As a board-certified child/adolescent & adult psychiatrist and Distinguished Fellow in the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Susan D. Rich has dedicated her professional career to diagnosing, treating and preventing Neurodevelopmental Disorder associated with Prenatal Alcohol Exposure (ND-PAE) – known more commonly as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Dr. Rich holds a Bachelor of Science in microbiology, magna cum laude, from North Carolina State University, as well as both a Master of Public Health in health policy and administration and a Doctor of Medicine from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed a psychiatric residency at Georgetown University Medical Center and a child psychiatry fellowship at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC.

Before entering public health and medicine, Dr. Rich worked in pharmaceutical drug development for 4.5 years in Research Triangle Park, NC. Her public health career included developing programs in affiliation with The Arc and The March of Dimes for preconception health, family planning and substance abuse treatment in rural and Native American communities in North Carolina, the Kahnawake Mohawk community outside Montreal, Canada and in the Navajo Nation of New Mexico and Arizona. As a thought leader in FASD and neurodevelopment, she has spoken internationally in Manitoba, Vancouver, and Toronto, Canada; Vienna, Austria; Vilnius and Alytus, Lithuania; and Shanghai, China as well as at several annual conferences at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association. She is founder and President of a nonprofit, 7th Generation Foundation, which operates Dream Catcher Meadows - an inclusive green care farm animal sanctuary.