Beth Sheidley

Ms. Sheidley is a licensed genetic counselor with over 30 years of experience in clinical genetic counseling, research, and teaching. Her areas of expertise include autism, epilepsy, psychiatric illness and both prenatal and pediatric genetic counseling. She received her BS degree from Cornell University in 1990 and her MS in genetic counseling from Brandeis University in 1994, where she served as Professor of the Practice/Co-Director of Research and Professional Development from 2005 to June 2014.

Ms. Sheidley is the Director of Genetic Counseling for the Department of Neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital. With Drs. Chopra and Srivastava, she serves in a leadership capacity for the Neurogenetics and Neurodevelopment Section.

Ms. Sheidley co-founded the first Epilepsy Genetics Program in the United States at Boston Children’s and co-founded/chairs EpiGC, an international network of genetic counselors who specialize in epilepsy genetics. Beth also serves on the Epilepsy Foundation’s Professional Advisory Board and is the Co-Editor of genetics content for the Epilepsy Foundation’s website.

Ms. Sheidley was the lead author of a systematic review of the epilepsy genetics literature on behalf of the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) and co-authored the resulting practice guideline adopted by NSGC and endorsed by the AES. She is a Co-Investigator for the Gene-STEPS study at Boston Children’s, which enrolls infants with recent seizure onset for rapid whole genome sequencing.