Meet the team behind the scenes
Lyndsey Gillespie, is a trained parent advocate, a mom of exceptional kids, and the daughter of a former school superintendent. She grew up in the world of education and advocacy. After having to campaign tirelessly for her own children she realized that her calling was to be a Parent Advocate for other parents to help them navigate the system and ensure their children got the services they needed.
Lyndsey is a parent trainer, advocacy specialist, and helps lead many of our classes.
Lyndsey Gillespie, BA
Education attorney Catherine Michael, JD, is the Founder of Coffee with Catherine, LLC, and has spent more than twenty years working with thousands of families, behavior therapists, psychologists, parents, and teachers on designing success for children with special needs.
Catherine is a well-known speaker and has been featured hundreds of times in national and local media for educational and parenting advice, including on the Montel Williams Show, Sterling on Sundays, Forbes Magazine, Fortune Magazine, Tilt Parenting podcast, ABC, CBS, and NBC news and many other national media venues, for her cases and advocacy of families and children.
Over the past two decades, in addition to her administrative, state and federal cases on behalf of students, she has attended and assisted in the development of IEPs, Section 504 plans, Functional Behavioral Assessments, Behavior Intervention Plans, and assisted parents in understanding what services are available to their children. She has trained parent advocates, teachers, parents and attorneys as they enter the area of special education as well as serving as an Adjunct Professor for Education Law for more than a decade.
To read more about the journey of this website and why she created it to help families and students, jump over to our blog.
Catherine Michael, J.D.
Pat Howey has been a parent advocate for nearly 30 years. Pat is the author of Special Education: Plain and Simple, a guide to special education for parents, attorneys, advocates, educators, and other interested people. Her second book, Special Education: The Commentary, Plain and Simple, will be published before the end of 2021. Both are available from Amazon as paperbacks and e-books.
A nationally known advocate with nearly 40 years of special education experience, Pat has assisted parents in IEP meetings, filed complaints on their behalf, represented their children in due process hearings and before the Board of Special Education Appeals.
The case involving her own child, Howey v. Tippecanoe School Corporation, 734 F.Supp. 1485 (1990) has been cited by administrative decisions in Michigan, Pennsylvania, the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Indiana and Northern District of Indiana, the U.S. District Court, Western District of Kentucky, the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, and the 5th and 8th Circuit Courts.
Pat was a founding member of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) and a Director on its first Board. She has made numerous presentations at its annual conferences.
Pat was a founding member and President of Tippecanoe Parents and Professionals for Special Education (TPPSE) and its public relations Chair. She was to Tippecanoe County Commissioners to be on the County’s first Human Rights Commission.
Pat Howey, BA, Advocate
Dr. Lynn Keegan, Ph.D., is a parent trainer, leader, and patient advocate. She is a founding member of the American Holistic Nurses Association.
Dr. Keegan’s career long work exemplifies the core values of advocacy, volunteer leadership, and her personal mentoring. She assists in training in advocacy for children with health plans, mental health needs, nursing needs in school,
Dr. Keegan received a BSN from Cornell University; an MSN from Loma Linda University; and a PhD in nursing from the University of Texas at Austin. She has served as a nursing professor at numerous educational institutions. Previous honors include being named a Distinguished Alumnus at Cornell University and an American Academy of Nursing Fellow (FAAN). She has also received five American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards for her publications.
Dr. Lynn Keegan, Ph.D.
Megan Corconan, Therapist, LCSW
Megan Corcoran, LCSW, is a therapist who has worked with children, adults and families for over a decade. She has attended countless IEP meetings and developed plans for children since early in her practice. In her private practice she was works with a range of needs: ADHD, Mood Disorders, Anxiety and Depression, Anger Management, Parenting Support, Life Changes. She now joins us regularly to bring her knowledge to you.
Alexandra Michael, Health Advocate
Alexandra Michael is completing her nursing degree with a focus on infant and child care. She works with us to develop programming for health resources, health care advocacy, health and crisis plans for students with health care needs, nursing plans, parenting teens courses, social media, and helping keep parents in the loop with our newsletter.
Over the years we have had the honor of working with psychologists, physicians, psychiatrists, developmental pediatricians, behavior specialists, therapists, parents, special education directors and teachers.
We regularly invite education and medical experts to be part of our masterclasses and seminars to help give you the information you need.
Our Friends and Experts
Why we are here.
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Dream it.
It all begins with an idea. Catherine Michael, J.D. had been presenting for parent groups and clients for nearly twenty years. She would regularly invite parents to come to bring a coffee to a library, conference room, a gym, or meet at a parent’s home to provide information on special education law, designing educational goals, what services and resources were available. Catherine’s hourly rate was over $300 an hour and she wanted to find a way to to get information out to parents without them having to retain an attorney.
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Build it.
Parent and disability advocate referred to Catherine’s parent sessions when inviting foster parents trying to advocate for their children to come to “Coffee with Catherine, J.D.” and the name was born. Another advocate began to help me organize more formal coffee gatherings with Catherine and it became a regular weekly activity for parents, parent advocates, mental health providers, and those wanting to learn to advocate for kids. We began to offer paid intensive courses for parents, advocates and attorneys. Those courses sold out and often were too costly for many parents.
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Grow it.
Many parents came to our regular coffee meetings because they didn’t necessarily want to pay for attorneys or even advocates to attend IEPs and they wanted help learning to navigate the world of special education, other parents wanted to gain the skills to be a strong and knowledgeable advocate on their own, and sometimes they even wanted to take the next step and become an advocate for other. In 2020 Coffee with Catherine, LLC took to the virtual coffee house with clients and friends joining for intensives as well as some regular Saturday mornings classes. We realized we didn’t only want to offer seminars and intensives or the occasional coffee and decided we wanted an affordable subscription and online masterclasses could bring information directly to empower parents everywhere.
Now we want you to grow with us.
“Knowledge is the first step to confidence. Confidence in what we know, what we want, and what we need so that we can ask for it. And get it. ”
— Catherine M. Michael, J.D.
Why we want to make the world a bit better, easier and more fun.
We are not born knowing how to negotiate, strategize, parent, teach or run an advocacy business. We don’t learn the laws governing education simply by hearing about them every once and while. We don’t simply know the best way to deal with behavior with a child with autism by simply having a child. Life takes learning. And it takes knowing how to apply that learning.
We are a group of people who want to make the world a little bit better, a little bit easier, and of course we want to add some humor and fun. Whether you are an exceptional parent, or a teacher with a love of children who wants to better understand learning disabilities, advocacy, and law, or an advocate, who wants to start a business, we are here to help. We promise to do our best to make it fun.