Adele Breen-Franklin brings decades of experience and passion to her role as MOT program director.

“I have found that those people that can be flexible, that can look outside the box and get a holistic view of a client will be excellent clinicians.”

Adele Breen-Franklin’s journey to become the master’s in occupational therapy (MOT) inaugural program director started far from the occupational therapy field. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Adele went to Barnard College in New York City and then worked for 10 years in radio and television. From there, she attended law school and clerked for a Philadelphia judge, the Honorable Abraham Gaffney.

After spending several years working in a law firm, Adele realized that being a lawyer was no longer fulfilling. Her decision to pursue a career in occupational therapy (OT) came from personal experience with her first child. “My son had a lot of developmental delays, and it was obvious pretty much from the get-go. As a new mother, I was very nervous and scared, so I applied for early intervention services. When they tested my son, they told me he would need occupational therapy. At the time, I said, ‘no child of mine is getting occupational therapy. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.’”

Despite her initial protest, Adele changed her mind after watching the occupational therapists who worked with her son. She was completely sold by how different it was from her expectations. The OTs never made Adele feel bad about herself or her parenting and they explained what they were doing with her son and why. “The combination of not feeling judged and understanding the specifics of the therapy and how it would help my son, just really clicked with me.”

Based on this personal experience, Adele chose to go back to school and earn her degree in occupational therapy at Philadelphia University. Adele likes that occupational therapy is about doing activities that are meaningful to the client and that it can be a very creative field.

After graduating with her degree, Adele started working in school-based therapy, often having to look at classroom environments to see how they are affecting students. “I once worked with a little boy that had autism, and the teacher told me he was having a terrible time in her classroom but wasn’t aware how noisy it was. We had to collaborate and figure out a way to make the environment work for him. We did this by creating a space in the classroom where he could go and feel calm in the middle of the storm.”

After working in schools, Adele was recruited by Philadelphia University to work on PHISH, an occupational therapy project at a local women’s prison. Part of Adele’s work there involved conducting assessments of the women’s cognitive levels. “The vast majority of these women were smart, bright, and had a great sense of humor but on the other side of the coin, they were at a stunted growth level. We discovered that their maturity level was that of teenagers, so we had to bring everything to that level. We worked with them a lot on self-care, nutrition, diet, and mental health diagnoses and they were really fascinated with these topics.”

Adele shared that many of these women had also been victims of violence and sexual assault and had never experienced true friendship, especially with other women. “We did an exercise where they had to create a personal ad for what they would want in a friend and most of them could not do it. But more often, we would simply play games or do arts and crafts activities with them that helped them be more themselves. It was eye-opening to me, and it really showed me what OT could do for people.”

After working in the prison, Adele moved on to higher education starting out as a faculty member at Harcum College and then working at The University of the Sciences, eventually becoming their doctoral program director. In 2023, she was offered a position at Alliant to start a master's of occupational therapy program and decided to go for it.

“It's very exciting to start a program and to have a vision for what you would like to do. I’m basing it on what I learned at Philadelphia University, which highly influenced me with regard to education, practices, and pedagogy. I’m using what worked there to develop the Alliant program, which is occupation based, client centered, and also student centered.”

Adele also wants to ensure that the MOT program has both the core physical and psychological components of occupational therapy. “There is always a psychosocial element in every treatment that an OT performs. Whether you’re working with a person who has bipolar disorder or depression, or a gentleman who's always been independent and now has had a stroke, or a child that realizes he can't keep up with the students in the classroom. It can appear similar to physical therapy, but occupational therapists look holistically at their clients. They need to know anatomy and physiology, but also psychology and the cognitive pieces that affect people. That's a really big part of their work.”

While the program is intense, Adele stressed that one doesn’t need to be a science major to pursue an education and career in this field. “It's more about thinking and being flexible and being creative, about your interventions and being client centered. I have found that those people that can be flexible, that can look outside the box and get a holistic view of a client will be excellent clinicians.”

As an example, Adele recalled one former student, a young man who was working with a young trans woman. “Her parents had abandoned her, and she was in a ward and all she wanted to learn was how to paint her nails. My student was her OT, and he knew nothing about that. But, as a true occupational therapist, he asked his co-workers to teach him how to paint nails and he did that with her because that's what the client wanted. That really warmed my heart.”