About the professionals (in alphabetic order by first name):
Ana Paula G. Mumy, SLPD, CCC-SLP, is a trilingual speech-language pathologist, program director and associate professor at East Texas Baptist University. Dr. Mumy is the co-founder and president of Spero Stuttering, Inc., a nonprofit organization that seeks to help, empower, and advocate for the stuttering community and their families by equipping those who work with people who stutter. She received the National Stuttering Association’s 2022 Professional of the Year award for her work and initiatives through Spero Stuttering. She enjoys singing, writing, reading, traveling with her husband and teenage kids, and fostering their bilingual journeys.
Heather Najman, MS/MA, LMFT, SEP has been a part of the stuttering community for more than 30 years serving in roles such as NSA/ISA workshop presenter, NSA Chapter Co-Leader, and as part of the co-hosting team on “Stutter Social.” As a psychotherapist and trainer, she consults and works online with individuals and families with a focus on resilience, stress, shame, emotional regulation and trauma, in addition to the emotional effects of stuttering.
Hilda Sønsterud (PhD) is a speech-language therapist and a clinical researcher in Norway. She works as a Senior Advisor at STATPED, National Service for special needs education, and as an Associate Professor at NORD university, Faculty of Education and Arts. Hilda works primarily with treatment and research related to stuttering and cluttering. Hilda is EFS-certified (European Fluency Specialist) and is an active lecturer. She runs courses and workshops within the field of stuttering and cluttering, and she provides clinical practice and supervision for SLT students and SLTs. Her PhD-project “Stuttering therapy; What works for whom?” at the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, was grounded in practice-based evidence and in context-sensitive considerations of what makes a difference to a particular person at a particular time point. Hilda has investigated the therapeutic alliance within stuttering treatment, and she is particularly engaged by how clinical research within the field of fluency disorders is defining evidence. Hilda is a national representative in the International Cluttering Association (ICA).
Katarzyna Węsierska is an associate professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, and the co-founder and president of the Logopedic Centre Foundation. She focuses mainly on stuttering and cluttering in her research and clinical practice. She is a European Fluency Specialist, coach, and lecturer of the European Stuttering Specialization (www.ecsf.eu). She has been actively involved in numerous research projects conducted in the framework of the International Project on Attitudes Toward Human Attributes – IPATHA. Recently, she has coordinated an international project: LOGOLab – Dialogue without barriers (collaboration with the Arctic University of Norway and the Agere Aude Foundation of Knowledge and Social Dialogue). The most important goal of the project was to raise the standards of speech-language therapy in stuttering. Dr. Węsierska is the secretary of the International Cluttering Association (ICA) and the editor of the ICA newsletter. At the 11th Oxford Dysfluency Conference, she was awarded the David Rowley Award for International Initiatives in Stuttering.
Manon Spruit has been a Speech and Language Pathologist since 1995. Since 2000 she owns a private practice, specialized in fluency disorders in Germany. She is a lecturer at different Universities of Applied Sciences in several countries, gives workshops and courses on Cluttering, Stuttering and their differences and commonalities.
Nora A. O’Connor is a person who stutters and a licensed clinical social worker. She lives in San Pedro, California with her wife, Anne, their son, Tyler (12), and two black cats. She is the Director of Behavioral Health Programs at Wesley Health Centers in Los Angeles. Nora has enjoyed being a part of the stuttering self-help movement for over 20 years. She loves talking with kids and teens who stutter, as well as their parents and SLPs to provide hope and education. Stuttering can be tough, but Nora realized that sharing the difficulties with other people who stutter has made life much better.
Sulema Rodriguez is a bilingual speech-language pathologist and person who stutters/stutterer who has conducted research in various areas of stuttering, including intersectionality, physiological responses, and genetics. Her current research interests include disability perceptions and identification across multicultural and multilingual stuttering community members and how these views impact the individuals’ willingness to pursue disability accommodations.
