The NASP Early Career Committee spotlights one early career member’s professional work and personal experiences during their first few years of practice. The Spotlights are featured 8 months out of the year (September–June) to coincide with the Communiqué. Click each person's name or photo below to learn more about them. View past spotlights from previous years.

If you or an early career school psychologist you know would like to be featured in the Early Career Spotlight, please complete this form to nominate them. Please note: Nominee must be a current NASP member.

June 2024: Isaac Woods Jr.

Isaac Woods Jr.
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

Isaac is an assistant professor, one of six faculty members in his school psychology program. His role involves a mix of research, teaching, and service. His research focus has been on improving the schooling experience for Black children. In his Q&A, he discusses his family history with working in academia and why he was attracted to the position for his own career path.

March/April 2024: Alec Marentic

May 2024: Michaela Borgerding

Michaela Borgerding
Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, CA

Michaela is a school psychologist at an elementary school that serves students in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade. She often collaborates with special education teachers, behavior specialists, paraeducators, and speech–language pathologists for evaluations and interventions. She is the sole mental health provider on her campus and also serves on the school’s Student Success Team and PBIS team.

March/April 2024: Alec Marentic

Alec Marentic
Ka‘ū-Kea‘au-Pāhoa Complex Area, HI

Alec provides school psychological services primary for the Ka‘ū-Kea‘au-Pāhoa Complex Area in the Puna (meaning “spring”) district of Hawai'i. He supports a K–12 charter school, an elementary school, and a combined campus intermediate and high school. He conducts psychoeducational evaluations, provides consultation to their MTSS teams, and chairs the safety and crisis committee for his complex area.

January/February 2024: Tara Rempel

Tara Rempel
Freehold Regional High School District, NJ

Tara is a school psychologist at Howell High School in the Freehold Regional High School District in New Jersey. Being a collegiate student athlete gave Tara the skills to juggle many responsibilities and led her to start a club advocating for student athlete mental health. She is currently working on research to advocate for graduate training programs to cover the signs and symptoms of eating disorders as well as school-based prevention efforts.

December 2023: Adrika Ganaishlal

Adrika Ganaishlal, NCSP
Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Miami, FL

Adrika services grades pre-k–12 within three different schools in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the fourth largest school district in the United States. By developing a deep understanding of special education, Adrika is working to address disproportionality while also supporting her school psychologist colleagues as a union representative.

November 2023: Yomna Bendary

Yomna Bendary, NCSP
East Side Union High School District, San Jose, CA

After starting her career as a bilingual school psychologist at a middle school in Hempstead, New York, Yomna took advantage of an opportunity to move across the country to Northern California to work as a travel school psychologist for Pioneer Healthcare. She now serves high school students, conducting group and individual counseling sessions.

October 2023: Lidiya Badalyan

Lidiya Badalyan, EdS, PPS
Sacramento City Unified School District, Sacramento, CA, and Nevada County Charter Services Authority, Nevada County, CA

Before becoming a school psychologist, Lidiya held positions as a behavior interventionist and substitute teacher. She shares her breadth of experience, passion for trauma-informed care, and past local and state leadership roles in her Q&A.

September 2023: Antonia Edelstein

Antonia Edelstein, MEd, CAS
Clarkstown Central School District, New City, NY

Antonia is currently balancing competing demands as an elementary school practitioner in suburban New York and a doctoral student pursuing a PsyD degree at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ. In her Q&A, she shares her passion for serving children with disabilities, her dedication to staying organized, and how she integrates art into her work with children.

May 2023: Haley Gard

Haley Gard, EdS, NCSP
Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, Granger/Mishawaka, IN

Haley works at two elementary schools within the Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation in Granger/Mishawaka, Indiana. She also serves on the early childhood assessment team. In her Q&A, she discusses her roles and responsibilities and her experience growing her skills around evaluations, report writing, and data-based decision making. She also writes about relationship-building and developing confidence.

March 2023: Amy Izuno-Garcia

Amy K. Izuno-Garcia, PhD, NCSP
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Amy’s area of expertise is in autism spectrum disorder across the lifespan. In her Q&A, she shares more about her autism training experiences and what her current role looks like. She also shares her NASP leadership experience and why she would recommend that early career professionals seek out volunteer opportunities.

January 2023: Candace McFann

Candace McFann, EdS, NCSP
Covington Independent Public Schools, Covington, KY

Candace is a school psychologist at a high school in Covington, KY, where she conducts psychoeducational evaluations, provides counseling services, executes school-wide suicide training for students, and serves on numerous teams. In her Q&A, she writes about her passion for supporting students with autism, which led to her research project on mentoring programs as an intervention for students with ASD.

November 2022: Abigail Dixon

Abigail Dixon, EdS
Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corporation, Ellettsville, Indiana

Abigail is a school psychologist at Richland-Bean Blossom Schools where she serves as part of a grant-based team engaged in MTSS implementation in her district. In her Q&A, she shares more about this opportunity and how it has allowed her to gain a breadth of experience, as well as what it was like to have her internship year cut short by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

October 2022: Kathryn Kurtz

Kathryn Doherty Kurtz, PhD, NCSP
University of Massachusetts Boston and Boston Public Schools, Boston, MA

Kathryn is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts – Boston and also provides services to Boston Public Schools. In her Q&A, she discusses how she came to these roles, how she hopes to use her research to prioritize the voices of those who have been historically marginalized, and how she serves as an advocate for students.

September 2022: Sandy Flores

Sandy Flores, PhD, LCP, NCSP
Maine Township District 207, Park Ridge, IL

Sandy is a school psychologist at a high school in Des Plaines, IL, as well as an adjunct professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. In her Q&A, she writes about her primary role as a practitioner, her passion for expanding culturally responsive practices in schools and how it intertwines with systems-level change and data-based decision-making, and her advice for other school psychologists looking to develop their expertise in working with diverse student populations.