My mom oversaw a company that owned a school that was for children with autism and they followed a super unique and progressive model for treatment strategies. I just fell in love with the idea of getting to work with kids in the school setting because I got to see how, while those therapists are working on addressing the educational goals, you also had the opportunity to collaborate with parents in finding opportunities for their kids outside of school. This way, once they did graduate from PT within the schools, they had options and opportunities to engage in that physical activity and do socialization, just as typically developing peers would be able to do. And that's how I found myself in physical therapy.

I went to Penn State University and studied Kinesiology. One of my friends, Ken, was in the LifeLink program. He had autism. I was telling him I'm in this really cool class where we're doing group exercise, and I'm leading the group. As I started to talk more about group exercise stuff, he was like, ‘Oh, that sounds cool. But I've never done anything like that.’ We then started to look into what kind of physical activity classes he would be interested in going to. I started to recognize there was a lack of opportunities within the State College area, and a lack of inclusion for people with disabilities. It's tough because [the gyms] feel like they lack the self efficacy to include individuals with different diverse needs like Down syndrome, traumatic brain injuries, and things like that where they need a little bit more support.

I co-founded a nonprofit called Happy Valley FitLink. We offer four classes weekly for free - two are virtual classes that's open to anybody, anywhere. Just because someone has different abilities or a disability doesn't mean the classes are any different. We're still going to raise your heart rate. We're still going to give you that physiological response that traditional exercise would. We're just providing you different variations of the movements so that you can pick one that's best for your body at that time. And, importantly, we are also providing you with a community to be a part of!

My whole academic career now has been towards kinesiology, towards group instruction, towards physical activity, so why not figure out how to make this class for them? We as a profession in general - kinesiology, exercise science - the goal is to get people more physically active, to understand why it's important to be physically active, and the benefits of that. But, typically, a lot of the research they're presenting in classes is just able bodied, typically developing individuals. And not a lot of people get experience with anybody with a disability or different needs, which then ends up increasing the barriers to physical activity for those populations.

What really convinced me to pick UD was the researchers here that were focused on pediatrics. We have Anjana [Bhat], we have Michelle [Lobo] and then at the time, Cole Galloway was still here. To think that you have the opportunity to study under any of these three individuals is amazing. Being at the University of Delaware, you have the opportunity to participate in a lot of other career development. I get to be a TA for the acute care course in the fall, and then I do the pediatric course in spring. And working with Dr. Bhat, I'm able to provide some pro bono care within the Christina School District, which is a lot of fun because I get to build more clinical skills.

I’m definitely filling my enjoyment bucket, even when I'm doing different research. When I sit and reflect, I’m very lucky to be in a position where I am doing stuff that I'm super passionate about. You get to work with a group of people like Anjana and everybody else in the lab that is just as passionate about making sure that we find out answers to different questions and provide evidence-based interventions for clinicians. So I really just can't be happier."