Olie Westheimer was the founder and executive director of the Brooklyn Parkinson Group before her retirement. Her knowledge of dance and understanding of PD led to the development, in 2001, of Dance for PD classes in collaboration with Mark Morris Dance Group. She has presented the Dance for PD® program at conferences and symposiums in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Her article Why Dance for Parkinson’s Disease appeared in Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation in 2008. She helped coordinate a pilot research study about the Brooklyn Dance for PD program that was published in the Journal of Neural Transmission (2015). She has worked as an editor and writer specializing in medical subjects and was Executive Director of the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease. She graduated from Oberlin College and has a Masters degree in applied linguistics from Columbia University Teachers College.