Andy Schirmer, HIS
I grew up outside Cincinnati, started on piano, then played guitar and drums in a band where I was also the one running the PA system. Sound was always the thread. When I found audiology, it clicked immediately: a way to work with sound every day, use the technical part of my brain, and do something people genuinely need.
In 2017 I moved west alone, planning on San Diego for their audiology program. A scouting trip ended with a stop in Palm Springs, and I never made it to San Diego. I finished my Bachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Sciences through Utah State University, then met Dr. Timothy Cook, the audiologist who founded this practice, at my gym. He took me under his wing and trained me, and the day my California dispensing license came through I became the dispenser at Desert Hearing Associates. That was nine years ago.
Why verification became the whole point
What hooked me was how technical this work is. Small differences in skill produce enormous differences in how someone's hearing aids perform in real life. Then it stopped being theoretical. My husband Guy, the love of my life, has a severe hearing loss and had been wearing hearing aids for years by the time I knew what I was doing. When I finally reprogrammed them properly and verified them with Real Ear Measurement, the improvement was dramatic. He had been living with a fraction of what those devices could actually deliver, and nobody had ever measured it.
Outside the office I am at the gym daily with Guy, it is our time together, and our dog Tano runs the house.
Credentials
- California licensed Hearing Instrument Specialist, license HA8459
- Bachelor of Science, Speech and Hearing Sciences, Utah State University
- Nine years practicing in the Coachella Valley
- Trained under Dr. Timothy Cook, Au.D., and Dr. Phillip Burney, Au.D.
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