Dr. Erin McDonough
Psychologist & ​President PDE of NY

Erin McDonough, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist with expertise in psychological assessment. She specializes in learning disability identification, including dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, as well as attention-related disorders. In addition to authoring chapters with experts in the field of cognitive assessment and learning disabilities, Dr. McDonough also serves as Clinical Assessment Supervisor in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, where she supervises graduate students in school and clinical psychology in psychological assessment. She received her doctorate in School Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009 and completed an APA-accredited internship at MercyFirst in Syosset, NY. She currently owns and operates Psychological Diagnostic Evaluations of New York, PC in Garden City, NY and Erin M. McDonough, PhD LLC in Pennington, NJ. Dr. McDonough's mission is to help her clients understand the difficulties they or their children are having and to generate practical and effective recommendations. 
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Kevin Pendergast
Special Education Attorney ​

Kevin Pendergast, Esq., is an attorney who specializes in advocacy for students with disabilities.  He currently serves as Of Counsel to the New York law firm of Littman Krooks. Kevin represents students and their families in their efforts to secure a better education within public schools and in private placement.  

Kevin’s previous experience includes Head of School at The Kildonan School in Amenia, N.Y. In the course of Kevin’s leadership, Kildonan attained accreditation as an International Baccalaureate school and created an Orton Gillingham -based foreign language program as well as an independent research program called EDGE. 
​After completing a Master’s program in English at Fordham University in New York City, Kevin served as a Literature teacher and Orton-Gillingham tutor at Kildonan for five years, during which time he led the Literature Department and Camp Dunnabeck, the school’s summer program.  He taught also at The Churchill School in New York City before attending law school at Case Western Reserve University, from which he earned a J.D. in 2006.  After working in the International Law sector of Oxford University Press’s Law Division for six years, he returned to Kildonan as its head in 2012. Kevin in the last few years has presented on the topics of dyslexia awareness and special education law at annual conferences for the organizations Everyone Reading (New York), the New York State Association of Independent Schools, the International Educational Consultants Association, and the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators. His legal work includes pro bono representation of families without the means for the high cost of specialized advocacy,