Dr. Elfrieda "Freddy" H. Hiebert is President and CEO of TextProject, Inc. Dr. Hiebert received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has worked in the field of early reading acquisition for 40 years, first as a teacher's aide and teacher of primary-level students in California and, subsequently, as a teacher educator and researcher at the universities of Kentucky, Colorado-Boulder, Michigan and California-Berkeley. Her research addresses ways of supporting students who depend on schools to become literate. In particular, her interests lie in how fluency, vocabulary, and knowledge can be fostered through appropriate texts. Dr. Hiebert's research has been published in numerous scholarly journals. She has also authored or edited nine books, the most recent of which is Revisiting Silent Reading: New Directions for Teachers and Researchers (International Reading Association; with R. Reutzel). Through documents such as Becoming a Nation of Readers (Center for the Study of Reading, 1985) and Every Child a Reader (Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement, 1999), she has contributed to making research accessible to educators. Dr. Hiebert's model of accessible texts for beginning and struggling readers—TExT—has been used to develop several reading programs that are widely used in schools. Dr. Hiebert is the 2008 recipient of the William S. Gray Citation of Merit, awarded by the International Reading Association and is a member of the Reading Hall of Fame. Dr. Hiebert chaired a group of experts on early childhood literacy who served in an advisory capacity to the CCSS writers.