PROFECTUM - Key Persons

Cindy is a Speech Language Pathologist and President and CEO of ACT Learning Centre. Cindy's area of clinical focus is the provision of assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and adults with autism spectrum disorder, disorders of relating and communicating, intellectual disabilities, global developmental delays.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• President and Chief Executive Officer of BioVie Inc

In 2011, I started Profectum to create a home for talented clinicians working with the DIR® model to continue their work. I believe that no single intervention approach can work by itself, so I worked closely with the Profectum faculty to create the Foundational Capacities for Development (FCD) model. I am proud of what we have achieved and look forward to the continued success of Profectum and the DIR® model. Cuong Do is President and Chief Executive Officer of BioVie Inc., a company developing treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Liver Diseases. He was formerly President of Samsung's Global Strategy Group, where he helped lead the group's strategy and growth efforts. Prior to Samsung, Cuong served as the Chief Strategy Officer for Merck, Tyco Electronics, and Lenovo. He was also a former senior partner at McKinsey & Company, where he spent 17 years and helped build the Firm's healthcare, high-tech, and corporate finance practices.

Job Titles:

• Professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine

Dr. Connie Kasari is a professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a leading international expert in developing interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder and their families. Her research focuses on targeted interventions for early social communication development in at-risk infants, toddlers, and preschoolers with autism, and peer relationships for school-aged children with autism, leading to the recognition of her therapy JASPER as an established evidence-based ASD treatment. Much of this work involves populations that have traditionally been understudied and underrepresented in research, including low-resourced children and minimally verbal children. Her work is often conducted in schools. She has published widely on topics related to social, emotional, and communication development and intervention in autism. Dr. Kasari has been the primary advisor to more than 60 UCLA Ph.D. students, is on the science advisory boards of Autism Speaks and the Mount Sinai Seaver Autism Center, and regularly presents to both academic and practitioner audiences locally, nationally, and internationally.

Job Titles:

• Founding Member
• Co - Founder, Co - Creator of the DIR Model

Profectum means progress but I also think of it as the "promise" that takes our children into the future, with intervention that optimizes potential when development is neurodiverse or impeded. Founding Profectum gave DIR® training a home for a pioneering relational model that integrates the multiple facets of the developing child across the lifespan. Each is unique in their minds, hearts and emotions, and neurobiology. Interactive affective relationships between children, parents, and caregivers that is attuned to culture and environment activate development. For myself and at Profectum, this means joining the child's and family's journey, as partners with parents, holding hope, anxiety, and joy as we find the pathways to lives of meaning, purpose and emotional well being. I see development as discovery with its own timetable. As co-creator of the DIR® model, I am ever so grateful to Profectum's Co-Founders, and all our colleagues who learn with us and train others to carry out our mission to find the promise in every child and presume competencies here and around the world. Dr. Serena Wieder is the Clinical Director and a founding member of the Profectum Foundation, dedicated to advancing the development and infant mental health of all children, including children, adolescents and adults with autism and special needs through training and educational programs. She also co-founded the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders with the late Stanley Greenspan. Dr. Wieder is a Board Member of Zero to Three and also serves on advisory boards to various programs serving infant mental health and other special needs. She established DIR®-Israel and provides consultation and training to international and national programs. As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Wieder has pioneered important approaches to diagnosing and treating infants and toddlers with infant mental health and developmental disorders. She co-developed the DIR® model with Stanley Greenspan, edited two diagnostic manuals for infants and young children, and created models for interdisciplinary post-graduate case based training and work with parents. She has co-chaired and organized national and international conferences integrating development, neuroscience and intervention approaches for nearly 20 years. Dr. Wieder also developed approaches to integrate visual-spatial knowledge to advance emotional and cognitive development. Her research interests concern follow up studies of children on the autism spectrum who have received DIR® model comprehensive interventions and the evaluation of training and educational programs. Dr. Serena Wieder co-authored Engaging Autism, The Child With Special Needs and Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health with Stanley Greenspan, M.D. They also co-edited Infants in Multi-Risk Families as well as the ICDL Diagnostic Manual for Infants and Young Children (DMIC) and the original Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (DC 03). Most recently, Dr. Wieder co-authored Visual Spatial Portals to Thinking, Feeling, and Movement with Harry Wachs, O.D. She has published numerous journal and book chapters and presents at multiple conferences nationally and internationally. Dr. Serena Wieder is the Clinical Director and a founding member of the Profectum Foundation, dedicated to advancing the development and mental health of children, of all ages, including adolescents and adults with neurodivergent development and emotional challenges through interdisciplinary training and educational programs. She also co-founded the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders and was a Board Member of Zero to Three for 23 years. Dr. Wieder serves on various advisory boards to various programs serving infant mental health and other special needs. Dr. Wieder also founded DIR-Israel, a training program that offers DIR Certificates, and provides consultation and training to many international and national programs. As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Wieder has pioneered important approaches to diagnosing and treating infants and toddlers with infant mental health and developmental disorders. She co-created the DIR Model with Stanley Greenspan, edited two diagnostic manuals for infants and young children. Further, she created models for interdisciplinary post-graduate case based training and pioneered parent-mediated intervention for parents of neurodivergent children.

Geoffrey Bracken is a trial attorney whose practice emphasizes commercial, construction, copyright infringement and personal injury litigation. He has represented individuals and businesses in both personal injury and commercial litigation matters at trial and appellate levels, and in arbitration.

Job Titles:

• CEO
• Founder
• Occupational Therapist

Kassie is an Occupational Therapist and Founder/CEO of Greenhouse Pediatric Therapy in Oklahoma. She is a proud graduate of Oklahoma State University and Texas Woman's University, with a BS in Psychology and a Master's Degree in Occupational Therapy. Kassie has been practicing as an OT across Oklahoma for over 20 years, dedicating most of her career to pediatrics. Kassie founded Greenhouse Pediatric Therapy in 2014, creating a unique setting that merged her favorite parts of early intervention and outpatient pediatric settings: a focus on caregiver participation and education of early intervention, integrated with the therapy intensity and fun toys of the outpatient clinic. Greenhouse is a specialty clinic with a focus on social-emotional development, primarily serving children on the Autism spectrum and/or with a trauma history. Kassie enjoys playing with kiddos, caregiver coaching, program development, and hosting special events for clients. The best part of her job is providing hope to families. Kassie began formal DIR® training in 2017 through Profectum and immediately began to transition Greenhouse into a DIR-focused clinic. She discovered a love of teaching the same year, and began lecturing at local therapy programs and teaching professional courses. Kassie has taught multiple CEU courses in the areas of Play, Sensory Processing, Behavior, Trauma, and Feeding. She guest lectured at several annual Oklahoma Occupational Therapy Association Conferences and the inaugural Eastern Oklahoma Autism Conference. She provides caregiver training courses and serves as a consultant to local clinics and organizations for staff training on infant/toddler development, DIR®, regulation, trauma, ASD, and behaviors. Kassie recently taught a Profectum Masterclass with a colleague on utilizing the DIR® model with gifted and twice-exceptional individuals, which was delightfully fun. Kassie is twice-exceptional herself, and the entire team at Greenhouse are neurodivergent in some way. Kassie lives with her lovely husband and two talented teens, all of whom are twice-exceptional. She also shares her home with the family dog, a ridiculously smart and anxious German Shepherd/ Lab mix. Kassie enjoys going to the theater, concerts, ball games, puzzles, reading and playing board games… but primarily spends her time at Greenhouse or chauffeuring her kids to rehearsals, performances, and games.

Job Titles:

• Executive Director

Lisa Reilly has led and developed non-profit organizations in the arts, affordable housing, criminal justice reform, and education. Her work honing strategic and operational aspects of organizations has enabled sustainable growth and expanded impact for their missions and visions. At Profectum, Lisa will oversee operations, strategic initiatives and fundraising, working closely with the Board of Directors as the organization enters a period of growth. Lisa has held leadership roles as the Executive Director of Big Apple Performing Arts the Executive Director of the Emelin Theatre, the Managing and Artistic Director of the College of Staten Island Center for the Arts, and the Executive Director of the Earlville Opera House. She served as the inaugural Director of Dance Programming at The Flea Theater, and as Executive Director of Westbeth, an artists' housing project in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Lisa taught at Syracuse University and has served as a consultant for nonprofit organizations in the areas of marketing, fundraising, board development, grants writing, executive searches, and curriculum. She has served on and chaired panels for the New York State Council on the Arts, the Council on Arts and Humanities for Staten Island, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour program, the Performing Arts Exchange Conference, ArtsWestchester, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Lisa is a board member for Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre, Blessed Unrest, MICRO (the world's smallest museum). and Racoco Productions. Recent consulting projects include fundraising for Good Call NYC (a social justice organization working to end mass incarceration and uphold Sixth Amendment rights) and Broadway for Arts Education (supporting arts education in NYC, Haiti, and India). Lisa routinely serves as an Accessibility Clerk at voting sites in NYC, ensuring that all voters are able to have fair and equal access to their right to vote. She is an avid crossword puzzle fan and has solved over 1700 crosswords in the last year; she is also a recent convert to strength training, and can do a lot more push-ups than you think she can.

Job Titles:

• Sales Executive at Dell

Mark Goldapp is a Sales Executive at Dell where he has spent 15 years helping public and private sector customers with complex technology solutions. He is also the Board Chair for Day and Night Waters, makers of Cielo Water, a Texas Public Benefit Corporation. Mark is an adoptive father of 2 children, and is active in the foster and adopt community in the Austin area. Mark comes from a family of Social Workers and is passionate about expanding access to quality mental health care for children. He has a BA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• Consultant
• Founding Member

Beginning in the early 90s, I was given the extraordinary gift of working closely with Drs. Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder who instilled in me my love for our DIR® model. In 2011, I was honored to co-found the Profectum Foundation under the leadership and direction of Cuong Do. My passion for raising awareness of the DIR® model, providing the highest quality training programs, and continuing to evolve the model in collaboration with the talented Profectum Faculty compelled me to take on the role of founding Executive Director for Profectum's first decade. My passion is working with students, caregivers, and staff in educational and home settings using the DIR® Model. I am passionate about empowering the next generation of leaders, and creating new DIR®-Educational products and programs. Please join Profectum in raising awareness of the importance of "relationships" in all sectors of intervention, including for ALL students in the educational setting! Monica G. Osgood is a founding member of Profectum Foundation. She is an experienced behavioral consultant and therapist who specializes in using developmental approaches to support children with autism and other differences in relating and communicating. Monica has worked in homes, therapy centers, and private and public school settings for over 20 years. Some of her experience has included assessment and the development of intervention programs, curriculum and IEP development, and parent and professional training. Celebrate the Children's founder, Monica G. Osgood, is an experienced behavioral consultant and therapist who specializes in using developmental approaches to support children with autism and other differences in relating and communicating. She is also the Founder and Director of the Developmental Center for Children and Families (Limitless), a Board Member and founding member of the Profectum Foundation, and a Board Member and founding member of Celebrate the Individual (CTI). Monica has worked in homes, therapy centers, and private and public school settings for over 20 years. Some of her experience has included assessment and the development of intervention programs, curriculum and IEP development, and parent and professional training. In 1998, Monica created the first public school program with the Developmental Individual Relationship-based (DIR model) approach as the core philosophy. ​In 2000, she was the first educator to join the senior faculty of the Interdisciplinary Council on Development and Learning(ICDL) to provide interdisciplinary training in the DIR model. During her time with ICDL, Monica served as faculty for all of their yearly training institutes, spoke at many of their conferences and had the opportunity to work closely and collaborate with Drs. Greenspan and Wieder to further develop the DIR model in school settings. ​In 2004, she collaborated with Lauren Blaszak to open a state-approved, DIR model school for children ages 3-21 in Denville, New Jersey, now serving over 70 school districts and 150 families. Additional accomplishments include, many speaking engagements at conferences and participation in television, radio and newspaper interviews across the USA, Wales, Ireland and Amsterdam. Monica has appeared on Welsh Channel 4 and BBC1 documentaries, sharing the DIR model approach with British parents and professionals. Monica and the Celebrate the Children school were featured in a TIME Magazine cover story in May of 2006. ​She serves on the Advisory Board for 3LPlace and the National Advisory Council for The Centers for Exceptional Children​. Monica also serves on the Economic Development Advisory Council and the Sustainable Economic Development Plan Steering Committee for her local Town Council. Finally, she collaborated with twice Grammy nominated children's artists Dan Myers and Brady Rymer on an album and music video celebrating diversity in children with all abilities released April 2011.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• Co - Director of Descanso Medical Center for Development

I just love working with Serena, Cuong, and Monica, and I was honored and grateful to join them for the "start up" of Profectum. I am thrilled that so many talented, experienced and wise Faculty members and families worldwide joined our movement from the very beginning. Together we have created a marvelous "home" where relationships flourish and an "incubator" where learning is robust and ideas based on the DIR® model expand and extend to support the families and treatment teams we support. I cherish my time in Profectum and am so proud of what our whole team continues to create and share with so many. My greatest hope is that we continue to grow and always strive to meet the needs of our constituency. As we say to all - "The DIR® model is all about Relationships." Profectum is the embodiment of this approach. Please come join us at Profectum as we learn and interact in such meaningful ways together. I think you'll be as grateful as I am every day for the opportunity! Ricki Robinson, MD, MPH. is co-director of Descanso Medical Center for Development and Learning in La Canada, California and a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Keck School Medicine of USC. She has been in private pediatric practice for nearly forty years, specializing in children with autism and developmental delays for over twenty-five years. Dr. Robinson received her MD degree in 1973 from the University of Southern California. She trained in pediatrics at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, having served as Chief Pediatric Resident for CHLA in 1976. She is board certified in pediatrics. In 1988 she received her MPH from the University at Berkeley School of Public Health. Dr. Robinson has been actively involved in the field of autism since 1990, developing multidisciplinary educational and medical programs for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and devoting endless hours in education, legislation and research efforts on a national level. Dr. Robinson has been at the forefront of leading grassroots autism organizations. She was a founding board member of Cure Autism Now (now Autism Speaks) and the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders (ICDL), and most recently Profectum Foundation. She was a member of the Autism Speaks Scientific Review Panel for over eight years. Dr. Robinson organized and chaired the first nationally recognized task force to define the standard of care for clinical trials in autism. The results of this outstanding effort were published in CNS Spectrums (January 2004, Vol. 9, #1). Most recently she was appointed as Medical Director of Profectum Foundation, an organization devoted to providing multi-disciplinary education and training for parents, families and professionals working with individuals with ASD across the lifespan. A nationally sought-after expert, she has appeared on the Today Show, The Talk, Larry King Live and Good Morning America Health in support of the needs of children and families with autism spectrum disorders. She is an internationally recognized speaker addressing the needs of children with autism and other developmental delays to parent, professional and lay audiences worldwide for the past two decades. She is also the author of the acclaimed book Autism Solutions - How to Create a Healthy and Meaningful Life for Your Child.

Sally J. Rogers, PhD, is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis. She has served as president of the International Society for Autism Research and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Society for Autism Research. With Geraldine Dawson, Dr. Rogers developed the Early Start Denver Model, the first empirically validated comprehensive intervention for toddlers with autism, now used by parents and professionals around the world. She is coauthor of books including An Early Start for Your Child with Autism (for parents) and Early Start Denver Model for Young Children with Autism and Coaching Parents of Young Children with Autism (for professionals). Dr. Rogers has published over 200 papers, chapters, and books, and ranks in the top 1% of Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers.

Shelley is married to Geoff Bracken, and mother to Hank, all of whom live in Houston, Texas. Shelley is a graduate of The University of Texas, and as an involved parent, she is very knowledgeable about the available therapies and their applicability to children and young adults on the spectrum. She is a devotee of the DIR Floortime model, having visited with both Serena and Stanley Greenspan for many years. In addition to Profectum, Shelley has served on the ReMind (DBSA) board of directors and the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo School Art Committee.