CI Parents' Choice Medical Professionals: And Yours?

I asked the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Circle for a list of speakers: Medical Professionals who "get" the Parental Support Component of Intervention, and would like to post the names. Parents attend conferences, meetings, classes, groups, etc. to become more informed on issues regarding their child's (children's) deafness. So, I would like to give credit where credit is due, meaning that the following speakers, in some way, have touched the lives of these parents. Please feel free to comment the name of a Medical Professional who has touched your family in some way:

Dr. Mary Pat Moeller

Dale Atkins

Christine Yoshinago-Itano

Carol Flexer, PhD, a professor of audiology
from the University of Akron gave an excellent talk at the AG
conference called, "Facilitating Emergent Literacy." I thought she
did a fantastic job of speaking both to professionals and parents.

Jane Madell, PhD, Director of the Hearing and Learning Center at
our center, New York Eye and Ear has been a huge advocate for
newborn screening in the US. She just gave a talking in Texas
called, "Closing the Gaps in Pediatric Hearing Loss, Identification
and Management in the 21st Century."

A very good friend of mine recently completed a dissertation on family
decision making in response to newborn hearing screening. She's an
audiologist/deaf educator who has worked with families in a variety of
early intervention contexts and has just accepted a position as the
clinical director of an AV therapy center here in the DC area. She's
also fluent in ASL and the mother of two Deaf children with CIs who
didn't benefit from newborn hearing screening (they were adopted
internationally as toddlers). She's a great speaker who really "gets"
these issues from all sides!
Her name is Sarah Dawson Wainscott

I just read your post and a name quickly came to mind.? The woman's name is Mary Koch and she resides in Maryland. She does national presentations and is also connected with Boys Town. I have heard her speak many times and her presentations are wonderful.. She does a great balanced presentation. She started the cochlear habilitation program at Johns Hopkins years ago and she is known for the video she did called Celia's story.

Judith Marlowe, Ph.D. She is an audiologist who was one of the founders of Auditory-Verbal International. However, in the past decade+ she also spearheaded the efforts in the U.S. for universal newborn hearing screening and was instrumental in getting it passed in the U.S.

Another one is Warren Estabrooks, who is a fantastic speaker. I’ve heard him speak a couple of times. Parents adore him. He was a Cert. AVT in Canada for years but now I think mostly just travels and speaks and helps others. He’s written several books for parents and professionals, written so that parents can easily understand them and were probably written more for parents than professionals.

There's Marilyn Neault, director of the CI program at Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital. She’s been in the field for years, is responsible for pushing to get the CI program started at Boston Children’s, and is incredibly dedicated to and adored by parents. She has been on the cicircle for years, almost since its inception, because she wants to be responsive to parents. Along with Larry Orloff, an adult CI user who used to be the editor of CICI’s Contact publication, she has been the leader and organizer for years of the Northeast CI convention that occurs every other year in the odd years at Sturbridge, MA, and is easily the best regional CI convention in the U.S. It draws close to 1000 people now, including many from outside New England. Marilyn and Larry put together a program that is geared towards everyone, parents, children, professionals, etc.

*And then, of course, there would be my personal choice, although I've never heard him speak...Josh Swiller *smile**

I would like to see the list grow, so if you have any names you would like to add, please feel free to email me at jodi@rallycaps.net or leave a comment. Thaaaaannnnkks!