Ramona Pierson was a gifted student who joined the marines at 18. At 22, she was in a catastrophic car accident that left her blind. After a long recovery where she had to relearn basic skills, she started her company Declara, a social learning platform. Some of her biggest lessons included inventing a new world through innovation, trusting others for help in her recovery, and becoming a lifelong learner despite challenges. She believes focusing on the future rather than the past is most important.

1. WHAT I'VE LEARNED
With entrepreneur UWIONA PIERS:
WORDS SALLY WILSON
H
aving soared through
life, enrolling at the
University of California,
Berkeley at just 16,
Ramona was 18 when she
signed on for the marines.
The move, prompted
after on-campus military recruiters showed up
in her dorm room, was steeped in promise.
Yet at 22, she was hit by a drunk driver and
only emerged from her coma after a heart
attack woke her up. Newly blind, she faced
huge obstacles to get her life - let alone her
career - back on track.
A miraculous recovery eventually led
Ramona to Silicon Valley. It was there that
her social learning platform, Declara (which
creates a 'learning path' for individuals based
on how they interact with information and
social data), raised more than US$30 million,
including funds from investor Peter Thiel.
It has also been praised by President Obama
as an example of innovation and inclusion.
Here, Ramona shares her biggest learnings.
INVENT A NEW WORLD. I grew up during
the '60s and '70s, a time when the US entered
a new era of science, space and technical
innovation as well as a lot of social change.
My siblings and I were encouraged to believe
that we could invent a new world reflecting
the scientific and technical advancements that
were beginning to transform society. I was
surrounded by mathematicians, scientists,
engineers and dreamers. My father was an
engineer and my uncle, a propulsions scientist
in the space industry. I thought it was normal
to interact with adults who would teach you
how to build and launch rockets.
I NEEDED BUCKETLOADS OF FAITH.
At 22, while training for a marathon, I was hit
by a drunk driver. No one believed I would
survive. The accident was catastrophic to me
physically and I was placed in a drug-induced
coma, which lasted for 18 months. When I
finally woke up, I was blind, unable to walk,
talk, or feed myself. Fortunately for me, the
hospital gave up on me and transferred me
to a senior citizens' home -
where my real life began. R|GHT: WINNING
FIRST PLACE IN
I NEEDED TO TRUST
OTHERS TO GUIDE
ME. The senior citizens
sized me up and
determined that they
needed to personalise my
learning experience. To
do so, they matched me
to individual seniors who
happened to have had
experience in one or more
areas where I had needs.
I had 100 grandparents
worrying about me,
teaching me and helping
me get back on my feet.
They taught me how to
speak, cook, and get dressed; with results that
veered between hilarious and near-disastrous.
THE MOST DIFFICULT CHALLENGES
WERE BARRIERS I CREATED FOR
MYSELF. Of course, it was not easy to be a
blind person, but the most difficult challenge
was to stop comparing my old self to my
new normal self. Once I learned how to 'see'
myself with humour, how to be directionally
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2. correct in all I did rather than 'perfect',
and focus on getting back on a career path,
I found my challenges to be intellectually
stimulating and interesting.
IF WE CAN FORGIVE OUR
IMPERFECTIONS AND BE WILLING
TO LETOTHERS HELP, WE CANGET
THROUGH ANYTHING. I had to overcome
my stubborn sense of pride around being
independent so I could allow others to help me.
I had been a kid who could learn anything from
watching others or reading. When I was blind,
I could not read or watch others. I needed to
re-learn how to learn as a blind person.
PEOPLE CAME INTO MY LIFEAT
DIFFERENT TIMES WHEN I NEEDED
THEM. When I was in hospital, people put
crucifixes on my bed. Although I am not
religious, the crucifixes became representations
that someone cared enough about me to leave
them. Annie, my guide dog, became the next
guide who helped open new doors in the world
of knowledge — she made it possible for me to
return to college and she introduced anew
social dimension that I could not have attained
without her. When Annie was diagnosed with
cancer, I decided to go through brain surgery,
receive a cornea transplant, and reattach my
retina. The most difficult part was now having
to re-learn how to be a sighted person, given
my trace memories of seeing were fading.
BE A LIFELONG LEARNER. Having to
relearn even the most basic skills made me
realise how important it is to be a lifelong
learner. That's what inspired me to start
Declara. Declara's vision is to change theway
the world learns. Stay curious. We all start
down a road that has [the] least resistance.
I was surrounded by science and maths asa
kid and was clearly very good at it. Through
that, we meet people who are able to build
on and feed our curiosity. The end goal is to
ask really great questions, really important
questions that move us forward.
WE ARE ALLTEACHERS AND
LEARNERS. The education technology market
is heading towards better support for teaching
professionals as well as supporting a paradigm
that embraces us all. Education technology will
bring these radical learning tools to more and
more people across the globe.
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
IMPROVES IDEA FLOW AND
DECISION-MAKING. Declara is a social
learning platform with a difference; it indexes
and analyses content of any type, from
anywhere, in one unified platform. Users can
curate, annotate, provide context, share with
their colleagues and teams, and collaborate
inside of documents and videos. Declara was
developed specifically with the knowledge
worker in mind. We have the ability to bring
data to the great questions
of our time. Wecan
leverage extreme radical
collaboration to find
answers that will change
the world.
THE SUM OFALL
HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
CAN BE ACCESSED
BYSMARTPHONES
TODAY. But basic search
often creates too much
noise as it surfaces the
streams of content. Search
is now a 25-year-old
technology and wasnot
designed to help knowledge
workers or learners access
information. Instead,
traditional search companies
were designed to sellads,
and they do it very well.
SOME OFTHE
DARKEST MOMENTS
I HAVE HAD ARE AS A
CEO, AND NOT AS A
BLIND PERSON. When
you are a leader, you often
are alone in your decisions
and it can be really hard,
but you must innovate your
way into the light.
DO NOT LOOK BACK. People always ask
me if I want retribution, or get depressed or
feel angry about my accident. I always sayno.
If I were to waste my time looking at the past,
I would not be creating my future. So my belief
is that the past can make us what we are today,
but what we do with today helps us build our
future. We should always focus on what we are
doing now with our sights on tomorrow. •
RAMONA'S
ADVICE FOR
ENTREPRENEURS
SCRATCH YOUR OWN ITCH.
When you're looking for an authentic
passion (and you will need that to
sustain you through years of building,
setbacks and frustration), the easiest
thing to be authentically passionate
about is something that you can
demonstrate a need, a vision
and a solution for.
ASK FOR HELP.
It's amazing how many people are
prepared to help if you ask the right
questions and look in the right places.
Remember a child, a dog, can spot a
fake - ask for what you really need and
not what you think they can give you.
HAVE A LONG-TERM GOAL
If you are thinking no further than this
quarter, next year even, you have really
not done enough work on what it is
you are doing. This is a bumpy ride,
you need an audacious goal over a
decade or more just to sustain your
own passion and energy.
Ref: 508398120
Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) licenced copy
Renegade Collective
November, 2015
Page: 40
Section: General News
Region: Sydney, AU
Type: Magazines Lifestyle
Size: 1,674.00 sq.cms.
Page 2 of 2
AUS: 1300 1 SLICE NZ: 0800 1 SLICE service@slicemedia.com
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