Entry-Level OTD Faculty
Boston University students in the Entry-Level Doctoral Program in Occupational Therapy study with outstanding faculty who have made significant contributions to occupational therapy practice, scholarship, and research. The BU faculty is known among occupational therapists and the health care community throughout the world and brings a broad and rich perspective to the education of students in the occupational therapy program. They are passionate about the profession, enthusiastic about teaching, and committed to making a positive difference in occupational therapy and health care at the state, national, and international levels.
Entry-level OTD Faculty and Areas of Interest
Children & Youth
Faculty specializing in participation and inclusion in school, at home, and in the community autism, sensory integration, transitions, motor adaptation and development, obesity, traumatic brain injury, outcome measurement, interventions, youth advocacy.
Temor “Tay” Amin-Arsala’s clinical practice history stretches across the entire lifespan, from toddler-aged youth to older adults. They have worked in a multitude of settings, including, but not limited to: inpatient mental health, residential homes for individuals in substance use recovery, skilled nursing facilities, schools, home health, and senior centers. Amin-Arsala’s academic and scholarly interests focus on the experiences of historically underrepresented and minoritized peoples, groups, and populations as they pertain to occupational performance and engagement, with an additional focus on LGBTQIA+ health. Their scholarly work also attempts to shed greater insight into the experiences of LGBTQIA+ occupational therapy practitioners and students, targeting change and inclusion at the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels of societal context.
Claudio Ferre is interested in the development of manual skills in typically developing children and children with disabilities (e.g., cerebral palsy). His research examines why children who experience brain injury during the same stage of life display vastly different functional outcomes later in childhood. By codifying the relationship between brain structure, nervous system integrity, and motor behavior, Ferre aims to develop paradigms that can transform clinical practice for children with movement disorders. His studies involve a variety of techniques,
including brain imaging and neurophysiology (transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation), paired with upper-extremity therapies (constraint-induced movement therapy, bimanual therapy) to understand the roles of injury and activity in promoting plasticity. Ferre’s work has been funded by an NCATS/NIH Clinical and Translational Science grant and he is a recipient of an NIH LRP award. He is a member of the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine. Ferre teaches Functional Movement Analysis in the entry-level OTD Program.
Simone Gill investigates how individuals’ bodies and environmental demands influence walking and motor functioning across the lifespan. She uses a variety of methods to examine how children and adults modify their walking patterns to navigate through the environment. She is particularly interested in understanding how childhood and adult obesity affect the ability to adapt to change. She is a member of the American Occupational Therapy Association, the Obesity Society, the Society for Research in Child Development, the International Society of Developmental Psychobiology, and the American Diabetes Association.
Gael Orsmond is a developmental and clinical psychologist who conducts research to understand how the family, social, community, and school contexts are crucial to the development and well-being of adolescents and adults on the autism spectrum. Her main areas of research are: (1) Promoting positive transition to adulthood for individuals on the autism spectrum, (3) Sibling and family relationships in the context of developmental disabilities. Orsmond’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, including the NIA, NICHD, and NIMH. She has current funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute on Education Sciences and NIMH. Orsmond is a Fellow of Division 33 (Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities/Autism Spectrum Disorder) of the American Psychological Association and is a past president of the Division.
Leanne Yinusa-Nyahkoon, ScD, OTR
Leanne Yinusa-Nyahkoon, ScD, OTR is an occupational therapist whose practice has focused on children with disabilities and chronic health conditions and their families, the majority of whom are from urban communities of color. Yinusa-Nyahkoon is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at Boston University, a Research Scientist in the Department of Family Medicine and a Research Associate in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, both within Boston University School of Medicine. Yinusa-Nyahkoon’s research focuses on examining health disparities that affect urban communities of color and the clients’, families’, providers,’ and community’s perspectives of the inequities that impact health behavior and illness management. Her current funded research projects include Using Innovative Communication Technology to Improve the Health of Young African American and Black Women: The Gabby System. The Gabby System is a web-based health education system that uses an embodied conversational agent to assess 150 preconception health needs, and deliver evidence-based interventions to facilitate health behavior change. Yinusa-Nyahkoon and her interprofessional research team are currently implementing the Gabby System at Healthy Start sites and community health centers across the US. Yinusa-Nyahkoon’s research interests also include interprofessional care. As a qualitative expert she is currently participating in a research project examining clients’, health professional trainees’, and health care providers’ perceptions of the interprofessional care experience within urban medical centers.
Mental Health
Faculty specializing in community integration, recovery, employment.
Temor “Tay” Amin-Arsala’s clinical practice history stretches across the entire lifespan, from toddler-aged youth to older adults. They have worked in a multitude of settings, including, but not limited to: inpatient mental health, residential homes for individuals in substance use recovery, skilled nursing facilities, schools, home health, and senior centers. Amin-Arsala’s academic and scholarly interests focus on the experiences of historically underrepresented and minoritized peoples, groups, and populations as they pertain to occupational performance and engagement, with an additional focus on LGBTQIA+ health. Their scholarly work also attempts to shed greater insight into the experiences of LGBTQIA+ occupational therapy practitioners and students, targeting change and inclusion at the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels of societal context.
Dan Fulford examines the interplay between human motivation (e.g., effort-based decision-making, goal striving) and social engagement, particularly in the context of serious mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). In his work, he translates basic findings from lab- and field-based research to the development and testing of evidence-based psychosocial interventions, particularly through digital technologies (viz. smartphones). Fulford’s work is funded by federal (NIH) and internal sources. He is on the editorial board for Psychological Bulletin, the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, and the Journal of Medical Internet Research – Mental Health. He has faculty affiliations with Graduate Medical Sciences, the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, the Institute for Healthy System Innovation & Policy, the Mobile and Electronic Health Affinity Research Collaborative, and the Mental Health Counseling & Behavioral Medicine program on the BU medical campus. Fulford teaches Evidence-Based Practice-III in the entry-level OTD program, and Research Design and other seminar courses (e.g., Motivation Science) in the PhD in Rehabilitation Sciences program.
Kate Stewart is an occupational therapist licensed with the Massachusetts Board of Allied Health Professions and registered with the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy and the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario. She has experience working with adults and older adults with diverse occupational performance and engagement issues across various settings, including acute care, inpatient rehab, community care, and mental health. Kate’s clinical work has primarily focused on providing occupational therapy services at the individual level (i.e., via home care) and at the group/collective level (i.e., via community mental health advocacy and social policy work).
Kate’s scholarship emphasizes her interest in deepening our understanding of the occupational human. Her PhD research explored how women’s occupational lives unfold in the aftermath of sexual assault while at university. Today, her scholarship continues to examine individuals’ experiences of major life disruptions across the life course using an occupational perspective, with the aim of better supporting clients’ full engagement in everyday life.
Health & Wellness
Faculty specializing in oncology, falls prevention, obesity, self-management, ergonomics, telehealth, assistive technology.
Anne Escher’s clinical experiences range from NICU and pediatric units at an acute care hospital, inpatient rehabilitation with older adults, home-based care for older adults with low vision, and community-based practice for adults with communication challenges. Her academic and scholarly interests focus on ensuring that all people are able to engage as fully as they desire in important occupations. This includes consideration of academic, fieldwork, and clinical contexts. Her most recent scholarly work promotes best practices – including evaluation, goal setting, and intervention – when working with adults with aphasia or other communication impairments. In her role as Level I Fieldwork Coordinator, Escher is invested in ensuring students have a range of experiences. Her teaching philosophy includes commitment to inclusive teaching practices, inquiry based learning, and helping students connect theory and practice in order to cultivate reflective practitioners who integrate knowledge for clinical decision making.
Jessie Franco is an experienced occupational therapist specializing in adult rehabilitation, with a diverse clinical background across multiple settings including inpatient rehabilitation, skilled nursing facilities, long-term acute care, and acute hospitals. Her areas of expertise include acute care, splinting, burns, neurology, trauma, and orthopedics. Driven by a passion for teaching and learning, she focuses on enhancing student preparedness for fieldwork and acute care practice through the use of simulation-based training. As part of her doctoral work, she identified a critical knowledge and practice gap within her workplace and created an evidence-based educational website, to improve practitioner knowledge and confidence in managing patients in the Neuro ICU.
Simone Gill investigates how individuals’ bodies and environmental demands influence walking and motor functioning across the lifespan. She uses a variety of methods to examine how children and adults modify their walking patterns to navigate through the environment. She is particularly interested in understanding how childhood and adult obesity affect the ability to adapt to change. She is a member of the American Occupational Therapy Association, the Obesity Society, the Society for Research in Child Development, the International Society of Developmental Psychobiology, and the American Diabetes Association.
Karen Jacobs, EdD, OTR, CPE, FAOTA
Karen Jacobs is a past-president and vice-president of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) and a Certified Professional Ergonomist (CPE). She is a 2005 recipient of The J. William
Fulbright Foreign Scholarship, the 2009 recipient of the Award of Merit from the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (CAOT), the Award of Merit (2003), the Eleanor Clarke Slagle Lectureship Award (2011) from AOTA and Outstanding Mentor Award from AOTA. She is a fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). Jacobs’ research and scholarly pursuits examine e-mentoring on the professional development of online post-professional occupational therapy doctoral students and the delivery of occupational therapy services through telehealth technology. She completed a 5-year grant from The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) with Kent State University, JBS International, Inc., West Virginia University, and Boston University titled Project Career: Development of an Interprofessional Demonstration to Support the Transition of Students with Traumatic Brain Injuries from Post-secondary Education to Employment. Her research has been supported by grants from The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), the Office Ergonomics Research Committee (OERC) and the Harvard-NIOSH Education and Research Center and gifts from Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and Target. Jacobs is the founding editor of the interdisciplinary, international journal Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment, and Rehabilitation. She has published and presented widely on the topics of on-line education, ergonomics, telehealth and marketing. She is the author of Ergonomics for Therapists and Occupational Therapy: Work-Related Programs and Assessments; and coeditor of Quick Reference Dictionary for Occupational Therapy, Occupational Therapy Essentials for Clinical Competence, and AOTA’s OT Manager (6th edition).
Jennifer M. Kaldenberg, OT, DrPH, MSA, OTR, SCLV, FAOTA
Jennifer’s clinical experience has been primarily with adults in a variety of settings including rehabilitation, home care and outpatient with extensive focus on working with individuals with visual impairment. Additionally, she has trained and educated occupational therapy and optometry students on the functional and social implications of visual impairment on occupational performance and quality of life. She has become a leader within this specialty area. She served on the Board of Advanced and Specialty Certification and was a Panel member for the development of the low vision specialty certification. Her current scholarly work centers on clients with visual impairment and its impact on occupational performance, community and population based health, and clinical education. She is a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association.
Leanna Katz’s primary clinical focus is neuro-rehabilitation. She has extensive clinical experience in a range of healthcare settings, including acute care, inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, and homecare (community-based and hospice). Katz conducts research on improving quality of life and incorporating self-management strategies for adults with strokes and brain injuries. Another research focus of hers is on the use and application of the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System (RTSS). Katz is an active member of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM), serving as a task force co-chair in the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification Networking Group. She is also a member of various special interest groups through ACRM and is an active member of AOTA. Katz is committed to supporting future agents of change within the occupational therapy profession through facilitated learning opportunities and inclusive teaching methods.
Robin Newman, OTD, OTR, CLT, FAOTA 
Robin Newman’s clinical experience has been primarily with adults in the acute care, inpatient rehabilitation and outpatient rehabilitation settings. Her current clinical work is with cancer survivors and adults living with neurological disorders. She has a specialty certification in lymphedema therapy. She has extensive experience in the delivery of self-management interventions for individuals with multiple sclerosis, stroke and breast cancer. Her research focuses on cancer survivorship with an emphasis on the late effects of cancer treatments and their impact on occupational performance.
Emily Rothman’s research focuses on health equity and marginalized populations. Her current scholarship centers autistic individuals, Black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC), and sexual and gender minority youth on projects that seek to prevent sexual and partner violence, promote sexual health, and inclusion of neurodiverse adults in research. She has expertise on topics including interpersonal violence, trauma, human trafficking, pornography, and firearms, and since 2018, has been extending her existing lines of research to autistic health. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Justice (NIJ), US Department of Defense (DoD), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Patient Centered Outcomes Institute (PCORI), Organization for Autism Research (OAR), and others. She is an appointed member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Council on Sexual and Domestic Violence, and on the Massachusetts Task Force on Sexual Assault Climate Surveys. She is the author of the book “Pornography and Public Health” (Oxford University Press, 2021). Rothman has provided violence-related consulting to multiple state Departments of Public Health and coalitions of domestic violence programs. Rothman has appointments at the Boston University School of Public Health and the Boston University School of Medicine. She is frequently consulted by media. She has appeared on the “Today” show on NBC, and her research has been featured on NPR and by the New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Teen Vogue, and other media outlets.
Monica Watford has a background in neuroscience and health disparities. Her research focuses on acquired and traumatic brain injury outcomes, population health in underserved communities, interventions in cognitive rehabilitation, and health disparities in older minority adults with chronic conditions. Her dissertation focused on trends in caregiver support in older minority adults with Traumatic Brain injury using secondary data from Uniform Data System (UDS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She has been a practicing Occupational Therapist for eleven years in inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation settings working on multitrauma and neuro teams. Dr. Watford has been teaching in entry-level OTD programs for 7 years where she has taught foundational courses in occupational therapy, clinical neuroscience, and has mentored students in their capstone projects.
Productive Aging
Faculty specializing in low vision, stroke, Parkinson’s, driving/community mobility and musculoskeletal conditions.
Anne Escher’s clinical experiences range from NICU and pediatric units at an acute care hospital, inpatient rehabilitation with older adults, home-based care for older adults with low vision, and community-based practice for adults with communication challenges. Her academic and scholarly interests focus on ensuring that all people are able to engage as fully as they desire in important occupations. This includes consideration of academic, fieldwork, and clinical contexts. Her most recent scholarly work promotes best practices – including evaluation, goal setting, and intervention – when working with adults with aphasia or other communication impairments. In her role as Level I Fieldwork Coordinator, Escher is invested in ensuring students have a range of experiences. Her teaching philosophy includes commitment to inclusive teaching practices, inquiry based learning, and helping students connect theory and practice in order to cultivate reflective practitioners who integrate knowledge for clinical decision making.
Jessie Franco is an experienced occupational therapist specializing in adult rehabilitation, with a diverse clinical background across multiple settings including inpatient rehabilitation, skilled nursing facilities, long-term acute care, and acute hospitals. Her areas of expertise include acute care, splinting, burns, neurology, trauma, and orthopedics. Driven by a passion for teaching and learning, she focuses on enhancing student preparedness for fieldwork and acute care practice through the use of simulation-based training. As part of her doctoral work, she identified a critical knowledge and practice gap within her workplace and created an evidence-based educational website, to improve practitioner knowledge and confidence in managing patients in the Neuro ICU.
Jennifer M. Kaldenberg, OT, DrPH, MSA, OTR, SCLV, FAOTA
Jennifer Kaldenberg’s clinical experience has been primarily with adults in a variety of settings including rehabilitation, home care and outpatient with extensive focus on working with individuals with visual impairment. Additionally, she has trained and educated occupational therapy and optometry students on the functional and social implications of visual impairment on occupational performance and quality of life. She has become a leader within this specialty area. She served on the Board of Advanced and Specialty Certification and was a Panel member for the development of the low vision specialty certification. Her current scholarly work centers on clients with visual impairment and its impact on occupational performance, community and population based health, and clinical education. She is a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association.
Leanna Katz’s primary clinical focus is neuro-rehabilitation. She has extensive clinical experience in a range of healthcare settings, including acute care, inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, and homecare (community-based and hospice). Katz conducts research on improving quality of life and incorporating self-management strategies for adults with strokes and brain injuries. Another research focus of hers is on the use and application of the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System (RTSS). Katz is an active member of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM), serving as a task force co-chair in the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification Networking Group. She is also a member of various special interest groups through ACRM and is an active member of AOTA. Katz is committed to supporting future agents of change within the occupational therapy profession through facilitated learning opportunities and inclusive teaching methods.
Robin Newman, OTD, OTR, CLT, FAOTA
Robin Newman’s clinical experience has been primarily with adults in the acute care, inpatient rehabilitation and outpatient rehabilitation settings. Her current clinical work is with cancer survivors and adults living with neurological disorders. She has a specialty certification in lymphedema therapy. She has extensive experience in the delivery of self-management interventions for individuals with multiple sclerosis, stroke and breast cancer. Her research focuses on cancer survivorship with an emphasis on the late effects of cancer treatments and their impact on occupational performance.
Monica Watford has a background in neuroscience and health disparities. Her research focuses on acquired and traumatic brain injury outcomes, population health in underserved communities, interventions in cognitive rehabilitation, and health disparities in older minority adults with chronic conditions. Her dissertation focused on trends in caregiver support in older minority adults with Traumatic Brain injury using secondary data from Uniform Data System (UDS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She has been a practicing Occupational Therapist for eleven years in inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation settings working on multitrauma and neuro teams. Dr. Watford has been teaching in entry-level OTD programs for 7 years where she has taught foundational courses in occupational therapy, clinical neuroscience, and has mentored students in their capstone projects.