
Lisa Mihalich Quinn
Executive Director
Lisa has been immersed in the AAC world since the early 1990s when her best friend aquired a Prentke Romich Liberator. When the school speech pathologists struggled to program the device, they invited Lisa to the local conference.
Lisa holds both a BA and MA in English Language and Literature. She also holds a M.Ed. in Special Education from the University of Maryland. For more than a decade, Lisa worked in a large Maryland public school system in a variety of capacities: including students with expressive language disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, and physical and learning disabilities; programming instructional content for high and low technology devices; implementing a pilot for students pointing / typing to communicate in inclusive middle school classes; and co-teaching reading, math, and science.
Lisa has experience providing training and ongoing support with a wide range of methodologies used to support students using Augmentative and Alternative Communication. She works individually with clients to develop communication skills, trains families and communication partners, and provides consultation to schools looking to implement multimodal text-based AAC in the classroom. She also applies her years of public school experience to help families understand IEPs and advocate for their children.
Most recently, Lisa has played a key role in the creation of Communication for Education, a training program for educators, homeschool teachers, and parents to learn best practices for supporting individuals using text-based multimodal AAC. In the program's first year, the Communication for Education team trained almost 100 educators in the United States, Canada, India, Pakistan, and Ireland.
In 2022, Lisa was appointed to a position on Montgomery County's Commission on People with Disabilities. She serves the community as an agency representative and advocates for change to better support inclusion of disabled people in all aspects of community life.
Conference & Workshop Presentations
2023
American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting. Virtual.
2021
TASH National Conference. New Orleans, LA.
Extraordinary Minds of Montgomery County. Montgomery County, MD.
2020
Innovations in Education Conference. Atlanta, GA.
2019
Wellspring Guild Webinar. Burlington, VT.
National Cathedral School Diversity Forum. Washington, DC.
2018
TASH National Conference. Portland, OR.
Educational Trainings & Collaboration
United States
Kennedy Krieger School, Montgomery County Campus. Silver Spring, MD.
Kids After Hours, Inc. Rockville, MD.
Sycamore Schools, Cincinnati, OH.
Internationally
Ecole Van Walleghem. Winnipeg, MB, Canada
American Nicaraguan School. Managua, Nicaragua