About the Presenters

Jackie Mader is a senior reporter for The Hechinger Report where she has reported on early childhood education since 2016 and writes a bi-weekly newsletter covering the early years. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and USA Today, and has been recognized with awards from The New York Press Club, The Newswomen’s Club of New York, and the Education Writers Association, among others. Prior to covering early childhood, she reported on K-12 education for The Hechinger Report, led The Report’s coverage of education in Mississippi and wrote Education Week’s rural education blog. In 2021, Jackie was an early childhood reporting fellow with The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma. She is currently completing a Spencer Fellowship at the Columbia Journalism School, where she is reporting on child care quality and policy. Prior to becoming a journalist, Jackie taught middle school special education in North Carolina and trained new teachers in the Mississippi Delta.

Dr. Nicol Russell currently serves as Vice President of Implementation Research for Teaching Strategies, LLC. She has been an ECE teacher, a school administrator, a Head Start State Collaboration Director, and a State-level administrator for the Arizona Department of Education. She is a member of the ReadOn Arizona State Advisory Board and is a former board member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). Her research interests include studying the implementation practices of early learning programs and considering ways to create more equitable opportunities for BIPOC children and educators. Dr. Russell holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in early childhood and early childhood special education and a Doctor of Education degree in educational leadership.

Dr. Ryan Lee-James is an ASHA-certified speech-language pathologist, researcher, and published author with expertise in language development, language disorders, and literacy in the context of linguistic differences and socioeconomic disadvantage.

In her current role as the Chief Academic Officer and Director of the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy at the Atlanta Speech School, she is responsible for developing, curating, and honing academic programming for the Speech School’s programs and Clinic that serve children who are deaf or hard of hearing, have speech and language delays, or are dyslexic. Through the Rollins Center and its free, equity-based, online Cox Campus, Dr. Lee-James is also responsible for overseeing and designing the implementation and evaluation of large-scale, community-based projects aimed at radical change in language and literacy outcomes for children from birth through 3rd grade who have been disenfranchised by inequitable systems.

Before joining the team at the Atlanta Speech School, she had the privilege of training and mentoring graduate-level speech-language pathologists as a member of the Communication Sciences and Disorders faculty at Adelphi University in New York. Dr. Lee-James is honored to serve as the incoming Vice President for Speech-Language Pathology Practice for the American Speech Language Hearing Association and to serve on numerous national and local boards to realize Literacy and Justice for All.