Laura Nadine Dooley
About Laura Nadine Dooley
Accomplished musician, educator, and autism advocate Laura Nadine Dooley understands firsthand the struggles and triumphs of living with autism. She has spent over 15 years advocating for a neurodiverse educational model after she and her son were diagnosed with ASD in 2006. She developed an approach for teaching music to students with various learning profiles and invented a MusicBoard, inspired by facilitated communication, to make composition and music theory accessible to non-speaking students.
Laura runs Enlightened Audio, an online and in-person hybrid music school with a mission to make music education accessible. She has self-published two books, recorded various albums, and was the main subject of the biographical documentary, The Shadow Listener: A Voice for Autism, directed by John Schaefer. She also composes music for films, including the Astoria Zuker Award-winning documentary LISTEN. Laura continues to post on her blog, The Shadow Listener, where she provides the layered perspective of someone living with autism, teaching autistic students, and raising a son with autism––what she calls a ”3 Shoes Perspective”.