Presenters’ Information

Keynote Speaker                              

Arlene Garcia Gunderson

Arlene Garcia Gunderson is the new Director at the Division of Services for the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing under the Utah Services of Rehabilitation (USOR) within the Utah’s Department of Workforce Service (DWS), who will be responsible for the oversight and administration programs assisting Utah’s Deaf, Deafblind, Deafplus,Hard-of-Hearing, and their families.

Arlene earned her Bachelors from Gallaudet University, a Masters in Deaf Education: with focus in Bicultural & Bilingual from McDaniel College and a Masters in Educational Administration from Argosy University. Arlene bring years of career experience in teaching ASL, Deaf Culture, Deaf Education, Interpreting, and Human Services as well as administrative experience leading one of Gallaudet University’s regional centers, K-12 Principal for a state school, and being involved in organizations such as being the president of the National American Sign Language Teachers Association (ASLTA). Arlene was also the co-founder of the first mobile, on-demand and live interactive video tutoring, education and practice platform for the Deaf in both K-12 and college-level subjects. In addition, Arlene led a development team in creating free, online courses for Deaf adults in Ontario, Canada.

Arlene has been recognized for her accomplishments in the Deaf community by several national organizations, including Deaf Women United and Deaf Women of Color, and featured in the recently published book: “The Light of Deaf Women”.

Arlene is Puerto Rican and Deaf native. Arlene is originally from New York, her parents and older sister are Deaf. Arlene is also proud mother of four children, Caleb, 16, Tristan & Sebastian, 15 and Sydney, 10. Arlene enjoys hiking and running.

 


Amanda Hammond

Amanda Hammond has worked in the field of Deaf Education for over 25 years. In 1994, she received her B.S. in Deaf Education K-12 from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, IL. During that time she was able to do several internships at the IL School for the Deaf in their ASL classrooms as well as mainstream LSL and TC programs. She was also able to spend some time at the Brighton School for the Deaf in England, which is a Liberal Arts school focusing on Listening and Spoken Language. All of those experiences helped prepare her for her current position in the Parent Infant Program for the Deaf at USDB. Before working for the PIP program, she taught middle school in a mainstream program and also worked as an ASL interpreter for the high school students. In 2003, she was able to go back to school to earn her M.A. in Early Intervention for Deaf and Hard of Hearing children. She has now worked for the PIP program for almost 20 years and absolutely loves it! She loves working with families to help support them in providing a language rich environment for their Deaf/HH child. She loves seeing the curiosity and desire to learn and communicate unfold in all the children she works with.

She is also a state trainer for the SKI HI curriculum, which is a curriculum specifically designed for Deaf/ HH children birth to three. She is enjoying training new employees and sharing her love and passion for Early Intervention the families and children that we serve in the PIP program.

 

David Davenport

David Davenport is an associate professor under the ASL/Interpreting Program at Salt Lake Community College. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology from Brigham Young University and a Master of Arts degree in Sign Language Education from Gallaudet University. He has been teaching ASL for over fifteen years and has mentored many interpreters in various programs. David is a versatile individual with a wide range of talents such as teaching, storytelling, coordinating, training, remodeling, video editing, and other technology-related skills. David has developed ASL curriculum and assessment tools incorporating a new modern style of teaching and technology for his classes to enrich the learning experience for students. His interests are the modeling of language processing, linguistics, bilingualism, and language development in Deaf and Hard-of-hearing.

 

 

Dan Mathis

Dan grew up in Salt Lake City so he basically was an all-season “valley boy.” He has been Deaf all his life, and of course, is naturally unashamed of it! He wholeheartedly credits gaining Deaf identity and bilingual fluency to his Deaf grandparents, hearing parents and siblings, as well as many other mentors and friends. His schooling experience was a combination of self-contained classrooms, solo mainstream classes with aid of interpreters, and residential-like (on/off campus) during college years. He’s a proud alumni of Gallaudet University where he picked up his BA & MA in ASL and Deaf Studies. Be it by fate or divine it, too, was unwittingly a rendezvous point of his courtship with his spouse, Stephanie; eventually they hit it off with with wedding flashing lights, producing four pretty much grown-up kids. Fast-forward to this moment, he can be found gleamingly teaching sorts of ASL & Deaf Studies courses at UVU and SLCC. He does have hobbies, and interests and pet peeves, but that’s for another time! 🙂

 

Wing Butler

As the eldest hearing son, born to a mother of Chinese descent and Caucasian father, Wing finds his opportunities center around sign language, their culture, language and heritage, and considers it a gift from his deaf parents.  Wing has gravitated to many entrepreneurial endeavors by founding one of the largest and most successful ASL Interpreting Agencies in the western United States.  After successfully selling the company, he worked for several Video Relay Service companies to provide greater telecommunication access to the deaf community.  Additionally, he is a frequent writer for Street Leverage a leading sign language interpreter industry website, innovator of DeafTV.com, served on the Registry of Interpreters executive board and worked with many performing arts venues across the country like La Cage Aux Folles, Cirque De Soleil, Wicked, and Les Miserables to name a few.  He currently is VP of Sales at GoReact, which is the #1 video coaching tool for skill and language development.