Dr. Marleen Westerveld, PhD, CPSP, FSPA, is an Associate Professor in Speech Pathology at Griffith University and a member of the Griffith Institute for Educational Research. She is a fellow of Speech Pathology Australia, and a certified practising speech pathologist. Her clinical and research experience relate to working with children, from infancy through adolescence, with language and communication difficulties, including developmental language disorder and language disorders associated with biomedical conditions, such as autism and Down syndrome. Dr. Westerveld’s research focuses on children’s spontaneous language and literacy skills, with particular emphasis on the relationship between children’s spoken and written language skills and their ability to participate in daily activities (at home, school, and in the community). Dr. Westerveld has published more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and she is a regular workshop presenter on spontaneous language sampling and analysis; narrative assessment and intervention;(emergent) literacy development in young children on the autism spectrum; assessment and intervention targeting advanced language skills including expository and persuasion. Dr. Westerveld leads the Committee’s Global TALES project, which has attracted global interest, with more than 20 child language researchers joining the project to date.

Dr. Mary Claessen, PhD, is a speech pathologist and researcher who is passionate about making a difference for children and adolescents with a language disorder. Mary has worked at Curtin University in a variety of roles including Speech Pathology Discipline Lead. She is currently employed at Speech Pathology Australia in the Professional Standards team, where her role encompasses professional recognition and university accreditation, while still maintaining an active research role at Curtin University.

Dr. Barbara J. Ehren, EdD, CCC-SLP is an ASHA Board-Certified Specialist in Child Language, ASHA Fellow and recipient of Honors of the Association. Currently she is President of Student Success Initiatives, Inc., an entity dedicated to development of materials and delivery of professional learning services on behalf of children and adolescents who struggle with language and literacy. Dr. Ehren was a professor at the University of Central Florida and director of a doctoral program that focused on language and literacy for learners who struggle. Prior to this position, she was a research scientist with the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KUCRL), where her emphasis was on strategic reading, collaboration among professionals in schools, and school-wide literacy initiatives, including response-to-intervention/multi-tiered system of supports(RTI/MTSS). Her experience includes many years in public schools as an SLP, classroom teacher, and district administrator. She serves on numerous committees and editorial boards and has a special interest in helping school systems build more effective literacy programs for diverse learners at the school level. A recurrent theme of her work is shared responsibility for literacy acquisition. She is a frequent consultant to countries, states, school districts, and professional associations internationally. She has authored many publications related to language/literacy and school practice.

Dr. Jóhanna Thelma Einarsdóttir is a professor at the University of Iceland, in the School of Education and School of Health. She is currently a chair of the speech and language pathology program at the University of Iceland. Her research focuses on fluency disorder, on measures and treatment of stuttering, as well as general language acquisition, bilingual studies, and developmental language disorders.

Dr. Khaloob Kawar, PhD, is a speech and language pathologist and a lecturer at Beit Berl college, Israel. She is specialized in typical and atypical language development in the diglossic context of Arabic, as well as second and foreign language learning. Moreover, she has developed several hearing perception assessments for Arabic-speaking children.

Dr. Jelena Kuvac Kraljevic is a professor at the Department of Speech and Language Pathology, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her main research interests are language development, language processing, and language disorders across the lifespan, both developmental and acquired. She is particularly interested in the development of formal instruments for assessing language skills. She is the director of the PhD programme Speech, Language and Hearing Disorders at the University of Zagreb and editor of the Croatian Review of Rehabilitation Research.

Dr. Rena Lyons, PhD, is a speech and language therapist and Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Speech and Language Therapy, School of Health Sciences, University of Ireland Galway, Ireland. She has over 30 years of clinical, teaching, and research experience. Her research interests include exploring collaborative working with parents, the voice of children with developmental speech and language disorders, narratives, person-centred care, and the social model of disability. She has expertise in qualitative methods. She has co-edited two books on qualitative research in communication disorders and is the recipient of two journal editors’ awards for qualitative research papers.

Dr. Sharon Moonsamy (PhD) is an Associate Professor at Wits University, and the Head of the School of Human & Community Development. She is a Speech-Language Pathologist. Teaching and research areas include child language, literacy and cognition, centered on social justice. Her scholarly profile includes teacher-therapist workshops, conferences, journal articles and book publications.

Dr. Nickola Wolf Nelson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, BCS-CL, is Professor Emerita in the Department of Language, Speech, and Hearing Sciences at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA, where she previously served as Director of the Ph.D. program in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Health and Human Services. Nelson is a Board-Certified Specialist in Child Language (BCS-CL). She conducts research and provides consultation on language/literacy development and disorders among school-age students, emphasizing an inter professional, curriculum-relevant perspective on assessment and intervention. Dr. Nelson is first author of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills(TILLS) and the Student Language Scale(SLS). She is past Editor of the journal, Topics in Language Disorders. Dr. Nelson has been awarded Fellowship in the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities, the Kleffner Clinical Career Award by the ASH Foundation, and the Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Nicki now lives in Wichita, Kansas, with her husband, Steve Nave.

Dr. Elena Theodorou, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Speech Therapy/Speech Pathology in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at the Cyprus University of Technology. Her PhD research project, completed at the University of Cyprus, evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of Greek language assessment tools for Greek Cypriot children with Developmental Language Disorders. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Speech Therapy  from the Technological Institute of Patrasin Greece and a Master’s in Science in Language and Communication Impairment in Children from Sheffield University in the UK. Her research areas include: identifying and diagnosing language disorders in the bi-dialectal context, language acquisition in typical and atypical populations, service provision for children with Developmental Language Disorder and Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Elena has worked as a researcher and research assistant in several regional and European projects since 2001. She has been a registered Speech and Language Pathologist since 2002. She worked for 15 years as a Speech and Language Therapist in government settings (hospitals, pre-primary and primary schools), where she provided speech and language services to children with language impairment, autistic spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, genetic syndromes, hearing loss, etc. She is currently the president of the Cyprus Registration Council of Speech-Language Pathologists.

Dr. Carol Westby, PhD, CCC-SLP, is a consultant for Bilingual Multicultural Services in Albuquerque, NM and holds an affiliated appointment in Communication Disorders at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. She is a Fellow of the American-Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), has received the Honors of ASHA and the Kleffner Lifetime Clinical Achievement Award, and holds Board Certification in Child Language and Language Disorders. Dr. Westby has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Geneva College and the University of Iowa’s Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology and the ASHA Award for Contributions to Multicultural Affairs. She has published and presented nationally and internationally on theory of mind, narrative/expository development and facilitation, adverse childhood experiences/trauma, qualitative methodologies, assessment and facilitation of written language, metacognition/executive function/ADHD, and issues in assessment and intervention with culturally/linguistically diverse populations. Dr. Westby has a BA in English from Geneva College and an MA and PhD in Speech Pathology from the University of Iowa.

Dr. Eleftheria Geronikou, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Patras, Greece. Having qualified as a licensed Speech and Language Therapist in Greece, she pursued postgraduate studies at UCL, University of London, supported by an IKY scholarship, and completed her doctoral studies at the University of Sheffield. She has clinical experience in pediatric caseloads, having served for a decade as a Speech and Language Therapist in the Special Education Units of the Greek Ministry of Education. Serving as a Member of the Diagnostic Committee for students with learning disabilities in Western Greece, she actively advocated for awareness of speech and language difficulties in preschoolers, emphasizing the need for early identification and support. Her research focuses on speech processing development, morphophonological development, and cognitive aspects of speech development, particularly within the Greek-speaking population.

Dr. Anita Mei-Yin Wong is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. As an ASHA-certified speech-language pathologist, she has worked with English-speaking children in the US, and with children from non-English speaking backgrounds in Canada. Until June 2022, she engaged in research and speech-language pathology education at the University of Hong Kong where Chinese and English are the official languages. Dr. Wong has a strong research record on language development and disorders, Developmental Language Disorder in particular, and early reading development in Cantonese-speaking children. Her current research interests are language disorders and intervention in English speaking children and in children who learn English as an additional language. Dr. Wong is a member of the international committee of RADLD to help raise awareness of DLD around the world, and the co-convenor of the Hong Kong special interest group on Terminology for Child Language Disorders (TCLD) in Chinese. Dr. Wong also serves as an Associate Editor for the journal First Language.