Sheila Grant Orphanides joined RIAIMH in 2022, where she leads the planning and delivery of RIAIMH’s core events, and professional development offerings. Over the last 25 years, she has been committed to building expertise in the social and emotional foundations of learning, early brain development, responsive caregiving, and the indicators of high-quality infant and toddler care and education and Early Intervention. She has experience as a toddler teacher, EC program administrator, researcher, Early Intervention specialist, consultant, and professional development provider.
For 9 years prior to coming to RIAMH, she led the design and delivery of research-based professional development focused on infants and toddler development, infant mental health, relationship-based caregiving, and program administration for EDC's Center for Early Learning Professionals. In that role, she also provided on-site technical assistance to administrators of infant and toddler programs and provided practice-based coaching to Early Head Start teachers. She serves on several state committees related to advocacy, higher education in ECE, and workforce development. Sheila co-created the revised RI Early Learning and Development Standards (RIELDS) professional development courses for infant and toddler care and education professionals.
She has presented at several national and regional conferences of organizations including: Zero to Three LEARN, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the Division for Early Childhood (DEC), the State and Territory Administrators Meeting (STAM), and the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children (RIAEYC). She served for 3 years as an adjunct instructor at Rhode Island College, where she collaborated with Zero to Three and RIAIMH to incorporate Infant Mental Health competencies into ECE coursework.
Sheila received a BA in Human Development from Colby College and a MS in Early Intervention/Birth to Three from Wheelock College and has earned IMH-Endorsement® as an Infant Mental Health Mentor, Faculty/Research.
