Meet the experts

Tom Copeland is the nation’s leading expert on the business of child care. He is the author of ten books and trains thousands of caregivers each year. A licensed attorney, he worked for Resources for Child Caring, a non-profit organization, for 28 years before becoming a private consultant in 2009.

Tonya Hayes is a speech-language pathology assistant at Sprout Pediatrics. She holds a Master of Education degree from the University of South Carolina as well as a Bachelor's degree in Speech Correction from Columbia College. She has served children in the public schools for over ten years, led the Parent Education and Family Literacy program, and served as an early interventionist with the SC School for the Deaf and the Blind. She has a niche serving children and families of late talkers as well as those on the Autism Spectrum. Tonya and her husband enjoy travel, mentoring newlyweds at their church, and enjoying their adult sons and daughter-in-law.

Shari Robertson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is a Professor of Speech Language Pathology and Provost’s Associate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Robertson spent 18 years as a school-based SLP and supervisor prior to obtaining her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the current president-elect of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Shari has published numerous articles, book chapters, and clinical materials and presented several hundred workshops at state, national, and international venues related to language and literacy.