Meet the experts

Megan Malone is a speech-language pathologist working as a clinical faculty member in Kent State University's Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology and as a clinician and consultant in home health care. She previously worked for as a senior research associate and lead trainer at Myers Research Institute, in Cleveland, OH where she oversaw federally/privately funded grants focused on implementing interventions with older adults with dementia. She is the co-author of the book, “Here's How to Treat Dementia” (Plural Publishing, 2013), the co-author of the textbook chapter, ”SLP Services in Home Health Care” in “Medical Speech Language Pathology Across the Care Continuum: An Introduction”, and “has spoken numerous times at the annual conventions of the American Speech and Hearing Association, Gerontological Society of America, American Society on Aging, and the Alzheimer's Association, along with several state speech and hearing conventions. She has published articles in the Journal of Communication Disorders, Alzheimer's Care Quarterly, The Gerontologist, and Dementia.

Shira Sameroff, LCSW, has decades of experience working with people of diverse identities, ages, and life stories in a wide array of settings. Her professional roles have included therapy, supervision, professional development, college teaching, coaching, community organizing, transformative decluttering, and a decade and a half on the leadership team of a community-based social work agency.

Shira weaves together a range of therapeutic healing modalities, including IFS, Hakomi, and other somatic, nature-based, and anti-oppressive practices. She offers professional development for individuals and organizations around themes including shame, group facilitation, supervision, giving and receiving feedback, empowering practice with youth, tending to self as a practitioner, and trauma-informed and oppression-informed therapy.

The heart of her work is helping humans reconnect with themselves, each other, and the natural world to enable deep individual and collective healing. Her approach is collaborative, intuitive, and full of heart and is rooted in her own lived experience of healing, learning, and emerging.

Dr. Youngdahl is a licensed psychologist who works at Thriving Minds Behavioral Health and
provides therapy and testing services for children and adolescents. She received
her PhD in School Psychology from Michigan State University.