Sharone Lee is the author and designer of this web site, and a life long Threshold volunteer too. She has worked as a trainer and consultant to family and service providers in the field of Autism education since 1991. Sharone has trained nearly a thousand famililes and professionals in best parenting and teaching practices over the last fifteen years. She now specializes in depth best practices training and small group peer-mentoring work within family-centered practice in relation to parents as life time providers and case managers for our children with Autism. Her slogan in all her life and work is often heard in her classes: "Keep going, stay together, follow your chosen best practices guide, and draw the map as we walk it together...Everything is going to be OK."

Sharone holds a B.F.A, in visual communication design and specializes in creating augmentative visual communication systems for individuals with specific sensory, communication, social development needs for adaptive structure. In addition, Ms. Lee has a B.S. in Developmental Research Psychology and a M.A. in Human Development and Diversity with a specialization in Leadership in Education and Human Services: Parent and Community Work. She also holds a M.A in Organizational Systems with a concentration in Information Systems and Knowledge Management and is pursuing her doctoral degree in Human and Organizational Development, with a focus on Able Diversity, Public Advocacy, Community Allyship, and Ableism. She is currently teaching a two-year graduate course series for administrators, college teachers, parent educators, and human service professionals for Pacific Oaks College. That action work focuses on authentic inclusion, effective critical thinking, ethical community-based practice, and reflexive teaching in the areas of literacy, professional fieldwork, qualitative research thesis, and advanced human development and diversity. The focus of all her studies and work is positive mutual change.

Over the years, Sharone has received over 500 hours of professional training in early childhood development, including developmental parenting for typical families, cognitive-developmental interventions for children with Autism at the Language Communication Center in Boston; three life span structured teaching intensives from Division TEACCH at the University of North Carolina with four years of direct follow up consulting from the main TEACCH research team; and direct observation of the transdisciplinary therapeutic approach of Giant Steps in British Columbia, a based on a model program for children with Autism in Montreal, Quebec in Canada. Furthermore, she has pursued collegial organizational consultation from other Autism programs across the US such as Judavine in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as university sites and model program providers from England, South Wales in Australia, and Japan. Sharone also served as a federal contractor representative for the Marion County Mental Health Services team on Early Prevention, Screening, Detection, and Treament from 1993-1995. Out of this work, she has been called on to provide expert advice to attorneys, the courts, and public agencies on issues of abuse prevention between people with and without Autism, critical incident intervention, and best practice follow up to quickly move back to productive, proactive, principled, and positive ways of being together.

Sharone Lee holds the office of President/CEO of THRESHOLD's non-profit corporation. She was one of the organization's initial founders, and currently serves as our Executive Director. Ms. Lee has pursued ongoing training and mentoring in human relations and humanistic ethics, therapeutic service organization design, conflict resolution and community reconciliation, adaptive communication theory and practice, and positive self-developoment from a variety of scholarly and practitioner sources. Ironically, all her previous work and life experiences in business operations, visual communication design, architectual team planning, and real estate development contained the critical capacities for the new creative paradigm that was needed to design and launch each of THRESHOLD's Autism community sites. Ms. Lee has shown the kind of commitment during personal and professional adversity that has ensured THRESHOLD's successful adaptation and continuation in Oregon's difficult political and economic environments. She is committed to a life of human service and Autism community work.

In recognition of her service to the community Ms. Lee has been awarded the 2001-2004 Editorship of The Net Journal of the Autism Society of Oregon Chapter of the Autism Society of America, Advocate of the Year 2002 from the Oregon ARC of Marion County; 1995 Marion County Health Advisory Board Award for Services to the Handicapped; 1993 and 1995 Children's Guild Award for Services to Children with Special Needs; and was recognized by the Statesman Journal as the honorary Volunteer of the Year for their Holiday Issue in December of 1993. In her young life before Autism, Ms.Lee was an award-winning athelete, designer, and public speaker, which offer the exemplary experiences and positive energies she brings to all her service work.

Threshold's Board of Directors
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