Judy Lewis is a true NLD Pioneer: She is a co-founder, former board member, vice president and volunteer of the Nonverbal Learning Disorders Association (NLDA), a national non-profit corporation which champions education, support and advocacy for people with nonverbal learning disorders. She was one of the first members and organizers of the Board of Trustees of the then newly-established Orion School in Northern California, the first high school in the United States established exclusively for students with NLD and Asperger’s Syndrome. Judy is the creator, webmaster and administrator of the NLDline website http://www.NLDline.com.Now in its tenth year, NLDline was the first website to address the complex issues of people with NLD, and has received more than 5,000,000 inquiries worldwide. She also created and facilitates the NLD Hotline, sharing information and resources with callers from all over the world, primarily parents and educators of children with NLD.
A private tutor and educational consultant for thirty years, Judy is involved in many aspects of support and education for the learning disabled. She is co-founder and Board Member Emerita of Chartwell School in Monterey, California, an educational institution primarily for children with language-based learning disabilities, now in its twenty-third year of operation. She has also done extensive work in advocacy, and was instrumental in developing an adult LD support group in Monterey County.
Ten years ago, she was introduced to a student with NLD and spent six hours a day in a one-on-one pullout program with this seventh grade girl. It was during that school year that Judy realized just how little was known about NLD, and she decided to commit her educational expertise to Nonverbal Learning Disorders. Soon, she became a member of the Board of SHARE Support Inc., whose president was then Sue Thompson. Sue’s book, I Shouldn’t Have To Tell You (now renamed The Source for Nonverbal Learning Disorders LinguiSystems, publisher), had recently been self-published, and Judy learned much fromworking with Sue and with the parents of various-aged children with this learning difference.
Eight years ago, Judy opened the NLDConnection, a multi-service resource providing educational consulting, teleclasses and NLD Coaching services to parents and teachers of children with Nonverbal Learning Disorders. Participants engage in weekly calls from their home base to discuss specific situations about their NLD children with Judy. Together, they examine the circumstances and use Judy’s NLDSPARC-K Model to help establish guidelines for bettering the lives of their child or student. The NLDSPARC-K Model offers parents, teachers and other caregivers Strategies,Practices, Activities, Resources, Coping Mechanisms and Knowledge for working successfully with children, teens and adults with NLD.
Judy Lewis is a graduate of UCLA, where she interned and tutored at the associated Fernald Clinic School before earning her degree in education. She taught school for three years before opening her private tutorial practice. Judy lives in Carmel, California with her husband, Leland.
She is the proud mother of four grown daughters and the grandmother of eight wonderful grandchildren. Judy has demonstrated time and time again that positive, appropriate intervention can maximize the cognitive, social and emotional development of individuals with learning disabilities, no matter what their age.