The Council's Ex-officio Board Members...

The Council has eleven ex-officio board members.  Ex-Officio members represent sister organizations that have a stake in deaf and hard of hearing issues. 

Executive Director - Vacant
Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Mary Jones
Idaho Infant Toddler Program
Department of Health & Welfare

Mary has served as Idaho's Infant Toddler Program Coordinator (Part C of IDEA) for fifteen years, providing administrative management for early intervention services to infants, toddlers and their families.  She manages federal and state budgets, contracts, and quality assurance monitoring. She provides lead agency support for the Interagency Coordinating Council.  She also oversees the Idaho Head Start Collaboration Office and is directly involved with the grant administration to support the Early Care and Learning Cross System Task Force. 

Janice Wiedrick 
Bureau of Occupational Licenses

Janice Wiedrick is a Technical Records Specialist I at the Bureau of Occupational Licenses.  She is also the Secretary for the Speech Hearing Services Act Board who licenses Audiologists, Speech Language Pathologists, Hearing Aid Dealers and Fitters, and Aides and Assistants for Audiology and Speech Language Pathologists.

Michele Clarke
Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Marsha H. Smith, Commissioner
Public Utilities Commission

Marsha H. Smith, a Democrat, is serving her third six-year term on the Idaho Public Utilities Commission.  Her current term expires January 2009.  She served as commission president from November 1991 to April 1995.

Commissioner Smith is the Second Vice President of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), a member of the NARUC Executive Committee and a member and past chair of the NARUC Electricity Committee.  She serves on the boards of directors of both the NARUC and National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI).  She is an elected member of the Western Electricity Coordinating Council Board of Directors.  She chaired the Committee for Regional Electric Power Cooperation of the Western Interstate Energy Board from October 1999 to October 2005.  She is a member of the Electric Power Research Institute's Advisory Council, the National Council on Electricity Policy Steering Committee, the Harvard Electricity Policy Group, the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions, the Western Conference of Public Service Commissioners, and the Idaho State Bar.

Mary Dunne
Director, Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind

Mary Lorton Dunne is a native of Idaho, has been married to Tim Dunne for 33 years and together they have three grown children: Laura, Timothy, and Christine. 

Mary attended the University of Idaho and Idaho State University, receiving a BS in Speech Pathology & Audiology/ Deaf Education and an M.Ed in Curriculum & Instruction.  Mary has worked at the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind for 33 years, seven of which were spent as an early childhood classroom teacher, 22 as an outreach consultant, and the last 4 1/2 as director of the outreach program. 

Given her history and enthusiasm for early learning issues, Mary has served on the Governor’s Idaho Interagency Coordinating Council, Region IV Infant Toddler Committee, Early Transitions Work Group, Learning Through Play Project, Western States Early Assessment Project, among other interests.  She is a member of the Council for American Instructor’s of the Deaf (CAID) and AG Bell professional organizations.  Mary is a SKI*HI local trainer and promotes early identification and early family-centered intervention whenever she can.

Vacant
State Department of Education

Brett T. DeLange
Office of the Attorney General

Nancy Upchurch
Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor

Nancy Upchurch has worked for the State of Idaho for 32 years and currently serves as the Human Resource Manager for the Idaho Department of Commerce & Labor.  She is also responsible for equal employment opportunity and nondiscrimination as well as reasonable accommodation and other disability issues for the Department.  Nancy is a member of several human resource organizations and serves in a leadership capacity in the International Association of Workforce Professionals.  She is also an advocate for her daughter who has a learning disability.  Nancy has served as an Ex-Officio member of the Council for several years.

Deedra L. Hunt
Idaho Commission on Aging

Vacant

Idaho Hearing Aid Society