Nominated Candidates 2025

I am a respiratory physician and practising clinician and Professor of Respiratory Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.  Co-Editor-in-Chief of Respirology, official journal of the TSANZ and APSR until 2024.

Having conducted research of asthma and COPD, I became interested in ILO/VCD since many patients with these disorders remained breathless despite optimal therapies. Our research has focussed on understanding the interactions between ILO/VCD and unexplained breathlessness and on models of care for ILO/VCD. 

My passion is to improve diagnosis and care of these patients and to reduce their exposure to harmful steroid treatments.  We aim to research and design models of care that use a team approach (Physicians, Speech Pathologists, ENT surgeons, Physiotherapists, Nurse consultants and others) to provide optimised, swift diagnosis and comprehensive care for the disorder.

GIILO has been a fantastic initiative that is taking ILO/VCD ‘international’. My contributions could include raising awareness of ILO/VCD (particularly in the respiratory physician community), to participate in education, to initiate and encourage international research collaborations and to encourage collaboration between the different specialty groups who see and manage the disorder.  

Jemma Haines MBE, PhD, FRCSLT BSc (Hons) is an established Consultant Speech and Language Therapist with over 20 years’ experience working with upper airway respiratory disorders. Pioneering the role of speech therapy in UK respiratory healthcare, she developed and led two tertiary referral multidisciplinary complex breathlessness services and has co-authored numerous national professional respiratory guidelines. Jemma is extensively published with many peer reviewed publications relating to her clinical research work. In 2025, she completed her doctoral studies on the evaluation and treatment of inducible laryngeal obstruction and was supported by an NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre Research fellowship.

In the Queen’s birthday honours list in 2021, in recognition of her national leadership within the field of upper airway disorders, Jemma was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. She is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Jemma’s current substantive post, Chief Allied Health Professional at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, is a strategic director role with overall professional accountability for the Trust’s 2000 Allied Health Professions workforce. She is responsible for the governance and assurance of quality care and leads transformation initiatives to maximise the skills and resources of AHPs across the Trust and Greater Manchester.

Jemma has been an active member of the Global Initiative for ILO Board, serving as Vice-Chair. She led the development of GIILO’s inaugural strategy and delivery plan. Jemma continues to support many colleagues across the globe to develop awareness, skills and capabilities of healthcare professionals to be able to improve the care and treatment of those suffering with ILO.

Dr. Rita Patel completed her doctoral degree and clinical training from the University of Wisconsin Madison and then went to the University of Kentucky to serve as a Voice and Swallow Clinic Director for 4 years. Dr. Patel is currently an associate professor at the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University and an adjunct associate professor at the Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery Indiana University School of Medicine. In 2024 Dr. Patel was awarded the title of ‘Extraordinary Professorship’ at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Her research and clinical expertise focus on addressing voice and upper airway disorders in adult and pediatric population, with specialization in endoscopic laryngeal imaging. Dr. Patel has been awarded 8 extramural grants from National agencies including ASHA (American Speech Language Hearing Association) and NIH (National Institutes of Health); and 5 intramural grants in the area of voice. In 2022, Dr. Patel was awarded fellow by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) for her outstanding contributions to research and excellent teaching in the area of voice and voice disorders. Currently, Dr. Patel serves as the editor-in-chief for the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology; American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation’s Board of Trustees, and as an Advisory Board Member of Voice Foundation. She also serves as a reviewer for numerous journals in the fields of laryngology and speech language pathology and also serves as grant reviewer for the NIH study section, the Voice Foundation, and ASHA.

I am a consultant respiratory physician with a special interest in difficult-to-treat asthma and ILO working at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. I co-lead our multidisciplinary ILO clinic and continuous laryngoscopy during exercise (CLE) service. I have also established a community adult asthma clinic through a not-for-profit organisation to improve access to specialist asthma care.

As a current PhD student, my goal is to develop a screening tool to help clinicians identify people who are at risk of having unrecognised ILO/EILO, and to promote access to appropriate care in a timely manner.  I’m enthusiastic about harmonising our ILO/EILO data collection to build our research capacity, highlight the often challenging diagnostic journey, and describe impacts of untreated or undiagnosed ILO/EILO.

Courteney McClutchy is currently a Speech-Language Pathologist at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She completed her graduate training at the University of Florida, where she earned a Master of Arts in Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Following her clinical fellowship at the Wake Forest Baptist Voice & Swallowing Center, Courteney accepted a full-time position on the team, where she now serves as one of the center’s voice and upper airway specialized SLPs. During her fellowship, Courteney developed a strong passion for working with individuals with voice and upper airway disorders as well as those affected by head and neck cancer. She is particularly interested in how SLPs can bridge gaps in care by advocating for improved resources, education, and emotional support for these populations. This passion led her to create the ILO Support Collective Network, a bi-monthly virtual support group designed to connect individuals living with ILO and related conditions. The group provides a safe, inclusive space for patients to share their experiences, learn from guest speakers, and build community. The group has also welcomed many SLPs into the conversation, fostering a collaborative environment that supports both emotional and clinical growth. Courteney’s contributions extend beyond clinical practice. She participates in professional conferences such as Fall Voice, where she has served as a speaker and EBT Champion. As Vice President of the North Carolina Chapter of The Voice Foundation, she plays a pivotal role in advancing voice care initiatives across the region. Her dedication to evidence-based practice is also evident through her involvement in IRB-approved research, including a current study focused on diagnostic protocols for evaluating ILO. She collaborates clinically and academically with colleagues at Wake Forest and was honored with the ASHA 2024 Distinguished Early Career Professional (ECP) Certificate. Joining the GILO Board would allow Courteney to continue this work in a more formal capacity, while learning from others who share a passion for improving quality of life and access to care. She is excited about the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to patient-centered initiatives and to help shape the future of support and advocacy for this population.

A little about Courteney: She loves staying active at F45 and hiking the beautiful mountain trails near her home in North Carolina. She’s a proud kitty mom to her little black Halloween cat, Jerry, enjoys exploring Winston-Salem’s coffee shops and breweries, and is currently taking dance lessons with her significant other—which has been a fun and rewarding challenge.

Dr. John Robertson is a pediatric pulmonologist at Cook Children’s in Prosper, Texas. He attended Texas A&M University and then University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He completed his general pediatric residency at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, Texas followed by a pediatric pulmonary fellowship at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas in 2008. He has been performing continuous laryngoscopy during exercise to investigate causes of exercise induced respiratory symptoms since 2019. In 2024, he received an Endowed Chair Award from the Cook Children’s Health Foundation to fund the Exercise Respiratory Center in Prosper, Texas. The ExRC’s purpose is to diagnose, treat and research the causes of exercise induced respiratory symptoms in older children, adolescents and young adults. He and his team performed the first Continuous Laryngoscopy During Exercise (CLE) on a pediatric patient in Texas on February 8, 2022 and the first ever Continuous Bronchoscopy (CBE) During Exercise on a pediatric patient on August 14, 2024.

When he's not working, Dr. Robertson enjoys spending time with his wife and young daughter, grilling, being involved in church activities, and making a mess as an amateur artist. He was first introduced to the international community that would become GIILO in 2019 at a CLE workshop in

Copenhagen and joined GIILO at its founding in 2023. Since then, Dr. Robertson has had the pleasure of participating in panels at the international conferences in Denver in 2023 and Pittsburgh in 2024. Dr. Robertson would like to be a part of the growth and development of GIILO as a resource for its members but also patients.

Specifically, he is interested in the following:

(1) Develop a members only quarterly online challenging case and topic discussion meetings where GIILO members can go to give and receive clinical guidance.

(2) Develop publicly accessible on-demand recorded presentations to educate health care practitioners on the basic presentation, diagnosis, and treatment of ILO, DB, and EIB.

(3) Develop publicly accessible online GIILO member directory to help patients around the world find the nearest center that specializes in their specific clinical issue.

My name is Lauren Shnowske, and I am interested in being considered for the GIILO board. I am a voice and upper airway speech-language pathologist and evaluate and treat patients with EILO/ILO at the University of Minnesota Lions Voice Clinic in the US. Having completed my clinical fellowship at the University of Kentucky in 2019/2020, my passion for this patient population quickly grew with an influx of post-COVID patients seeking treatment for laryngeal hypersensitivity and dysfunctional breathing. Additionally, this work has also been an excellent way to tie in a personal interest into my work - sports!

Having been a member of GIILO since the very beginning (I attended the initial meetings at the 2023 conference in Denver), I am excited at the possibility of increasing my involvement with this organization as it continues to grow, and more specifically, join Drs. Milstein and Patel as another American SLP on the board. I am a younger clinician, having been in practice for 6 years, but am exciting to provide a fresh perspective to the group. 

At this time, I do not have a specific board position in mind and am open to anything, although I do feel that my interests would be best suited either in offering clinical perspectives and/or helping build awareness generally and specifically within the athletics community.