Nanci Linke Ellis is a bi-lateral cochlear implant user and has advocated for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people for the past 30 years. She is in her third term as a member of the Santa Monica Disabilities Commission and President of Hearing Loss Association of America, California Association (HLAA-CA) and was a recent past Advisory Council Member on the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. She also served on the FCC Disability Advisory Commission, as well as on the California State Rehabilitation Council. She is primarily known to the DHH community because her work to bring open captions into commercial movie theatres across the U.S that began in 1993. Her advocacy continues now as she works on legislation for mandatory activation of closed captioning in public places.