John T. C. Yeh

Entrepreneur

A native of Taiwan, John Yeh moved to the U.S.A. from Brazil in 1962, when he was 15, so that he and his deaf sister, Fanny, could get the best possible education. He could already speechread Chinese and knew Chinese Sign Language; his next challenges were learning English and ASL. He earned his B.A. in Mathematiics at Gallaudet College and M.A. in Computer Science at University of Maryland. In 1979, having been turned down from hundreds of jobs, he and his brothers co-founded Integrated Microcomputer Systems, a software-engineering and integration company in Rockville, Maryland, with 300 employees, many of them deaf. After IMS was sold in 1994, John Yeh invested in several businesses and was active in fundraising for Gallaudet University and the National Asian Deaf Congress, serving on several boards, including Gallaudet’s Associates and Trustees. He founded Viable Technologies in 2001, and, in 2005, Viable, Inc., which provides remote real-time-captioning service; he is company president.