Family Leadership in Language and Learning Center Advisory Board

Carmen Armenta, MBA

Carmen is a Database Specialist II at the New Mexico School for the Deaf (NMSD) Early Intervention Department. She has been with NMSD for over 8 years. She is also the Executive Director for Hands & Voices NM (HVNM)/Guide by Your Side Program Coordinator. She has been with HVNM for 11 years. She and her husband are the proud parents of three children, two of whom are Deaf/Hard of Hearing.

Bradley Hartman Bakken Ph.D.

Bradley is the Wyoming EHDI Coordinator and serves on the Directors of Speech and Hearing Programs in State Health and Welfare Agencies (DSHPSHWA) Executive Board.  Dr. Hartman Bakken is a physiologist who, prior to joining the Wyoming EHDI Program in 2012, was a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Universidad de Chile, and Kansas State University.  He oversees Wyoming's late onset hearing loss (LOHL)/periodic childhood screening system and pediatric audiology clinic.

Kristina Blaiser, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Kristina Blaiser is a Professor at Idaho State University and the director of the ISU Helping Adults Talk to Children (HATCH) Family Support and the Idaho Hearing Education and Aural Rehabilitation (IHEAR) Graduate Training Program. Her research and clinical interests revolve around optimizing the outcomes of young children who are Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing by supporting the families and training providers. Dr. Blaiser serves as the Coordinator of Special Interest Group 9, Pediatric Hearing and Hearing Disorders and the Special Topics Chair for the Council of Exceptional Children Division for Communication, Language, and Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DCD). Dr. Blaiser was recently appointed to roles on the national American Academy of Pediatrics Provider Education Center and Family Leadership in Language and Learning Center Advisory Boards.

Lesa Coleman

Lesa Coleman is the mother of 6 children; 2 daughters, Corinne and Emily were born with moderate-profound hearing loss. Corinne was late-diagnosed at age 2. Emily, born shortly thereafter, was diagnosed at birth. Having personally experienced the difficulty of language acquisition with late diagnosis, Lesa is passionate about helping families engage in family support and early intervention. Lesa helped establish Idaho Hands and Voices in 2007. Off and on since 2002, Lesa has served on Idaho's EHDI board, Idaho Sound Beginnings. Lesa was a part of the team that brought health insurance coverage to Idaho in 2019. Lesa received the 2019 EHDI Family Leadership Award. Currently, Lesa serves as the Family Support Coordinator for the ISU HATCH lab. Lesa and husband Lance are Idaho natives and love to explore National Parks and Historic Sites.

Cheri Dowling

Cheri is the Coordinator of the Family Support and Resource Center at the Maryland School for the Deaf and the Director of Outreach and Programs with the American Society for Deaf Children and  has recently joined the Maryland Deafblind Project, Connections Beyond Sight and Sound as their Family Engagement Specialist. She lives in Woodbine, MD with her husband and two young adult children, 25-year old, Patrick and 22-year old, Ryan. Cheri has been working with families who have deaf or hard of hearing children to help them navigate the special education system and providing parent to parent support since 1999.

Evelyn Shaw Ford, M.Ed. - is a technical assistance specialist at Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working for over 30 years on a number of projects related to young children with or at risk for disabilities. As a technical assistance specialist, she has expertise in early identification and on issues related to child find including children with hearing loss, autism, children who have experienced maltreatment, and the use of data to target improvements.

Elaine Gale – Ph.D, M.A. Deaf Ed

Dr. Elaine Gale is an associate professor and program leader for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing teacher preparation program at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). She is the Lead Investigator for the Hunter College consortium on the research project Family ASL: Bimodal Bilingual Acquisition by Deaf Children of Hearing Parents, supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Gale also serves on the board of New York Hands & Voices and is a member of the New York EHDI Advisory Group. On an international level, she chairs Deaf Leadership International Alliance (DLIA), advocating for Deaf expertise in early intervention systems for young deaf children and their families worldwide.

Gayla Guignard, M.A., CCC-A/SLP, LSLS Cert AVT - is AG Bell’s Chief Strategy Officer. In this position she promotes and supports collaboration, develops strategy to achieve AG Bell’s mission, and works cooperatively on key strategic initiatives of AG Bell and the AG Bell Academy.  Gayla has worked as a direct service provider, clinical supervisor, State EHDI Coordinator, and Director of Indiana’s Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education (CDHHE) and has served and continues to serve in leadership roles on national committees/work groups.

Karen Hopkins, Ed.D

Dr. Karen Hopkins is the Executive Director of The Children’s Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf. She brings over 32 years of experience as a collaborative teacher of the deaf, special educator, early interventionist, grant writer, and educational administrator to her work with Deaf and hard of hearing children.  Her work with families, coupled with her own personal experience as a Deaf adult and parent of a daughter who is hard of hearing have inspired her to create systems that puts families and deaf adults in the forefront of systems. Karen oversees early intervention and educational programming for children who are Deaf or hard of hearing birth to age 22 in the Northshore of Massachusetts. She is active in many organizations and boards, is the current President of the Hands & Voices HQ Board of Directors and is involved with international FCEI programming including the Deaf Leadership International Alliance.

Maria Katz

Maria Blanco Katz is a Birmingham, Alabama based wife, mother, and attorney.   Inspired by her experiences raising her 19 year old deaf son, Lawson, she co-founded Alabama Hands & Voices in 2017 and serves as its director.  She serves on several committees related to Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) and deaf education.  She is a graduate of the University of Georgia (B.A.) and Georgetown University Law Center (J.D.).

Debbie Mood, Ph.D

Deborah Mood, PhD is a Gallaudet-trained licensed psychologist specializing in working with children who are deaf/hard of hearing and children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Dr. Mood is an assistant professor at University of Colorado Anschutz, School of Medicine, Department of Developmental Pediatrics where she serves as lead psychologist on the developmental behavioral pediatrics D/HH team, microtia team and cochlear implant team. Dr. Mood is passionate about supporting children who are D/HH with co-occurring developmental disabilities and is affiliated faculty with the JFK Partners/Developmental Pediatrics Leadership and Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) program.

Sheila Moodie, PhD. - is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, Faculty of Health Sciences at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. She is also the Director of the Family-Centered Early Intervention Laboratory in the National Centre for Audiology at Western. Prof. Moodie has spent 30 years on clinical-based research questions associated with early intervention. Most recently she has been focused on the development of approaches to supporting families on the important journey of raising a child(ren) who are Ddeaf or Hard of Hearing.

Jocelyn Ross

Jocelyn Ross has been married to Akil for 21 years and is a proud mother of Alyssa (14) and AJ (10). At birth, the newborn hearing screening identified that Alyssa needed follow up testing which confirmed her hearing loss. Jocelyn founded Let South Carolina Hear (LSCH) to advocate for families in the deaf and hard of hearing community. The LSCH mission is to secure legislation, still ongoing, to require insurance to cover the cost of hearing aids. Jocelyn is the current president of SC Hands & Voices which is another avenue to help families receive resources and support for all children.  She volunteers to travel the state hosting mingles for families to connect, learn, and share about their hearing loss journey. Additionally, SCHV leads a statewide DHH Building Bridges conference connecting parents and students to professional resources and information. Jocelyn, by profession, holds a Master's degree in Statistics from the University of South Carolina and has served as an educational researcher for k-12 and post-secondary institutions for 21 years.

Allison Sedey, Ph.D., CCC-A/SLP

Allison Sedey, Ph.D., CCC-A/SLP, is a speech pathologist, audiologist, and researcher. She is currently the director of the Early Language Outcomes Lab (ĒLO) at the University of Colorado-Boulder and is the assessment and accountability coordinator for the early education outreach program at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind. Dr. Sedey received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studied language acquisition in children who are deaf/hard of hearing as well as in children who have Down syndrome. For the past 30 years, she has served as the director or project coordinator on a variety of grant-funded research projects examining predictors of language outcomes in young children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Johnnie Sexton, Au.D.

Mr. Sexton is the Founder and Executive Director of The CARE Project, a nonprofit organization devoted to providing emotional support for families with children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Dr. Sexton has worked with children who are deaf and hard of hearing and their families for over 4 decades. He received his B.S. (1977) and M.S. (1979) degrees from East Carolina University and his Au.D. Degree (2010) from A. T. Still University/Arizona Health Sciences. Dr. Sexton owns a private practice in Educational Audiology Services in NC, providing services to over half of NC school systems with a staff of 15 Audiologists. He served as the Audiologist on the NC Department of Health and Human Services Team that designed the newborn hearing screening program for the 93 NC birthing hospitals in 1999-2001 and currently serves as the Chair of the NC Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Advisory Board. In 2018, Dr. Sexton was named the #1 Audiology Practitioner in the United States by the Oticon Focus on People Awards.

Uma Soman, Ph.D, LSLS Cert AVEd

Dr. Uma Soman is an educator of deaf-and-hard-of-hearing (DHH) students and Listening and Spoken Language Specialist (LSLS Cert AVEd.) She is the Co-Founder and the Director of Listening Together, and Assistant Professor in the Communication Disorders and Deaf Education Department at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, USA. Over the last twenty years, Dr. Soman has provided intervention to DHH children and their families. She prepares, trains, and mentors pre-service and in-service professionals in US and India. Dr. Soman is on the AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language board and the Hands and Voices Family Leadership in Language and Learning Center (FL3) Advisory Board.

Amy Szarkowski, PhD - is a psychologist who specializes in working with children who are deaf or hard of hearing and their families. Dr. Szarkowski is Director of The Institute at the Children’s Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf (CCCBSD), which aims to conduct research, provide professional development, and partner with invested stakeholders to bridge the research-to-practice gap in the areas of Deaf Education and Special Education, focusing on supporting learners with communication challenges. Dr. Szarkowski also serves as Core Faculty for LEND (Leadership and Education in Neurodevelopmental and related Disabilities) at Boston Children’s Hospital and holds an appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Additionally, Dr. Szarkowski is an Associate Professor at Gallaudet University, where she teaches in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Infants, Toddlers and their Families: Collaboration and Leadership Interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate Program.

Jana Villemez, LCSW

Jana Villemez is the Family Engagement Initiative Lead at the National Center on Deaf-Blindness (NCDB). She is a licensed clinical social worker with experience in hospice, palliative care, and behavioral health and served as the Family Consultant for Arkansas’ deafblind program for over 10 years. Her passion is in systems change - strengthening support systems by providing opportunities for all families and their children, meeting families where they are, and building and elevating family voice.

Ashten Yost, EdD, CED, LSLS Cert, AVEd

Dr. Yost is the Mississippi Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) Director. She holds a B.A. in Speech and Hearing Sciences, an M.S. in Oral Deaf Education, and an Ed.D. from The University of Southern Mississippi. She has served as a Professional Development Coordinator for the University of Mississippi and the Mississippi Department of Education. Her previous roles include Early Oral Interventionist and Listening and Spoken Language Specialist (LSLS) at Magnolia Speech School, Cochlear Implant Consumer Specialist for Advanced Bionics, LLC, and Teacher of the Deaf at the Mama Lere Hearing School at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.