Hi there, I’m Karen Dudek-Brannan!
I’m a Professional Development Specialist, SLP, and founder/owner/operate of Dr. Karen, LLC, a company focused on empowering therapists and educators to design interventions that support language, literacy, and executive functioning. In my current role, I develop engaging professional development and products that help school teams work together to get better results.
On the De Facto Leaders Podcast, I share up-to-date evidence-based practices, my own experience, and guest interviews designed to help pediatric therapists, educators, and aspiring school leaders design services that support social, emotional, and academic growth and set kids up for success in adulthood. Whether you want to learn effective strategies for your therapy session or classroom, be an influential leader on your team, or find creative ways to use your skills to advance in your career, I’ve got you covered. You can listen to the De Facto Leaders podcast on most popular podcast directories, and can scroll through past episodes on this page here.
Latest Episodes
Part 2: Five Skills to Create Your Executive Functioning Intervention Framework
I’m often asked if I can create an “executive functioning lesson plan” that a clinician could do within a 20-minute therapy session with a student or group of students...
Part 1: Five Skills to Create Your Executive Functioning Intervention Framework
Executive function is often defined as “having good time management skills”. While this isn’t completely off-base, it’s a vast oversimplification.The REASON people are...
Building Data Culture & Trust in Education (with Jessica Lane)
In this episode, I sit down with Jessica Lane, founder of Data-Informed Impact, to unpack the critical role of data in K-12 education—and how to use it responsibly, ef...
Orthographic Mapping & Effective Spelling Instruction (with Dr. Molly Ness)
In this episode, we’re joined by literacy expert Dr. Molly Ness, author of Making Words Stick, to unpack the science behind orthographic mapping and what truly effecti...