Board of Directors

Nathan Stotlar

Chairman

Erika Applegate

Vice-Chairman

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.

Thomas Fink

Treasurer

Colleen Polglaze

Secretary

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.

Tim Mueller

Board Member

Mr. Mueller is the President of Office Furniture Used and New, LLC. He joined the WILDD Board to share his success with management and operation of a small business. He became involved with WILDD because he believes in the organization’s ability to help younger and older individuals improve their quality of life and because he lives by the guiding principal that “you get out of life what you put into it.”

Steve Porter

Board Member

Steven Porter is a lawyer in private practice who advocates for civil rights and against discrimination on behalf of all people, including those with learning disabilities. Mr. Porter’s involvement with WILDD began as a result of seeking help for his two dyslexic sons (both of whom are now adults). Mr. Porter is acutely interested in seeking and promoting solutions to the challenges facing those with learning disabilities.

David Mahoney

Board Member

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”

Kim Carpenter

Board Member

Kim Carpenter has an M.S.E. in Adult Education with an emphasis on adults with learning disabilities/dyslexia, and a B.S. in Regular and Special Education with K-12 certifications in Learning Disabilities and Emotional Behavioral Disorders. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from UW-Oshkosh and completed post graduate work in remedial reading, Autism, and Sensory Integration Therapy. Carpenter has 30 years of experience teaching students with learning disabilities, dyslexia, autism, and emotional behavioral disabilities. She is trained, and proficient, in numerous remedial reading strategies, including the Orton-Gillingham methodology. Kim was previously Co-Founder of and Diagnostician for the Academic Achievement Center, Inc.; Testing Clinician for the Children’s Dyslexia Center-Madison (then 32° Madison Masonic Learning Center); and tutor for a program specifically designed to help college students with dyslexia overcome their disability, enabling them to earn their college degrees. Kim has presented at several national and state Orton Dyslexia Conferences, in addition to numerous Wisconsin Special Education conferences on learning disabilities, and the social and emotional aspects of the disabilities. She has also conducted workshops for language deficient students, their teachers, and parents on the social and emotional aspects of learning disabilities.