Lorayne Carbon, BA, SUNY Buffalo. MSEd., Bank Street College of Education. Director, SLC Early Childhood Center, 2003-present. Former classroom teacher, childcare center director, and adjunct professor. Workshop leader at seminars and conferences on early childhood education. Special areas of interest include social justice issues in the early childhood classroom and creating aesthetic learning environments for young children.

Lorraine Ehlers-Flint, PhD, is a clinical and developmental psychologist with extensive experience working with children and their families in private settings, as well as schools, hospitals, and community agencies. She lectures on topics related to children on the autistic spectrum and the use of the Floortime/DIR approach. Dr Ehlers-Flint is also a trainer and supervisor of professionals in psychology and related fields in the US and in Latin America. She is a faculty member of the DIR Institute and the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders (ICDL). Originally from Buenos, Aires, Argentina, Dr. Ehlers-Flint is in private practice in New York.

Barbara Fields, a graduate of Smith College, subsequently received an MA in Child Development from Sarah Lawrence and a Social Work degree from Hunter College School of Social Work. She has worked with infants, children and parents for over 30 years in a variety of innovative clinical and research settings and has published and/or presented many papers, largely about treatment but also about the integration of psychoanalytic and developmental principles in work with children and their families. She is currently in private practice in New Rochelle and New York City, working with parents and children presenting a broad range of issues, including children on the autistic spectrum and theirparents, as well as individual adults.

Margery Franklin, BA, Swarthmore College. MA, PhD, Clark University. Former Director of the Child Development Institute. Professor Emerita, SLC (psychology faculty from 1965-2002). Areas of interest include language development, psychology of art and play, educational theory and practice. Author of articles and book chapters on children's language, play, artistic development, developmental theory; co-editor of Development and the Arts: Critical Perspectives; Developmental Processes: Heinz Werner's Selected Writings; Symbolic Functioning in Childhood; and Child Language: A Reader. Fellow of the American Psychological Association and past president of the APA division, Society for Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

Cheryl French, BA, UC Santa Barbara. MA, New York University. Coordinator, Child Development Institute, 2007-present. Formerly youth services coordinator for a public library in New Hampshire, assistant director of the University of New Hampshire Writing Center, program administrator for the Portfolio Program at NYU’s graduate school of journalism, teaching intern at NYU’s American Language Institute, and various roles in the theatre world. Book reviewer for Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA). Extensive experience with children and teens in after-school, public library and tutorial settings. Areas of interest include language development, especially with regard to speakers of more than one language, the arts in education, and literature and literacy.

Rachel Grob, PhD is currently Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Director of the Child Development Institute, and Health Advocacy Program faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also an investigator in health policy research, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2006-09. Formerly, she served as director of policy analysis and planning, Andrus Children's Center, and assistant to the Deputy Commissioner of Health, Westchester County. Her research interests include social influences on early childhood development; theory and practice of advocacy; and the social impact of the “new” genetics, particularly concerning parenting in the early childhood period. Author of “Is my sick child healthy? Is my healthy child sick?: Changing parental experiences of cystic fibrosis in the age of expanded newborn screening,” Social Science and Medicine, 2008; “Parenting in the Genomic Age: The Cursed Blessing of Newborn Screening,” New Genetics and Society, 2006; “Educating for Advocacy in Settings of Higher Learning,” in Patient Advocacy for Health Care Quality: Strategies for Achieving Patient-Centered Care, Jones and Bartlett, 2008, and Testing Baby: The Transformation of Newborn Screening, Parenting and Policymaking, forthcoming, as well as numerous other related articles. She holds degrees from Wesleyan University, Sarah Lawrence College, and City University of New York Graduate Center.

Roger Hart is a Professor of the Psychology and Earth and Environmental Sciences Programs of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and Director of the Children’s Environments Research Group. His research has focused on understanding the everyday lives of children and youth. He has been particularly concerned with the practical applications of theory and research to the planning and design of children’s environments. In 1978 he published Children’s Experience of Place, a natural history of children’s lives in a New England Town and he is currently engaged in a comprehensive study of how children’s out-of-school lives have changed in this town and how parents deal with these changes. He has published books on the planning and design of cities for children and onchildren’s participation in development with UNICEF and Save the Children. He is also deeply involved in improving play opportunities in New York City and the book Play Gardens will be released shortly.

Morgan Leichter-Saxby is a senior playworker, researcher and consultant who has worked with Demos Think Tank, the London Wildlife Trust, Play England and University College London. She is currently employed by the Islington Play Association on a borough-wide project to improve access and inclusion on adventure playgrounds, and the Play Association of Tower Hamlets to help council estate residents of all ages and abilities to create their own community playspaces. She also delivers training through the London Centre for Playwork Education and Training.

Edward Miller is an internationally known journalist and children’s advocate. As editor of the Harvard Education Letter he twice won the Distinguished Achievement Award of the Educational Press Association of America. He has taught at Harvard University and at Sarah Lawrence College. Ed was co-founder of the Opus 118 Harlem School of Music, and is a founding partner and director of the U.S. Alliance for Childhood. He received both his BA and MSEd. degrees at Harvard.

Cindy Puccio is in private practice in NYC and Westchester, seeing typically developing children for play therapy and doing Floortime/DIR with children with special needs, mainly children on the Autistic spectrum. Right out of graduate school, she worked for four years at The Learning Center in Riverdale doing psycho-remediation with children with a range of language needs and disorders. She then moved to Los Angeles and worked part-time at a mental health agency and part-time in a public elementary school doing individual, family and group therapy. She returned to New York about four years ago and resumed her practice. She has an MA in Child Development from Sarah Lawrence College and an MSW from NYU. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health and Developmental Disorders.

Marie Reynolds is a candidate for the MA in Child Development from Sarah Lawrence College and holds an MSW from New York University. She has over ten years experience working with children, youth and families in school, church, and community settings in Kingston, Jamaica. Currently working as a staff psychotherapist in the Mental Health Division of Andrus Children's Center in Yonkers, Marie returns home to Jamaica this summer where she will continue practice in play therapy, while promoting the important role of play in socioemotional and literacy development, and emotional healing from trauma.

Barbara Schecter is Director of the Graduate Program in Child Development at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a developmental psychologist with a special interest in cultural psychology, developmental theories, and language development. She is an author and researcher on cultural issues in development and metaphoric thinking in children. In addition to her many other graduate and undergraduate course offerings, she has developed a new course on "Play and Culture," which she taught during Spring 2008. Barbara currently holds the Roy E. Larsen Chair in Psychology. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MA and PhD from Teachers College Columbia University.

Sara Wilford, MS, MEd, is director of the Art of Teaching graduate program at Sarah Lawrence College. Since 1982 she has been a member of the psychology faculty teaching courses connecting child development theory to educational practice. She has held the College's Larsen Chair in Psychology and received a Bank of New York Award for Inspirational Teaching. A former elementary grades public school teacher and early childhood center director, Sara was a member of CHILD Magazine's Editorial Advisory Board from its inception, and a regular contributor to Scholastic's Early Childhood Today. As a member of Westchester Community College's Early Childhood Advisory Committee she has received an Outstanding Service Award. Sara's writings include two books for parents, and a new text for early childhood educators titled Nurturing Young Children's Disposition to Learn.

Penny Wilson ran an inclusive Adventure Playground in London for many years. This project provided the time and space for children with and without disabilities to play together with the support of a talented team of playworkers. She now works for the Play Association Tower Hamlets, PATH, as the Inclusion Worker. She writes about play and playwork and trains people too. With the Alliance for Childhood, she has worked in many areas of the United States, to re-kindle awareness of the need for children to have free play time.