LAUREN RIORDAN, PH.D

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST / FOUNDER / CO-DIRECTOR

I grew up in the heart of Greenwich Village, at the corner of Waverly and McDougal, surrounded by hippies, artists, and students. From a very early age, I think I understood the idea of individual differences, I just didn't know how it would shape my career.

Ever since I was a young child, I loved children. When I began to think about what I wanted to do with my life, there was no doubt that whatever I did would have to involve children. I took my first psychology class as a senior at Stuyvesant High School, and from there I was hooked. Nonetheless, even as a psychology major at Brown University, I thought that I might want to go to medical school to become a pediatrician. For several summers, I had an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital working with the Child Life department. It was during those summers that I realized that I didn't want to be a physician; the doctors were so busy that they could only spend a couple of minutes with each child. I, on the other hand, could spend an hour or more playing games with a child or doing an art project. I knew that I wanted to have more of a connection with each child than the life of a busy physician would allow. With that in mind, I chose to get my doctorate in clinical psychology at New York University, back in Greenwich Village, my old stomping grounds.

While I was at Brown I had become interested in working with kids with cancer. It was a wise professor at NYU who changed the course of my career. She said that if I wanted to work with pediatric cancer patients that I should get training in neuropsychological assessment because of the effects that chemotherapy had on the brain. As result, I chose to do my internship year at North Shore University Hospital in their departments of Child Psychiatry and Neuropsychology. Subsequently, I completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in their Division of Oncology where I conducted neuropsychological evaluations of children undergoing chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants. These two training opportunities gave me tremendous experience in assessment, in utilizing a wide array of different testing instruments, and insight into how different parts of our brains process information.

In the early part of my professional career, I maintained a private practice doing therapy and assessment with children for learning and psychological disorders. I concurrently worked with a pediatric hematology-oncology practice in Guilford, CT and ran groups for siblings and parents of pediatric cancer patients through the Center for Hope and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. In the meantime, when I had my first child, I ended up learning about the Birth-to-Three system when she was diagnosed with a speech delay. I had to learn to navigate the public school system to advocate for her needs. It was my personal experience which propelled me to continue my professional development and seek continuing education on many different topics related to developmental and learning disorders, ADHD, and executive dysfunction which have become my primary areas of professional interest for the past dozen years. Three more children later, and I continue to learn.

Now twenty-five years after receiving my doctorate, I still love to work with children. I love piecing together the clues found during psycho-educational testing in order to tell the story of how a child thinks and what can help him or her learn best. More than anything else, I am committed to making sure that the family of every child I see feels that they have been heard and understood.

ALISA SLATIN ROHDIE, BCBA, LBA-CT, NBCC, LPC

BOARD CERTIFIED BEHAVIOR ANALYST / Licensed Professional COunselor / FOUNDER / CO-DIRECTOR

I am dually certified as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and a Licensed Professional Counselor, and I am one of the co-founders of The Waverly Group. Early in my career, I was fortunate to be trained as a behavior analyst from some of the leading experts in the field. I took that experience and combined it with my undergraduate degree and training as a Speech-Language therapist and my graduate degree in Counseling Psychology to create an eclectic, yet informed, approach to working with children. Today at Waverly, I direct all ABA and Behavior therapy, provide school consultation and evaluations, and work with parents to understand and manage challenging behaviors and complex learning issues in children. Waverly Group is my dream come true. I work with smart, passionate, talented people everyday to help improve the lives of children. How lucky I feel.

LAUREN ZALIS, MA, OTR/L

OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST / FOUNDER / CO-DIRECTOR

At the age of seven I was faced with one of the most desirable and memorable tasks of my short life—teaching my brother the alphabet. The prize was a Nintendo game system (the original!), which I so desperately wanted. I vividly remember working with my brother for days and inventing all sorts of different ways to teach him the letters and symbols that meant a world of reading would soon open up to him. While we did earn that Nintendo, I will never forget how hard we had to work to get it. That was my first glimpse into the world of learning disabilities and ADHD.

As an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis I volunteered at an integrated preschool program in downtown St. Louis. This is where I realized that I could blend two areas that I felt a deep connection with—children and occupational therapy. This drove me to get my Masters at New York University.

Soon after graduation, I took my first job with Lynne Israel and Associates in Washington, D.C, which was the first private practice for the treatment of sensory processing disorders in the Washington DC area. I was dedicated to understanding child development as well as the complicated diagnosis of a sensory processing disorder. In 2009 I opened my own office in the Southfield Center for Development in Darien, Connecticut.  It was there that I developed and directed the Occupational Therapy department, and participated in multidisciplinary evaluations and treatments while continuing to maintain and expand my school-based practice. I continued to have a seemingly unquenchable thirst for learning more about what I could do to support all of the children that I was privileged to work with. This lead to my choice to take numerous additional certification courses in the SIPT (Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests), Therapeutic Listening, ILS (Integrated Listening Systems), and Interactive Metronome. I am passionate about what I do, and I am committed to supporting the children and families that I work with.