Alison has been a Speech Pathologist since 1988, and also holds a Masters in Applied Linguistics and an ESL teaching certificate. She has worked for the Victorian Education Department, Yooralla, SCOPE, a University in Mexico, a hospital in London, RMIT, the Royal Children’s Hospital and private practice.
Alison set up the Spelfabet website in 2012, because she was keen to encourage early literacy teaching and intervention that reflects scientific reading research. She was 2015-16 Vice President of Learning Difficulties Australia (LDA), and has also worked as an administrator, and been a City Councillor and Mayor. She received LDA’s 2018 Mona Tobias Award, and a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2022. Since 2018, Alison and her therapy team have been offering reading and spelling/writing intervention in North Fitzroy.