Presenter Bios
Leah S. Dunn, MS, OTR/L, has 20 years of experience as an occupational therapist in a variety of settings, including acute care, home health, school system, and private practice. As the rating therapist on several stroke studies through the University of Cincinnati’s Neuromotor Recovery and Rehabilitation Lab, she has acquired additional experience with outcomes measures. Dunn is the site coordinator for the occupational therapy assistant program at Brown Mackie College–Northern Kentucky campus. She earned her bachelor’s degree in occupational therapy from Northeast Louisiana University and her MS from Eastern Kentucky University. She is pursuing a doctorate in rehabilitation science at the University of Kentucky.
Lisa Finnen, MS, OTR/L, is supervisor of occupational therapy at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she oversees the outpatient neurology and outpatient hand therapy services. Finnen has been an occupational therapist since 1997; her expertise includes the assessment and treatment of patients with neurological involvement, upper-extremity technologies, vision, vestibular function, cognition, wheelchair seating and positioning, and spasticity management. She is certified in vestibular evaluation and treatment and is involved in several research initiatives involving the use of upper-extremity technologies.
Valerie Hill-Hermann, MS, OTR/L, is the research occupational therapist in a stroke research lab at the University of Cincinnati. She works with stroke survivors in studies addressing functional ability, motor impairment, and quality-of-life changes after applying different innovative treatment approaches. Hill-Hermann has extensive training in and has worked with many of the new technologies and approaches presented in this workshop; in addition, she has taught and presented study results on many of interventions presented in this workshop. She has been trained in interventions including EMG-triggered electrical stimulation, functional electrical stimulation (including Bioness H200), Interactive Metronome, game-based software (including Coretx), mental practice, and cortical stimulation.