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Background and History

Sonya Kurzweil Developmental Center (SKDC) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support child-family mental health and child development.  It was founded by Dr. Sonya Kurzweil in 1995 to provide clinical services and community programs for children and families. 

 

From 1995-2005 the organization offered PLAYSPACE for young children and parents (www.playspace.org). This program provided group support and individual psychotherapy for women with infants and young children and preventive mental health groups for the children of these moms.

 

​From 1999-2024 Dr. Kurzweil provided individual child, parent and family psychotherapy.(www.skdcpp.org)

​​Current Focus

In 2004, SKDC began to engage in community projects to support child-family mental health and child development.  Grants for these types of projects are currently the organization’s primary mission.  For example:

Project Poetry & Pictures, Boston Public Schools and Boys and Girls Clubs (2004-2010)

www.projectpoetryandpictures.org

PlaySpace at the Boston Children’s Museum (2014-ongoing)

playspace.bostonchildrensmuseum.org

Sonya Kurzweil Grant Programs at William James College (2017-ongoing)

www.skdcwjc.org

Staff and Advisors

Staff

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Sonya Kurzweil, Ph.D., Founder & Director, SKDC

     Sonya Kurzweil, Ph.D. is a psychologist who very recently retired after many years of hospital practice in Boston, followed by 25 years of private practice in Newton MA.  She specialized in psychotherapy with women, children, parents and families.  She also recently retired from her faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School which she held for more than 20 years.   She continues academic work as Senior Lecturer at William James College where she has been affiliated since 2017.

       Sonya enjoys research and writing endeavors.  Her research articles have been published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Infant Behavior and Development and the American Journal of Psychotherapy and she has co-authored a book of poetry for children with her daughter entitled: Forever Poems for Now and Then.   Last year she co-authored a New Yorker comic, also with her daughter.

      Sonya also enjoys supporting conservation and preservation endeavors.  In keeping with this, she directs Friends of Crystal Lake (www.friendsofcrystallake.org), a neighborhood, non-profit organization she founded in 1995.

Bob Beal, CPA 

SKDC Accounting Associate​

Lindsay Boffoli, B.A.

SKDC Executive Support Associate​

Ken Linde, B.A.

SKDC Media and Tech Associate​

​​​​Project Advisors

Amy Kurzweil, MFA, writer and New Yorker cartoonist

Ray Kurzweil, Inventor, Author, Entrepreneur, 21 honorary doctorates

Satu Mehta, M.Ed, Teacher, Child Development Specialist, Emeritus Wheelock College

Carolina Rosenstein, LLM (Brazil), DESS (France), Specialist in Family Mediation and Psychoanalysis

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Kim Storey, Ed.D, Child Development Specialist, Educator and Researcher, Boston vs Bullies​

Sharon Weinstein, M.D., Child, Adolescent, Adult Psychiatrist, Private Practice, Lincoln, MA.,

Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, Part-time, Harvard Medical School, 

Medical Director and Past President, New England Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 

Sonya Kurzweil Developmental Center (SKDC)

Newton Highlands, MA 02461 | 617 332-0302

sonya@skdc.org

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