Kathy Futterman

My journey in education began before college when I met a pediatric neurologist who diagnosed my brother with dyslexia when he was young. I wanted to understand why no one else had been able to recognize what was going on with him, so I asked if I could shadow her during my breaks from college. That experience made me hyper-focused on learning as much as I could about dyslexia and learning disabilities. After graduating from undergrad, I got a job at a clinic in San Diego where I learned about Linda Mood Bell and was trained in structured literacy approaches to working with students with learning disabilities and dyslexia one-on-one. From there, I applied to Tufts and went to their master's program in child study, where I studied under Marianne Wolf, a world-renowned expert in the field of dyslexia and literacy. I got dual credentialed in general education and special education while I was in Boston, then worked at a school in Connecticut that was all for students with learning disabilities. I wanted to get my doctorate, so I went to Northwestern for their doctorate in learning disabilities program and became all but dissertation before moving back to California. I got a job at UC Berkeley where we had just started a program in educational therapy - I was the clinic supervisor there and started teaching courses for that certificate program. After having children, I ended up teaching at a public school here in California, then got hired by Cal State East Bay to teach as adjunct faculty in their Department of Educational Psychology in 2009, and I've been there ever since. Now I work full-time at another public school district here in Northern California as a district-wide educational specialist, I have my private practice in educational therapy, and I'm also the Executive Director of Higher Ed for the Reading League California, which is a statewide organization. I completed my doctorate in Educational Leadership from Cal State East Bay in 2017. I enjoy being able to have my hand in multiple areas of influence and impact - at the individual student level, at the teacher training level, and at the state level.