The founders of the Pediatric Anxiety Research Center—an internationally renowned center focused on childhood anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder—started their work together quite by accident.
In 1999, Henrietta Leonard, MD, was a pediatric OCD expert who had recently joined Brown’s faculty from the National Institutes of Health; Jennifer Freeman F’01, PhD, was a Brown trainee planning to enter a clinical postdoctoral fellowship—until the funding collapsed. At the last moment, with no particular background in OCD, Freeman found herself in a position as Leonard’s postdoc.
“Henrietta Leonard was a force to be reckoned with, someone who cared deeply about kids and about research,” Freeman says. “Her arrival here was perfect timing.”