I attended the University of Virginia and graduated early through the Echols Scholar honors program. After completing medical school at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Cleveland Clinic, I headed to Chicago for pediatric residency at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Following residency, I served in the US Navy as a Lieutenant Commander in Okinawa, Japan. Subsequently, I was an attending physician at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. My global health work included volunteering as a field doctor for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Africa, Project Medishare in Haiti, and receiving a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the Gorgas Institute in Lima, Peru.
My interest in child development evolved from a research fellowship in Pediatric Environmental Health at Mount Sinai Medical Center under the mentorship of Dr. Philip J. Landrigan. I earned a Master of Public Health degree investigating the potential toxicity of endocrine disrupting chemicals on the developing brain (see Publications).
After completing a clinical fellowship in Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics and a Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, I served as Chief of Developmental Medicine at Maimonides Children's Hospital, Brooklyn's only children's hospital.