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Meet the Advocates

At Exceptional Advocacy Services, we pride ourselves on having experienced, passionate, and caring staff that invests fully in our clients and their needs. With over 80 years of combined experience working with students with disabilities, we look forward to serving you!

Marianne Young, founder and CEO of Exceptional Advocacy Services, along with Madison Nigh, Jessica Camp, and Jess Meneses look forward to serving you and your family.

Marianne Young is a wife, mother of three, and special education advocate. Mrs. Young found her calling as an advocate for students with disabilities through her youngest child’s learning difficulties, and the challenges she faced while navigating the educational system on his behalf.

Marianne has been advocating for many years and officially opened Exceptional Advocacy Services in 2017. Marianne believes that every child has the capacity to learn and has gifts that can be developed. Marianne has dedicated her professional life to ensuring that all children have access to a quality education. She works full time as a special education advocate across multiple states including Georgia and Alabama, Fort Moore. Mrs. Young also provides Individualized Education Program (IEP) and disability training for several businesses and non-profits.

Marianne has been recognized for her work by community leaders and education advocates throughout Columbus. In 2017, Marianne was honored by the NAACP with the "Community Hero Award." She was appointed to the Alternative Education- Community Advisory Committee for the Muscogee County School Board as subject matter expert (SME) in Special Education. Later that year, she was appointed to the district's Continuous Improvement Planning Committee. In 2018, she was chosen as a member of GeorgiaCAN's inaugural Advocacy Council, elected to the Executive Board of the Autism Hope Center, and appointed as a Network Leader for the Autism Society of Alabama. Marianne completed the training and competency exam for Registered Behavior Technicians (RBT) in 2019 and has been featured multiple times on the television show "Straight Forward with Gloria Strode" and on WLTZ's "Community Spotlight" with Nicole Jones. In 2020, Marianne was elected to the Board of Directors for Access 2 Independence, appeared in the Census 2020 promotional videos and sat on a national panel about obtaining a Free and Appropriate Public Education during a pandemic, representing both Georgia and Alabama. She was appointed by City Council to the Region Six Advisory Council for the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, and is the author of "Raising Exceptional Children: A Guide to Understanding Learning Differences and Empowering Your Child." Raising Exceptional Children became the number one new release in disability parenting on Amazon. Most recently, Marianne has realized a long time dream of opening a non-profit to assist families with accessing community supports, offsetting the cost of advocacy services; and proudly serves as the Co-Director of Project Ability.

Mrs. Young is a member of Council Of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA).

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Madison Nigh is a proud boy mom, veteran wife, and special education advocate. Madison has obtained a Bachelor’s in Special Education: Moderate - Intensive Needs from Ohio University and Master’s in Educational Leadership from American College of Education. She has eleven years of experience, in special education and advocacy. She also has her Ohio teaching and administrative licenses. Through her experiences, she has developed a passion for student success and parent involvement within the school system.

Mrs. Nigh has experience in teaching in multiple areas, from functional skills in a high school self-contained classroom setting to academic and behavior intervention in an elementary pull-out setting. Madison has written dozens of IEPs, while also working with support staff such as speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists. She has performed evaluations to redetermine special education eligibility and has an extreme passion for data collection. She served on the Positive Behavior and Intervention Support (PBIS) Team within an elementary school where she developed and implemented various behavior data collection systems and interventions for students. Finally, she has a passion, as a former military spouse, for specializing in advocacy for fellow military families within DODEA schools on military installations.

On her own time, Madison enjoys spending a lot of time outside with her family being active. She loves board games, traveling, and taking care of her collection of house plants. She recently has become the proud mom to a little boy, Beckett Bradley, on March 22, 2024. She is also a founding member and co-director of Project Ability, a local non-profit that serves the disability community. Madison is also a proud member of COPAA.

Madison has always known that she wanted to serve exceptional students in amazing ways. Working with students with disabilities started while she was in middle school, and Madison’s passion has grown over many years into wanting to help their families as well. She hopes that she can help make your family’s education experience exceptional!

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Jessica Camp is a wife and mother of two children. Before becoming an educational advocate, she was a special education teacher. She obtained her bachelor's degree in special education from Georgia College and State University. Jessica also earned a masters degree in education with a concentration in applied behavior analysis from the University of North Dakota. She has thirty years of teaching experience educating diverse groups of students in Alabama and Georgia in general education, functional curriculum, residential hospital, community based, and vocational settings. She maintains teaching credentials in Georgia.

Mrs. Camp's most recent experience was teaching in a specialized program for students with Autism who were in need of more substantial support to progress. She is trained as a Barton Reading and Spelling System tutor. She has experience teaching from preschool classrooms to adult day treatment and community based vocational instruction. She has extensive training in strategies to support students on the Autism Spectrum. She is a Marcus Autism Center Model Classroom trained teacher with multiple years supporting students in a model classroom who were assessed on the Georgia Alternate Assessment. Jessica has participated in multiple trainings on universal design, assistive technology, and applied behavior analysis. She has been through training for Professional Crisis Management, TEACCH Method, and self injurious behavior training led by Brian Iwata. She has also received a Golden Apple Award.

In her teaching experience she modeled effective data based educational and behavioral strategies for classroom staff to support students' access to the curriculum and instruction. She also had to review IEPs and evaluations as a lead teacher. She was asked to provide new staff and parents access to training and support documents to better support student learning in the classroom and at home.

Jessica was also tasked with coordinating with other departments within the school system and community to best support students (transportation, access to therapies, vocational rehabilitation, transition coordination, community-based instruction)

At home, Jessica enjoys gardening, sewing, swimming, and singing. She is a founding board member and secretary for Project Ability, a local non-profit serving the disability community. She knew in college, while teaching swimming lessons, that she would always work to support people with disabilities and their families. She is looking forward to using her decades of experience and extensive knowledge to support your family. She can’t wait to meet you!

Jess Meneses is a loving mother of two, a military spouse, and special education advocate. Jess has a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Western Carolina University and a Master’s certificate in Special Education from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Prior to becoming an advocate, Jess spent seven years in the classroom as a special education teacher, instructing students with diverse needs in kindergarten through ninth grade. She currently holds an active teaching license in Georgia and has experience teaching in both Georgia and North Carolina.

Over the years, Jess taught in a variety of settings and worked with students with varying disabilities and diagnoses. Through her experience as a teacher, she has developed and implemented many IEPs and Behavior Intervention Plans (BIPs). She is proficient in collecting and interpreting IEP and BIP data and collaborating with other educators or service providers such as speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and board certified behavior analysts in order to ensure student success.

Mrs. Meneses has received comprehensive training in behavior techniques, crisis management, functional behavior assessment, positive behavior support and Wilson Reading System which is based on Orton-Gillingham principles. She has also helped to develop a school-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) plan to assist students school-wide with behavioral and emotional challenges.

In her free time, Jess enjoys reading, music, baking, and spending time outdoors with her family and her dog. As a college student, she worked with students in the University Participants Program at Western Carolina University, a program designed to provide an on-campus living and learning experience for college-age persons with intellectual disabilities. In that time, she felt called to work with the special needs population and has dedicated her career to cultivating a love of learning with the belief that all children are capable of achieving remarkable things. As an advocate, Jess is excited for the opportunity to apply her experience and enthusiasm to assisting your family.