Board of Directors

Erika Applegate has been a special education teacher in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois for the past 25+ years.  She brings a background in Orton Gillingham and has enjoyed working with students with dyslexia from grades Pre K to 12.  Erika joined WILDD in 2018 after learning about the services they are able to provide to individuals who experience difficulties reading fluently.  

Colleen spent 28 years as an elementary school teacher.  She received her bachelors and masters degrees from UW-Platteville.  Her masters degree was that of a Reading Specialist.  Teaching in the same school district is when she met Kim and Erv Carpenter, thus, learning about WILDD and its successes.  During retirement, Colleen joined 2 non-profit boards.  Her church’s preschool, for which she was president for the last 3 years.  She also joined the  WILDD board to learn more and help spread the word of the quality of work that is done at this organization.

David Mahoney is currently serving his second term as Dane County Sheriff. First elected as Sheriff in November 2006, David has been a professional law enforcement officer for 33 years. Thirty-two years of his law enforcement career have been with the Dane County Sheriff’s Office where he worked in Security Services, Support Services, and Field Services Divisions. Sheriff Mahoney joined the WILDD board because of his knowledge of and commitment to address the connection between criminal behavior and illiteracy and because his own dyslexic son is now an honors-level college student after having his reading deficits remediated by WILDD’s CLASS™ method. "By the time our son reached middle school, he absolutely refused to do any reading--he was great with his hands and loved science, but hated reading. We tried every way we could think of to get him to read, because we knew how important that was going to be for his future. Nothing worked.Then, we met Erv who was Founding Executive Director at the Children's Dyslexia Center and now our son is ready to graduate from UW Platteville with a goal of a career as a forensic pathologist, all thanks to Erv's approach and method. That's why I want to be on the Board of WILDD”