Team

Dave Stevenson is CEO of Reading Futures. He has worked in K-12 education for more than 20 years, primarily on K-3 reading, including universal literacy screeners and high quality instructional materials.
He worked at Wireless Generation, then Amplify, in roles including product development, research partnerships, state policy, and sales management. As Executive Vice President, he helped put Amplify on the path to its current scale, supporting millions of children.
His early career included time as a Technology Director in schools in New York City and Paris, France, and a stint doing product and project management at Scholastic in the early 2000s. He holds an A.B. in Philosophy from Brown University, where he was co-captain of the Ultimate Frisbee team. He is an instrument-rated private pilot.

Liz is an experienced K-12 Publishing and EdTech Product Leader and self-appointed “word nerd!” She began her career as an elementary teacher and Teach for America corps member working in southern California. After leaving the classroom, Liz held various roles in sales, marketing, market research, and product management at Pearson Learning Group, Hampton-Brown/ National Geographic School Publishing and Scientific Learning. More recently Liz was the Chief Product Officer at GlassLab/LRNG and Vice President of Education at Common Sense Media. With a passion for building and leading teams, Liz strives to inspire people to do their best work, focussed on impact and serving the needs of kids and families first. Liz is a graduate of UC Berkeley and holds a master’s degree in Curriculum and Teacher Education from Stanford.

Sarah prides herself in being an educator first. Prior to joining Reading Futures she taught in a formal, elementary classroom setting for twelve years. Her teaching experience varies from kindergarten through 5th grade and as a military spouse she’s had the opportunity to teach all over the world.
Sarah holds a BS from Texas State University and an MA from Grand Canyon University in Curriculum and Instruction.
When she left the formal classroom setting she began writing education content for a small start-up, at which point she realized she could branch out on her own. She started her own small, digital marketing business where she learned, and fell in love with, the ins-and-outs of business operations.
She’s thrilled to join the Reading Futures team because she so fully believes in the work the team is doing, and has always had a heart to serve the underserved.

Kate Malinowski is a Lead Teacher and middle grades educator at Reading Futures. Before joining Reading Futures she was the lead reading intervention teacher at a charter middle school in Brooklyn, NY where, in addition to teaching reading intervention, she also coordinated the school’s intervention program, developed reading intervention curriculum, and provided professional development and coaching for the intervention teachers. She has taught 5th-8th grade students in a variety of settings including urban and rural schools, general and special education, whole class and small group interventions. Kate is a graduate of Brown University with an M.Ed. from UMass Boston and an advanced certificate in Teaching Exceptional Learners from Relay Graduate School of Education. She lives in Brooklyn, NY and is a proud District 13 parent.

Monique is a reading interventionist and instructional coach at Reading Futures. She most recently served as an early childhood reading coach for public elementary schools in New York City. Prior to that, she taught in a formal, elementary classroom setting for fourteen years and served as an interventionist for one year. Her teaching experience varies from kindergarten through 4th grade.
Monique loves having the opportunity to meet and impact students from across the country through Reading Futures.

Cary is a reading interventionist, site lead, and content editor at reading futures. She most recently taught in a Title I district in Colorado, where she served as an MTSS coordinator and data coach, while teaching K-5 ESL and reading intervention. She also worked at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, connecting children to conservation. Previously, she taught 4th grade ELA and Social studies in a district outside of Houston. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with a Minor in Education from Texas A&M University. She is certified to teach in Texas and Colorado.

Prior to joining Reading Futures, Katharine Donnelly Adams was an Assistant Teaching Professor at Penn State. Early in her teaching career, she was a Research Teacher for dyslexic and struggling readers at Benchmark School with Dr. Irene Gaskins and at Tufts University with Dr. Maryanne Wolf. She helped to develop the Benchmark Word Detectives and RAVE-O programs. Her doctoral research with Dr. Wolf focused on how to best deliver research-based interventions to students and teachers through summer programming and training. These experiences highlighted the relevance of dual language learning for many students. Her postdoctoral training with Dr. Janet van Hell focused on neurocognitive and behavioral methods to investigate how children and adults learn second languages. Her current work investigates how technological tools can be used in linguistically diverse classrooms to support reading development. Dr. Donnelly Adams also serves on the boards of the Restorative Justice Initiative at Penn State and the Dyslexia Reading Center of Central Pennsylvania.

Dr. Jason Yeatman is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Stanford University. Dr. Yeatman completed his PhD in Psychology at Stanford, then held a faculty position at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences before returning to Stanford.
As the director of the Brain Development and Education Lab, the overarching goal of his research is to understand the mechanisms that underlie the process of learning to read, how these mechanisms differ in children with dyslexia, and to design literacy intervention programs that are effective across the wide spectrum of learning differences. His lab employs a collection of structural and functional neuroimaging measurements to study how a child’s experience with reading instruction shapes the development of brain circuits that are specialized for this unique cognitive function.

Teaching Team

Lisa Avila

Elementary Educator, Special Education & ESL
Nicole Black

SEL Specialist & Reading Interventionist
Sandra Carter

Special Education & Reading Interventionist
Alexa Delgado

Elementary Educator & Reading Interventionist
Jennifer Guido

Elementary Educator & Reading Interventionist
Olivia Ward

Elementary Educator, Reading Interventionist, & ESL
Kim Komisarek

Reading Interventionist & Special Education
Heidi Congleton

Early Childhood & Elementary Educator
Shannen Nowakowski-Downing

Elementary Educator & Reading Interventionist
Aimee Rodriguez

Reading Interventionist & Special Education
Rachel Sauber

Elementary Educator & Reading Interventionist
Anastasia Hampton

Interventionist/Special Education
Marley Graff

Elementary Educator & Reading Interventionist
Melanie Jenkins

School Administrator, Elementary Educator, & Reading Interventionist
Michelle Arcala

Elementary Educator & Reading Interventionist
Elizabeth Morey

K-6 Educator & Reading Interventionist
Dr. Tracy Bender

Elementary Educator, Veteran, & Reading Interventionist
Addy Walker

Elementary Educator & Reading Interventionist
Candice Ellery

Reading Interventionist & Special Educator
Sue Tokar

Elementary Educator & Reading Interventionist