CEO
Smarty Ears/Smarty Symbols
Rowlett, Texas, United States
Barbara Fernandes, an award winning Brazilian-American Speech-Language Pathologist, and one of the most successful entrepreneurs in her field, founding two businesses and revolutionizing her field with nearly seventy successful product launches to date.
As the founder and CEO of Smarty Ears, she is well known for her innovative and breakthrough product development for speech and communication disorders. For over a decade, Barbara has translated science into user friendly and powerful technology to support individuals with communication disorders. Barbara transformed an entire industry to adopt mobile technologies through the design and development of over sixty mobile applications and an entire symbol library: Smarty Symbols.
As the founder of Smarty Symbols, Barbara also created the most inclusive, diverse and comprehensive symbol library and developed a powerful new technology that is disrupting the special education field by providing a platform for custom visual support creation. Smarty Symbols has been adopted as the symbol of choice in many other technologies developed in the field. Under Barbara’s leadership, Smarty Symbols has also undertaken the mission of making public spaces more inclusive with the design and manufacturing of custom playground communication boards.
Barbara has traveled the country to train special education professionals in the adoption of mobile technology to promote student learning and engagement. She has been a guest speaker in multiple state association conventions, the national American Speech-Language and Hearing convention, as well as the Brazilian and Canadian conventions.
Barbara has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institute of Health, and she released a ground-breaking technology called the Speech and Language Academy. Barbara has received multiple awards, and is now an Amazon best-selling author with her latest book: “Sis, you got this. From Surviving to Thriving as a Minority Speech-Language Pathologist”.
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Thursday, February 23, 2023
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM