About the professionals (in alphabetic order by first name):
Dr. Ana Paula G. Mumy, SLPD, CCC-SLP, is a trilingual speech-language pathologist, SLP Program Chair and Associate Professor. She 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. Her scholarly interests and research have focused on early language and literacy, bilingual speech-language development, and bilingualism and stuttering.
Angélica Bernabé is a person who stutters and the director of Centro Especializado en Tartamudez (Specialized Center for Stuttering). She is a speech-language therapist from Michigan State University, where she worked as a research assistant in the university’s Stuttering Laboratory (PI: Dr. Scott Yaruss). She is also pursuing a doctorate at Florida State University, where she works in the Stuttering Research Laboratory (PI: Dr. Christopher Constantino) and teaches undergraduate students. Angélica is dedicated to professional training, having trained speech therapists in more than 30 countries. In 2022, she received the Clinician Award from the International Stuttering and Cluttering Association.
Hilda Sønsterud, PhD, is a speech-language therapist and researcher based in Norway. She serves as a Senior Advisor at Statped, the National Service for Special Needs Education, and holds an Associate Professorship at Nord University’s Faculty of Education and Arts. Her work predominantly focuses on the treatment and research of stuttering and cluttering. In her professional role, Hilda conducts courses and workshops on these subjects and offers clinical practice and supervision to both speech-language therapy students and professionals.
Dr. Katarzyna Węsierska is an associate professor at the University of Silesia, Poland, and President of the Logopedic Center Foundation. Her research and clinical work focus on stuttering and cluttering. She is a Certified European Stuttering Specialist, a lecturer and coach of the European Stuttering Specialization. In 2024, as a Bekker Program of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, she completed a three-month fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. That same year, she became the first Polish SLT awarded the prestigious ASHA Fellow. She was also honored with the David Rowley Award at the Oxford Dysfluency Conference (2017) for international initiatives in stuttering. Dr. Węsierska leads and participates in numerous international projects, including IPATHA. From 2020 to 2022, she coordinated the LOGOLAB Polish-Norwegian grant, and since 2023 she has led the project Many Voices in Stuttering and Cluttering, funded by the Polish Ministry of Science.
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.
Nic Maddy is a speech and language therapist working withing the NHS in the UK for over 20 years. She’s also on the committee for the National Stammering Clinical Excellence Network. She’s passionate about creating a world that makes space for, and embraces stammering. She loves to work collaboratively with people who stammer to make moves towards this within her local area.
Nicole Kulmaczewski, M.S., CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist, clinical educator, and advocate with a strong focus on stutter-affirming care. She teaches graduate students how to provide evidence-based, stutter-affirming therapy that centers autonomy, identity, and the client’s lived experience. Nicole is also the creator of The Stutter Ally, a platform dedicated to advocacy, professional education, and resources for clinicians. Her work emphasizes collaborative goal setting, counseling competencies, and the therapeutic alliance as essential components of effective stuttering treatment.
Steff Lebsack has been a Speech-Language Pathologist for 16 years, with experience practicing in the medical, school and university settings. Steff is a PhD student focusing on researching children who stutter with a more recent emphasis on agency and communication experiences. Steff has an older brother, Jasper, who stutters since childhood, and she herself started to stutter at the age of 36 due to hypoxic brain injury. Steff has had the opportunity to guest lecture on the national and international levels, and recently completed her time as the Chair of Stamily, a non-profit international organization for people who stutter and their allies. Steff lives in Texas, USA, with her husband and two children. 