City & State: Ruth Gerson Featured in 2021 Nonprofit 40 Under 40
Ruth Gerson, MD – Senior Vice President of Mental Health Services at The Foundling – was named one of City & State’s 2021 Nonprofit 40 Under 40 Rising Stars!
Read about her successes below:
After working in the children’s psychiatric emergency room at New York University Langone Health for many years, Ruth Gerson says she transitioned to The New York Foundling because she wanted to prevent the kinds of crises that were landing kids in the emergency room.
When she joined The New York Foundling, Gerson started out supervising the psychiatric services for children in foster care and has since helped oversee the organization’s clinic in East Harlem that provides resources for children not in foster care as well.
“It’s not just ‘Come into my office for 45 minutes a week and I will support your child.’ It’s let me support the whole system that’s surrounding you and all of the places that you go,” says Gerson, who describes the organization’s approach as holistic.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Gerson says The New York Foundling has expanded its grief services and provided more services available directly within the community.
“We went from being an organization that had done almost no telehealth, to providing almost all of our services via telehealth in an incredibly short amount of time,” Gerson says.
Outside of her work with The New York Foundling, Gerson has co-edited two books, “Beyond PTSD: Helping and Healing Teens Exposed to Trauma,” and “Helping Kids in Crisis: Managing Psychiatric Emergencies in Children and Adolescents.” Gerson also teaches at NYU School of Medicine, where she is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
