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Getting in Touch with Literacy 2025
Getting in Touch with Literacy 2025
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Blessing Offor - OPENING KEYNOTE SPEAKER/MUSICIAN
Blessing Offor - OPENING KEYNOTE SPEAKER/MUSICIAN
Blessing Offor speaks to relatable experiences of struggle, triumph, life, and love from a distinctive perspective as a Nigerian-born, Connecticut-raised, and Nashville-based singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Exhibiting virtuosic piano ability, honest songwriting, and a showstopping voice, his musical fluency and creative foresight are unmatched only made more inspiring by his journey.
Since the debut of his album My Tribe, two-time GRAMMY® nominee and multi-award winner Blessing Offor has established himself as a true artist’s artist with a voice as bright and authentic as his personality. My Tribe debuted in early 2023, and quickly hit Top 20 on THREE Billboard charts. The album’s lead single, “Brighter Days” became a bastion of mainstream radio, hitting Top 25 on the mainstream AC radio charts with over 150 million views on TikTok million views on TikTok and his duet, “The Goodness” with TobyMac became his first #1.
Building on his success, Blessing has performed twice on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna, has appeared on Good Morning America, Kelly Clarkson and The Jennifer Hudson Show, and was named an Amazon Breakthrough Artist and Pandora Artist to Watch. Blessing spent most of 2024 on the road with Lauren Daigle as the support act for her Kaleidoscope Tour, and made his Stage coach debut in 2025.
Dr. Sheri Wells Jensen - GENERAL CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Dr. Sheri Wells Jensen - GENERAL CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen is a professor of linguistics at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio where she serves as director of both the linguistics and the English for Speakers of Other Languages Programs. Her research interests include braille and tactile graphics, disability studies, xenolinguistics, and astrobiology. She was the 2023 Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress chair in Astrobiology, Exploration and Scientific Innovation and worked as a linguistic consultant on the NASA Clipper probe which is now on its merry way toward Jupiter’s moon Europa.
She was the flight operations co-lead for AstroAccess, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing disability access to space flight. She flew aboard two zero G parabolic flights and was the accessibility officer for the first mission at the Space Analog for the Moon and Mars facility on the campus of Biosphere II. She is a writer, lifelong braille reader, bread baker, and unapologetic banjo and ukulele player.
She is on the boards of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence International, SciAccess and the Society for Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology. She was beyond thrilled to have been selected to fly aboard the first parabolic flight of Mission: AstroAccess which took 12 disabled people into a zero gravity environment, and she is currently at work on a book documenting that experience.
Amanda Thompson - PRE-CONFERENCE PRESENTER
Amanda Thompson - PRE-CONFERENCE PRESENTER
Amanda Thompson is a TVI, COMS, CATIS, ATP from Virginia who has been in the field since 2009 and working with Allied Instructional Services since 2014. She is their Executive Director of Vision Services and supports their fantastic teams of O&Mers, TVIs, AT Specialists, and Braille Transcribers.
If you have any questions - please email us at gitwlconference@gmail.com
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