Introduction Nery Castillo-McIntyre

[Nery Castillo-McIntyre]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Nery Castillo-McIntyre. I'm the father of two: a soon-to-be 3-year-old girl and a 12-week old boy. My daughter has a rare genetic disorder known as Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome (RTS), which involves global developmental delays and other issues. I have been her primary caregiver since my wife returned to work from maternity leave when our daughter was 6 months old, and that has allowed me to not only take her to 4-5 different therapy appointments each week but, more importantly, to get to know her and bond with her.

However, our daughter is about to start preschool and join a special education classroom. In fact, just last Wednesday my wife and I had the first Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting with the school district to decide what services our daughter would receive and with what frequency. Fortunately, my wife is a pediatric occupational therapist with plenty of experience at IEPs for her clients, and I am an attorney. While I do not have my wife's experience, our combined professions put us in a position to know our rights - and exercise them - in the special education context.

Now that my daughter is getting ready to go to preschool, I am more than ready to rejoin the workforce. Whether or not I do it as an attorney remains to be seen, but if that is the case, there is a good chance that I will focus on disability rights and special education law. In the meantime, I have been taking some online classes through Coursera to get a certificate in Data Science (am currently finishing the second and most challenging class of the 9-course series + Capstone Project: R Programming); also, a friend who introduced me to the field is teaching me some other aspects of it.

This friend first introduced me to the field when he wrote a couple of guest columns on my blog in Spanish about Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) - but, like Matt, I have not updated my site for a long time, partially because of time, and partially because I may focus more on predictive analytics if and when I go back to it.

I met Brian and Craig in an introductory improv class Craig teaches. The rest, as they say, is history....