Anne Marie Baer, M.A.

Anne Marie, a Deaf ASL signer, is a doctoral student in ASL Development at the University of Colorado; received a bachelor degree in English Literature and a master degree in American Sign Language and Linguistics at
Gallaudet University. During her college years she was an instructor in ASL and worked for 5 years as a full-time evaluator at the Center of ASL Literacy at Gallaudet where she assessed ASL proficiency for graduation and employment requirements.

During that time, she assisted the Department of Linguistics on sociolinguistic variation of ASL across the country and Academic ASL. She coordinated the ASL and English Mentoring Program on campus and served on language and literacy committees. In 2000, she received a four-year doctoral scholarship in Leadership Training: Research in Childhood Deafness at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she is currently studying acquisition of ASL sentence structures for her dissertation work.

She is married to Deaf artist Uzi Buzgalo and is mother to two sons, hard of hearing and Deaf. Her academic interests are language testing, child language acquisition, and cognitive development.

Diane Plassey Gutierrez, M.A.

Diane is a writer and lecturer in Deaf Culture topics and blogs occasionally as Dianrez. She has a B.A. degree in Psychology from the University of Rochester, an M.A. in Counseling from Gallaudet University, and an A.A.S. in Electronic Publishing and Graphics from Rochester Institute of Technology. She taught and counseled for nearly twenty years working with high school, college preparatory, disadvantaged and foreign-born Deaf populations in USA and Canada.

Eventually she entered publishing after part-time work with the Silent News and is now soon to be retired. Her great interest is in the future of Deaf community and its various peoples; in ASL, and documentation of human stories from the Deaf community for the future. She was born Deaf of hearing parents and is mother to two CODA daughters and a Deaf son.

Jeannette Johnson, A.A.S.

Jeannette is fluent in both of her native languages, American Sign Language and English. As a result of her life experiences as a culturally Deaf person, especially inspired by her childhood experience of her parents’ legal struggle to force public schools to give a free and appropriate public education to her, Jeannette became an activist for the local Deaf Community. Along with community leaders, she successfully advocated for the restoration of Deaf mental health services. She also was one of the advocacy team leaders who successfully blocked the government from overruling parental rights when it came to cochlear implant surgeries in 2002.

Aside from local advocacy, Jeannette is an active blogger writing The Deaf Edge and contributes to the ASL Think Tank website. She is best known online as A Deaf Pundit. She is currently pursuing a degree in Public and Nonprofit Administration at Grand Valley State University. Upon completion of her B.S. degree, Jeannette plans to implement her delusions of grandeur for changing the world.

Elizabeth Gillespie, M.S.

As a prelingually deaf person, Elizabeth grew up oral and attended an oral program for her first five years of education, followed by private hearing schools until graduation. She then went to Gallaudet where she was introduced to a wonderful new world with its own language, ASL. She graduated with a degree in Psychology. While there, her career as an activist began when she filed a complaint with the Dept of Justice against the D.C. Traffic Court over their refusal to provide an interpreter in 1979 (long before ADA) which ended in a victory for Deaf people in D.C.

Her work with Deaf adolescents with autism and mental illness led her to pursuing another degree in biology in Florida where she also became active in civil rights. Due to a shortage of qualified interpreters there, she completed her degree in Biology at Gallaudet. After earning a Masters in Deaf Education at McDaniels College, she pursued doctoral studies in Neurobiololgy. Elizabeth worked as a neurobiologist at the National Institute of Health for several years before teaching biological sciences at Gallaudet.

Retired from teaching, she focused on civil rights and advocacy in several health organizations. She served on the Citizen Advisory Board, Disability for the city of Laurel, Maryland for eight years. Elizabeth organized a major lawsuit against the local hospital along with seven deaf plaintiffs. This ended as a landmark case with two new interpretations of ADA by the Dept of Justice in 2006. Currently she is researching Deaf peoples’ experience with cochlear implants. Elizabeth is a noted blogger, writing as Mishka Zena pursuing advocacy and civil rights topics. One of her interest in this field is the human basic right of the deaf children to be exposed to a fully accessible language, based on the child’s individual needs.

Rene Visco, M.A.

Rene is an information architect for the ASL Think Tank who comes from a background of digital filmmaking and is involved in film/media theory involving signed language. He earned his B.A.in Radio, Television, and Film, CSUN, and his M.A. in Electronic Film, American University. Rene works as a technology specialist at the California School for the Deaf, Riverside.

Advisors

Amy Cohen Efron, M.A., Psy.S.

School Psychologist
Georgia Certification

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Amy attended Lexington School for the Deaf before being mainstreamed starting in third grade. At the age of seventeen she learned American Sign Language. She earned three degrees at Gallaudet University, all specializing in psychology. She has worked with deaf children for fifteen years in schools for the deaf, a non-profit organization, and a mental health center.

She is a school psychologist in prevention and intervention programs at a day school for deaf students in Atlanta. A sought-after speaker, Amy has given presentations on mental health-related topics.

Growing up in New York City and surrounded by visual images from the media, Amy realized that visual media is of paramount importance. This propelled her to expand her understanding on how to use visual media to express her views and knowledge about issues of the Deaf community, such as the widely viewed The Greatest Irony. (http://greatestirony.com)

Elaine Gale, Ph.D.

Born in Yonkers, NY to a Deaf family, Elaine’s native languages are both ASL and English. She earned a B.S. degree in Deaf Education from Kent State University and completed her Masters thesis investigating the relationship between language and theory of mind development in deaf children at Smith College with adviser Dr. Peter de Villiers.

Dr. Gale earned a doctorate, and a cognitive science certificate, from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Under the direction of Dr. Brenda Schick, Dr. Gale’s dissertation was on initiation, joint attention and language in mother-child interaction with toddlers who are deaf. Today Dr. Gale is an Assistant Professor at Hunter College in New York City where she is the coordinator of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Teacher training program. Her research interest includes language and cognitive development; and best practices and educational technology in deaf and hard of hearing education. When Elaine is not working, she spends her time exploring with her husband and son (both hearing).

Susan Gonzalez, J.D.

Susan González is a community activist, an educator and now an attorney. Susan attended University of California-Davis, California State University-San Francisco, New College of California School of Law, and Golden Gate University School of Law LLM Program. A SF/Bay Area native, Susan began her community activism with a variety of grassroots organizations committed to HIV/AIDS education, communication access, equality and animal rights. During her time with Deaf AIDS Center, Susan along with other board members created Deaf Communities Together, Incorporated with the goal of providing fiscal agency for other community organizations. Today Susan devotes her energies and attention to access and equality, international disability policy making, domestic violence/sexual assault, and animal rights.

An educator for 13 years, Susan discovered her passion for advocacy and legal rights. It was a natural transition from being a Deaf teacher of the Deaf to being a Deaf attorney of the Deaf community. In February 2007, Susan passed the California Bar Examination and June 2007 received her license to practice law. She hopes to one day create a one stop legal center for the communities. Her interests lie with family law, domestic violence law, estate planning, immigration queer and elder law and animal rights. Her commitments include the Deaf, Queer and the Latino/Hispanic communities.

Poorna Kushalnagar, Ph.D.

Poorna was born deaf to a bilingual Tamil and English speaking family and was raised in Memphis, Tennessee. After graduating from Gallaudet University, she received a Masters in Psychology with focus in Clinical Neuropsychology from the University of Houston.

Dr. Kushalnagar completed her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with specialization in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Houston, where she continues to do language and visual selective attention research at the Laboratory for the Neural Bases of Bilingualism. She serves as a Deaf consultant and research collaborator with the Seattle Quality of Life group on a NIDCD/NIH study that examines quality of life among deaf and hard of hearing youths and adolescents. When not busy with academics, she enjoys gourmet cooking and playingboardgames with her Deaf husband and two hearing sons.

Melanie McKay-Cody, M.A.

Melanie McKay-Cody, an Oklahoma native, is a North American Indian Sign Language linguist and historian, advocate for American Indian Deaf people. Also she is a Deaf historian, ASL linguist, and an interpreter trainer. She received a BA degree in American History and Art History/Museum Studies from Gallaudet University. She worked at several residential schools for the deaf in the United States. Her MA degree from the University of Arizona, Tucson in Sign Language Studies with a strong area of concentration in North American Indian Sign Language. Melanie became the first deaf researcher specializing in that linguistic research. She also did research on American Indian/Alaska Native/First Nation deaf and hard of hearing people to promote Native Deaf Studies.

Melanie specialized in Deaf Education and the linguistic study of American Sign Language along with language development and language acquisition. She conducted many training sessions in multicultural deaf education and interpreter training. She was involved in the National Multicultural Interpreter Project in El Paso, TX to develop a multicultural curriculum for interpreter training. She taught American Sign Language for 27 years.