Janet W. Lerner is professor emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University, where she served as professor and chairperson of the Department of Special Education. She received the J. E. Wallace Wallin Special Education Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Exceptional Children, and was awarded the Romaine P. Mackie Award from the Pioneers Division of CEC. Dr. Lerner served as a general education teacher, a special education teacher, and a reading specialist at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. She has taught at several colleges and universities in the fields of learning disabilities, reading instruction, and special education. She served as co-editor of Learning… Disabilities: An Interdisciplinary Journal, a publication of the Learning Disabilities Association of America. Dr. Lerner has authored and co-authored numerous journal articles and books, including LEARNING DISABILITIES AND RELATED DISABILITIES: STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS (2014, Cengage Learning) and READING PROBLEMS: DIAGNOSIS AND TEACHING STRATEGIES (2010). Dr. Lerner is currently an adjunct professor in the PACE program at National Louis University.
Beverley Holden Johns has 35 years of experience working with students with learning disabilities and emotional/behavioral disorders within the public schools of Illinois. She is now a learning and behavior consultant and an adjunct instructor for MacMurray College. She is the 2000 recipient of the CEC Outstanding Leadership Award from the International Council for Exceptional Children, past international president of the Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders, and the 2007 Recipient of the Romaine P. Mackie Leadership Service Award. She served as president of the International Association of Special Education from 2006 to 2010. She presented the first Marden lecture at the… University of Hong Kong. Johns is the lead author of ten books (and co-author of four others) and is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who in American Education, and Who's Who Among America's Teachers. She has chaired ISELA, the Illinois Special Education Coalition (whose membership includes 13 statewide organizations) for 30 years. She is a past president of the Learning Disabilities Association of Illinois, and was the national state president's representative serving on the Board of LDA of America. She has presented workshops across the United States and Canada; in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Sydney, Australia (keynote); Warsaw, Poland; Hong Kong, China; Lima, Peru; and Riga, Latvia.