Laurie Stephens, PhD
Senior Director of Autism and LGBTQIA+ Programs, The Help Group
Dr. Laurie Stephens is a developmental psychologist who has been working with children, teens, and young adults with autism for over 30 years. She currently serves as The Help Group’s Senior Director of Autism and LGBTQ+ Programs. In this role, Dr. Stephens provides individual and family therapy to neurodiverse clients as young as 3 years of age, though young adult. She also oversees Advance LA, Kaleidoscope, Kids Like Me, PLAN Center and the Training Department, in addition to providing clinical supervision to psychology interns and postdocs specializing in therapy with autistic youth. Previous, Dr. Stephens served as the Director of Clinical Services for Education Spectrum for 12 years. She provided diagnostic and psycho-educational evaluations, individual &, family therapy, social skills training, educational consultation and professional, academic and parent training.
Dr. Stephens received her BA in Experimental Psychology from UC San Diego, and her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from SUNY Stony Brook. Prior to working with Education Spectrum, Dr. Stephens served for 8 years as the Director of Autism Spectrum Disorders Programs at The Help Group. In her position then, Dr. Stephens created Young Learners Preschool for Autism and designed comprehensive education, behavioral and social skills programs for all the specialized day schools. She established an intensive social skills summer camp program for children with Asperger’s Disorder, which had an international reach with campers coming from the United Kingdom, El Salvador, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the UAE and other countries.
Dr. Stephens has published and lectured extensively, and appeared as an expert in autism on several news, radio and TV programs. She has served as the autism consultant to TV shows and movies. Dr. Stephens worked as a consultant to Los Angeles Universal Preschools (LAUP) to establish an evidence-based inclusion model for autism preschoolers. She also taught the course “Teaching and Supporting Students with ASD in the Classroom” through the UCLA extension program for several years and the work-readiness class at Exceptional Minds, a post-secondary school for young adults with ASD who want to go into post-production, character design and graphic arts.