Candidate for Vice President for Planning: Marlene B. Salas-Provance, CCC-SLP

Marlene B. Salas-Provance, PhD, MHA, CCC-SLP, is an ASHA Fellow and a National Academies of Practice (NAP) Fellow. She has been an academic faculty member, clinician, and administrator for more than 35 years. Her areas of interest are cleft lip and palate, culturally responsive practices, and international service. She served on ASHA’s Multicultural Issues Board and Financial Planning Board, and she was integral to building ASHA’s related professional organization, the Hispanic Caucus, serving as its treasurer and president. Her work extended to serving as coordinator of SIG 14, Cultural and Linguistic Diversity, and serving as founding member and coordinator of SIG 17, Global Issues in Communication Sciences and Related Disorders.

Dr. Salas-Provance’s ASHA awards include the Certificates of Special Recognition for Contributions in Multicultural Affairs and International Achievement. Her co-authored textbook, Culturally Responsive Practices in Speech, Language and Hearing Science, is in its second edition. She is founder and president of Bilingual Advantage Inc., a bilingual medical interpreter training company serving health care organizations for more than 20 years. A significant service commitment has been her work with Rotaplast International since 2004, traveling worldwide as part of a medical team that provides surgeries for children with cleft lip and cleft palate. She has provided speech therapy services in Bangladesh, China, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, and Venezuela. University students and faculty have joined her as part of these missions.

Dr. Salas-Provance’s academic administration work included developing and implementing A.T. Still University’s Strategic Plan for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as well as extensive new program development across many health care disciplines while building interprofessional practice and interprofessional educational (IPE/IPP) experiences for faculty and students. Most recently, she built a new graduate program in speech-language pathology with multicultural education being its cornerstone, educating speech-language pathologists to deliver culturally responsive and bilingual services. She developed the Cultural Growth Profile, an original pedagogical 2-year student journey.