As Laura grew up in White Lake, NY, it became obvious that she was a youngster with diverse interests and a unique skill set. While Laura was an active child who participated in soccer, water skiing, and cross country skiing from an early age, she also enjoyed developing her fine art talents of painting, sculpting and drawing. As she progressed to high school, she found that many of the skills that she used to be a good artist also helped her to be proficient in math and science. While Laura knew that she wanted a career that would allow her to help people, she also wanted to leverage her unique combination of art and science skills. She learned about the field of Biomedical Engineering and off she went to the University of Rochester.

While in her second year of college, Laura was introduced to the field of prosthetics by her sister, a physical therapist. Laura was drawn to prosthetics because it allowed her to use both her art and science backgrounds to design prosthetic systems that incorporate the latest in technological advances.

Laura then began shadowing a local prosthetist and targeted her engineering projects toward her prosthetic interests. Not wanting to entirely give into the engineering side of her personality, Laura spent a year in Florence, Italy at the Lorenzo de Medici School honing her art skills.

After returning from Italy, Laura graduated with her biomedical engineering degree and immediately headed to Northwestern University where she graduated with her prosthetics certification. She joined Prosthetic & Orthotic Associates in 2005 and began caring for patients immediately. Laura’s proficiencies with biomechanical topics led her to focus her efforts more on patients needing help with upper limb prosthetics. She soon developed proficiency on a wide range of upper limb prosthetic components and also began to see the need for a more integrated rehab approach with these patients.

In 2009, Laura began working with Touch Bionics, the developer of the world’s first multi-articulating hand and partial hand solution. Laura’s background was a natural fit with Touch Bionics and she soon became the Clinical Operations Director. In this role, she managed the other Touch Bionics’ clinicians, provided support to clinicians using the Touch Bionics’ products throughout North America, and attended training and events in Canada, China, Scotland and South Korea. Laura also helped to develop a unique clinical approach for partial hand prosthetic patients through which the prosthetist, the occupational therapist and the technicians worked very closely to create not only the best device possible but also a highly customized training program for each individual patient.

Laura is an important part of the Handspring team. She works with patients primarily in the New York City and Middletown, NY clinics while also helping to educate therapists, physicians and case managers about the impact that successfully created upper limb prosthetics can have on the lives of patients. Laura continues to live in the Catskill Mountain region in New York where in her free time she is refining her skills on land and water through painting, hiking, biking, waterskiing and wakeboarding.