Newsmakers 2016: Sarah Hickey

Audiologist Dr. Sarah Hickey found professional success by listening.

She listened to her grandfather, who struggled with hearing aids and his own hearing loss, and she wanted to help him.

In college, when Hickey found herself frustrated with her original field of study, speech pathology, she listened to her adviser, who suggested she turn to audiology. The new area of focus put her down her current career path and allowed her to understand the issues affecting her grandfather.

When she joined Audiology Associates of Missouri in 2011, she planned to purchase the practice after five years. But when the opportunity was offered to her just a year later, she listened to her intuition and bought the practice.

And so at age 32, when most audiologists are still working their way through the field, Hickey found herself running her own business with "four wonderful employees," whom she says work incredibly hard. "We need more," she says.

Sarah HickeyLaura Simon

Hickey provides a voice for Southeast Missouri in the National Marketing and Business Development Advisory Council, to which she was selected to sit by a national hearing aid company.

"It helps them make some decisions for their marketing campaigns," she says. "Most of the people on that committee are from very large cities. It's pretty neat that they have input from a town this size."

But where her profession meets her passion is in her desire to assist U.S. veterans, who often don't receive the care they need as immediately as they need it. She performs compensation and pension evaluations for veterans groups and assists the Poplar Bluff VFW with the appeal process.

"If anyone is having trouble with an appeal, they'll send them to me and we'll try to do another audiologic evaluation to try to help them," Hickey says.

She regularly visits the Missouri Veterans Home and offers assistance with residents' hearing aids so the devices don't need to be sent to the VA where, according to Hickey, they can be gone for up to three months.

"If it's something I can do here, I'm happy to do it. It's a big deal for those guys not to be able to hear," she says. "None of us could have the freedoms we have without veterans, and I think it's important that we appreciate them."