Theresa Wrangham
Theresa Wrangham is the Executive Director for NVIC. She became a parent advocate as a result of her daughter Deanna’s life-threatening asthma, as well as her daughter Rachel’s diagnosis of an Autism Spectrum Disorder. As a former AMTA massage therapist and Usui Reiki master, she views health holistically and brings an experienced parent's perspective on raising a healthy children affected by asthma and ASD to her advocacy work. She lives in Colorado with her husband of over 20 years, Scott.
In 2001 she co-founded the Autism Society of Boulder County (ASBC) in Colorado and served five terms as its president and, served on the Board of Directors for the Autism Society of Colorado. She has served on the Board of Directors for SafeMinds since 2007 and is its immediate past president. She serves on advisory boards for the US Autism & Asperger Association and the American Medical Autism Board and is a representative on the Boulder Valley School District Special Education Advisory Committee.
Within her community, she has helped to raise public awareness of biomedical causes and treatments for autism by publishing Colorado’s first autism specific resource guide and coordinating conferences and lectures, as well as Colorado’s consensus statement supporting the Combating Autism Act. Additionally, in 2005 she worked with local agencies to establish a parent-directed treatment program for autistic individuals who are ineligible for state DDS services. This program has paid for $575,000 in treatments and changed the lives of 115 families. She also spearheaded Colorado's legislative efforts to ban mercury-containing vaccines. She also collaborated with Google to create Project Spectrum, a program designed to assist the autism community to identify possible career paths and to give educators classroom tools, and assist parents to obtaining special education services for their children. In 2006, the Boulder County Business Report as a recognized Theresa as a Health Care Hero.
Theresa regularly published the ASBC and SafeMinds eNewsletters and, articles in Mothering Magazine, The Autism File, Age of Autism and Pathways. She has been featured in local and national television and print news reports. She is a regular lecturer at autism conferences and support groups. Most recently, she participated in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s H1N1 Stakeholder Meeting.