Dr Leonard L. LaPointe
Leonard L. (Chick) LaPointe, Ph.D. received his Bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the University of Colorado. He currently occupies an endowed distinguished professor chair, the Francis Eppes Professor of Communication Disorders, at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He also serves an invited term as Annual Visiting Professor in the School of Health Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He recently served as a Visiting Research Professor at the University of Hong Kong. His research focus is in the area of neurological disorders of communication and cognition. He is the founding and current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology.

Dr. LaPointe has authored or co-authored 5 books, 35 book chapters, over 80 journal articles, and presented more than 400 papers, lectures, or invited workshops in the United States, the former Soviet Union, several countries in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and the South American countries of Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil. He has received the Honors of the Arizona Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and the Academy of Neurological Communication Disorders and Sciences, and the Clinical Career Award from the Florida Society of Speech Language Pathologists and Audiologists.

He enjoys salt water, music, wine and the culinary arts, reading, writing, humor, the cultivation of optimism and the absurd, and is the author of Blood Ice, A novel published by AuthorHouse.com

Dr Travis T. Threats
Travis T. Threats, Ph.D. is the chair and an associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Saint Louis University, where he teaches courses in neurogenic communication disorders and dysphagia. He has written and presented extensively concerning his three main scholarly interests: the ICF, evidence based practice, and health care ethics.

He has worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) in development of its 2001 International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF). He has served as ASHA’s representative liaison to the WHO since 1999. He is currently the Senior Consultant for the American Psychological Association in the joint WHO/APA project to develop and write a book on the clinical use of the ICF. He also currently serves on ASHA’s Advisory Committee for Evidence Based Practice, and Academy of Neurologic Communication Disorders and Science’s (ANCDS) Ethics Committee.

Dr Wendy Rinaldi
Wendy Rinaldi, Ph.D. is a speech and language therapist with extensive experience in special needs. She was one of the first SLTs in the UK to work with teenagers with specific language disorders and her Ph.D. looked at pragmatic comprehension in this group (International Journal of Communication Disorders, 35, 1, 1-30). Most of Wendy’s work as a therapist has been in education and she has had a series of language-based programmes published. These are now being implemented in schools, colleges and specialist services across the UK and internationally. Her best known work, Social Use of Language Programme, addresses issues of social behaviour and emotional well being from a communication and thinking skills perspective.

Recently, Wendy has been a member of a working party to develop guidelines for special needs to accompany the Primary National Strategy’s document: Speaking, Listening and Learning (DfES).

Wendy currently works freelance as an adviser to professionals in health and education across the British Isles. She has lectured widely in Britain but the NZSTA conference will be her first venture abroad!

You can find out more about Wendy's communication programmes on the following website : www.wendyrinaldi.com

Dr Glenn Colquhoun
Glenn Colquhoun is a doctor, poet and children's writer. His first collection The art of walking upright won the Jessie Mackay best first book of poetry award at the 2000 Montana book awards. Playing God, his third collection, won the poetry section of the same awards in 2003 as well as the reader's choice award that year.

He has also written three children's picture books and published an essay with Four Winds Press entitled Jumping ship. In 2004 he was awarded the Prize in modern letters. He works as a GP on the Kapiti Coast.