Summer Summit 2024

Meet your Summer Summit 2024 keynote speakers!

Michael Bonner

Michael Bonner is a renowned leader, innovator, and performance booster, who is a trailblazer in leadership development and organizational culture. He is a dynamic keynote speaker as seen on The Ellen Show, NBC Nightly News, and Time for Kids and a recent recipient of Atlanta's 40 under 40 awards.

He is the CEO of Bonnerville, a business that promotes the value of self-care and a highly respected team member at the famed Ron Clark Academy. He empowers leaders to build genuine relationships and establish a positive organizational culture, vision and team development.

Michael's seminars challenge listeners to reflect, strategize, and execute in order to increase their efficiency in the workplace and personal areas. He empowers listeners to build genuine relationships with their teams and colleagues because "You cannot demand a withdrawal from someone you have never invested in."

Kareem Weaver

Kareem Weaver is a Co-Founder and Executive Director of FULCRUM, which partners with stakeholders to improve reading results for students. He is the Oakland NAACP's 2nd Vice President and Chair of its Education Committee; his advocacy is featured in the upcoming film The Right to Read.

Mr. Weaver previously served as New Leaders’ Executive Director of the Western Region and was an award-winning teacher and administrator. He has undergraduate degrees from Morehouse College and a master’s in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina.

He believes in the potential of all students, the brotherhood of man, and the importance of service above self. His educational heroine, for literacy instruction, is the late Marva Collins.

Katie Garner, M.Ed.

Katie Garner (author of Secret Stories® Cracking the Reading Code with the Brain in Mind) is an international keynote speaker, author, literacy consultant and teacher with 25 years of classroom experience and a passion for infusing neuroscience into phonics instruction.

Her "backdoor to the brain" approach to fast-tracking phonics skills for reading shifts the paradigms associated with science of reading-based instruction. Katie’s fast-paced, dynamic presentations spotlight brain-changing, evidence-based strategies for boosting existing reading and phonics curriculum with the latest neural research showing how our brains learn best.

Her practical and proven methods have been the topic of both lecture and panel discussions at Harvard University and MIT, as well as the subject of numerous professional journal articles and publications.

Katie’s Facebook Group, “Science of Reading Meets Science of Learning” is a popular learning hub for almost 140K educators from around the world and provides free access to instructional resources in the group files.

Dr. Jan Burkins

Dr. Jan Burkins is a full-time consultant and author of six books for literacy educators. Her latest book, Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom, is co-authored with Kari Yates.

With more than 30 years of experience in education, Jan’s favorite work is conducting literacy audits, where she works with schools and district leaders to determine their next steps for making learning to read easier for the children they support.

Jan is the mother of four sons and lives in Georgia with her husband and youngest son.

Kari Yates

Kari Yates is an author, speaker, and consultant with a passion for helping busy literacy educators thrive. Kari’s most recent book, Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom (Stenhouse, 2021), is coauthored with Jan Burkins. Kari has previously written two other books to support literacy educators.

With experience as a classroom teacher, special education, Reading Recovery teacher, elementary principal, and district administrator, Kari has the experience and the expertise to help teachers and school leaders shape brighter outcomes for children, one thoughtful next step at a time.

Kari has two daughters and four grandchildren and lives on the lake in Minnesota with her husband, John.

Dr. Katie Egan Cunningham

Dr. Katie Egan Cunningham has over twenty years of experience as an educator in many different roles to bridge the science of reading with the joy of learning including classroom teacher, literacy specialist, author, and consultant.

Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Elementary Education at Sacred Heart University. Katie’s most recent book, Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom (Stenhouse, 2024) is co-authored with Jan Burkins and Kari Yates. Katie has authored or co-authored four other books to support literacy educators.

Katie lives with her husband, Chris, who is also an educator, their two school-aged sons, and Mini Goldendoodle in the woods of Connecticut.