Deborah Ross-Swain, Ed.D., CCC-SLP is the Clinical Director and CEO of The Swain Center for Listening, Communicating and Learning.  Currently, Dr. Swain is the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s (ASHA) Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy.  She is a past president of the California Speech-Language-Hearing Association (CSHA) and has served on the CSHA Board of Directors for 10 years.  Dr. Swain is a former Chief of Speech-Language Pathology at the University of California, Davis Medical Center and held a clinical staff appointment to the School of Medicine.  

Dr. Swain has received awards from CSHA including Honors and Fellow of the Association, Outstanding Service and Outstanding Achievement and was awarded Outstanding Alumnus in 2016 from California State University, Sacramento. Dr. Swain was honored with the Nancy McKinley Leadership award from the Council of State Association Presidents (CSAP) presented at the annual American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s annual convention in Boston, MA. Dr. Swain is Fellow of ASHA and served  as Editor of ASHA SIG 17 Perspectives Journal. She is a Distinguished Scholar and Fellow of the National Academies of Practice. Dr. Swain has served as chair of CSHA’s Early Intervention and International Committees.  She also served as the project coordinator for a tri-state ASHA grant which produced five videos on Interprofessional Practice and Interprofessional Education for assessment and treatment of ASD, Literacy and Early Intervention as well as SLP Scope of Practice and Audiology Scope of Practice. She was the producer of  200 by 2, an informational video for physicians highlighting communication development in 2-year-olds. 

Dr. Swain has served on ASHA’s Legislative Council, Advisory Committee and is former chair of the Governmental Affairs and Public Policy Board. She is Fellow of the Association for ASHA Her most recent publication,  Confidence and Joy: Success Strategies for Kids with Learning Differences is an Amazon bestselling book. She is the author of numerous books and standardized test batteries:  Auditory Processing Disorders-Third Edition: Assessment, Treatment and Management; The Receptive-Expressive Social Communication Assessment-Elementary; The Auditory Phoneme Sequencing Test; The RIPA series of tests; The Listening Inventory; The Swallowing Ability and Function Test; Aphasia Rehabilitation: An Auditory and Verbal Treatment  Hierarchy and The Cognitive-Linguistic Improvement Program. Dr. Swain is an internationally and nationally recognized speaker and author.