Jill Gilkerson, PhD

CHIEF RESEARCH AND EVALUATION OFFICER

Dr. Jill Gilkerson is the Chief Research and Evaluation Officer at LENA and leads all research and analysis activities. Since joining the team in 2005, Jill has been instrumental to just about every major initiative involving LENA. She manages a team of researchers responsible for collecting and analyzing the spontaneous speech data used for software development, the LENA normative scales, and a wide range of academic research studies. Jill is a recognized expert in the relationship between parent talk and child language development, and her research has focused on the relationship between early language environment and demographic variables such as birth order, gender, and TV exposure. Jill led LENA’s efforts through the launch and scaling of Providence Talks. Jill earned a BA in developmental psychology from UCLA. She earned her MA and PhD in linguistics (both with a concentration in language acquisition), also from UCLA.

Follow/Connect with Jill: https://twitter.com/DrJillGilkerson