The month of June brought two protests at facilities owned or operated by the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired of San Francisco (LightHouse). The first took place on Thursday, June 12, in front of the eleven-story building containing LightHouse’s main headquarters at 1155 Market Street in San Francisco and was reportedly attended by forty to fifty people, according to an attendee. The second, led by a group called the Northern California Association of the DeafBlind (NCADB), took place on June 27, which is celebrated as Helen Keller Day, at the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley, where LightHouse has an office.
An email from the Decertify LightHouse Now campaign said in part: “Dozens of supporters showed up in solidarity. Cars honked in support, and people passing by stopped to learn more. A charter bus dropped off campers from EHC [Enchanted Hills Camp, which is operated by LightHouse], and several families who came to pick up their loved ones were shocked to learn what LightHouse has been doing. The energy was undeniable—community awareness is growing, and the call for justice is getting louder.”
Both demonstrations are the latest and possibly largest public demonstrations of concerns about the management, financial stability, and services (or alleged lack thereof) provided by LightHouse. Some of the concerns touch on sensitive personnel matters, including allegations of everything from nepotism to sexual misconduct to retaliation against LightHouse employees who reported concerns about alleged misconduct or malfeasance.
These issues, along with recent staff reductions and living wage demands, may have contributed to a push by LightHouse employees to unionize. As indicated by the Helen Keller Day protest, there is also controversy around LightHouse’s administration of the National Deafblind Equipment Distribution Program (NDBEDP), more commonly known as iCanConnect.
This is a federal program supported by grants to entities certified to distribute equipment to eligible deafblind people. Certification is granted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and LightHouse is the only certified entity in the entire state of California. Nonetheless, the NCADB is leading a campaign seeking decertification of LightHouse, although its letter accompanying a petition to the FCC for decertification does not identify any potential alternate provider. (When asked by the Monitor, a campaign spokesperson said that the Helen Keller National Center would be best positioned to take over the program).
A third category of concern has to do with whether LightHouse’s property, assets, and programs are being responsibly managed. All of this is now occurring against the backdrop of a national search for a new CEO necessitated by the resignation, for health reasons, of Sharon Giovinazzo, who had served in the post since 2022, succeeding Federationist Bryan Bashin.
Some of the allegations surrounding the iCanConnect program and personnel matters are the subject of confidential reviews or administrative and legal proceedings that are still pending. Given that context, verifiable details have been hard to come by pending deeper investigation, and this magazine has no intention of engaging in speculation or the repetition of rumors.
This short article merely outlines the concerns and allegations at play and what we have been able to confirm so far from publicly available sources, including reports by news outlets. It is important to note here that the most thorough timeline we have found identifying the issues is on the website of the Decertify LightHouse Now campaign, which is hardly an unbiased source of information, although that does not mean that it is unreliable by definition.
Where we can, we have verified assertions made on that site, but so far had limited success. We have reached out to Brandon Cox, the acting CEO of LightHouse, and he has indicated a willingness to be interviewed. Per his request, we submitted written questions for his preparation. As of this writing, we have been unable to schedule a time for the interview.
We have also contacted the Decertify LightHouse Now campaign through its website and, after receiving a reply from Angela Palmer, who described herself as the campaign spokesperson and appears also to be a board member of NCADB, submitted written questions to her, which she answered by email. We have also spoken with Tim Elder, the California affiliate president, to learn what he knows about the concerns that have been raised based on his own due diligence and connections with the blind and deafblind communities.
Finally, we have reviewed documents that are publicly available on the FCC website regarding a complaint that has been filed with the agency; however, it appears that not all documents in the pending case are publicly available.
The Braille Monitor will continue to investigate these matters and update our readers as we learn of additional developments. If you believe you have information that will be helpful to our readers in understanding what is happening at this agency, please reach out to the editor at [email protected].
The Concerns of the Deafblind Community
The Decertify LightHouse Now campaign claims that iCanConnect services from LightHouse have been understaffed and under-resourced since the agency began administering the program in 2012, although it commends the performance of some employees, all of whom it claims have now been fired or reassigned. However, most of the events of which the campaign complains took place after in-person services were temporarily paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The campaign calls particular attention to the dismissal of employees who it says were trying to make much-needed improvements to the program and report malfeasance, including Kathy Abrahamson, Sook Hee Choi, Mussie Gebre, and Sequence Gilder. It alleges retaliatory action against some of these employees, including administrative assistant Gilder and equipment training specialist Gebre.
On September 23, 2023, Mr. Gebre filed an informal complaint with the FCC alleging violations of program rules. Three days later, he was fired. Mr. Gebre later filed a formal complaint with the FCC, this time alleging not only ten separate rule violations but also unlawful whistleblower retaliation. LightHouse has said in FCC filings that he was fired for cause. According to FCC documents, Mr. Gebre also filed a civil lawsuit in California Superior Court, but dropped it voluntarily while continuing to pursue the FCC complaint.
In a January 2025 memorandum opinion and order, the FCC dismissed Mr. Gebre’s claims for back pay, front pay, and damages, saying that it cannot grant such legal relief, but allowed the proceeding to go forward based on his remaining allegations despite LightHouse’s efforts to have the entire complaint thrown out. At this writing, however, no final ruling on the allegations has been issued; the case appears to still be in the “discovery” phase in which parties provide evidence supporting their respective positions.
Decertify LightHouse Now also says that a deaf interpreter whom LightHouse refused to hire sued the agency for discrimination and won in California Superior Court. When asked by the Monitor for further details, spokesperson Angela Palmer identified the case as Moore v. LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, case number 24STSC02610.
In July of 2024, NCADB formally launched the Decertify LightHouse Now campaign, citing systemic mismanagement and discrimination in deafblind services. The campaign told the Monitor in an email that it receives support from and collaborates with several California-based organizations of blind and deafblind people, including the DeafBlind Division of the National Federation of the Blind of California. (We forwarded this email to Tim Elder, who said it was the first he had heard of any such collaboration with the affiliate.)
In a January 2025 blog post on the campaign’s website, the group specifically called for the removal of three LightHouse leaders: then-CEO Sharon Giovinazzo, COO Brandon Cox, and Culture and People/Human Resources director Lisa Lee, stating that their removals were necessary to prevent “further harm to LightHouse and the communities it serves.”
In February, the campaign submitted a letter and petition to the FCC outlining its reasons for seeking decertification. Sharon Giovinazzo voluntarily left LightHouse at the end of March 2025 after a cancer diagnosis, according to a post on her LinkedIn account, to focus on treatment. Brandon Cox has assumed the role of Acting CEO while the LightHouse board of directors conducts a national search for her replacement.
Labor Unrest and the Push for Unionization
In September of 2023, according to news reports, representatives of an aspiring union, LightHouse United, informed the agency’s management that a majority of LightHouse’s then eighty-seven employees had signed union cards and asked for voluntary recognition of the union. LightHouse United’s introductory letter cited workers’ desire for more job security, a Bay-area living wage, and a greater say in agency policies and decisions.
What happened next is disputed: both parties agree that LightHouse asked for more time to respond to the request for voluntary recognition, which the union organizers say they granted, giving management an extra week to respond beyond the original deadline in their introductory letter. Union organizers said that they went ahead and filed a petition for a formal union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) just to start the process and notified LightHouse management that they would withdraw it if the union was voluntarily recognized.
But LightHouse said the union went ahead and sought a formal election with NLRB without waiting for their response or notifying it of the plan to pre-file the petition, a charge union organizers denied to Mission Local, a news outlet that reported on the union push.
In any event, LightHouse ultimately did not recognize the union, and so a formal vote went forward. On October 25, 2023, workers voted fifty in favor and twenty-two against to organize LightHouse United as an affiliate of the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29.
Following the election, CEO Sharon Giovinazzo sent an email to the entire LightHouse team, which Mission Local obtained and published. It said in part:
“While I must honestly express that I believe this may not be the optimal path for our agency, I want to assure you that our leadership, including the board of directors, is committed to working cooperatively throughout the contract negotiation process. We recognize the importance of open dialogue, collaboration, and ensuring that your voices are heard.”
Despite that commitment, the union filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in November. That complaint was settled in early 2024, according to the NLRB website, which notes the filing of a settlement notice but does not make the document available in its entirety. But by the fall of that year, contract negotiations had stalled again, with union representatives accusing LightHouse management of delaying tactics and union-busting practices. As of July 2025, the contract negotiation is apparently still unresolved.
Financial Concerns
A decade ago, LightHouse’s future seemed very secure when it received a 125 million dollar bequest. Blind architect Chris Downey was hired to renovate and redesign aspects of the entity’s headquarters building, and Mr. Downey and his work were featured on the CBS news program 60 Minutes. According to a LightHouse newsletter that the agency sent following a public board meeting, capital improvements were also made from these funds to Enchanted Hills Camp (EHC), a facility that the agency operates in rural northern California.
Tim Elder believes that the capital improvements to the camp went over-budget and said that the agency is trying to shore up the camp’s finances by renting it to other groups when not using it. At the same time, some agency offices have been closed and there have been staff layoffs. LightHouse claims in a Your Questions Answered segment of its June 2025 newsletter that its financial position is secure, with 80 million dollars still remaining of the corpus of the bequest.
In 2024, LightHouse suffered another financial setback. The first eight floors of its building on Market Street had been rented by offices of the City of San Francisco for many years. Claiming that the rent it was paying was too high, the city terminated its lease at the end of May 2024. This left the agency without the revenue it was using to pay a 48 million dollar mortgage on those eight floors of the building. According to Tim Elder, who is also an attorney, the loan agreement contained an automatic default provision triggered by the city’s termination of its leasing arrangement.
LightHouse says that it owns the top three floors of the eleven-story building outright and debt-free, so the agency will not be forced to vacate the premises. The real estate website therealdeal.com reports that LightHouse originally leased the space from the Patson Companies, which then allowed it to purchase a majority stake in the building, with the original owner retaining a 10 percent minority stake. The website also reported that Giovinazzo said that LightHouse was “blindsided” by the city’s decision, as San Francisco was originally expected to renew the lease until 2028.
But the decision to back out was apparently discussed at a city Budget and Finance Committee meeting as early as September of 2023. Elder believes that despite the negative press created by the default, it was arguably financially responsible of LightHouse not to try and pay the loan given the loss of rental revenue. A foreclosure proceeding was initiated in July of 2024, and the lenders asked that the parcel containing the lower eight floors of the building be placed in receivership. The top three floors occupied by LightHouse, however, were not collateral for the loan, so LightHouse is correct that its occupancy will not be affected by whatever happens to the lower eight floors.
What Does All This Mean?
While the proverb has it that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, the truth can be much more nuanced. It seems apparent, however, that LightHouse has lost the trust of at least a significant segment of the deafblind community and has fraught relations with its staff. What is not clear is whether these problems are the result of malfeasance or simply a lack of transparency or failure to communicate effectively. This reporter is not enough of a labor expert to know whether the union contract negotiations are taking an unduly long time, but it seems reasonable to ask whether they ought to be going more smoothly given management’s expressed commitment to recognizing worker’s rights.
As for the agency’s finances, LightHouse appears to have burned through 45 million dollars of the large 2015 bequest relatively quickly, and it is reasonable to raise questions given the closure of offices and staff layoffs. The default on the 48 million dollar mortgage loan was the result of unsuccessful lease negotiations with the City of San Francisco, but it’s unclear whether that is the fault of poor negotiating by LightHouse administration or just the execution of San Francisco’s reported strategy to focus on purchasing downtown office space rather than renting it.
The allegations of the Decertify LightHouse Now campaign are serious, and there does seem to be real frustration in the deafblind community with respect to the quality and timeliness of service in the iCanConnect program as administered by LightHouse. However, as we have noted, the most serious allegations have not yet been the subject of definitive legal or administrative rulings.
As we said earlier, if you believe that you have information or documents that will help us report more thoroughly and knowledgeably on the LightHouse going forward, please reach out to this editor at [email protected]. We will continue to follow developments and update our coverage as warranted.