Meet the Team Meet the Team

Diane Staehr Fenner, PhD, is the president of SupportEd and founded the company in 2011 as a way to serve educators who work to help multilingual learners (MLs) realize their full potential. Dr. Staehr Fenner is an author of six books (including Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity, Unlocking English Learners’ Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible, and Advocating for English Learners: A Guide for Educators). She is a frequent keynote presenter on ML education at conferences across North America.

Dr. Staehr Fenner spent a decade as an ESOL teacher, dual language assessment teacher, and ESOL assessment specialist in Fairfax County Public Schools, VA and taught English in Mexico and Germany. She earned her PhD in Multilingual/Multicultural Education with an emphasis in Literacy at George Mason University. She earned her MAT in TESOL at the School for International Training and her Masters in German at Penn State University.

Dr. Staehr Fenner lives in Fairfax, VA with her husband and three school-age kids who learned math and science through Spanish in their public elementary school. Dr. Staehr Fenner grew up on a dairy farm in New York State’s Finger Lakes region and is a first-generation college graduate.