I was born in Israel but grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. I attended the University of Virginia in the Echols Scholars Interdisciplinary program, completed medical school at Ohio State University College of Medicine, and trained in pediatrics at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Following residency, I served as a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy stationed in Okinawa, Japan. After the military, I briefly practiced at the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles before volunteering as a field doctor for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Uganda and Nigeria.
My interest in child neurodevelopment evolved from a research fellowship in Pediatric Environmental Health at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York under the mentorship of Dr. Philip J. Landrigan. During that time, I also earned a Master of Public Health degree investigating the potential toxicity of endocrine disrupting chemicals on the developing brain (see Publications), volunteered for Project Medishare in Haiti, and received a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the Gorgas Institute in Lima, Peru.
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 in Brooklyn, NY.
More recently, I was an attending physician in the Center for Development and Learning at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore and assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
I am currently Director of Developmental Medicine at Ally Behavior Centers in the Washington DC area.