Expert Advice

A tremendous amount of thought and research goes into every Sassy product! We can't do it all by ourselves—so we'd like to introduce our fans to some of our wonderful experts!

We work with specialists in Early Childhood Development, speech pathologists, occupational physical therapists and child psychologists to bring product features that engage infants through their senses. Come back often to meet more of our experts!


Beth O’Connor, MAECD and adjunct faculty member in the Department of Psychology and Communicative Disorders, at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Ind.

O'Connor has 25 years of experience as an education specialist in Early Child Education and Development and we are excited to have her expertise!  Her teaching and research specialties are in Early Childhood Assessment; cognitive and emotional development; parenting practices to support developing synchrony; attachment; self-regulation and cognition in infants and toddlers; and early language and literacy development.

Jennifer Canter, Dr. Jen®, is a double board certified pediatrician, professor, researcher, educator, inventor, and nationally recognized expert in child safety. But the role she loves the most is being a mother of two sets of twins – one set of girls and one set of boys.

Inspired by her playing with her son, Dr Jen® invented the patent pending U-Play Mat®, and started her own company called Play This Way with Dr. Jen. She is also featured in the recently published book Good Enough is the New Perfect.

Dr. Jen® has several press recognitions including the American Medical News, Cool Mom Picks®, WorkingMother.com, Disney Radio, Pregnancy & Newborn, Kodak’s blog and AOL’s Parent Dish. She also maintains a very active social media presence through Twitter.

Kristina (Tina) Reid is an assistant professor in the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program at Wayne State University in Detroit and has more than 15 years of pediatric and rehabilitation clinical expertise and 12 years of teaching experience.

Tina’s teaching portfolio includes courses in human growth and development, basic patient care skills, orthotics, prosthetics, rehabilitation treatment along with complementary and alternative medicine in rehab and human locomotion. In addition to being a certified pediatric Neurodevelopment Treatment practitioner, she also studied human locomotion at the Pathokinesiology Lab at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Tina holds both a Master of Science degree in Physical Therapy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Therapy from Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.

She is married with two daughters ages 10 and 8 and enjoys being a Girl Scout leader, reading and spending time with extended family.