Jennifer Lootens, M.Ed., was born and raised in Northern California, and is the current President of the Tucker Maxon Board of Directors. She has a bilateral profound sensorineural hearing loss from Rubella which was diagnosed at birth, allowing her to be fitted with a hearing aid at eight months. She began her journey early of being a kid who happened to have a hearing loss, her parents opting for her mainstreaming in neighborhood schools.

Jennifer received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, majoring in photography and printmaking, and did graduate work in Art Therapy at Pratt Institute. She worked and lived San Francisco, where she met her husband and soon after getting married in 1989, she moved to Portland and received her cochlear implant. She has been an active member of the Oregon Chapter of the Alexander Graham Bell Assoc. for the Deaf, serving as board president and as a member-at-large with the national group’s deaf adult section’s Executive Committee.

Jennifer received her M.Ed. degree with her teaching training at Tucker-Maxon, through our training program at Lewis & Clark College. From 2002 until the present she has been an itinerant Teacher for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing with Educational Service District 112 in Washington State.

Jennifer lives in Portland with her husband and two children who work and attend college. Besides teaching and mentoring, she loves reading, doing her artwork, gardening, spending time in the outdoors, and time with friends and family.