Hi there, I’m Karen Dudek-Brannan!

I’m a Professional Development Specialist, SLP, and founder/owner/operate of Dr. Karen, LLC, a company focused on empowering therapists and educators to design interventions that support language, literacy, and executive functioning. In my current role, I develop engaging professional development and products that help school teams work together to get better results.

On the De Facto Leaders Podcast, I share up-to-date evidence-based practices, my own experience, and guest interviews designed to help pediatric therapists, educators, and aspiring school leaders design services that support social, emotional, and academic growth and set kids up for success in adulthood. Whether you want to learn effective strategies for your therapy session or classroom, be an influential leader on your team, or find creative ways to use your skills to advance in your career, I’ve got you covered. You can listen to the De Facto Leaders podcast on most popular podcast directories, and can scroll through past episodes on this page here.

Latest Episodes

Your clinical expertise is powerful. But is it scalable?

When everything depends on your real-time decisions, you can’t replicate the progress, scale the outcomes, or lead others through your process. Even when it’s working....

So…can you recommend an app to build my child’s language skills?

In this episode, I’m sharing my top resources for clinicians to explain why we do what we do in language therapy, and how parents and colleagues can support skills out...

Narrative Intervention: Beyond "Cute" Stories and Lesson Plans (with Jane Gebers)

When you’re teaching storytelling with students, do your lessons feel kind of…random?I used to feel like this a lot when I was a school SLP, so if you’ve ever had a “t...

What's the point of teaching storytelling? (with Jane Gebers)

Why are we so obsessed with “storytelling”?In education, we talk about it when we’re working on language and reading comprehension. It’s also referred to in sales and ...

Not seeing generalization? You might be the bottleneck.

If your therapy techniques only work when you’re in the room, that’s a problem.Many therapists unintentionally “gatekeep” their expertise and miss opportunities to boo...

More Episodes »