Fall 2023

Pamela Talero Cabrejo OTD, BSOT(Col), OTR/L (she, her, ella)

Assistant Professor
Post-Professional Occupational Therapy Doctoral Program
Instagram: @andeanink

As a faculty member in the Post-Professional Occupational Therapy Program, Dr. Talero teaches courses related to leadership, exploring potential capstone project ideas, and cultural humility for transforming healthcare practices. She began as an adjunct instructor at Jefferson in early 2015, receiving the TJU Award for Outstanding Adjunct Teaching in 2020. The department is fortunate that Dr. Talero assumed a faculty position as assistant professor in 2022. In this role, she engages with our active learning community of accomplished faculty, students and staff who collectively seek to reimagine health and social services with a commitment to improving the living conditions of local communities.

Dr. Talero is very involved in professional activities.  She serves as the First World Federation of Occupational Therapists Alternative Delegate for Columbia and is a member of the American Occupational Therapy Association Board of Trustees. She is involved in international initiatives to reduce disparities in knowledge production, dissemination and visibility in occupational therapy. Currently, Dr. Talero is working within an international research consortium to examine scientific literature published in Spanish to understand its scope and gaps. This endeavor is part of a broader undertaking spearheaded by the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT). Dr. Talero’s interest lies in understanding how unequal knowledge-mobility practices shape occupational therapy local practices and how this interplay influences human occupation, health behavior, decision-making and policy-shaping endeavors.

In her spare time, Dr. Talero is an amateur illustrator and has illustrated the covers for the Colombian Journal of Occupational Therapy- Revista Ocupacion Humana since 2016.

Dr. Talero’s words of wisdom for students is to take advantage of the resources accessed as part of the Jefferson community, including physical, technical, technological and social network. Take the opportunity to be open minded and step out of a comfort zone to forge meaningful connections with both people and ideas. Be vulnerable, ask questions, think critically and push the boundaries of what's achievable. 

Sarah Klunk, MBA, OTR/L, CTP   

Director of Experimental Learning
Instructor & Academic Fieldwork Coordinator
Occupational Therapy Assistant Program, East Falls

Sarah Klunk has been at Jefferson for three years as the Academic Fieldwork Coordinator (AFWC) for our Occupational Therapy Assistant Program. As the AFWC, she is responsible for coordinating fieldwork rotations and committed to offering a diverse array of fieldwork experiences for each OTA student. She is actively engaged in community outreach and collaboration with community organizations and educators in order to support learning experiences for our students. Sarah supports initiatives to build new programs, improve existing services and identify needs in the community that can be supported by our Jefferson occupational therapy and occupational therapy assistant students.

Sarah has an entrepreneurial spirit! She has a kitchen-design business specializing in designing IKEA products. She has designed over 250 kitchens over the past eight years, which she truly enjoys. Merging her kitchen design skills with her occupational therapy expertise, she also advises clients about home remodeling options to maximize functionality and aesthetics.

With the establishment of our Experiential Learning Team, a new instrumental role was created to lead this team, focused on centralizing the policies and procedures guiding fieldwork across all programs. In July, Sarah assumed this new role as the Director of Experiential Learning. With her experience as a manager and business administration, she is perfectly suited for this role and is excited to lead the effort to merge experiential learning curricula and processes across our entry-level programs that will support and promote student learning and meet accreditation standards. Sarah is excited to work with the other experiential learning team members and is excited to see the progress the team will make together this academic year.

Building relationships with colleagues, students, and professionals in the community is important to Sarah. She enjoys learning about the great work that Jefferson and community partners do, in addition to students’ passions and initiatives. By blending these groups together and structuring experiential learning opportunities, Sarah believes student perspectives broaden and educator knowledge of the profession grows.

Sarah describes how guiding and supporting students towards their dream of becoming an occupational therapy practitioner is so rewarding! Words of wisdom for students center around the value of mentorship, “When a mentor or educator takes time to offer thoughtful constructive feedback, it is a gift that shows they are truly invested in the personal and professional growth of the student”. She encourages students to accept feedback with an open mind and appreciate how important it is for professional growth. 

Sarah Donley, MS, OTR/L, CHT, COMT-UL (she/her)

Instructor & Academic Fieldwork Coordinator
Master of Occupational Therapy Program & Occupational Therapy Doctoral Program, Center City

Sarah Donley joined the Department of Occupational Therapy this summer as one of the Academic Fieldwork Coordinators. As a 2007 alumnus of the MSOT program at Jefferson, she is excited to return to Jefferson in a faculty role.  

Sarah worked for 16 years as a hand therapist at NovaCare Rehabilitation and Cooper University Healthcare. During that time, she earned her Certified Hand Therapist (CHT) credential and certification in Orthopedic Manual Therapy for the Upper Limb (COMT-UL) and the Graston Technique© of soft tissue mobilization.  Sarah completed Certified Educator training for Dynamic Tape© leading to the development of a training in-service on the application of Dynamic Tape©. In addition, she participated in a research study on post-operative hand therapy, examining hand infections following surgery (refer to article)

While in clinical practice, Sarah was involved in designing and presenting education modules for NovaCare/Select Medical’s Hand Therapy Fellowship Program.  Advancing the knowledge of students has always been important to Sarah, as such she served as a fellowship mentor, fieldwork educator, and OTD capstone site mentor. 

Sarah is currently pursuing her Post-professional OTD from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences. For her doctoral project she is using a mixed-methods survey to examine the perceptions of Level II Fieldwork Educators regarding student need for additional didactic and clinical content prior to Level II Fieldwork in hand therapy. Sarah is interested in creating a hand therapy elective for our entry-level programs.

As she transitions from clinic practice to academic fieldwork coordinator, Sarah brings a valued perspective to students. She shares with students that occupational therapy offers many opportunities and encourages students to hone their skills and explore traditional and emerging practice areas.

Erin Lynn, OTD, OTR/L, CNT, NTMTC  (she/her)

Instructor and Doctoral Capstone Coordinator
Occupational Therapy Doctoral Program, Center City

Erin Lynn joined the Department of Occupational Therapy this summer as our Doctoral Capstone Coordinator. Prior to coming to Jefferson, she worked for 17 years in pediatric clinical practice, working in early intervention, schools, acute care, and outpatient.  Her passion as an occupational therapist emerged when Dr. Lynn began working in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).  As such her doctoral work focused on developing a program to facilitate access to therapy services and provide family support/education to promote better developmental outcomes for infants being discharged from the NICU . Dr. Lynn's doctoral work led to presentation opportunities including a continuing education webinar through DandleLion Medical (a NICU education and resources organization). 

During her work in a local NICU, she also created an annual reading program and a Kangaroo-A-Thon to encourage parent engagement and promote developmental outcomes universally in the NICU.  These programs provided Dr. Lynn opportunities to work with marketing and local foundations and generate support from community resources.  Together they successfully created programming for the unit that benefitted all the families and increased awareness in the local community about the NICU and infant development. As a result of these activities, the NICU expanded the role of therapy from Dr. Lynn's part-time position to a full therapy team representing occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech and language pathology to improve the outcomes for the babies. 

Dr. Lynn's enthusiasm and commitment to the role of occupational therapy in the NICU is a wonderful example for students. She describes her experience of helping a parent hold their sick baby for the first time as amazing and very rewarding. Moreover, impacting brain development and setting up an infant for success, she shares, is extremely critical and very meaningful to her. 

Dr. Lynn transitioned to academia with the desire to inspire students and ensure they are exposed to opportunities in the NICU and other areas of practice in which occupational therapy makes a difference. She is inspired by her academic colleagues and their work; she is energized by the many possibilities for occupational therapy and the opportunity she has to develop capstone experiences and place students in settings that will expand practice. Dr. Lynn is grateful that Jefferson provides the opportunity to engage in this type of work.