutions; ear surgery and business development strategies

  • mentor new clinicians and act as a “sounding board” resource for effective solutions for difficult hearing healthcare cases

  • consult as an audiological expert on medical-legal cases and facilitate other key medical connections

  • assist in the development of new government and private hearing healthcare programs

  • help businesses optimize their interactions with their clients and employees who have hearing loss 

  • review proposed Requests for Product (RFP) or or tender applications for hearing devices

  • provide consultation on implant candidacy

  • provide audiological second opinions

  • give assistance in assessment of soft implant failures

  • provide training in strategies for communication with those who have hearing loss in clinic and operating theatre

  • arrange waiting list triage and pre-consult test referral recommendations

  • tailor patient counseling regarding hearing procedures

  • provide training on “best practice” virtual meeting etiquette with clients who have hearing loss

  • provide consultation on hearing loss medical claims

  • give guidance on hearing service solutions

  • provide training on strategies for communication with individuals with hearing loss

  • suggest recommendations regarding assistive listening devices for conference rooms set-up

  • provide training on “best practice” virtual meeting etiquette with clients who have hearing loss

  • provide training of staff on communicating with clients who have hearing loss 

  • give recommendations regarding assistive listening devices for conference room set-ups

  • provide training on effective telephone etiquette for decreased communication breakdowns

  • provide training on “best practice” virtual meeting etiquette with clients who have hearing loss

  • provide education on hearing loss and communication optimization; assistive listening devices; hearing technology

  • provide training on “best practice” virtual classroom etiquette with hearing-impaired students

  • provide information on strategies for communicating with individuals who have hearing loss

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Karen MacIver-Lux, M.A., Aud(C), Reg. CASLPO, LSLS Cert. AVT

Co-Founder

I'm an audiologist who has over 30 years of experience providing family-centered aural rehabilitation and listening and spoken language intervention for listeners of all ages. I have liaised with governments and businesses in Canada and internationally--planning and implementing training programs for professionals serving children with hearing loss and their families.

I can help:

  • ensure your hearing needs are met during audiologic assessments and hearing technology fitting and programming sessions by bridging communication between you and your Audiologist, benefiting both you AND your Audiologist

  • convert your daily hearing experience into quantifiable information that will aid your Audiologist in programming and verifying the appropriateness of the fit of your devices

  • assist in identifying reasons for of your/your child’s/your client’s lack of progress with hearing devices (e.g. difficult cases involving developmental delays and disorders that limit progress, long-term auditory deprivation, auditory access, soft failure, etc.)

  • educate, diagnose, and treat Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder (ANSD), Auditory Processing Disorders (APD), Single-Sided Deafness (SDD), and/or Tinnitus

  • educate, diagnose and treat to improve your hearing in noisy situations, optimize your localization skills, build your skills dealing with competing messages (binaural integration/separation, perception of degraded speech signals (masks, accents, etc.)) and enhance your music appreciation

  • coach you and your listening partners (family or in workplace) in communication strategies to enhance your interactions and communication relationships

  • collaborate and build healthy and effective relationships between you and your hearing care professionals; particularly in challenging cases

  • provide professional training programs/conferences focused on your needs, as well as those of professionals and businesses

  • train listeners and businesses on tele-intervention strategies and captioning options for children and adults with hearing loss

  • foster strategies and appropriate listening environments that facilitate the development of listening (auditory processing skills), spoken language, and thinking/learning skills in children and teenagers

  • help identify daily activities and routines (at home, school, work, holidays and vacation etc.) that offer rich listening and spoken language learning opportunities

  • identify the computer-assisted aural rehabilitation programs that are age-, stage-, culturally- and language-appropriate

  • assist in the selection and use of hearing assistive technology that improve your access to speech, music, podcasts, telecommunication, virtual meeting spaces, environmental sounds and music

  • diagnose and treat, audition (auditory skills development/auditory processing skills), speech, receptive and express language, cognition and communication in infants and children with hearing loss who are learning to listen and talk

  • educate, diagnose, and treat using appropriate interventions for older children, teenagers and adults (7 years and up) (AST and Dual) and/or refer to qualified local practitioners

  • provide contacts of aural rehabilitation practitioners providing high quality listening and spoken language intervention (children) and auditory skills therapy (adults) around the world

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Cathy

Catherine “Cathy” Creaser’s interest in hearing began with her grandmother.  A nurse by training, her maternal grandmother lost her hearing after contracting typhoid fever as a nursing initiate at the Nova Scotia Hospital. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, Cathy was intimately familiar with the challenges faced by the hearing-impaired and the role that Audiologists can play in enhancing the lives of those they serve.  Her interest in biology, neuroscience, and psychology, added to her grandmother’s experience, led Cathy to pursue a career in Audiology.

 

A graduate of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Cathy has almost 25 years of experience working as an Audiologist.  With a strong neuroscience background from her Bachelor of Science, honours, degree, Cathy served as the Audiology student representative for the entirety of her Master of Science program, sitting as a student representative on the Faculty of Graduate studies and successfully lobbying with her classmates for a university-based, student-manned Audiology diagnostic clinic at Dalhousie University’s School of Human Communication Disorders that continues to run today.

 

Graduating on the Dean’s list; at the top of her Master of Science class; and, as winner of the Unitron Award for Academic and Clinical Excellence, Cathy continued working to better the lives of the hearing-impaired through her work in private and government clinics.  She has worked fitting adult and pediatric hearing aids as a licensed Audiologist and hearing aid dispenser in British Columbia; a clinical Audiologist in New Brunswick, where her clinical responsibilities included electrophysiological testing with threshold and diagnostic Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) and Electronystagmography (ENG) balance testing; and as Cochlear Implant Audiologist for the Nova Scotia Cochlear Implant Program, where she honed her counseling skills and medical knowledge; was a co-author on several papers published on cochlear implants; and was finally head-hunted to work for a cochlear implant manufacturer.

 

For the last 10+ years of her career in Audiology, Cathy has worked for two of the four major international hearing implant companies.  With MEDEL GmBH, Cathy worked as the primary Clinical and Surgical Support Specialist for the Vibrant middle ear implant and began the Bonebridge bone conduction implant business in North America.  During this time, Cathy made a name for herself in surgical support, using her skills to train colleagues, clinicians, and surgeons alike on best practices for middle ear and bone conduction implantation and programming.  It was here that Cathy was responsible for the support of a successful Health Technology Assessment that allowed Albertans the opportunity to access middle ear and bone conduction implants through their provincial health program. Cathy, also, helped make MEDEL products more accessible to hearing-impaired clients across Canada through her product development, marketing, education, and support skills.

 

After leaving MEDEL GmBH, Cathy was recruited to Oticon Medical Canada by a former colleague.  As the Senior Clinical Support Business Development Manager, she was involved in building their cochlear implant and bone-anchored implant business in Canada through surgical, clinical, business development, and marketing support.  At Oticon Medical Canada, Cathy liaised with and educated both private and government organizations to improve the lives of hearing-impaired clients through the widening of implant eligibility criteria; creation of novel Auditory Skills Training (AST) rehabilitative programs within Oticon Medical in collaboration with SoundIntuition™; and was heavily involved in the development of a number of initiatives that increased Oticon Medical’s brand awareness whilst supporting the education of clinicians, surgeons and the hearing-impaired.

 

Hearing Navigation Consultants is a natural progression of Cathy’s goal to educate and improve the lives of individuals with hearing loss.  She is excited to embark on this new adventure with partners with whom she has worked and respected for over 20 years.

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Karen

Karen has a moderate-to-profound hearing loss which was diagnosed at 3.11 years of age. Karen's mother set about making sure that Karen learned to listen and talk with the help of Daniel Ling and a recently graduated speech-language pathologist, Shelly Mandel. Karen was one of 50 children in Toronto enrolled in a research study to determine the effectiveness of educating children with hearing loss in the regular classroom with a Phonic Ear (hearing assistive technology) and the weekly support of an itinerant teacher of the deaf. This model of education continues to this day. 

 

Karen's hearing technology always managed to break down on weekends and holidays. Thus, her frustration turned into a life-long interest and determination to pursue a career in Audiology. Karen received her Bachelor of Science degree in Communication Disorders at Indiana-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she received the Who's Who in Students of American Colleges and Universities Awards in 1993. Karen went on to receive her Master of Arts degree in Audiology at The University of Akron in Ohio. This is where she became interested in the aural rehabilitation aspect of Audiology, and learned about Auditory-Verbal Therapy from Drs. Carol Flexer and Denise Wray. 

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From 1997-2007, Karen worked as an auditory-verbal therapist and coordinator of clinical services at the Learning to Listen Foundation (LTLF), North York General Hospital in Toronto. In addition, she worked as a clinical audiologist for several years.  She also served as a director of the board of Auditory-Verbal International, Inc. Karen was honoured by Maclean’s magazine as one of the Top 100 young Canadians of 2000.

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As president of MacIver-Lux Auditory Learning Services and Co-Founder of Thrive Together, Karen provides a variety of listening and spoken language and auditory learning services to infants, children, teenagers, and adults with hearing loss and their families. Karen also serves as the President of SoundIntuition, a company which provides multi-media training materials for professionals engaged in practices to treat communication disorders in children and adults. Karen has held the position of Lecturer in the School of Human Communication Disorders at Dalhousie University, and guest lectures at the University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario and Central Michigan University.

 

Karen has made significant contributions to the literature including:  How the Student with Hearing Loss Can Succeed in College (2nd ed.) (1996), 50 FAQs About AVT (2001), Songs for Listening!  Songs for Life! (2003), Listen to This!- Volume 1 (2004), The Listener (2000, 2005), Listen to This!- Volume 2 (2006), Auditory-Verbal Therapy and Practice (2006), Perspectives on Audiology (2009), 101 FAQs about Auditory-Verbal Therapy (2012), and a chapter on Aural Rehabilitation in the text Cochlear Implants (2012). Karen is co-editor of the Auditory-Verbal Therapy For Young Children With Hearing Loss and Their Families, and the Practitioners Who Guide Them (2016) and Auditory-Verbal Therapy: Science, Research, and Practice (2020). 

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She continues to lecture internationally and is instrumental in the training of professionals worldwide. With her knowledge, professional and personal experience with adult aural rehabilitation (she received a cochlear implant for her left ear in 2009), she was able to develop a training and certification program for Auditory Skills Training (AST) in 2019, a form of aural rehabilitation for older children, teenagers and adults with hearing loss. To date, 16 professionals  from Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Canada and the USA hold Level 1 Certification in AST as granted by SoundIntuition.

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Karen is not only grateful that she can fix her hearing devices when they break down, but those of her clients. And if she's not able to, she knows where to go. She is looking forward to helping more clients navigate their way to sound solutions with HNC.

OUR BIOGRAPHIES

"The past is a stepping stone, not a milestone."

--Robert Plant

40 years of

COMBINED EXPERIENCE

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