Julie A. Washington, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education at Georgia State University, Program in Communication Disorders. In addition, Dr. Washington is an affiliate faculty of Georgia State University’s Language and Literacy Initiative, a unique research initiative focused on the Challenges of Acquiring Language and Literacy. Dr. Washington’s work focuses on understanding cultural dialect use in young African American children with a specific emphasis on language assessment, literacy attainment, and academic performance. Her work with preschoolers has focused on understanding and improving the emergent literacy skills necessary to support later reading proficiency in high risk groups, with a special focus on the needs of African American children. Dr. Washington’s research program is currently addressing the following key areas: 1) the role of cultural- linguistic variation, socioeconomic status and other social risk factors on language use and development for African American students and their families, 2) the role of language in the attainment of early literacy skills by African American preschoolers and kindergartners, and 3) prevention of language and reading impairments in high-risk preschoolers and kindergartners. Dr. Washington’s research program is funded by the National Institutes of Health-National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, U.S. Department of Education, and the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.