Our Team

	J. Richard Gentry, Ph.D. Chairman of the Advisory Board
	KL Wong Founder and President
	Natalie Berg Executive Director
	Tonya Eierdam Director of Outreach, North America

J. Richard Gentry, Ph.D.

Chairman of the Advisory Board, BrillKids Foundation

J. Richard Gentry, Ph.D., earned his Elementary Education degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in Reading Education from the University of Virginia in 1977. For sixteen years he taught Reading Education at Western Carolina University where he directed the Reading Center. He is well known for his research and writing in literacy education and is currently an independent researcher, author, and educational consultant. A frequent keynoter and featured speaker at conferences for teachers both nationally and internationally, J. Richard Gentry continues to write and speak widely on literacy development and spelling. His depth of knowledge and breakthrough thinking about the importance of teaching spelling for reading and writing development has resulted in a number of books including Spel... Is a Four-Letter Word, The Literacy Map: Guiding Children to Where They Need to Be, and My Kid Can't Spell as well as numerous articles in academic journals and textbooks for school-age children.

J. Richard Gentry's ground breaking book, Breaking the Code: The New Science of Beginning Reading and Writing (Heinemann) was released in February of 2006. Writing with the same clarity and teacher-friendly approach as in his best-selling The Science of Spelling (Heinemann, 2004), Richard Gentry shows you how scientific thinking and student-centered teaching can work together to create powerful literacy instructional practices. His staff development sessions open a window for teachers and parents into the minds of young readers, so that they can open a window for them into a world of literate possibilities.

His book Breakthrough in Beginning Reading and Writing, released by Scholastic in late in 2007 and Step-by-Step Assessment Guide to Code Breaking released in 2009 are already popular for teachers of beginning reading and writing and along with his other books have established Richard as one of the foremost national experts on teaching beginning reading and writing.

Learn more about Dr. J. Richard Gentry