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THE INTERVIEW
When the DeafNation crew went to Bristol, Connecticut, I knew that every single sports enthusiast would have given their right arm to be one of us. After all, the opportunity to tour a sports Mecca – otherwise known as the ESPN Headquarters – doesn’t come by every day.

Prior to receiving a tour of the headquarters, the DeafNation crew sat down with 27-year old Luke Faxon-St. Georges, an Account Executive with the Marketing/Sales department at ESPN. Faxon-St. Georges, deaf since birth, grew up in Maryland, later attending NTID/RIT, and graduating in winter of 2004 with his degree in Marketing.

Landing the job at ESPN and Disney was fate, Faxon-St. Georges affirmed. Fate – and persistence. Fate entered when Faxon-St. Georges happened to pick up one of RIT’s many newsletters and opened to the alumni section. There, he read an article on a female student at RIT who landed a job at ESPN – all by contacting a RIT alum who worked as an executive at the company. Through keeping in touch with him, she was able to get an internship at ESPN. “If she could do it, I figured I could very well do the same thing,” said Faxon-St. Georges. “I had nothing to lose – and everything to gain.”

Then came persistence in close second – Faxon-St. Georges, hell-bent on fulfilling one of his dreams – consulted his business professors, asking if any of them had the very same alum’s contact information. One professor did, and Faxon-St. Georges did the same thing the female intern did – contacted him, staying in touch with him for nearly a year and half. His constant correspondence paid off: the executive notified Faxon-St. Georges when there was a job opening within the Sales/Marketing department. Faxon-St. Georges went in for an interview – and soon after that, he was clocking in for work at Disney/ESPN.

“Working at ESPN is every guy’s dream, and on top of the dream, the company provides me with everything I need to do my job,” said Faxon-St. Georges, going on to list all the resources Disney/ESPN provides in order for him to do his job effectively: CapTel to make telephone calls, live-captioning while in conference calls, and interpreters lined up for important company meetings. “My deafness has never been an issue – not once – since I’ve joined the company…they’ve been great.”

Faxon-St. Georges’ primary responsibilities as an Account Executive is to cover the entire Northeast region, traveling to promote both Disney and ESPN’s networks and services, as well as negotiating contracts with cable companies such as Time Warner, Comcast, and the like.

But Faxon-St. Georges doesn’t just do the nine-to-five – he is also involved in the Deaf community, serving as the Hartford Deaf Professional Happy Hour host, as well as gearing up for his second Deaflympics, heading down south in two weeks for tennis tryouts. As a former NCAA tennis player with the credentials of a three-time Conference champion at RIT, it is apparent he looks forward to the challenge.

THE TOUR
Faxon-St. Georges lead the DeafNation crew to the ESPN Headquarters, where we received a tour. The ESPN “campus” – dubbed as such because of the many buildings and the several acres of land the Headquarters occupies – had everything:
• A fully-stocked cafeteria for all three meals of the day (and more!);
• A basketball court for intramural leagues within the company;
• A mini-football field;
• A state-of-the-art gym;
• Sports memorabilia – autographed jerseys, photographs, famous quotes by broadcasters, and much more – adorning the walls.

It doesn’t end there: the ESPN Headquarters also houses several studios, where we met famous broadcaster after famous broadcaster for segments like NFL Live, SportsCenter, Monday Night Football, and many more. It also holds one of the world’s largest digital centers – with enough computers and television screens to keep any IT department busy for weeks!

The crew also strolled through two of some of the best parts of the tour:
• the hallway where the Manning brothers commercial was filmed (http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3378724);
• and the stairway where the pro skateboarder Shaun White filmed his SportsCenter ad (http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3425960)

The tour ended inside the NASCAR studio, where car-racing fanatic (and Viable truck driver) Darryl Niefer gushed over the Home Depot-sponsored racecar. To hear Darryl talk about racing – and to join us on our tour of the Headquarters – you can watch our video clip!