Elissa has worked with children in some capacity for the past 10 years, starting, as most teens do, by baby-sitting. During her junior year of college, she secured a position working as a behavioral therapist with a six-year-old boy with autism. Having enjoyed that experience, she started working through the Institute for Applied Behavior Analysis with three other children.

After working at I.A.B.A. as a senior staff member for two years, she joined Huntington Learning Center, a national chain of supplemental education centers, as an assistant director. For the past year, she has worked individually with children ages 5 to 17 who struggle in school for various reasons, including undiagnosed ADHD, learning disabilities, and dyslexia.

Elissa’s favorite part about working with children with disabilities is the joy they get out of their accomplishments. She often becomes just as excited as the kids do about the little things in their lives. She always has confidence in the children’s abilities, and she shares that confidence with them. She has seen how much more effective encouragement and positive support can be as opposed to punishment or discouragement as tools for teaching and guiding. As one of her references said, “Elissa has a heart filled with fireworks. These fireworks are just waiting for the opportunity to ignite the lives of children with special needs.”

One of Elissa’s instructors added, “We need more professionals like Elissa to join teams serving families and to enrich those teams by sharing and modeling knowledge, compassion, professional training, and attitude.”

Elissa met her husband of two years, Paul, at CLU in Spanish class; he is working on his MBA. The two dote on their cat, Jaguar. During her limited spare time, she enjoys scrapbooking, reading, baking cookies, shopping, and line dancing with her girlfriends. She loves country music as well as musicals.

Elissa was nominated by her father, Stephen C. Jordan, a charter Society member.