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

A behind-the-scenes look at EdTech startups and curriculum companies (with Ross Romano)

Many of my colleagues working in the public sector are skeptical of companies selling products to school districts. I’ve felt some of this skepticism myself as I’ve se...

Reframing the purpose of social narratives, video modeling, and social skills lesson plans

Many people treat social skills groups as if they’re the complete package, when in fact they’re just one part of a bigger service plan. When we “lesson plan” we can’t ...

Scaffolding syntax and semantics for non-readers and redefining life skills

Syntactic use is considered an “academic” skill that’s useful for reading comprehension and writing, but the impact of sentence comprehension goes way beyond school.Ou...

Dynamic Assessment: Evaluations are a process, not a test (with Destiny Johnson)

I regularly hear from therapists who ask me questions about how to evaluate language in a way that gives detailed, meaningful, and accurate information.Most people kno...

Supporting multilingual students and taking part in state and national advocacy work (with Puja Goel and Prabhu Eswaran)

Language evaluations are challenging enough; but when we’re evaluating multilingual and bilingual students, they become even more complex. When clinicians ask me about...

More Episodes »