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Board of Directors
Board of Directors President Martha B. Bernard
Board of Directors President Martha B. Bernard has been an advocate for over 35 years, serving parents who need help for their children with learning disabilities. She served for many years as the Chair of the Trustees of the Lorge School and as a Board Member for the Gateway School and the Mary McDowell Center for Learning. She is presently Chair of the New York City Board of Education’s Advisory Commission for Occupational Education for Students with Disabilities and is a member of the Intergroup Relations Advisory Council. Over the years she also served on numerous committees and task forces for the Office of the Manhattan Borough President and the Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools. She continues as a consultant to the Jose P. case, one of the two major class action suits she was instrumental in bringing on behalf of the educational needs of children with disabilities. At the federal level, Ms. Bernard was actively involved in the development of P.L. 94-142 and, as an advocate for people with disabilities, served in Washington to help write the regulations.
Ms. Bernard has been involved from the very early stages of The Learning Disabilities Association of New York State and was an active volunteer in the state office when it was located in New York City. She founded the Manhattan Chapter in 1964 and served as the catalyst for the establishment of the Learning Disabilities Association of New York City, Inc., in 1989, where she has served ever since as Board President. She was State Association President from 1970-73 and Trustee for over 30 years, serving on the Executive Committee in several officer positions to the present day. Ms. Bernard also was President of the national association, the Learning Disabilities Association of America, during 1973-74. She chaired the first major national conference in 1967 in New York City and was again chair for the 1975 conference, also in New York City. In 1986 she was presented with the Pioneer Award, one of the National’s highest accolades.
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Hannah Flegenheimer
Hannah Flegenheimer has Masters degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University, in both the psychology of reading and reading difficulties, and in learning disabilities. She also holds a doctorate from Columbia in special education, with a specialization in learning disabilities. During the period of her doctoral studies and for several years thereafter, Dr. Flegenheimer taught in the special education program at Teachers College, responsible for courses and practica in the evaluation and treatment of children with learning disabilities. In addition, she supervised student teachers in special schools serving students with learning disabilities. She has also taught at Marymount Manhattan College and at NYU.
Dr. Flegenheimer spent fifteen years with the New York State Education Department. There she developed and implemented the Department's special education monitoring program—a program designed to ensure that school districts and private schools throughout the state complied with the applicable federal and state laws and regulations governing special education. For the last ten of those years she was Director of the Department's Division of Program Monitoring. Upon leaving that position, Dr. Flegenheimer became Executive Director of the Learning Disabilities Association of New York City, where she served for five years. At the LDA of NYC she was an instrumental part in developing both the Latino Outreach program and Adult Support Group. She retired in 1997 and joined the LDA of NYC Board in 2003.
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Peter Flom
Peter Flom is a statistician at a nonprofit research group, where he assists scientists examining AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, and related issues. He is also an independent statistical consultant. He earned his MA in Special Education from NYU, and his Ph.D. in Psychometrics from Fordham University. He was the first student at the Gateway School, where he is on the Board of Trustees, and his son now attends that school. He has long been interested in learning disabilities, for both personal and professional reasons. He joined the board of LDA of NYC in 2002. He is particularly interested in nonverbal learning disabilities and in problems facing people who are both gifted and LD.
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Susan Ingram
Susan Ingram is Vice President and Senior Counsel at MasterCard International Incorporated, located in Purchase, New York. At MasterCard, Ms. Ingram is responsible for drafting and negotiating commercial agreements, including sponsorship, advertising, media and consulting agreements. Prior to her work at MasterCard, Ms. Ingram was general counsel to a group of three affiliated media companies. Before that, she had a private law practice specializing in consumer credit and banking law.
Ms. Ingram first became interested in the area of learning disabilities when her son was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of seven. After learning as much about the subject of LD as she could and helping her son obtain the services he needed, she wanted to advocate for other children as well. Thus, she expanded her private law practice to include advocacy work for children with disabilities. She found this to be some of the most personally rewarding and gratifying work of her legal career.
Ms. Ingram has been a member of the LDA of NYC Board of Directors for over 10 years. Among her other responsibilities, she assists the Board on employment and other law-related issues. She holds a J.D. from St. Johns University School of Law and a B.A. from New York University.
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Dr. Irwin Rosenthal
Dr. Irwin Rosenthal is a psychologist who has made learning disabilities a primary focus of research and practice during his career in college, university and private practice. As Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York and a research professor for many years at New York University, Dr. Rosenthal has been Principal Investigator in a wide range of action research projects related to learning disabilities. Among his many important achievements in the field are his pioneering activities in establishing the first federally-funded learning disability support services program in a public university and, subsequently, in a private university. He has written articles, taught courses, and made presentations—in such areas as self-psychology, career development, giftedness and learning disability, poverty and the at-risk child, learning disability and social adjustment, inclusion and students with learning disabilities—that have had significant impact on professional attitudes, programs, and special and general education teacher training and practice. |
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Charles H. Traub
Charles H. Traub is Chair of the Graduate MFA Program in Photography, Video and Related Media, School of Visual Arts in New York City, the largest independent college of art in the United States. He holds an MS from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a BA degree from the University of Illinois. Formerly Director of the legendary Light Gallery of New York, he is currently President of the Aaron Siskind Foundation for support of creative photography. He is a co-founder of Here Is New York, a Democracy of Photographs, which received the Brendan Gill Award of the Municipal Arts Society, the Cornell Capa Infinity Award, and a Distinguished Service Award from the Children’s Aid Society of New York. Mr. Traub has had numerous one-person exhibitions at venues including: the Marcus Pfeifer Gallery, Van Straaten Gallery, Art Directors Guild of New York, Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Light Gallery and the Hudson River Museum. His work is currently represented by the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. Mr. Traub has authored and edited several books including Beach, Italy Observed, and Anglers Album, and has had his work published in Connoisseur, Fortune, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, American Photographer, Popular Photography, Aperture, and Afterimage. Mr. Traub has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts, Hendrecks Foundation, Illinois Art Council, Manda Foundation, the Olympics Arts Organization Committee, and the Mary McDowell Center for Learning. His textbook In the Realm of Circuit was published by Prentice Hall in the spring of 2003. In the Still Life, a monograph of his recent color photography, is due out in September 2004.
Charles has been a member of the LDA Board for over 10 years and has actively supported education for the Learning Disabled. He has written and lectured on this subject throughout his career.
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Staff
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Cleo Lewis
Part-time Bookkeeper Cleo Lewis has been in business since 1995, providing service to more than 2000 small businesses, including companies in the Caribbean and England. She helps set up and maintain bookkeeping/accounting structures and also offers small business classes for the City of New York and the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation. Her clients include a variety of for-profit businesses as well as non-profit agencies such as LDA of NYC.
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Iris Spano
Iris Spano, part-time Coordinator of the Adult Support Group, founded the New York Branch of the Orton Dyslexia Society some thirty-five years ago after discovering that her otherwise brilliant son had problems learning—this at a time when the general population was still unaware dyslexia even was a learning disorder. She went on to serve as Branch Vice President and Executive Director. Later, Iris instituted programs at schools and colleges training teacher-specialists to impart better awareness of dyslexia as well as special methods to train those with this learning disorder. With her help, parent education programs taught parents to recognize early signs of dyslexia in their children and to adopt remedial measures. Soon thereafter, Iris established Adult Dyslexia Groups to help adults whose learning disabilities had not been recognized and addressed properly earlier on. She also held annual three-day conferences for educators, lawyers, doctors, psychologists, etc., from all over the world, to address various aspects of dyslexia. And Iris set up a separate program focusing on teens faced with dyslexia to assure them they are not alone in facing this problem, and to enable them to exchange views on their socio-psychological problems.
Iris has worked for the cause of Learning Disability in other capacities as well: she served on the Foundation for Children with Learning Disabilities; on the Board of the National Center for Learning Disabilities; has been on the Committees on Juvenile Justice for Learning Disabilities, under the aegis of the Appellate Division, the first department of the Supreme Court of New York State; and assisted on a series of lectures for attorneys focusing on the problems of learning-challenged children and the Juvenile System.
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