Diane Staehr Fenner is the president of SupportEd, LLC (formerly DSF Consulting), a woman owned small business that provides educators in English learners' education the skills and resources they need to champion ELs' success within and beyond their classrooms. At SupportEd, Diane serves as project lead for all the team's work providing professional development, programmatic support, and research to school districts, states, organizations, and the U.S. Department of Education. Diane is an author of four books, a blogger for the Colorín Colorado website, and a frequent keynote presenter on EL education at conferences across North America. Diane was a research associate at George Washington University's Center for Excellence and Equity in Education, spent a decade as an ESOL teacher, dual language assessment teacher, and ESOL assessment specialist in Fairfax County Public Schools, VA, and taught English in Veracruz, Mexico and Berlin, Germany. Diane earned her Ph.D. in Multilingual/Multicultural Education with an emphasis in Literacy at George Mason University. She earned her MAT in TESOL at the School for International Training and her Masters in German at Penn State University.

Sydney Snyder, Ph.D. is a Principal Associate at SupportEd. In this role, Sydney has had significant experience in developing and conducting interactive professional development for teachers of ELs. She also has expertise in program management, curriculum development, research, and technical writing. Sydney has contributed to a series of blog posts on the Colorín Colorado website on strategies to support ELs. Sydney has extensive instructional experience, having taught ESOL/English as a Foreign Language for over 15 years. She started her teaching career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinea, West Africa. This experience taught her the extent to which effective strategies can support students' language acquisition, even when resources are limited. She taught most recently in Falls Church, VA where she was the K-12 ESOL Curriculum and Instruction Resource Teacher for the district. Sydney also served as an English Teaching Fellow at Gadja Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Sydney earned her Ph.D. in Multilingual/Multicultural Education at George Mason University and her M.A.T in TESOL at the School for International Training.