Who We Are

William Frosch, M.D.

Dr. Frosch was born, brought up, and educated in New York City: its public schools, Columbia College, and the NYU School of Medicine. His psychiatric training was at NYU/Bellevue and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He remained at NYU for many years and while there served as Assistant Dean of the Medical School, Professor, and Assistant Director of the Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital.

Dr. Frosch moved to Cornell/The New York Hospital in 1975. There he served as Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Director of The Payne Whitney Clinic. He was then appointed Interim Chair of the Department and Psychiatrist-in-Chief of The New York Hospital.

Sean Gallary

Sean is a married father of four and currently resides in CT.  He has spent the past 20 years in private equity and investment banking focused on the asset management industry.  He is currently Head of GP Capital Solutions at Jefferies.  He received an MBA from NYU and a B.S. in Finance from Fairfield University.  Sean and his wife Kathy are passionate advocates for children with learning and developmental disabilities.

Rebecca Zilkha Halpin

Rebecca is a mother of three, currently navigating the world of NVLD. She graduated from Boston University with a BA in Secondary Education and completed her coursework for a Master’s in Special Education at Simmon’s College in Boston. She taught high school French before becoming a full-time mother.

David Pratt

David Pratt is Chair of the Private Client Services Department and head of the Boca Raton office. His practice is dedicated exclusively to the areas of trusts and estates, estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer, fiduciary and individual income taxation and fiduciary litigation. He has extensive experience in estate planning and post-mortem tax planning. He has been routinely “Chambers” ranked.

David’s clients consist predominantly of high net worth individuals and families. He regularly counsels his clients regarding how to transfer wealth from generation to generation with the least amount of tax and the maximum amount of asset preservation at each generation, including protection for a divorcing child or grandchild and from potential creditors. While many of David’s clients are retired, he also represents a significant amount of business owners. He has recommended and implemented many plans which have transferred ownership of business interests to the next generation with minimal transfer tax cost and without disruption of the family business. Such plans very often include recommendations resulting from the family dynamics involved with a family business.
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Samantha Nicks – Development and Communications Manager

Samantha joined The NVLD Project in 2017 as the Development and Communications Manager for the Project. She is responsible for digital media strategy, content development, and outreach and communications efforts with donors, partners and the public.

Samantha moved to New York after spending the last five years as an educator in both Texas and Spain. Along with her background in the classroom teaching journalism and English, she also has experience in marketing, public relations, real estate, retail management and photography. She received her Master of Arts in Strategic Communication and Innovation at Texas Tech University and holds a BA in both public relations and Spanish.

Samantha lives in Manhattan with her golden retriever and together they volunteer at the local hospitals as a therapy dog team.

John (Jack) M. Davis, Ph.D.

John (Jack) M. Davis, Ph.D., is the co-author of Nonverbal Learning Disabilities in Children: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Practice (2011). He is currently a Professor at California State University, East Bay, and Chair of the Educational Psychology Department, where he teaches and supervises.

He received his Ph.D. from the U.C. Berkeley School Psychology program and did clinical postdoctoral studies to become a licensed psychologist. He has a special interest in learning and developmental disorders having been the director of a school and clinic for students with learning disabilities for 13 years, which provided diagnostic and intervention services.

His current clinical work is primarily with children and adults with learning disorders. His writing and research interests include articles and book chapters in the areas of mental health consultation, suicide/crisis intervention, and learning disorders.

Abigail Diamond

Abby Diamond is the Director of Academic Support at Trevor Day School. Prior to her current position, she spent 10 years as a learning specialist and the chair of the Learning Center at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. During her time at Fieldston, Abby spearheaded a collaboration between school leaders and administrators and The NVLD Project. Abby has also worked at the Francis Parker School, a progressive independent school in Chicago and the Churchill School and Center, a non-public school for students with language-based learning disabilities in New York City.

Abby holds a bachelor’s degree in Education from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in Elementary Education and an advanced master’s degree in Literacy from the Bank Street College of Education.

Eric Greenberg

Eric Greenberg is a leading college-advising, test-preparation and tutoring expert. Since establishing the Greenberg Educational Group in New York City in 1991, Greenberg and his team have helped many students of all ages achieve their academic goals. The company has established a stellar reputation for providing strategic admission and application advising (high school, college and graduate school), test preparation and academic tutoring. Greenberg Educational Group provides personalized service (in person or online). They have clients throughout the United States and internationally as well.

After graduating from the prestigious Fieldston High School in Riverdale, New York, Greenberg attended the world-renowned Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. It was there that Greenberg developed a dual passion for education and business, dividing his time between his own studies and tutoring other students. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Wharton in 1988, graduating Summa Cum Laude and was elected to Beta Gamma Sigma, a leading national business school honor society.
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Marc Gurtman, Psy.D.

Dr. Gurtman maintains an independent psychology practice in NYC. He specializes in neuropsychological assessment, parent consultation and psychotherapy of children and adults. Prior to his move to full-time independent practice, Dr. Gurtman worked as a school psychologist at several independent schools. For close to a decade, he led the development of the high school mental health program at The Churchill School and Center for Learning Disabilities in NYC. In addition to his primary role in consulting to faculty, administration, student and parents, Dr. Gurtman helped to develop and implement a comprehensive curriculum focused upon supporting the social-emotional lives of children with learning disabilities. Subsequent to his tenure at The Churchill School, Dr. Gurtman was appointed as the Middle and Upper School Psychologist at an educational start-up, Avenues: The World School, in NYC. As Avenues expanded internationally, he was appointed as a senior administrator to help widen the scope and the breath of mental health and learning support in the school. Throughout his years in schools and independent practice, Dr. Gurtman has presented extensively on issues pertaining to learning, parenting, and child development. Dr. Gurtman received his Psy.D. in Clinical Child/School Psychology at The Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology on the campus of The Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, NY. He completed his clinical internship at The Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, New York where he was trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and conducted his dissertation research.

Amy Levine

Amy Levine is the Upper School Assistant Director at the Mary McDowell Friends School, a Quaker school for students with learning disabilities. As an educator who has been working in the field of learning disabilities since 1998, she has worked in both general education and special education settings. She has organized and presented numerous professional development workshops for faculty as well as informational workshops for parents. Amy has been an adjunct professor at Hunter College training masters students in differentiated instruction and learning disabilities and has presented numerous times on Non-Verbal Learning Disability.

Jeremy Veenstra-Vanderweele, MD – Director, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele, MD, is the Mortimer D. Sackler, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center; Director of the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), and Columbia University; and Co-Director of both the NIMH T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship for Translational Research in Child Psychiatric Disorders and the Whitaker Scholar Program in Developmental Neuropsychiatry at NYSPI/Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Veenstra-VanderWeele is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who uses molecular and translational neuroscience research tools in the pursuit of new treatments for autism spectrum disorder and pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder. He trained in human molecular genetics in the laboratory of Edwin H. Cook at the University of Chicago. Following his child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship, he expanded his research experience with a postdoctoral research fellowship in molecular neuroscience with Randy Blakely and Jim Sutcliffe at Vanderbilt University. Prior to joining the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia in 2014, Dr. Veenstra-VanderWeele was director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, where he was also an associate professor and medical director for the Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorder.
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Laura Mufson, Ph.D. – Associate Director, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Laura Mufson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), associate director of the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and co-director of the Office of Clinical Psychology at CUMC. She is also director of Clinical Psychology and unit chief of the Children’s Day Unit at New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). She is director of Training for the Child Track of the APA–Accredited Predoctoral Internship in Clinical Psychology and a faculty member of the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry’s NIMH T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
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Molly Algermissen, Ph.D.

Molly Algermissen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and Clinical Director of the Promise Program at Columbia. Dr. Algermissen is a child and adolescent psychologist and neuropsychologist.

She specializes in comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations of children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric difficulties including autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, neurological disorders, language difficulties, and attention/executive function deficits. Dr. Algermissen has extensive experience working with young children (0-5) and has a clinical expertise in Autism Spectrum Disorder, including use of the ADOS-2 and ADI-R. Evaluations are completed within a developmental framework and often include assessment of social-emotional functioning and co-occurring psychiatric concerns. Her work includes providing ongoing recommendations and consultation for families and educators in developing and implementing appropriate academic, social, and behavioral interventions for children who are evaluated.

Beatrice Beebe, Ph.D.

Beatrice Beebe Ph.D. is Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry), College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute. She directs a basic research lab on 4- and 12-month mother-infant communication, prior to the infant’s development of language.

Infant preverbal learning of communication patterns lays the foundation for emotional and cognitive development across the lifespan. The lab specializes in the microanalysis of face-to-face non-verbal communication. Resources include a split-screen video-recording and audio-recording studio and an open play space for observing infants and children with their parents.

Her research program investigates mother-infant face-to-face communication and infant social development: the dyadic mechanisms organizing mother-infant social communication, the role that maternal distress plays in this communication, the effects of early mother-infant communication patterns on emerging infant attachment styles, and the long-term continuity of communication and attachment styles from infancy to young adulthood. Video and audio microanalysis of mother-infant behavior has been her focus for four decades. This precise coding, together with a sophisticated statistical method of multi-level time-series analysis, functions like a social microscope, identifying different patterns of contingent relating. These methods have been used in three NIH/NIMH RO1 Grants. She was co-investigator on NIMH RO1 41675 (1985-1990), Interpersonal timing and infant social development, which documented that the degree of contingent vocal coordination between mothers and infants, and strangers and infants, at 4 months, predicted infant attachment at one year. She was PI on NIMH RO1 MH 56130 (1999-2004) which also predicted attachment at one year from mother-infant and stranger-infant interaction at 4 months. In addition, this study showed the impact of maternal depression and anxiety on mother-infant interaction. She have also been the PI of a longitudinal follow-up study of these two cohorts, from infancy to young adulthood, funded by the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytic Association. This study predicted young adult attachment from degrees of mother-infant and stranger-infant vocal coordination in infancy at 4 and 12 months. Currently she is co-PI (with Julie Herbstman) on R01ES027424, Prenatal endocrine-disrupting chemicals and social/cognitive risk in mothers and infants: Potential biologic pathways. For over a decade, from the spring of 2002, she directed a clinical/research primary prevention project following a cohort of 36 women who were pregnant and widowed on September 11, 2001. Her clinical work focuses on primary prevention in mother-infant dyads at risk for dysregulated social development, a topic on which she has published five articles.

Prudence Fisher, Ph.D.

Dr. Prudence Fisher received her Bachelor’s degree (Psychology) from Johns Hopkins University and her M.S. and Ph.D. (2001) from Columbia University School of Social Work.

Dr. Fisher is the Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatric Social Work in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Research Scientist at New York State Psychiatric Institute (Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry). Dr. Fisher’s main research focus is on the development and testing of assessment measures for children and adolescents. She is widely acknowledged in the field at large as someone who is knowledgeable about assessment issues and actively collaborates with investigators both within the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia and at other institutions and a consultant for federal and state agencies. Dr. Fisher has been instrumental in the development of numerous versions of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC), the most widely used diagnostic interview for youth, and of many other widely used measures, including the Children’s Global Assessment Scale (CGAS), the Columbia Impairment Scale, and the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS), among others.
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Amy Margolis, Ph.D.

Dr. Amy Margolis is Assistant Professor of Medical Psychology with an appointment in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and an affiliation with the Cognitive Development and Neuroimaging Laboratory. The scientific question she seeks to answer concerns how learning problems are related to underlying deficiencies in the structure and function of neural systems that support learning processes.

In the first decade of her career, she established a pediatric neuropsychology training program in comprehensive assessment and treatment of children with learning disabilities and attention disorders. She developed novel treatment methods for children with learning disabilities and attention disorders by combining tutoring, cognitive remediation and psychotherapy techniques.

In 2010, Dr. Margolis transitioned to a research career, in which she seeks to use neuroimaging to inform the development of novel therapeutics and early prevention programs for people with learning disabilities.
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Rachel Marsh, Ph.D.

Rachel Marsh is an Associate Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University Medical Center where she directs the Cognitive Development and Neuroimaging Laboratory. She is also the Director of the MRI research program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Marsh’s current work focuses on understanding the neurodevelopmental trajectories of disorders and problems that arise during childhood and adolescence.

Specifically, her lab uses multimodal MRI techniques to study the function, structure, and connectivity of the neural circuits that support self-regulation and learning over development in health and illness. She is currently conducting an NIMH-funded longitudinal, multimodal MRI study of the neurodevelopment of these circuits in adolescents with Bulimia Nervosa. Together with her collaborators, Dr. Marsh is also conducting studies of children and adults with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and studies of children with learning problems. The goal of this work is to identify abnormal trajectories in specific brain circuits and processes that could be targets for the development of novel treatments and remediation strategies. Dr. Marsh co-directs the T32 training program in child psychiatry research at CUMC for which she oversees the selection of applicants and their progress as trainees, and personally mentors those who are learning clinical MRI techniques.

David Pagliaccio, Ph.D.

Dr. David Pagliaccio received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis. His graduate work with Dr. Deanna Barch focused on the effects of stress and stress-system genes on brain structure and function in children with early-onset depression. During his postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Daniel Pine and Ellen Leibenluft, Dr. Pagliaccio continued fMRI research to examine the neural underpinnings of pediatric anxiety and irritability. As a project manager with the Marsh Lab, he is using neuroimaging to explore alterations in brain circuitry and functioning relating to impulsive-compulsive behaviors, learning disorders, and other pediatric pathologies.

Jazmin A. Reyes-Portillo, Ph.D.

Dr. Jazmin Reyes-Portillo is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology (in Psychiatry) in the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Reyes-Portillo obtained her BA in psychology from Wellesley College and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. After completing her predoctoral internship at Columbia University Medical Center (Child Track), Dr. Reyes-Portillo was awarded the Sallie Foundation Child and Adolescent Mental Health Technology Program Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University. This fellowship provided research opportunities in the emerging field of using digital technology to improve outcomes for depressed, anxious, and suicidal youth.

Dr. Reyes-Portillo’s program of research focuses on the use of digital health technology to reduce health disparities among racial/ethnic minority youth suffering from internalizing disorders. She also has an interest in conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses and along with Dr. Prudence Fisher conducted a systematic review of the empirical literature on Nonverbal Learning Disability (NVLD). This research will serve as the basis for a proposal to have NVLD be included in future editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Dr. Reyes-Portillo also holds a tenure track Assistant Professor position in the Psychology Department at Montclair State University.

Meghan Tomb, Ph.D.

Meghan Tomb is an Assistant Professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and Associate Clinical Director of the Promise Program at Columbia.

Dr. Tomb is a child and adolescent psychologist and neuropsychologist. She specializes in neuropsychological evaluations of children, adolescents, and young adults with learning, language, and developmental disabilities. Her work also includes providing ongoing recommendations and consultation for families and educators in developing and implementing appropriate academic, social, and behavioral interventions for children who are evaluated.

Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Dr. Tomb worked for a number of years in a research capacity assisting in the implementation, training, and evaluation of effective clinical practices in school-based mental health centers in New York City. She later received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Vermont, where she specialized in childhood and adolescent mental health disorders. She completed her clinical training at Columbia University Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital with a focus on individual and group treatment for anxiety and depression as well as school-based interventions for childhood mental health disorders, particularly children placed within a special education setting. Following her doctoral training, she completed a fellowship in neuropsychology at Columbia University Medical Center, and she is currently faculty in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at CUMC. She sees children and families through the Promise Program as well as Faculty Practice. She supervises trainees in neuropsychological evaluation and psychotherapy and she is a co-mentor for the DeHirsch-Robinson Research Fellow in neuropsychology.

J. Blake Turner, Ph.D.

J. Blake Turner, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Social Science (in Psychiatry) in the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University and a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Turner has extensive research interests within both child and adolescent psychiatry and within social epidemiology. In child psychiatry, a major emphasis of his work has been the phenomenology of psychiatric disorders. He has held an R01 from the National Institute of Mental Health to examine alternative definitions of psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents. In concert with this project, he served as an advisor to the DSM-5 workgroups for child and adolescent disorders and ADHD and disruptive disorders. More recently, he has been researching trajectories of neurodevelopmental disorders in a low-birth-weight/pre-term cohort. He has also examined phenotypic variation in ASD children in this same cohort, as well as in the Simons Simplex data set.

In social epidemiology, he has published extensively on the physical and mental health effects of social stressors, on measurement issues in the assessment of stress over the life course, and on PTSD and other psychiatric sequelae of exposure to combat in military veterans.

Dr. Turner has considerable expertise in research methods and quantitative data analysis. A portion of his current position involves serving as an “in-house” consulting methodologist for the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Stephen P. Hinshaw, Ph.D.

Stephen Hinshaw is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Department Chair from 2004-2011. He is also Professor of Psychiatry and Vice-Chair for Child and Adolescent Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his B.A. from Harvard (summa cum laude) and, after directing school programs and residential summer camps, his doctorate in clinical psychology from UCLA. His post-doctoral fellowship took place at the Langley Porter Institute of UC San Francisco.

His work focuses on developmental psychopathology, clinical interventions with children and adolescents (particularly mechanisms underlying therapeutic change), and mental illness stigma. He has directed research programs and conducted clinical trials and longitudinal studies for boys and—more recently—for girls with inattention and impulse-control problems (who often express many comorbid disorders), having received over $20 million in NIH funding. He has been Principal Investigator of the Berkeley site for the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) since 1992.
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James McCracken, M.D.

Dr. James McCracken is the Joseph Campbell Professor of Child Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he serves as Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry. He is widely known for his involvement in seminal NIMH clinical trials that have guided current evidence-based treatments for autism, ADHD, pediatric anxiety, and OCD. His current research is focused on identifying new treatments and treatment biomarkers for a range of childhood cognitive and neurodevelopmental disorders. Dr. McCracken attended Baylor College of Medicine, and completed residency training at Duke before moving to UCLA where he received clinical and research training in child psychiatry under Dennis Cantwell and Peter Tanguay. He has authored or co-authored more than 300 articles and chapters in the field of child psychiatry and serves on the editorial board of Molecular Autism. Dr. McCracken is the recipient of several honors and awards, including the American Psychiatric Association’s Blanche Ittelson Award for Research in Child Psychiatry, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s George Tarjan Award for Contributions in Developmental Disabilities and the Elaine Schlosser Lewis Award for Research on Attention-Deficit Disorder.

Peter Szatmari, M.D., M.Sc., FRCPS

Starting March 1st 2013, Dr. Peter Szatmari assumed the combined position of Chief of Child and Youth Mental Health Collaborative, at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, The Hospital for Sick Children, and the Division of Child and Youth Mental Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Szatmari holds the Patsy and Jamie Anderson Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health. He began his research career as one of the investigators working on the Ontario Child Health Study (OCHS), the first epidemiological study of psychiatric disorders in children and youth in North America. Dr. Szatmari has also made significant contributions to the ASD field in many areas including diagnosis, measurement, genetics and longitudinal development. More recently, he has turned his attention to developing evidence based, patient oriented systems of care for children and youth with depression.

Benedetto Vitiello, M.D.

Benedetto Vitiello, M.D. is a psychiatrist and pediatrician with expertise in psychopharmacology and treatment research. A graduate of the University of Pavia Medical School, Pavia, Italy, he trained in pediatrics in Italy and in psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry in the U.S.A. From 1989 until 2016, he worked at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., where he was Chief of the Child and Adolescent Treatment and Preventive Interventions Research Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health and adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore. He is currently Professor of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at the University of Turin, Italy. His research has focused on developing and testing effective treatment and preventive interventions for children, adolescents, and adults with mood and anxiety disorders, psychosis, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, and other neurodevelopmental disorders. He has contributed more than 300 scientific publications to the field of mental health.

Agnes Whitaker, M.D.

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University
Dr. Whitaker has been engaged in both clinical service and research in the Division of Child Psychiatry at Columbia for three decades. Her clinical work has focused on the mental health care of children, adolescents, and adults with developmental disabilities; she is especially interested in supervising and assisting trainees with the evaluation and treatment of complex clinical issues that involve developmental, medical, and psychiatric factors. Her research has focused on the relation of early brain injury to psychiatric disorder later in life as revealed by long-term longitudinal studies of low birthweight / premature infants.