About

Who is The OT Butterfly?

Hi! I’m Laura. I’m a mom, wife, pediatric OT and huge huge “Disney Adult” fanatic.

My mission is to help parents, educators and kids understand how sensory processing impacts behavior. If I could shout it from the roof top, I would, “SENSORY IS BEHAVIOR!!!”

Instead of shouting it from a rooftop, I do talk it about it A LOT on my website, in my podcast, on instagram and even my book.

In a world built by neurotypical people FOR neurotypical people, our neurodivergent kids are being excluded and “othered” and really put into situations in which they are forced to change who they are for the convenience of neurotypicals.

I want to change that narrative. And you’re helping, just by being here.

My educational background

I got my B.S. from UC San Diego (Go Tritons!) in 2010 with a degree in Neuropsychology. I fell in love with all things neuro my senior year of college and wanted to go into grad school to get my Ph.D. in Neuropsychology. 

For 2+ years I worked for UCSD V.A. System as a research project manager for a Bipolar and Schizophrenia lab. While I was applying to grad school, I had a random change of heart and decided… research is great, but man do I hate writing papers! In this mini life-crisis, my boss at the time told me about Occupational Therapy (his wife was an OT!) and as soon as I found out that an OT didn’t mean finding people jobs, and realized that I could work in health sciences without another 4 year school, I was hooked.

It was all down hill from there!

I graduated from San Jose State in 2015 with my Masters in Occupational Therapy and since then, I’ve been hooked. I fall in love with this field more and more everyday.