About the creator of TISLR 15 logo
His name is Kidane Habte, born and grown up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He attended his primary education at Mekanissa School for the Deaf, formerly Amha Desta. He also attended a Fine Arts School in Addis Ababa. At the age of 15, in 1976, Kidane and family moved to the United States, due to the arrangement made by his father, who used to work for the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC. He pursued his high school at Model Secondary School for the Deaf at Gallaudet University and completed in 1980. He then continued his passion for graphic art and graduated from St. Paul Technical College, Minnesota, in 1983.
After completing college, Kidane joined to work for US National Association for the Deaf. He worked for 6 different organizations before joining Booz Allen Hamilton, in Virginia, in 1993, where he works to date. Kidane is a talented digital and graphic artist.
Kidane is married to his wife Hirut, Deaf herself, together have two children: Hanna and David. Hanna, a talented sign language interpreter, graduated from university and looking to pursue her Masters in Social Work. David just completed his high school.
Kidane and colleagues founded a new nonprofit NGO named Support for Ethiopian Deaf Community (SEDC) in 2021, which aims to support the educational challenges of Deaf Ethiopian students in urban and rural areas.
Kidane was approached by TISLR 15 organizers to develop logo and came up with exciting 6 different options. He invested his creative and intuitive knowledge of his graphic art to create visibility to African sign languages at TISLR 15 and beyond. The map of Africa with the African color is to show TISLR 15 will be held for the first time in Africa and the hands on the map of Ethiopia is to show that the event will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
