About

Laurel Hard, M.Ed., CCC-SLP, ASHA-F, Co-Founder and President of CALIPSO, LLC, is a speech-language pathologist with extensive experience in clinical education and program development. She earned her degree from the University of Georgia and served as the Director of Clinical Education for the Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) Program at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, SC from its inception in 1997 through 2010. During her tenure, Laurel developed the program’s clinical curriculum, coordinated both internal and external clinical placements, and successfully led the program through initial accreditation and re-accreditation by the Council on Academic Accreditation (CAA). Drawing on this experience, she developed the CALIPSO platform in 2005 to address the growing need for streamlined management of clinical training and accreditation and certification documentation. In 2010, she co-founded CALIPSO, LLC and expanded the platform for use by Communication Sciences and Disorders programs nationwide.

Satyajit Phanse is a programmer and system administrator working with web-based systems, data engineering, and Amazon AWS. He has a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.

Renee Wendel joined the CALIPSO team as a consultant in July of 2013. She earned her M.S. from Texas State University in 1994, and has 10 years of University experience as a Clinic Director and practicum course instructor. Renee’s clinical and teaching interests include autism spectrum disorders, emergent literacy, applied ethics, and technology applications in clinical education.

Amy Dickson, MHA, M.S., CCC-SLP joined the CALIPSO team in January of 2015. She earned her M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from the Medical University of South Carolina in 2000. Amy served as Assistant Director of Clinical Education for the Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) program at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, SC from 2006 until 2010. In this role, Amy coordinated internal and external clinical placements and taught academic courses.

Prior to her role in the CSD program at MUSC, she routinely served as a clinical supervisor to numerous graduate students. Amy remains active in clinical practice and clinical supervision. Her clinical interests include communication and swallowing in the medically fragile population.

Jordan Gilbert joined the CALIPSO team in October of 2017. She earned her B.S. in Graphic Communications from Clemson University in 1999. Prior to joining CALIPSO, Jordan worked for 15+ years in the printing and pre-media industry in client services, project management, database management, color management and software support, followed by 3 years of service as Clergy Administrator and Director of Communications at historic St. Philip’s Church in downtown Charleston. This diversity in her career background brings a unique mix of technical expertise and customer service to CALIPSO.

Karalee Cole, M.A., CCC-SLP joined the CALIPSO team in April of 2025. She earned her speech-language pathology degrees at The University of Iowa. Karalee began her career as a school speech-language pathologist but has clinical experience in early intervention, content creation and teacher training with a language and literacy company founded by SLPs, and most recently as a university clinical educator. Karalee’s clinical interests were early intervention/childhood, early literacy, and providing real-world clinical opportunities for graduate students.