About Vinnie

The following contains heavy content.

Vinnie is a white queer Autistic, ADHD, Gifted, PDA, vision impaired & hard of hearing survivor, coach, creator & consultant who engineers spaces for processing, healing, reflection and regeneration.

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

Immediately following, she was misdiagnosed, drugged, and became swallowed up in the mental health industry for 25 years for having an unrecognized, misunderstood disability and a beautiful life-energy no one to understood.

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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 way of being in the world.

A formal Autism ‘diagnosis’ followed.

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

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

Self-Neurodivergent Identification is welcome!)

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Theatre

At age 10, Vinnie made their professional theatre debut in a production of Annie, starring Charlotte Rae (The Facts of Life).

And continued in the Theatre Industry off and on for 30 years as an unidentified, masked disabled person “trying to make it on Broadway”.

They use their experience as a disabled artist creative journey as source for guidance and process.

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Vinnie was an advocate with The Harriet Tubman Effect Institute

and an Independent Consultant for How to Dance in Ohio - the first Broadway Musical to feature openly-Autistic cast and creatives -

navigating conversations of unconscious bias & neurodiverse communication differences.

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

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She lives with her husband, also Autistic, much cooler than she, and maintains a hyperfocus on the important — like how your pet is doing.

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