Lessons from a leading CEO Lessons from a leading CEO

women & business
Vision quest
Woman in business overcomes blindness to succeed
It wouldn’t be a stretch to describe Satauna
Howery as a modern-day pathfinder.
Her path has led her from California, to
Alaska, to Seattle and, ultimately, the Capital
Region, where she currently owns two businesses.
Howery, who has been blind since birth,
empowers her clients through Blindsight 20/20, a
consulting service for the visually impaired, but
she strikes a different chord through MajorKey
Entertainment, a musical enterprise for social
events. Whatever she’s doing, she’s proud to help
others see life in a unique way.
“It’s really great to show someone a path that
they didn’t know was there, or that they didn’t
know how to navigate,” she said.
Adept and adaptive
Born in Southern California, Howery moved to
Alaska when she was 18. A year later, she relocated
to Seattle where she worked for a company
that sold adaptive technology to the visually
impaired; when the company underwent a
merger, she became an independent contractor.
She first got the idea for Blindsight 20/20 in
1993 and went from selling adaptive technology
to training/consulting for the visually impaired
and motivational speaking.
If, for example, a company hires an employee
who is blind, Howery trains the individual to help
them perform the functions and responsibilities
of their job.
In her work, Howery uses a device made by
Humanware called mPower, which she compares
to a court reporting machine and describes as
being “between a Palm Pilot and a laptop.” The
device has eight Braille keys, a Braille display and
thumb keys that are used to move around the
screen.
The MPower runs Microsoft CE and has a
word processor, calendar and address book. A
flash card allows her to connect to a wireless network,
and there’s a USB port, infrared port,
modem and microphone/headset adaptors.
There’s even GPS software that tells her both
vehicular and pedestrian routes to destinations.
It can function as a terminal by connecting to
a computer, in which case the Braille display
becomes a monitor, or it can function as an independent
unit.
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