About Vinnie

The following contains heavy content.

Vinnie is a white queer Autistic, ADHD, Gifted, PDA

vision impaired, hard of hearing

survivor, creator, healer & consultant

who creates spaces for

processing, discovery, and regeneration for what could be.

Her first day of classes in a BFA program at NYU was 9/11.

After, she was misdiagnosed and drugged in the mental health industry for 20 years for having an unrecognized, misunderstood disability

and a beautiful life-energy.

After being ‘treated’ up to 4x per week by

therapists, psychiatrists,

in/out of the hospital systems — with and without her parents — in 2020,

a theatre friend

identified Vinnie’s Autistic ways of being relationship with the world.

A formal Autism

diagnosis followed.

So, too, did life-threatening medical & mental health industry abuse and discrimination.

(Note: Barriers to Autistic identification and working through medical & mental health systems in the US are of significant consequence.

Self-Neurodivergent Identification is welcome here.)

…

At age 10, Vinnie made their professional theatre debut

and continued in the Theatre Industry for 30 years

as an unidentified, masked disabled person “trying to make it on Broadway”.

With a pervasive drive to regulate her nervous system on a military-show schedule.

…

When families began being formally separated at the US Border,

Vinnie started Team TLC NYC,

a nonprofit that organizes supplies

and coordinates legal & medical support

for asylum-seeking families in New York City.

This work was written about in the book Once I was You by Pulitzer Prize winner Maria Hinojosa;

The organization continues today.

…

Vinnie was an advocate with The Harriet Tubman Effect Institute, an

Independent Consultant / Advocate

for Broadway’s

How to Dance in Ohio navigating unconscious bias & neurodiverse communication differences.

…

Vinnie is an intuitive healer (Siwa Murti).

And in survivorship and recovery, developed what one teen coined ‘a laugh you can only grow into.’

She lives in New York with her husband, also Autistic, much cooler than she,

and

will have an inevitable focus on the important — like how your dog is doing.

(Detailed version Vinnie’s path to Autism here.)