Practicing Since
Graduate Program
Therapeutic Focus
Accolades, Award or Notable Achievements
- Presenter at the International Pre-conference at TEACCH University of North Carolina Department of Medicine
- Spring 2005 Framing Your Thoughts: A regular education writing program that gives voice to students on the spectrum. Presentation on a writing program that is multi-sensory with illustrated case studies that show increase in all areas of language including verbal language
- Spring 2002 The Ambassador’s Club: How a Middle Age Un-cool Woman helps Teenagers to fit in, Presentation
Favorite Quote
“I was fascinated by the development of language and its relationship to literacy.”
About
I consider myself to be very fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn with and to collaborate with dynamic forward thinking teams of administrators, educators, therapists, and families. Being part of these problem-solving teams has allowed me to expand my expertise not just as a speech and language pathologist but also in my understanding of the culture surrounding disabilities and the structures that need to be built to advocate and support the person with the disability and their families. My proudest accomplishment has been being one of the founders of the Autism Project which started as a public-school grant to educate public school faculty and to expand the base of support throughout the state. It is now a non-profit in Rhode Island and their mission continues to be to empower families and professionals to educate and support people with autism.
Sometimes I feel like Forest Gump in that I have had the opportunity to be in amazing places when significant changes have happened in our field. I began my career when we were recognizing that institutionalizing people with disabilities was inhumane, my first graduate clinical were people released from Willowbrook, an institution in New York. I was part of a Rhode Island
legislative working group that developed a bill to fund telecommunication devices for people who were unable to access the traditional phones and developed a relay system and a structure for supplying specialized devices. When the rise of autism began to occur, I was part of a team that was examining the needs of Rhode Island and then had the opportunity to visit other states to examine their system of support, giving me the opportunity to learn from and work beside some of the early leaders in autism education. The continuing evolution of our field excites me, I am fortunate to continue to work not just with students and their families but also with pre-service graduate special educators and speech and language pathologists so that I am not only able to understand the past but I am part of the shaping of the future of our field.