About Melissa Tumblin

Microtia and Atresia Awareness Day is coming up on November 9th!
Deadline to order is September 30th, 2026

This year, the Ear Community Organization reached out to Averie Warford (age 12), asking her to design our awareness day shirt for our community! Averie is incredibly talented and has been designing awareness day shirts for the past three years for our community since her brother, Gage (age 3), was born with microtia and aural atresia! This year, Averie has done it again with her “Pig-ture Perfect Just The Way You Are” design! She designed this beautiful shirt for our community and rare cause and she did an excellent job!

Averie is an incredible advocate! She has been advocating for Gage since he was born and she also advocates for her youngest brother, Wesson, who was born with Down Syndrome last year. Averie and her family are amazing advocates in our community who enjoy embracing our rare cause and helping give back to the community!

Averie’s design, along with our other Ear Community shirts, can be purchased at the following link for microtia and atresia awareness day:
(Deadline to order is September 30th)

https://stores.inksoft.com/earcommunity/shop/home

Thank you to Alise and Joel Warford for raising such a beautiful daughter who is so loving, kind, creative and accepting! You are beautiful inside and out, Averie!

$5 to $8 goes directly to the Ear Community Organization when ordering Averie’s t-shirt, and our other Ear Community designs, through the above link for the Ear Community t-shirt store. Thank you to Tiny Little Monster for being our official awareness t-shirt store for nearly a decade now!

Thank you to everyone for supporting our cause for microtia and aural atresia and for embracing our awareness day on November 9th! The deadline to order is September 30th so shirts can be printed and shipped, arriving one week before November 9th. Thank you for everyone’s support! Thank you Averie for your creativity and love for Gage and our community!

Melissa Tumblin
Founder – Executive Director
Ear Community

Congratulations to our Ear Community College Scholarship Recipients for 2026!

Congratulations to Samantha Grivno! – Samantha was born with microtia and aural atresia of her right ear with a left stenoic ear canal and is aided with a BAHS. Samantha has been accepted to the audiology program at Washington University at St. Louis and is excited to take her lived experience and help children and adults in the future when it comes to hearing loss and microtia!

Congratulations to Ellia Schultz! – Ellia was born with bilateral microtia and aural atresia and also Treacher Collins Syndrome. She has had nearly 30 surgeries to date! Ellia has been accepted into the BSN program for nursing at Ohio State University and is excited to take her lived experience and help children and adults in the future as she cares for all patients hoping to make a connection with them as she serves in health care.

Congratulations to Zachary Talamantes! – Zachary was born with microtia and aural atresia of his right ear. He has played hockey since he was eight years old! Zachary has been accepted to Washington State University where he will begin working on his undergraduate degree in marketing. Zachary plans to obtain a Master’s degree someday in teaching!

Congratulations to Natalia Nguyen! – Natalia was born with microtia and aural atresia of her right ear and is aided with a BAHS. Natalia is in her second year at the University of Texas at Austin working toward an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. She plans to earn a law degree as a patent attorney working with renewable energy technology!

Our organization is so incredibly proud of Samantha, Ellia, Zachary and Natalia! We are excited to see the good they do in the fields they plan to go into! Congratulations from everyone at Ear Community and do great things!
Melissa Tumblin
Founder – Executive Director
Ear Community

The Colorado Rare Disease Fair is coming to Colorado in October! Research Day will take place on October 12th and the Research Fair will take place on October 13th. This event will take place at Children’s Hospital Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, CO.

Melissa is the Founder and Executive Director of The Ear Community Organization, serving the Microtia and Aural Atresia community. She is an advocate for the D/HH community and a hearing health activist. Melissa sits on many boards and councils including the FNIDCR (National Institutes for Dental and Craniofacial Research), the Friends CHHC (Congressional Hearing Health Caucus) and the advisory board for Auregen Biotherapeutics working on 3D printed regenerated ears.

She brings years of experience in advocacy and a wealth of knowledge to our discussion on federal policy!

Click here to register. There will be an online option this year!

On June 21st, 2026, our Ear Community Organization proudly helped Amaia receive the gift of hearing! Amaia is ten years old and was born with microtia and atresia of her left ear. She lives in Arizona and enjoys school very much! Amaia is a very kind, polite and respectful child, having earned the affection of all of her school staff and everyone recognizes her for her constant kindness and respect. Amaia’s Special Education teacher, Brittany Powelson, began noticing how much she wasn’t engaging in the school classroom recently. Amaia’s mother, Karen, took her to the audiologist and ENT, learning that she now has complete hearing loss in her left ear. Thankfully, Amaia’s parents found our Ear Community Organization, after struggling to find coverage for a bone anchored hearing device for their daughter to benefit from.

Yesterday, June 21st, Amaia received a NEW Baha 7 Max which was fitted and programmed by her ENT, Dr. Michael Fucci and her audiologist, Dr. Lindsay Shroyer, at Arizona Hearing and Balance! Our children do not always tell us when they are struggling. In Amaia’s situation, thanks to her team at school and her doctors, Amaia’s family was able to find the help she needed in order to hear better. It absolutely takes a village and with the help of Mrs. Powelson and Drs. Fucci and Shroyer, Amaia’s parents were able to find a way to still help Amaia hear better! This is what a advocating looks like when there is a great team in place for our children!

Amaia is also a recipient of receiving help through Ear Community’s Pax’s Ear Fund, helping cover the cost to program and fit her new Baha 7 Max!

Thank you to Drs. Shroyer and Fucci for helping make sure Amaia can hear her best now! A special thank you to Keesha Pfeiffer and Cochlear Americas helping Amaia hear with her NEW Baha 7 Max! We are also grateful for Pax’s Ear Fund and the support of the Gross Family Foundation and the Blue Chip Foundation for making this fund possible to help reimburse audiologists for the fitting/programming service fee when families cannot afford to pay or when insurance denies this service. Pax’s Ear Fund helps audiologists still give the gift of hearing through our organization! Thank you to Pax, a sweet little boy who’s helping kids & adults hear! Together, we can make wonderful things happen for our community!

Thank you to everyone involved with helping Amaia hear better! We are so happy for her and excited for her to do so much better in school! #HearNowAndAlways

Thank you!
Ear Community

Dr. Eavey holding his Microtia and Atresia Awareness Day coffee mug.

Introducing, Dr. Ron Eavey!
– Ear Community’s newest Advisory Board Member!

The Ear Community Organization is incredibly proud and absolutely honored to introduce and welcome our newest Advisory Board Member – Dr. Roland “Ron” Eavey!

First, I just have to say a little bit about Dr. Ron Eavey “The Legend”, before sharing his bio and welcoming him as our newest Advisory Board Member. Ron is an incredible person who has dedicated decades of his work and care to the microtia and atresia community! He is my friend that I hold near and dear to my heart and someone that I am proud to call my mentor. Our organization is lucky to have him join our Board!

Ron has attended lots of Ear Community picnics over the years, seeing the joy microtia and atresia families find coming together at our events! Our picnics mean so much to Ron that he has brought his beautiful wife, Dr. Sheila Desmond, and his father, with him to our events. Getting to know Ron has been wonderful over the years! He is someone who takes you under his wing and is willing to offer support wherever he can! In 2016, Ron gave me an opportunity to work for him at Vanderbilt, helping launch the first all options microtia and atresia clinic at VUMC, which was an absolute honor! In 2018, Ron was right by my side when our organization presented before the FDA during a listening session about microtia and atresia.

For years, Ron has dedicated much of his work to helping our community. In fact, many of you may recall the research where an ear was grown on the back of a mouse. Well, Dr. Eavey was one of the researchers collaborating with Vacanti Labs on this work, which proved that complex tissues could be engineered in labs, laying the groundwork for modern organ regeneration and reconstructive medicine. AMAZING! Ron has also researched hearing loss and microtia for years with Drs. Jon and Christine Seidman at Harvard! Knowing all of the incredible things that Ron has worked on for our community, imagine my excitement when he asked me what else would I like to work on! Of course, I said I wanted to know why microtia happens! The next day, Ron had a call scheduled for us with Dr. Jon Seidman, which began our collaborative research that has since yielded new findings on microtia genetics due to damaging variants on FOXI3.

Ron Eavey’s bio:
“The pediatric ear has been the major career focus of Dr Roland (Ron) Eavey.

He is trained and double-boarded in both Pediatrics and Otolaryngology (Ear, Nose,Throat). He founded the Pediatric Otolaryngology Service at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and served in that capacity for three decades where he was also a Full Professor at Harvard Meical School. He also has a degree in healthcare management from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr Eavey was appointed the position at Vanderbilt University as the Director of the Bill Wilkerson Center for Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences as well as the Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery where he held the Guy M. Maness endowed Professorship. The Bill Wilkerson Center consistently has achieved the #1 national rankings for educational and training for Otolaryngology, Audiology, and Speech-Language Pathology, as well as #1 ranking in research funding from the NIH.

Most of Dr Eavey’s research collaborations have been oriented to the pediatric ear such as tissue engineering, – ‘the mouse with the ear on its back’ – in the Vacanti Lab, genes for sensorineural hearing loss and microtia in the Seidman Lab, epidemiology of hearing loss with the Curhan lab, and surveys for perception of hearing loss with MTV courtesy of Ms. Shari Redstone and Viacom. These publications have appeared in medical publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association of the as well as in media contributions such as Rolling Stone Magazine, CBS News, The BBC, Oprah, and the New York Times.

Internationally, for many years Dr. Eavey served as the US representative to the World Health Organization in Geneva concerning Ear disorders. He has traveled dozens of times globally, educating physicians about ear conditions.

He is a proud father and grandfather.”

Melissa Tumblin and Dr. Ron Eavey at the FDA presenting on microtia and aural atresia during a listening session in 2018.

Thank you for all that you have done for the microtia and atresia community, Ron, and thank you for liking what the Ear Community Organization does to help give back the microtia and atresia community! It is an absolute honor to have you join our organization’s Advisory Board!
Melissa Tumblin
Founder – Executive Director
Ear Community