She earned her bachelor's degree in Communication Sciences & Disorders from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Her clinical and research interests focus on the treatment of adults with neurogenic communication disorders, particularly aphasia. She has worked with this population for 30 years in medical, home-health care, and university settings. The focus of her current research is on word retrieval difficulties caused by aphasia. She is testing and refining a treatment to improve word retrieval impairments during discourse activities, and exploring the social validity of measures of word retrieval in the discourse of adults with and without neurological impairment.