With Dr Dimity Dornan
by Sam Regi
In a story session with Dr. Dimity Dornan for the Churchill Trust, she reflects on her deep interest in neuroscience, sparked by 15 years of work in the field. She shares a poignant anecdote about encountering a distressed deaf boy on the street, which underscored the importance of communication and led her to a career working with deaf children. Dr. Dornan discusses the professional challenges she faced, including criticism and funding issues, and emphasizes the value of resilience, maintaining a positive demeanor, and staying true to oneself.
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"...Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. And I thought, well, I really want to sleep peacefully in my bed." - Dr Dimity Dornan.
You’ve spent a significant part of your career in neuroscience. How did your fascination with the brain begin?
I worked in neuroscience for about 15 years, which gave me a solid foundation. I’ve always been fascinated by the brain, seeing it as the center of everything. I had this feeling that if we could truly understand the brain and how it works, we could solve so many problems. That curiosity is what led me deeper into the field. There’s a story I want to share that had a big impact on me.
What’s the story?
I call it the Boy on the Road story. I was working on a research project for the Department of Medicine, testing a man who’d had a stroke. We were developing a test for aphasia, which is a language disorder caused by brain injury. One morning, I was rushing from the train station to the hospital when I came across this boy, maybe 15 years old, lying in the gutter. He was screaming and banging his heels against the pavement. Naturally, I went over to him, asking if I could help, but he didn’t stop screaming.
I wasn’t sure what to do, so I started running up the hill for a doctor. Just a few steps later, a woman came out of a nearby house. She signed to the boy, Are you sick? He signed back, No, my bus money has rolled into the drain. In that moment, I realized the issue wasn’t what I had thought. He was deaf, and we simply didn’t have a common language. It was something so simple that had caused all this distress.
How did that experience shape your career?
That incident stuck with me. A few years later, I was headhunted to work with deaf children. When I told them I had no experience with deaf kids, they said something that was pivotal for me: You have the ability to find out. That changed my perspective. I realized that having a degree or expertise in one area doesn’t limit you. It gives you the tools to learn and adapt. I've been finding things out ever since, and that's something I want to pass on to young people—once you have that foundation, you have the ability to figure things out.
Dr Dimity Dornan at home.
What challenges have you faced throughout your career, both from the academic and business communities?
The obvious challenge is funding, but I wouldn’t actually put that at the top of the list. For me, professional criticism was the bigger hurdle. It took time, but I eventually learned that if you’re a pioneer in any field, criticism comes with the territory—like they say, you can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs. You just have to accept it and learn how to deal with it.
I had to develop a thick skin and learn how to argue my points. My way of handling criticism, aside from having solid research to back me up, was to smile. The harsher the criticism, the sweeter I smiled. I made a conscious decision never to stoop to the level of petty arguments. Instead, I tried to be motivational and help others understand why my approach worked better. Over time, I found that this attitude paid off. People I met in government, for example, would often tell me later on that the reason they listened to me was because I wasn’t nasty or confrontational.
I learned early on to stay true to myself. One man, a key figure in the Churchill Fellowship, gave me some advice that really stuck;
To thine own self be true. It’s a Shakespearean quote, but it’s powerful. From that point on, I vowed not to do anything that didn’t align with who I am. That’s what helped me navigate the criticisms and challenges.
How did you maintain your motivation to keep pushing forward in the face of adversity?
When I started Hear and Say and applied for the Churchill Fellowship, I came across two sayings that kept me going. One was from Winston Churchill: 'Never give in, never give in, never, never, ever give in.' The second was from the aviator Amelia Earhart, who said, 'Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.'
That really resonated with me. I knew that if I wanted to sleep peacefully at night, I had to follow my conscience and do what I believed was right. So I just kept going, staying true to myself, building good relationships with people, and sharing what I had learned in ways that inspired them to join me in my mission.