Haben Girma

“Haben Girma would prefer not to be called inspiring,” said Emily Bobrow in The

Wall Street Journal. Yes, the Oakland native was the first deaf-blind graduate of Harvard Law School, earning her degree in 2013. And yes, she also surfs, salsa dances, and climbs glaciers. But she hears pity in the word “inspiring” when it’s not linked to an action. “I ask people, ‘What are you inspired to do?’” she says. “Use inspiration as a verb: ‘I’m inspired to make my website more accessible’; ‘I’m inspired to learn salsa dancing.’ Frame it terms of something positive you want to do in the world.” Girma, 31, also insists that she’s not unusually strong-willed—that there are many other deaf-blind people who are just as capable. “The remarkable thing about me,” she says, “is that I was given the opportunity to excel.”

Girma’s new memoir, titled simply Haben, suggests she’s being too humble, said Julianne Pepitone in NBC News.com. As a child, she was able to attend mainstream public schools because they provided Braille reading materials and other accommodations for her. But it was her idea to travel to Mali as a teenager to help rebuild a school. And it was Girma who, with a friend, devised a dual keyboard system that allows her to converse even at Harvard grad-student parties: When the other person types a message, she receives it instantly as Braille and can respond by speaking or typing back. Today, she travels the world advocating greater inclusion of people with disabilities, especially in the workplace. “We are talented; we work hard,” she says. “It’s just ableism, the assumption that people with disabilities are inferior, that gets in our way.”