Wendy Ross is an American developmental and behavioral pediatrician with a specific focus on autism. Ross founded Autism Inclusion Resources, a non-profit organization dedicated to help children with autism participate in every day activities in their communities. Currently, Ross serves as the director of the new Center for Autism and Neurodiversity at Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University.
Ross worked as a developmental pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School until 2006, and then moved to Philadelphia and worked as the Director of Developmental Medicine and Genetics at The Albert Einstein Medical Center until July 2011. Ross founded Autism Inclusion Resources in 2011, and founded her private practice, the Center for Pediatric Development, in 2012. Aside from her work with autism, Ross serves as a board member of the Pennsylvania Branch of the International Dyslexia Association, in which she helps educate the local community about language based learning disabilities, ADHD, and their respective warning signs, diagnoses, and treatments.
Autism Inclusion Resources
Autism Inclusion Resources is a non-profit that provides services and solutions aimed at empowering children with autism to more fully participate in society. AIR focuses on methods of inclusion, and promotes this solutions by educating affected families and the broader community about how to include people with autism. AIR focuses on providing children with autism with social experiences in their communities. Ross believes that these experiences are crucial for people with autism to become independent and employable, arguing that therapies grounded in real world settings have the most positive impact on their life prospects. AIR helps families affected by autism to navigate social situations such as sporting events and airport travel. AIR's partnership with the Philadelphia Phillies, which has received national attention and awards, helps to educate ballpark workers about autism and provide families with autistic children with strategies in order to provide enjoyable ballpark experiences for children with autism. AIR's airport travel program provides a mock flight boarding experience for children and families affected by autism through a partnership with Philadelphia International Airport. A partnership with United Airlines helped to expand the program to other airports and cities across the United States.
Center for Autism and Neurodiversity
The Center for Autism and Neurodiversity focuses on developing interdisciplinary solutions in order to enable individuals with autism or other neurodiverse conditions to more actively engage in society by means of a newly created universal design. Ross believes her role is to lead the center in developing the universal design to assist in caring for neurodiverse individuals for their entire lifespans, as well as to make communities more inclusive of these individuals.
Personal life
Wendy Ross married Michael Ross on June 8, 1997. Michael Ross later died of colon cancer in September 2019. Ross is Jewish and is an active member of the inclusion committee at her synagogue, Beth Am Israel, in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania. Ross is the mother of two boys.
Awards
In 2015, Ross was nominated to be a CNN Hero for her work with children with autism. In 2018, the Council of the City of Philadelphia honored Ross during Autism Awareness Month. Ross graduated from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine as a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society. During her residency training at Yale, Ross received the Morris Y. Krosnick Award for Dedication, Compassion, and Caring.
