AND Action! Shining a Spotlight On Neurodiversity with Liz McDonough

Liz McDonough is a Brooklyn native who fell in love with music and theater in high school. She trained at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts and graduated with Honors in Drama. Liz performed Off-Broadway and has sung professionally in both the US and Europe including the Victoria Jungfrau Hotel, The Village Gate and the California Jazz Conservatory. In the early 2000s, she changed course, became a drama therapist, and earned a Master’s in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She found her calling doing drama, music, and theater with neurodivergent students. Liz wrote and co-directed three all-school plays with students with autism ages 7-22, and directed countless performances over her 17 years of working with this population. Liz has taught graduate school at her alma mater and is a national speaker and consultant on autism. She has shared her drama-based approach with dozens of educators through neurodiversity trainings. Making learning joyful and accessible to students with Autism and ADHD through incorporating drama and music has been a core anchor of her mission.
Liz is also passionate about social-emotional learning and has created programs Dandelion Clubhouse and AND Action!, that provided her students with opportunities for creative expression and self-discovery. Liz believes that neurodivergent students learn best in action and that by harnessing their strengths through the arts, they can thrive in the classroom, on stage and in the greater community. Her students most recently performed at The Neurodiversity West Conference and The Neurodiversity Gold Podcast. Liz loves to perform jazz standards and is honing her skills in creative non-fiction.