Maya-Camille Broussard is a deaf and hard of hearing community icon. Maya appears as a contestant on Netflix’s Baking Squad.
Maya-Camille is a culinary artist of Justice of The Pies, a baker based in Chicago. She grew up in a family of bakers and used to bake muffins or pound cakes together with her aunt.
From her shop getting recognized by the Illinois Office of Tourism to her making special dessert recipes for the first-ever virtual James Beard Foundation Awards, she has come a long way.
She has proved that people with hard of hearing can make live well on their own. And it is her motto to relay the same message to those people through her appearance in Bake Squad.
Maya-Camille Broussard Is A Deaf Community Icon
Maya-Camille Broussard has been deaf since a young age. Maya had to wear hearing aids since she was four years old.
She did not start talking until she was four years old. A speech therapist told her mother to give up since she was likely deaf and dumb.
Thus, she attended speech therapy for most of her elementary school years. However, she had to hear mean things from her classmates, who would call her Helen Keller, Miracle Ear, and Bell Tone.
People would pass on a note to her that read, “I am writing this on paper because you probably can’t hear me. That’s it. That was supposed to be a joke”.
Her social teacher had even suggested she keep her hair down to hide from hearing aids, but she loved ponytails and did not change her hairstyle to pacify her classmates who teased her.
When she was at Daley Plaza Farmers Market or any fair, she could not hear some people, and they did not know that she had to see their faces to know they were talking to her.
While she was working with her head down, people would say mean things to her, and her assistant at that time would yell at them, saying she could not hear them.
Maya-Camille Is Part Of Several Associations
Broussard and her business partner work with several organizations to help several communities. She is a member of PWD (Person with Disability) and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community.
She teams up with the Cabrini Green Legal Aid for its annual pie drive to raise money for the organization, which offers free legal assistance to low-income families. In 2017, she started hosting “I Knead Love” for fifth to eighth graders from low-income communities.
She taught the kids basic kitchen skills, nutritional development, budgeting, and creativity in the kitchen. She also talked about how easy it is to visit an urban garden and volunteer there.
During the pandemic, she partnered with Frontline Foods Chicago to provide meals to the frontline workers and others affected. Thus, she wants to help as much people as she can.
Maya-Camille On Bake Squad
Maya-Camille was invited to Bake Squad by chef Tosi. She has a baking club, and the first time she worked with the chef was in one of the episodes she used to do on Instagram.
Then, she got invited to Los Angeles to shoot the show. She expressed how grateful she was for the opportunity, writes Chicago Suntimes.
She is the creator of Justice of Pies bakery, which specializes in sweet and savory pies, quiches, and tarts. She opened it in honor of her late father, who would call himself the pie master.
He was an attorney passionate about baking and eating anything made with the crust.
Likewise, in an interview with Disability Visibility Project, she shared her experiences on the show. She said that she enjoyed exercising her creative muscles and participating in a friendly competition.
On the show, she wanted to show that anything is possible for young girls of her race. She wants people in her community to be inspired by her story, tenacity, drive, and success.