FOUNDING BOARD OF DIRECTORS (Detailed),
THE HAAN FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN

G. Reid Lyon, Ph.D., nationally renowned research psychologist
Dr. Lyon is a research psychologist and heads the most respected organization that directs and funds research related to child development. He is responsible for the direction, development and management of research programs in developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral pediatrics, reading, and human learning and learning disorders. Before assuming this important position on a full-time basis in l991, Dr. Lyon served on the faculties of Northwestern University (Communication Science and Disorders/Neuroscience-1980-1983) and the University of Vermont Neurology-1983-1991). He was a member of the Maternal and Child Health Scientific Peer Review Group at NIH from 1987 to 1991. Dr. Lyon's research program was supported, in part, by grants from the NIH and the Department of Education.

John Sidgmore, Vice Chairman, Worldcom Inc., McLean, Virginia; Chairman, Uunet, Inc., McLean, Virginia
John Sidgmore, Worldcom's vice chairman and UUNet's Chair, has an extensive career in the information technology field. Before his current role, he was COO of UUNET, president and COO of MFS, president and CEO of CSC Intellicom and VP and general manager of General Electric Information Services North American division. He is on the board of MCI WorldCom, UUNET, MFS Communications Saville Systems and ECI.

SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD (Detailed)

Chairman, Scientific Advisory Board Of Directors For The Haan Foundation For Children- Dr. Maryanne Wolf

Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D, Director, Center for Reading and Language Research; Associate Professor of Child Development, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, Tufts University; Research Scientist, Harvard Medical School; Department of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts

Dr. Wolf received her doctorate from the Department of Human Development in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, where she began her work on the neurological underpinnings of reading, language and dyslexia. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Germany where she conducted dyslexia research with German-speaking children.

Her current research with Dr. Pat Bowers concerns a new conceptualization of developmental dyslexia called the Double-Deficit Hypothesis. This work was the subject of a recent Special Issue of the Journal of Learning Disabilities. In collaboration with colleagues Dr. Robin Morris, and Dr. Maureen Lovett, Professor Wolf has been awarded a NICHD Shannon Award for Innovative Research and several multi-year NICHD grants to investigate new approaches to reading intervention. She received the Norman Geschwind Lecturer Award from the International Dyslexia Association for Neuroscience Research in Dyslexia, and was awarded the Distinguished Professor of the Year Award from the Massachusetts Psychological Association, and the Teaching Excellence Award from the American Psychological Association. She has edited a new book, Dyslexia, Fluency, and the Brain, and is the author of the forthcoming book, Plato's Rebellion: The Story and Science and Written Language and its Disorders, published by Harper-Collins.

Ed Kame'enui, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement (IDEA), College of Education, University of Oregon; Associate Director, National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators (NCITE), Eugene, Oregon

Dr. Kame'enui co-directs six federal US Department of Education research and training grants. He has published more than 80 research and issue journal articles and is author or co-author of seven textbooks and over 25 book chapters. He serves on numerous editorial boards of prominent reading and special education journals. He serves on the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children for the National Research Council and is a member of the Research Advisory Team for the American Initiative on Reading and Writing sponsored by the US Department of Education.

Gil G. Noam, Ph.D., Director of the Hall-Mercer Laboratory of Developmental Psychology and Developmental Psychopathology at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital; Director of the Risk and Prevention Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Director of the Program in Afterschool Education and Research, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Dipl. Psychology from Freie University in Berlin, and Ph.D. from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland

Dr. Noam trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist in both Europe and the United States. Dr. Noam has a strong interest in theory, research and practice in human development and resilience. He has undertaken a number of cross-sectional longitudinal studies of children and adolescents. He and his associates have created innovative prevention programs in middle schools for at-risk children and youths.
Dr. Noam's books include Development Approaches to the Self; The Moral Self; Children, Youth and Suicide; and Development and Vulnerabilities in Close Relationships. Dr. Noam has published and lectured internationally and nationally. He spent the past year at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and is currently completing work on a book on the development of resilience and interventions with youth.

SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT TEAM (Detailed)

Chairman Of The Scientific Development Board Of Directors For The Haan Foundation For Children-Dr. Joseph Torgesen

Joseph K. Torgesen, Ph.D. and Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and Education, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida

Based on the development and acceptance of his "metrics for success," Dr. Torgesen will lead the development team.

Dr. Torgesen is currently a member of the Learning Disabilities Planning Group, Office of Special Education Programs, the US Department of Education, the Scientific Advisory Board, the International Dyslexia Association and the Editorial Review Board, Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA). He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Learning Disabilities Quarterly and Learning Disabilities Research and Practice.

Dr. Torgesen is also a member of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities, the American Educational Research Association, the Learning Disabilities Association of America, the Council for Learning Disabilities and the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading.

Dr. Torgesen has received numerous awards and honors, most recently the Distinguished Lecturer Award, Council for Learning Disabilities 1997, The Sylvia O. Richardson Award for Outstanding and Exemplary Service to Individuals with Learning Disabilities and Dyslexia, 1998, from the Florida Branch of the International Dyslexia Association, and The Samuel A. Kirk Award for Exemplary Research Publication from the Division of Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children, 2000.

Dr. Torgesen has made over 250 presentations at professional meetings, colloquia and workshops, and has presented over 200 published works. Dr. Torgesen received his Ph.D. with a double major in Development and Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Barbara R. Foorman, Ph.D., Director, Center for Academic and Reading Skills, University of Texas, Houston, Texas; Health Sciences Center, Principal Investigator, National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) Early Intervention Project

Dr. Foorman is an internationally recognized scholar in the areas of reading and language development. In the early part of her career, she conducted cross-linguistic research in Japan, Mexico and England. For the past 15 years, she has focused on reading acquisition, bringing her cross-linguistic perspective to studying the role of phonological and orthographic processing in learning to read. In the past 10 years, Professor Foorman has focused her research on the role of instruction in learning to read. She is currently Principal Investigator of an $11.8-million, five-year grant funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She is co-Principal Investigator on projects within the NICHD-funded "Psycholinguistic and Biological Mechanisms of Dyslexia" and the Center for the Study of Learning and Attention Disorders, both at Yale University. Both of these projects use measures developed by Dr. Foorman and implemented in studies of specific-language-impaired and severely dyslexic children. Dr. Foorman received her M.A.T. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley's School of Education. She is the author or co-author of 50 journal articles and book chapters. Her article in the March 1998 issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology has already had enormous impact on reading research and traditional educational practices. She recently participated in President Bush's Reading Roundtable with literary experts, in January 2001.

Richard Olson, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado

Dr. Olson and his colleagues have recently received a $2.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study early reading development in identical and fraternal twins. The researchers will study 600 pairs of twins to understand the factors influencing individual differences in early reading, language and attention. The project will help learn more about what can be done to help preschool children who are at risk for reading difficulties. Dr. Olson believes that learning more about the developmental precursors that place young children at risk for failing in the early grades will help with the prediction and amelioration of early developmental problems before children begin formal schooling.

Maureen W. Lovett, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Brain and Behavior Research, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada

Dr. Lovett focuses in the areas of developmental dyslexia, cognitive rehabilitation and developmental neuropsychology. Her clinical research program is devoted to the study of specific cognitive and language learning disorders of childhood and adolescence. Her ongoing projects involve treatment of outcome studies and evaluation of the efficacy of different forms of cognitive and language rehabilitation for children and adolescents with developmental learning disorders.

Jack Fletcher, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Center for Academic and Reading Skills, University of Texas, Houston, Texas

Throughout the past 20 years, Dr. Fletcher has completed research on many aspects of reading and attention problems in children, including definition and classification, neurobiological correlates and, most recently, intervention. He collaborates on four grants on reading and attention funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, including a five-year, $11.8 million award to evaluate reading interventions for children at risk for reading disability.

Dr. Fletcher has been honored by the President of the United States with a request to become a member of the President's Council of Excellence in Special Education, 2002.

Dr. Fletcher has authored over 120 research articles on journals and over 60 chapters in books, mostly on children with disabilities. Dr. Fletcher is an associate editor of the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology and serves on eight other editorial boards. He is a Diplomat, of the American Board of Professional Psychology. He received his doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Florida.

Sally Shaywitz, M.D., Professor Pediatrics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, Co-Director, Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention, New Haven, Connecticut

Dr. Shaywitz is a doctor of pediatrics and a neurologist who is nationally and internationally recognized for research contributions in reading development and reading disorders, including recent demonstration of the neurological substrate of reading and reading disability. She is unique for contribution her to the development of a conceptual model of reading and reading disability and for identifying high prevalence of reading disability in girls.

A recent Distinguished Alumnus Award was given to Dr. Shaywitz from Albert Einstein School of Medicine. Most recently, Dr. Shaywitz served on the National Academy of Science Panel Preventing Reading Disabilities in Children.

Dr. Shaywitz is a Diplomat of the American Board of Pediatrics; a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Educational Association Council for Exceptional Children, the International Dyslexia Association Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, the Society for Pediatric Research, the Society for Research in Child Development and the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. She is a panel member of the National Reading Panel (NRP).

Frank Manis, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Dr. Manis specializes in reading and cognitive development, dyslexia and learning disabilities. He has received numerous grants and awards in support of his research, including a New Investigator Research Award from the National Institute of Mental Health and a research grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Manis has published widely on reading acquisition and on developmental dyslexia. He is currently a member of the American Psychological Society, the Society for Research in Child Development and the Orton Dyslexia Society. Dr. Manis serves on the editorial board for Scientific Studies of Reading, a new journal.

Rebecca Felton, Ph.D., Educational Consultant, Southport, North Carolina

Dr. Felton has published in the areas of physiological specifications of the phenotype in genetic language disorders, separate verbal memory and naming deficits in attention deficit disorder and reading disability, the dissociation of attention deficit disorder from reading disability, cognitive deficits in reading disability and attention deficit disorder, neuropsychological profile of adult dyslexics, a reading-level match study of nonword reading skills in poor readers and separate linguistic and attentional factors in the development of reading.

fMRI SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD (Detailed)

Chairman, fMRI Scientific Advisory Board Of Directors For The Haan Foundation For Children-John D. E. Gabrieli, Ph.D.

John D. E. Gabrieli, Ph.D., Director, Gabrieli Laboratory, Associate Professor, Psychology Neurosciences, Radiology, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California

Dr. Gabrieli is an Associate Professor in Psychology, in the Neurosciences Program and in Radiology at Stanford University. He received a B.A. in English from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Psychology Department at Harvard and Northwestern.

Dr. Gabrieli and his team have received 35 grants in the areas of cognitive dysfunction covering memory, learning disabilities in children and disorders of development, including dyslexia, ADD/ADHD and Alzheimer's. His area of research is human cognitive neuroscience, in which he studies the brain basis of memory, language and thought. He has published over 100 publications, 150 abstracts and 200 journals regarding cognitive and affective development.

Susan Y. Bookheimer, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine, Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center.

Dr. Bookheimer received a B.A. degree from Cornell University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology (Neuropsychology) from Wayne State University. Her almost two decades of work experience includes positions at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, the Neuropsychology Section of the Department of Psychology at Gaylord Hospital and the Neurosurgery Section at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Bookheimer currently serves on the Scientific Review Committee for the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. At UCLA, she has served as Chair, Admission Committee: Interdepartmental Program in Neurosciences, as a member of the Research Council, Neuropsychiatric Institute and as a member of the Academic Advisory Committee, Interdepartmental Program in Neurosciences.

Dr. Bookheimer and her team have been the recipients of 20 grants in areas of neuropsychology research relating to changes in brain function, brain mapping, alzeihmer’s disease, impaired reading and dyslexia, among others. She has published more than 100 abstracts and more than 50 articles regarding clinical and experimental neuropsychology, functional MRIs, human brain mapping, memory and brain stimulation.

Andrew C. Papanicolaou, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Division of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Neurosurgery, University of Texas-Houston, Health Science Center.

Dr. Papanicolaou is Professor and Director, Division of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Neurosurgery, University of Texas-Houston, Health Science Center. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston, as Director of the Magnetic Souce Imaging Unit at Memorial Hermann Hospital and as Director of The Vivian Smith Advanced Studies at the Institute of the International Neuropsychology Society.

Dr. Papanicolaou received a B.S. and a Master’s in Psychology from Xavier University. He received a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Dr. Papanicolaou has more than 20 years experience as a professor specializing in Neurosurgery. He received the Deans Excellence Award at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School in 1999. Dr. Papanicolaou is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Neurophysiological Monitoring, the Hellenic Psychological Association and the International Neuropsychological Society.

Dr. Papnicolaou has received numerous research grants and has served as the principal investigator in areas of neuropsychology including brain mapping, reorganization of brain function, sensory physiology and cognition and memory processing. He has published or contributed to more than 20 books and has published approximately 120 peer journal articles.

Dr. Elise Temple, Ph.D., Graduate Field Faculty, Department of Psychology, Cornell University.

Dr. Temple is a member of the Graduate Field Faculty for the Department of Psychology and an Assistant Professor and member of the Graduate Field Faculty for the Department of Human Development at Cornell University. In addition, she serves as a Faculty Fellow at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. 

Dr. Temple received a B.S., summa cum laude, from the University of Oregon, majoring in Psychology and Biology and minoring in Chemistry. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Pre-Doctoral Fellow and received her Ph.D. in Neurosciences from Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Temple is a member of the Undergraduate Education Committee, Human Development at Cornell and has served on the Review Panel for the National Science Foundation for the IGERT Panel and Cognitive Neuroscience Panel. She has also worked as an Ad-hoc Reviewer for Cerebral Cortex, Child Neuropsychology and the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience and as an Ad-hoc neuroanatomy textbook reviewer for Fitzgeral Science Press, Inc. and Garland Publishing. Dr. Temple is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society and the Society for Neuroscience. 

Dr. Temple has given numerous presentations on modern neuroimaging, neural plasticity in dyslexic children, developmental psychology, functional imaging of reading disorders and language and rapid auditory processing and their relationship with functional MRI, among others. She has published a number of journal articles and conference abstracts in the areas of neurobiology and neuroscience.

Dr. Anthony D. Wagner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In addition to Dr. Wagner’s position as Assistant Professor of Cognitivie Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he also serves as a Faculty Affiliate for the Center for Learning and Memory at MIT and is a visiting scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital for the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center. Previously he was an Assistant Cognitive Psychologist and Instructor for the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital for the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center. Dr. Wagner received a B.A. in Pyschology, Magna Cum Laude, Departmental Highest Honors from the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. at Stanford University. Dr. Wagner was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow for the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and was also a Post-doctoral Research Fellow for the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Wagner was the recipient of the McKnight Scholar Award in 2001, the Surdna Foundation Research Award in 2000 and the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholars Award in2000. He has also held the Paul E. Newton Career Development Professorship in Neuroscience and was awarded the Jacob K. Javits Graduate Fellowship. Dr. Wagner is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Memory Disorders Research Society, the Organization for Human Brain Mapping and the Society for Neuroscience.

Dr. Wagner has extensive teaching experience in the area of cognitive sciences. He and his team currently have six active grants for research in neuroscience regarding subjects which include, functional neurobiology of memory, brain injury memory disorders, mechanisms of memory formation, memory contributions to phonological representation and memory encoding and multimodal neuroimaging of cognitive and mnemonic control. Dr. Wagner has published nearly 40 articles and has additional manuscripts currently in preparation, has delivered over 20 presentations and symposiums and has published more than 100 abstracts.

Russell Alan Poldrack, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles

Dr. Poldrack is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles as well as Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Psychologist at the MGH-NMR Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition Dr. Poldrak is a member of the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford University Department of Psychology and a Lecturer at the Stanford University Department of Psychology. 

Dr. Poldrack received his B.A. in psychology from Baylor University in Waco, TX and his Masters and Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Illinois. He is a member of the American Psychological Society, the American Psychological Association, Psychonomic Society (Associate), Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Memory Disorders Research Society and the Society for Neuroscience. He has served as an Ad-hoc Reviewer for a multitude of journals including Brain, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience, Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, Journal of Memory and Language, Cerebral Cortex, Human Brain Mapping, Cognitive Brain Research, American Journal of Psychology, Cognitive Science, Journal of Neuroscience Methods and Microscopy Research and Technique. 

The areas of research in which Dr. Poldrack specializes are the cognitive neuroscience of learning, memory, and language, functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, reading and dyslexia and neural systems for skill learning and repetition priming. 

Dr. Poldrack was a Fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health where he was the recipient of the National Research Service Award for his research entitled “Relational Representation in Amnesia." Additionally, he received an individual grant as a Fellow at the McConnell-Pew Program for Cognitive Neuroscience for his research, "The Neural Basis of Skill Learning using fMRI." Dr. Poldrack has received another eight grants focused on research in neuroscience and has published more than 100 abstracts, presentations and articles. He has also been an invited speaker at various universities and research centers including, Rice University, where he gave a presentation regarding multiple memory systems and amnesia, the University of California at Berkeley, where he presented on the neural basis of skill learning, the Center for Psychological Studies in Berkeley, where he presented on the neural basis of dyslexia, Harvard University, where he was a guest lecturer, and MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, where Dr. Poldrack gave a presentation on neural structure and function in dyslexia.

Bennett Shaywitz, M.D., is Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Section of Child Neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is also the co-director of the fMRI project.

Dr. Shaywitz received his MD from Washington University School of Medicine and completed his Pediatric training and then a Postdoctoral fellowship in Child Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine before joining the faculty of Yale. Together with his wife, Dr. Sally Shaywitz, Dr. Bennett Shaywitz established and is currently Co-Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Dr. Shaywitz has a long-standing interest in disorders of learning and attention in children and young adults. His research focuses on using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to discover differences in brain organization and function in children and adults with dyslexia and he is now using fMRI to study how the brain changes as children with dyslexia are taught to read. Dr. Shaywitz is the author of over 300 scientific articles and chapters examining the neurobiology of reading and attention disorders.

Dr. Shaywitz’ honors include election to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and selection, along with Dr. Sally Shaywitz, as the recipient of the 2001 Leonard Apt Lectureship of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Sidney Berman Award for the Study and Treatment of Learning Disabilities presented by and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the March of Dimes, on the Institute of Medicine Immunization Safety Review Committee, on the NIH Biobehavioral and Behavioral Processes 6 [BBBP-6] Study Section and on the Board of the HELP Group of the UCLA Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Shaywitz also serves as associate editor of the journal Child Development.

Dr. Guineviere Eden, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Georgetown University

Dr. Eden is currently Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. A graduate of Oxford University, Dr. Eden's research is focused on the pathophysiology of developmental dyslexia utilizing post-mortem studies and, more recently, in-vivo observations by means of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET).

The studies conducted in Dr. Eden's laboratory address cognitive and sensory changes resulting from dyslexia, specifically focusing on phonological and naming skills, as well as rapid visual and motor processing. The effects of intensive remediation in individuals with developmental dyslexia are being investigated by mapping brain activity prior to and after reading intervention. The results from these studies will elucidate to what extent early brain changes can be compensated for and to what degree brain plasticity can prevail in bringing about noticeable changes in the physiological and behavioral skills associated with this developmental disorder.

EDUCATION ADVISORY BOARD (Detailed)

Marion Joseph, Director, California State Board of Educaton, Sacramento, California

Marion Joseph has served on the California State Board of Education since 1997. She formerly served as executive assistant to State Superintendent of Schools Wilson Riles from 1970 to 1982.

An educational leader for more than 35 years, Mrs. Joseph is nationally recognized for her pioneering role in establishing essential basic reading requirements for California public schools and for her leadership in promoting phonics to improve California's reading scores. Mrs. Joseph played an essential role in the design and enactment of the landmark California Reading Initiative, working with the Governor and Legislature to ensure passage of this critical 1996 legislation. She was appointed by Delaine Eastin to serve as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction's Reading Task Force in 1994. She served as vice chair of the State Compensatory Education Commission from 1965 to 1970 and was director of the Neighborhood Study Center Program, working with the California State University and the Los Rios Community College District from 1963 to 1970.

Randi Weingarten, President, United Federation of Teachers, New York, New York

Randi Weingarten is President of the United Federation of Teachers, representing more than 140,000 active and retired nonsupervisory educators in the New York City public school system. She is also a vice-president of the million-member American Federation of Teachers, the UFT's national affiliate; a member of the board of directors of the New York State United Teachers; and a vice-president of the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO.

Dr. Donna Durno, Executive Director, Allegheny Intermediate Unit, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

Dr. Durno is the Executive Director of the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, a service agency that provides resources, instruction and education services for schools, families and communities through collaborative partnerships with local school districts, institutions of higher education, government agencies and foundations.

Dr. Durno has over 30 years of educational experience and expertise. After obtaining a B.S. degree at Seton Hill College with Magna Cum Laude status, she began her career as a home economics teacher and vocational advisor at Norwin School District. Donna continued her schooling and obtained an M.Ed. in guidance and counseling from Indiana University of PA. She was named Director of Federal Programs and designed and implemented the SOAR program for academically gifted secondary students. During a leave from the district, Dr. Durno served as a graduate assistant and completed a Ph. D. in Educational Administration at the University of Pittsburgh. She was appointed assistant superintendent at South Western School District in Hanover, PA and then was elected superintendent at the Mars Area School District in Mars, PA. Her second superintendency was at the Susquehanna Township School District in Harrisburg, which she left in 1987 when she was named Commissioner for Basic Education for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the AIU in 1999, Donna rounded out her career in K-12 education by establishing an independent consulting firm and finally accepting the position of senior vice president for Herald Colleges, Inc., a group of fifteen private, non-profit, regionally accredited junior colleges in California, Oregon and Hawaii.

In 2002, Dr. Durno received the University of Pittsburgh’s Distinguished Woman in Education Award from Tri-State Area School Study Council.