CALI Staff

Director and Co-PI, Center for Atypical Language Interpreting

Diana Doucette, MEd, CI, CT, brings over 25 years of experience managing RSA Interpreter Training Program grant projects, serving as Center Director and Principal Investigator of the Regional Interpreter Education Center at Northeastern University and currently as the Director and Co-PI of CALI. Diana was instrumental in many of the accomplishments of the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers (NCIEC). She is a nationally certified interpreter and holds a Master’s degree in Adult and Organizational Learning.

Project Coordinator, Center for Atypical Language Interpreting

Dawn Whitcher, M.A.,CI/CT, Project Coordinator, comes to the Center for Atypical Language Interpreting with over 20 years of interpreting experience and over 10 years of teaching in Interpreter Education Programs. Dawn served as Project Coordinator for the National Interpreter Education Center (NIEC) which allowed her to work both independently and collaboratively to develop, create, and executive projects. With a love for leadership, she held several leadership roles locally, regionally and nationally. Notably, she served as the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) President, 2013-2016, as well as other RID Board roles prior to President. Dawn holds a master’s degree in Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education.

Director of the American Sign Language & Interpreting Education Program, CALI Co-PI

Dr. Lori Whynot brings diverse experiences from a 30-year professional interpreting practice that began in Boston and led her to several countries and eventually to Melbourne Australia in 2011. She has ties to the Northeastern community as a former student and an adjunct lecturer. Dr. Whynot began to learn ASL in the Massachusetts Deaf community in 1986 and has taught and mentored interpreters since 1995. She received an Australian international research excellence scholarship and earned her PhD in Linguistics at Macquarie University in 2015, publishing her doctoral study in 2016 with Gallaudet University Press, as “Understanding International Sign”. While in Australia, she lead a committee of the Australian Sign Language Interpreters’ Association (ASLIA), advising the National Authority on the Accreditation of Interpreters and Translators (NAATI) to establish national recognition and qualification of Deaf Interpreters in Australia. Prior to joining Northeastern University, Lori was a faculty member at Gallaudet University, Washington DC, in the Department of Interpretation and Translation and did a research fellowship at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, investigating cross-linguistic sign language contact phenomena and the effectiveness of International Sign interpreting. Dr. Whynot maintains her national certifications in the US as a professional interpreter and a legal interpreter, as well as Auslan- English interpreting accreditation from the National Accreditation Authority of Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) in Australia. She is also a certified CoreCHI healthcare interpreter by the US Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters. Her working languages are English, ASL, Auslan, the contact system known as International Sign, and French (C language). Dr. Whynot is committed to promoting continuous professional development to shape interpreting work and influence social justice on behalf of Deaf citizens through her research, teaching, and maintaining a professional interpreting practice. Her areas of expertise include cognitive and sociolinguistic aspects of interpreting, corpus-informed and ethnographic research methods, multilingualism and sign language contact phenomena, consequence-based ethics, and health care interpreting. She has lived and worked in France, Austria, the Netherlands, and Australia, where she considers Melbourne her second home. When not interpreting, teaching, or researching, you can find Lori on her bicycle, taking in the New England scenery.