Laurene Simms

Dr. Laurene Simms is a Deaf American educator and advocate. She served as an interim Chief Bilingual Officer at Gallaudet University for 3 years before being promoted to a permanent position. In the summer of 2025, she was demoted to a faculty position. She has discussed how a lack of resources and knowledge about how best to educate Deaf children contributed to her initial enrollment at an oral school. After struggling to keep up in an oral school, The next year, she earned her Master of Education in Deaf Education from Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College). In 2000, she earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Language, Reading and Culture with a minor in Teaching and Teacher Education from the University of Arizona. where she teaches classes such as "Introduction to Education and Teaching", "Literacy Applications in ASL/English Bilingual Classrooms K-12", and "Language Arts in Elementary Education". a standardized system for tracking ASL benchmarks from birth to age 5.

Advocacy and leadership In addition to her work as an educator, Simms has long been an advocate in the Deaf community. She is on the leadership board of Deaf Women of Color, an organization she founded in 2005 with Leticia Arellano, Thuan Nguyen-Lakrik, and Francisca Rangel, which provides educational and professional development opportunities for Deaf women of color, including annual conferences. They created an online community called "Overlooked Gems" on their website and Facebook page, where Deaf women of color can share their experiences and promote their businesses.

Simms has also been involved in the National Black Deaf Advocates (NBDA) for over 15 years. NBDA activities include a pageant for black Deaf women, leadership training for youth, professional development opportunities, senior citizen programs, and they have collaborated with Gallaudet to create a Black Deaf history archive. Simms served as Alternate Eastern Regional Representative from 2005 to 2006, Regional Representative from 2006 to 2010, and Alternate Representative again from 2016 to 2018. She was also appointed as director of their Collegiate Black Deaf Student Leadership Institute (CBDSLI) program in 2005.

Simms also served as Program Coordinator of the National Deaf People of Color Conference in both 2007 and 2010, a conference which includes discussions of topics ranging from diversity in the classroom, to interpreting, to mental health.

In media appearances, she has provided her expert opinion on how to support Deaf and hard-of-hearing students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Simms directed and produced the film, featuring the life experiences of a number of activists and Deaf people of color (Victoria Monroe, Dr. Paddy Ladd, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Erica Hossler, Chad Wolfe, David Hamilton, Aurora Frias, Nha Kim). 2019 Deafpeople.com Deaf Person of the Year