Our People

Cindy Conklin, Program Manager, It Takes Two to Talk®
Cindy Earle, Program Manager, Target Word®
Janice Greenberg, Program Manager, Learning Language and Loving It™
Michelle Lintott, Program Manager, You Make The Difference®
Fern Sussman, Program Manager, More Than Words® and TalkAbility®
Elaine Weitzman, Executive Director, The Hanen Centre

Cindy Conklin

Program Manager, It Takes Two to Talk

Cindy Conklin received her speech pathology degree at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario Canada in 1996.    She had a passion for working with adults as well as preschoolers, and upon graduation, worked with both of these populations as a speech language pathologist in community hospital settings.    She later began working with school-aged children specializing in the areas of fluency and motor speech disorders.    In these positions, she experienced a sense of dissatisfaction with her limited contact with parents and their involvement in their child’s treatment.  An important piece of the puzzle was missing!  

In 2001, she started to work part-time at the Hanen Centre running the It Takes Two to Talk Program for Parents.  She recalls, “It was like coming home”.  The philosophy of involving parents as partners in their child’s early language intervention fit her like a glove.  She found that enabling and empowering parents to help their child’s communication develop was the most rewarding thing that she had done and that it had tremendous impact on the progress of children with language delays and on the entire family dynamic.  She was hooked on parent training and hasn’t looked back.  

In 2003 she became an It Takes Two to Talk Instructor, training speech language pathologists around the globe.  In 2005 she joined The Hanen Centre as the Program Manager for the It Takes Two to Talk Program.  In this role, she provides leadership and overall direction to the It Takes Two to Talk Program. She supports Hanen Certified speech language pathologists who request advice and guidance on the application of It Takes Two to Talk to their clinical work. She also supports Hanen instructors who lead It Takes Two to Talk Certification workshops around the world.  She develops It Takes Two to Talk resources and recently developed the It Takes Two to Talk DVD: A guide to promoting the communication development of children with language delay - a versatile resource for both parents and professionals, which demonstrates parents applying the It Takes Two to Talk strategies with their children in everyday situations.  

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Cindy Earle

Program Manager, Target Word

Resource Coordinator for Hanen Training - Ontario’s Preschool Speech and Language Program

Cindy Earle graduated with her Bachelor of Science at the University of South Dakota and a Master of Arts Degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Cindy took her initial Hanen training (a five day workshop) in 1979!) in Kingston, Ontario when The Hanen Centre was on the move from Montreal, Quebec to Toronto,. This training not only changed the way she felt about working with families of young children, it also improved her own interactions with children during therapy.

She had the good fortunate to do her final clinical practicum at Chedoke Child and Family Centre in Hamilton (now part of Hamilton Health Sciences) and was then hired on as a clinician in the Out patient Department. After offering her first It Takes Two to Talk program, she knew she wanted to be more involved with The Hanen Centre and in 1988, she became an It Takes Two to Talk Instructor, leading workshops for SLPs around the world. She became an Instructor for Learning Language and Loving It in 1992 and led a pilot project in Hamilton that resulted in ongoing community funding for Learning Language and Loving It programs. That project continues today.

The launch of the Ontario Preschool Speech and Language Program in Ontario in 1998 (a revamped, more coordinated and family-focused initiative) made available an opportunity that she couldn’t resist - overseeing a province-wide Hanen project. Her position as Resource Coordinator for Hanen Training within this Ontario Program involves supporting speech language pathologists in their Hanen-related clinical work with families of young children with communication delays. Interactions with SLPs across Ontario identified the need for a program for parents of children who were late talkers. Cindy teamed up with Lauren Lowry (an SLP who works for The Hanen Centre) to create Target Word - The Hanen Program for Parents of Children who are Late Talkers. Cindy is also the Program Manager for the Target Word Program. She is currently involved in a research project for children who are late talkers with Dr. Pam Hadley.

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Janice Greenberg

Program Manager, Learning Language and Loving It

Janice Greenberg received her degree in speech pathology from the University of Toronto in 1978. Janice’s connection with The Hanen Centre began in 1981 when she attended an It Takes Two to Talk workshop and began offering It Takes Two To Talk Programs at what was then called the Ontario Crippled Children’s Centre (currently known as Bloorview Kids Rehab).  Janice then had the good fortune to become involved in writing one of the first drafts of the It Takes Two to Talk guidebook and instructed It Takes Two to Talk workshops for Speech-language pathologists over the next ten years. Janice considers this opportunity to have been a real stroke of good fortune for a relatively new graduate who had only been practicing as an SLP for 3 years. Hanen was really in its infancy in those days and had not yet achieved the international reputation it enjoys today. Back then, a flight to northern Ontario in a 12 seater plane was considered a worldly adventure!

In the early 90’s, Janice took a hiatus from Hanen to pursue broader interests in the areas of family support and education and training other professionals to provide responsive, collaborative family-centred services. By 1998, Janice was getting the Hanen itch again and returned part-time to The Hanen Centre to provide the Learning Language and Loving It Program to child care providers in Toronto. At the same time, she ran a private practice and consulted to a local integrated preschool, where she offered It Takes Two to Talk to the parents and Learning Language and Loving It to the early childhood educators. Janice still recalls the opportunity to train the children’s parents and teachers as one of the most powerful interventions she has been involved in.

In 2000, Janice was offered the position of Program Manager for Learning Language and Loving It. One of her first big tasks was to co-authour the second edition of the Learning Language and Loving It Guidebook (Weitzman & Greenberg, 2002) and revise all the Learning Language and Loving It materials that had been developed by Elaine Weitzman in 1992 All the new resources were released in 2002.

In her role as Program Manager, Janice continues to introduce exciting innovations to the Learning Language and Loving It Program, including flexible options for program delivery, development of the Teacher Talk Training, extension of the trainer model to include early childhood education consultants and development of new resources, such as program posters and Teacher Talk Workbooks. She also collaborates on research on teacher training with Elaine Weitzman and Luigi Girolametto, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto.

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Michelle Lintott

Program Manager, You Make The Difference

As a young mom, Michelle Lintott developed a passion for spending time with children, seeing the world through their eyes and helping them get excited about learning.  After volunteering at the local public school, she decided to go back to school herself to train as an early childhood educator. 

After graduating from Centennial College in Toronto, Michelle spent many years working in a variety of Early Childhood settings getting to know families and children and encouraging early learning.  Her first experience with Hanen was when she participated in the Learning Language and Loving It Program for Early Childhood Educators at the centre where she was working, offered by Fern Sussman. It wasn’t long after Michelle received her ECE diploma that she decided to further her education at the University of Toronto, where she recently completed her Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in psychology.

Michelle first joined the Hanen Centre in 1999, as a member of Toronto Preschool Speech and Language Services supportive personnel team. In 2003, she took on the role of Early Years Project Manager and provided leadership and guidance to the first group of Toronto Early Literacy Specialists.

In January 2004, Michelle Lintott became the You Make The Difference Program Manager at The Hanen Centre, where she is responsible for the overall management of that program.  As well as leading the YMTD Program in local community centres, Michelle provides support and guidance to the You Make The Difference Members through the You Make The Difference Newsletter, The Flow, and through regular updates of program materials. She developed the Magic With Music DVD, a delightful resource which shows parents how to have fun with their children through music and rhyme, while making this a stimulating, language-learning experience.

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Fern Sussman

Program Manager, More Than Words and TalkAbility

Fern Sussman likes to call herself a “born again speech pathologist”. That’s because until she came to work at the Hanen Centre in 1989, her work experience had often left her feeling frustrated. When Fern graduated from Speech Pathology at the University of Toronto she was, like most new grads, full of enthusiasm and passion for the profession.

Her first job was as an itinerant speech language pathologist at a school board just outside of Toronto.  She had her first car, her first apartment, her very own nifty container to carry materials in and a very cool speech mirror which could also be used as a felt board.  It didn’t matter to her that her office was in the school’s broom closet. She provided therapy to a wonderful group of children with a broad range of speech and language disorders – but saw not one parent.

Fern stayed at the school board for six years. While raising her children, she entered what she refers to as her, “Queen of the Locums” period, doing locums at many of the children’s treatment centres in Toronto, as well as conducting a small private practice.  She went back to school and studied creative writing and magazine production and wrote children’s books that remain unpublished to this day.

And then, one day, Fern responded to a job posting for a position at The Hanen Centre. This position was for a speech language pathologist to run a pilot program for early childhood educators (the early version of Learning Language and Loving It), that Elaine Weitzman was developing. She got the job and that’s when she fell in love with her profession again. 

At the Hanen Centre, Fern ran both Learning Language and Loving It and It Takes Two to Talk programs. Empowering mothers and fathers to help their own child learn to communicate not only made sense, but it was the most satisfying thing that she had ever down. 

In 1995, Fern had the opportunity to merge one the passions that she had developed during her locum days (autism) with her passion for parent training. She developed More Than Words – The Hanen Program for Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and wrote More Than Words the guidebook for parents based on the content of the program.

After being offered the position of Program Manager for More Than Words in 2000, Fern continues to develop autism-focused programs and resources for The Hanen Centre. In the fall of 2006, she completed TalkAbility, a guidebook for parents of children on the milder end of the autism spectrum. Currently she is creating a TalkAbility parent program and a training workshop so that other SLPs can learn to give this program in their own communities.

Fern travels widely, providing More Than Words training to Hanen SLPs, as well as doing presentations for parents and professionals, who want to learn about the More Than Words approach. She now has her very own office, with not a single broom in sight.

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Elaine Weitzman, M. Ed, S-LP

Executive Director
The Hanen Centre

Elaine Weitzman received her speech pathology degree in South Africa and her Master of Education degree at York University in Toronto, Canada. In the mid-70s, when working at a community hospital in Toronto, she experienced immense frustration at the limited progress made by children to whom she provided speech therapy in her office twice a week (the parents usually sat in the waiting room and came in for the last five minutes to get their “homework”). Her epiphany came when a desperate mother of a 2-year old exclaimed, “This isn’t working at all!” - and she was right. Around this time, Ms. Weitzman heard about a Hanen workshop being offered in Montreal and travelled there to get her certification training in 1978. After that, she offered Hanen Programs to the parents of young children with language delays and saw an enormous difference in the progress made by the children and in the well-being of the family.

In 1983, she went to work at The Hanen Centre and has worked there ever since. She provided It Takes Two to Talk Programs for a number of years. In 1988, she began to develop the Learning Language and Loving It Program and resources for early childhood educators. This exciting project ended in 1992, culminating in the first Learning Language and Loving It workshop offered to Hanen SLPs.

Ms. Weitzman has been Executive Director of The Hanen centre since 1992. She is the co-author of the Hanen guidebooks It Takes Two to Talk: A Practical Guide for Parents of Children with Language Delays (Pepper & Weitzman, 2004) and Learning Language and Loving It (Weitzman & Greenberg, 2002). Her research on parent and teacher training in collaboration with Dr. Luigi Girolametto, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, has been widely published.