Vertica’s Kathy Taylor is Honored by the Carroll Center for the Blind

 

Positive attitude

 

Education

 

Passion

 

Determination

 

Teamwork

  According to Jay Blake, founder of Follow a Dream auto racing, those are the tools you need to overcome obstacles and be successful. More on that later. On June 7, The Carroll Center for the Blind inducted Micro Focus’s own Kathy Taylor into the Carroll Society. This award recognizes employees who have made significant contributions in their workplace while overcoming a visual disability. Kathy Taylor has been a Principal Information Developer at Vertica, a business unit of Micro Focus, for the last three years. There are many responsibilities in her position. She researches and writes technical articles and blogs that explain how Vertica’s partner products connect to Vertica’s database. Kathy creates compelling instructional and informative technical videos, and she works with technical experts in the US and India to ensure that her articles and videos are accurate and up to date. Her supervisor Sarah Lemaire, who nominated her, stated, “Kathy came to Vertica with a wealth of technical writing experience. She has improved her existing skills while acquiring new knowledge since she arrived. We value her contributions that improve customers’ experience with our product, as well as her positive attitude and perseverance through her visual disabilities.” A few years ago, doctors diagnosed Kathy’s vision problems as a disorder of the retina called occult maculopathy. This condition prevents her eyes from focusing properly. Kathy’s vision is very blurred, and she has trouble seeing contrast. Kathy enjoys working for Vertica, as they have been very understanding and helpful to her needs. They have purchased a large monitor for her and ZoomText software to magnify and read text. They allow her to work from home several days a week. Massachusetts Commission for the Blind has also helped Kathy immensely, especially with in-home training of adaptive software. She is impressed with the advocacy that many people in the blindness community do and how connected everyone is. Other inductees to the Carroll Society included Erich Manser, an accessibility evangelist at IBM, Tanja Milojevic, a Braille production specialist at the Perkins Braille & Talking Book Library in Watertown, MA, and Tyler Terrasi, a transportation coordinator at MetroWest Regional Transit Authority who is pursuing graduate education in political science. What they’ve accomplished despite their disabilities was truly amazing to Kathy’s colleagues and friends who attended the awards ceremony. Jay Blake, whose advice we mentioned earlier in this blog, received the Blind Employee of the Year award. Jay gave a short speech about how he dealt with his disability, which was caused by an accident when he was 31. Despite this, Jay pursued and achieved his dream of owning a professional auto racing team. In addition to managing his team, Jay gives motivational speeches and brings his car to help raise funds for worthy non-profit organizations. The day’s honorees and their guests got to explore his race car after the ceremony. We here at Vertica are proud of Kathy’s achievements every day at work. She has used all of the Jay’s tools to deal with her disability and provide exceptional documentation to Vertica customers. Please join us in congratulating Kathy on this well-deserved award.