ABOUT US
Our family business embraces communication, connection, and collaboration.
In the early 1980s, founder Joyce Dworsky (Srour) was a health care professional learning sign language and teaching CPR in her spare time. That unique combination led to a training session for Gallaudet University’s students, and two days after her successful CPR class, she got a call from Deaf Pride, the primary organization in DC that worked with the Deaf community and sign language interpreters. A student at Gallaudet, who had been in the recent CPR class, requested that Joyce interpret an up-coming meeting. This opportunity segued into other assignments and Joyce realized there was an opportunity to get more involved in the deaf and interpreting worlds so she began a quest for more formal training.
Joyce was accepted into the Gallaudet Interpreter Consortium and later became certified through the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID). In 1987, responding to a growing need, she turned her love for interpreting into Vital Signs. As time went on, Joyce also trained as a C-Print captionist and later, a TypeWell transcriber and voice writer. Speech-To-Text, including CART and TypeWell, were added to interpreting services to accommodate the variety of requests from universities, government agencies, and the private sector.
Now the original mission of Vital Signs to serve the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community has grown to become a multi-generational family business.
Today, Vital Signs is led by both Joyce and her son-in-law, Avi Siegel, a passionate leader and entrepreneur. After joining the family, Avi began studying ASL at Gallaudet. He continues to fuel his lifelong learning personality by taking additional courses in ASL and hanging out with Deaf friends and more.
Avi utilizes an employee-centric approach to business success, emphasizing culture and connection at the heart of everything we do. He is expanding the team’s impact, while remaining wholly committed to maintaining a family atmosphere where the needs of people, both clients and employees, always come first.
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