Rosane O’Conor

Rosane O’Conor

Rosane O’Conor was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At age 7, she lost hearing on her right side due to meningitis. Despite being unilateral, she pursued a music education and was performing professionally on the flute with several music groups. In 1984, Rosane moved to Belgium to attend the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels. After graduation she moved to the USA and performed in local orchestras and chamber ensembles. For 33 years she was also a flute teacher at schools and in her private music studio.

In 2017, she was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease which led to serious hearing loss on her “good” side and spells of debilitating vertigo attacks.She decided to have a Cochlear implant on the right side and hearing aids for her recently deafened left side. Along with her supportive family (husband and 3 grown children), she has been studying ASL (including a summer immersive at Gallaudet), which opened the door to communicating with so many wonderful people and learning about Deaf culture. She now uses a combination of various innovative technology (phone apps and personal microphones), lip reading, hearing aid, cochlear implant, closed captioning and ASL to communicate.

Rosane enjoys volunteering as a role model and sharing her life experience with school age children identified as deaf or hard of hearing. She has been actively advocating for the inclusion of close captioning in all higher education and museum online media material. Parallel to those activities, developing and creating art installations keeps her busy as well. In her free time, Rosane enjoys practicing yoga, hiking, biking and spending time with her family. She is looking forward to the arrival of her first grandchild in July.