Ashley Crooks (she/hers) is a second-year audiology doctoral student at The University of Texas at Austin, with a background in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and Educational Psychology.
Her clinical and research interests center on promoting communication access in all its forms (including AAC, signed language, and multimodal systems) and shifting public perceptions of hearing healthcare, deafness, and hearing accessibility technology. As a first-generation Filipina American student, she is also passionate about hearing healthcare outreach for Asian American and immigrant communities navigating cultural stigma and barriers to care. Ashley is
neurodivergent herself, and her own disability-identity journey shapes her commitment to interdisciplinary, whole-person care and advocacy.