Dr Dimity Dornan AM,
PhD UQ, HonDUniv USQ, BSpThy, FSPAA, CpSp, LSLS Cert AVT
Dimity Dornan AM is a Speech Pathologist, and the Founder and Managing Director of Hear and Say. This not-for-profit program, opened in July 1992, and enables children with hearing loss to listen and speak through the use of modern hearing technology combined with the simultaneous education of parents and children (Auditory-Verbal Therapy).
Today Hear and Say provides services for over 500 children and families in five Queensland centres, plus a telemedicine Outreach program for rural, regional and international children and families.
Dimity is also the founder of Hear and Say Research and Innovation, the research and development unit of Hear and Say, and Hear and Say WorldWide, their global professional training program. Recently she initiated an international consortium of 10 university training courses engaged in similar professional training, the Ling Consortium. She has also co-founded “Women with Spirit”, a global collaboration of women linking women’s initiatives for the Children of Tomorrow.
She has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship (1992), a Member of the Order of Australia (1998) and a Fellow of Speech Pathology Australia (1999). She has also received the Australian Medical Association (AMA) Award of Distinction for Services to Medicine (1999); Australian of the Year for Queensland (2003); Ernst & Young Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year (2005); and Suncorp Queenslander of the Year (2010); University of Queensland Alumni of the Year 2011 and most recently was awarded the Telstra Business Women’s Awards Queensland Business Woman of the Year and White Pages Community and Government Award (October 2011).
Dimity gained her PhD in 2011 from the University of Queensland. Her thesis reported a longitudinal controlled study on the outcomes for children with hearing loss educated in an Auditory-Verbal Therapy program (http://www.ihear.org.au/userfiles/file/Dimity’s%20PhD%20thesis.pdf).
Dimity has made 16 major international presentations on the topic of her PhD thesis. She also is internationally certified as a Listening and Spoken Language Specialist, Auditory-Verbal Therapy. In 2011 she also received an Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from the University of Southern Queensland.
Dimity is currently a Board member of Hear and Say, and of the Intaba Foundation. She is also Chair of First Voice, the national voice for member organizations whose primary focus is the provision of listening and spoken language therapy services in Australia and New Zealand. She is a past Board member of the CRC for Hearing in Australia, and the Alexander Graham Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language, and a current Board member of the Ken Fletcher Foundation.