Karen E. Dakin
Karen E. Dakin, M.Ed., began her career in Cleveland as co-director of the Learning Assessment Clinic (LAC) at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. For ten years, she carried out educational testing and integrated team information from the pediatric neurologists and psychologists into comprehensive diagnostic reports. She then became the Director of the Center for Academic Potential at Hathaway Brown School, Shaker Heights, OH, for 11 years, a position from which she retired in June 2010. In her role as Chair of the department with three learning specialists, she helped to implement an early intervention program in Kindergarten and oversaw the writing and implementing of over 100 educational plans for girls who qualified for accommodations in grades K-12. Early on in her career, she was the was founder, owner, and director of Alternative Educational Services, Inc., Albany, New York, an educational therapy clinic for the diagnosis and remediation of dyslexia in adults and children. She holds a Master’s degree in Reading from Rutgers University and has been state certified as a Reading Teacher in Ohio and New York. She is one of the founders of the Northern Ohio Branch of The International Dyslexia Association (NOB/IDA).
Ms. Dakin recently completed her 11th year on the Board of the International Dyslexia Association; she has been a Vice-President, Member-at Large, and Secretary. Ms. Dakin was the Program Chair for the IDA’s 60th annual international conference held in Orlando in November 2009 and again for the 65th annual international conference in San Diego in November 2014. She has chaired the Research to Practice Publications Committee and the IDA Historical Archives Committee. For three years, she was Editor of IDA’s monthly e-newsletter, The Examiner, which is sent to 16,000 IDA members and friends. Ms. Dakin is the author of articles about dyslexia, reading, and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. She has co-edited with Louisa Cook Moats, Ed.D. and R. Malatesha Joshi, Ph.D., an anthology of instructional articles entitled Expert Perspectives on Intervention for Reading Disabilities. In 2008, she co-authored with Louisa Cook Moats, Ed.D. Basic Facts About Dyslexia and Other Reading Problems. In 2005, she and Gerald Erenberg, M.D., pediatric neurologist, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, co-authored Questions About Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Dyslexia, a booklet published by IDA. At the annual IDA conference in Dallas, Texas, in October 2015, Ms. Dakin received the Margaret Byrd Rawson Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions advancing the mission of The IDA.