Sheryl Frierson, MD

Dr. Sheryl Frierson is the new medical director of the Luke Waites Center for Dyslexia and Learning Disorders as of July 2019. She is a developmental pediatrician, board certified in General Pediatrics and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (NDD). Before doing her NDD fellowship, she practiced general pediatrics for seven years and observed first-hand the range and frequency of developmental disorders that primary care providers encounter. Initially, her goal for subspecialty training was to bring those skills back to a general pediatrics practice. However, she got distracted from direct patient care by the opportunity to engage in clinical research using brain imaging to investigate the neurobiology of reading and reading-related disorders. Since then she has divided her time between diagnostic patient care and clinical research focused on children and young adults with dyslexia and other learning disorders. Now, after a decade at Vanderbilt University, she has come to the Luke Waites Center for the privilege of working in this one-of-a-kind environment with an extraordinary multi-disciplinary team that shares her passion and commitment to changing the world for students with dyslexia and other learning disorders.