Caralee is a Speech Language Pathologist with experience working in private practice and the public schools. She is passionate about helping families understand, develop, and use effective communication methods for their children with complex communication needs. As a new board member, she is excited to have an opportunity to give back to the community, network with professionals in the area, and share resources with families and teams of children with complex communication needs. Caralee lives in Lake Stevens with her husband, young daughter, and labrador retriever. She enjoys camping, reading, and games night with family and friends.

Camille is a bilingual (Spanish/English) speech-language pathologist. She has worked with both children and adults in a variety of settings including home health, outpatient, inpatient rehab, and acute hospital settings. She now works as the Pediatric Solutions Consultant for Tobii Dynavox.

Camille is passionate about empowering individuals to find communication tools that can help them better communicate with friends, family, and the community and to reach their own communication goals. She learned even more about AAC and became an even bigger advocate for it when her dad was diagnosed with ALS and began using his own AAC system.

Camille is excited to join the NWACS community here in Washington! In her spare time, she enjoys hiking and backcountry skiing with her husband David, and cattle dog mix, Poppy.

Mary is a medical administrator with 20 years of experience working collaboratively with clinical professionals who provide assistive technology and augmentative alternative communication services to those who need them. She is passionate about 'clearing the way' for clinicians to do their best work by resolving administrative, regulatory, and compliance barriers.

Mary joined the NWACS board as Treasurer to further this passion. In this role, Mary can leverage her extensive experience with financials, budgets, and taxes to provide meaningful support to NWACS & the greater community of complex communicators. In this way, Mary feels she is a part of the great work these clinicians do.

Mary lives in Bothell with her husband, two children, and their dog. She enjoys kayaking, camping, hiking, skiing, snowshoeing, mountain biking, dirt biking, and just about any other outdoor sport that can be done in the woods, mountains, or seas. When she's stuck at home, Mary also enjoys reading and watching a good movie or two with her family.

Liz is currently an occupational therapist (OT) in the Everett School District, where she works primarily with elementary-aged students. She is involved in coordinating professional development events for the OT/PT department in Everett. Liz is passionate about interprofessional collaboration, specifically working with SLPs to support students with complex communication needs. She is continuing to learn about AAC through work and looks forward to deepening understanding through involvement with NWACS.

Prior to attending graduate school, Liz lived abroad teaching English in China and worked in a community mental health child & family office as support staff. Liz enjoys reading, doing puzzles, crocheting, relaxing with her dog, and spending time with her niece.

Pixie is autistic and nonverbal, a full time AAC user. They started drawing, when very young, to try to communicate with people. Pixie has also used emojis, home sign, printed communication cards, and American sign language as well as communication boards and speech generating AAC devices. They get frustrated with AAC device vocabularies sometimes because they’re all made for children, which limits their communication to child-appropriate words even though Pixie is an adult.

Pixie loves skiing with a Special Olympics team, and does many activities with Outdoors for All, like rock climbing, bicycling, kayaking and hiking.

Pixie is an artist at Vibrant Palette, an art studio specifically for disabled artists. They also really like animals and have 3 guinea pigs, 2 cats, and a Service Dog in training.

Marci is a speech language pathologist who specializes in the area of Augmentative Alternative Communication. With over 25 years experience, she has worked in private and public schools as well as in private practice in Seattle and in the Boston area. She currently runs the Augmentative Alternative Communication program at Seattle Children’s Hospital and provides AAC assessment, training and treatment for children of all ages. Marci also runs Augmentative Alternative Communication Services (AACS), her private practice that provides school training, consultation and in-home AAC training and treatment. She joined the NWACS board in 2020. In her other life, Marci is an avid hiker, camping enthusiast and yoga practitioner who you can find outside as much as possible, searching for agates on local beaches, breathing in the green of the trees or perhaps marveling at the many colors of the Seattle sky.

Margaret is a Speech-Language Pathologist and Assistive Technology consultant with the Renton School District. She has been with the district for over 30 years and has had the great opportunity to work with a diverse population of students, most of whom require AAC to support their communication growth. Margaret is excited to be part of the NWACS group and hopes to use her knowledge of AAC to support students and families in a meaningful way. When it's time to relax, Margaret loves to spend time with her family visiting local parks and trails. In addition, she is an avid runner and has traveled to several states to participate in organized runs.

Cass Griffin Bennett is an autistic and ADHD self-advocate. She is a parent of multiple autistic children, including a young multimodal communicator. She knows firsthand that AAC can change lives. Cass started her youngest child on robust high-tech AAC at age 2. She stepped into the Outreach Coordinator role because she wishes she had known about NWACS when first embarking on this AAC quest. She hopes that sharing her family’s Toddler AAC experience will decrease gatekeeping. Cass wants to empower parents to take an active role in their child’s AAC journey.

Cass is passionate about early access to robust high-tech AAC, collaborative problem-solving, equity, neurodiversity, and inclusion. Her guiding goal in parenting is to raise her children to be their own best self-advocates. Cass has a career background in professional services business development and a degree in Psychology.

Molly graduated with a master’s degree in speech-language pathology from the University of Utah in 2012. She has worked exclusively in pediatrics since completing her fellowship year, and has clinical interests in not only augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), but also bilingual language development and services, and pro-neurodiversity practices. Molly has been a volunteer with NWACS since 2019 and joined the board in 2022. In the realm of AAC, she strives to learn more from other professionals in order to provide strengths-based services, incorporate a parent coaching model, promote autonomy, and focus on supporting relationships. In her spare time, Molly likes to spend time playing with her kids, snowboarding, hiking, camping, and listening to podcasts.

Alison is a Speech-Language Pathologist in the Snohomish school district. She is also the owner of a private practice (Lake Stevens Speech Language and AAC, PLLC). Alison has a special interest in working with autistic children and children with complex communication needs. She is passionate about learning, sharing resources, and connecting with and supporting families. As a new board member, Alison is looking forward to collaborating with other AAC professionals, AAC users, and families to help support authentic and autonomous communication for everyone. In her spare time, she loves hiking, going for walks, reading, and spending time with her husband, two kids, and Collie mix.

Casey is a Speech-Language Pathologist and Assistive Technology Professional with a private practice (Vlinder Communication Therapies) in the Seattle area. She works primarily with children, however she also has experience with teens and adults with intellectual/development disabilities. She signed on with the NWACS board in 2016 to help with "webmaster" and social media duties, and knows just enough to almost look like she knows what she is doing. Despite having grown up in Eastern Washington where summer temps regularly reached triple digits, she now starts to wilt as the temperature creeps past the mid-70s. Casey enjoys reading, crocheting, card-making, and doting on her adorable nieces!

Janice has worked as a Speech-Language Pathologist for over 40 years with the bulk of her experience in Idaho, Alaska, and Washington public schools. She retired from the Seattle School District in 2013 when her granddaughter was born with cerebral palsy. With very little experience in Augmentative-Alternative Communication (AAC), Janice has been learning what she can about low- and high-tech AAC systems and providing her granddaughter with communication support. In her spare time, she can be found walking Green Lake, at the gym or sitting around her kitchen table with friends.

Rachel is a speech-language pathologist currently working at an elementary school in Washington, DC. She has a background in elementary and special education and completed graduate school for Speech Pathology at the University of District of Columbia in 2017.

Rachel works with students who have various speech and language disorders including articulation, fluency, expressive, receptive, and pragmatic language deficits. Many of the students that she works with have complex communication needs and benefit from AAC devices or support to help them communicate throughout their day. These tools have proven to be extremely effective for many of the nonverbal or unintelligible students that she works with and she is very passionate about learning more about AAC, using it with her students, and spreading/ sharing awareness!

In her spare time, Rachel enjoys traveling, sports, going to museums, live music, reading, and spending time with friends and family. She is very excited to collaborate with this group to grow her knowledge, spread her passion, and help make sure that everyone can have the voice that they deserve!

Kathy is a retired Speech-Language Pathologist with over 40 years in the field of Augmentative-Alternative Communication (AAC). While she worked with children through adults over the course of her career, her experience has been primarily with adults with complex communication needs. Kathy has been involved with NWACS almost since its inception and served as President for many years. She remains active in the field of AAC through volunteer work, mentoring, and her work on the NWACS board. She also volunteers in the English As A Second Language program at Seattle Public Library. Kathy is the proud Grammy of four grandchildren and resides in the Seattle area with her husband. She is an avid reader, loves to knit and go out for coffee!