Julie Blodgett, MS, OTR/L, is a licensed occupational therapist and founder of Thrive Smart Solutions.  She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and English from the University of California Santa Barbara and received her master’s degree in occupational therapy from Tufts University.  Julie brings over ten years of experience providing comprehensive occupational therapy services in inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation in acute, short-term, and long-term care settings.  She has focused on providing specialty services to clients with progressive neurological diseases, with a strong emphasis on the use of alternative access methods and assistive technology to achieve client goals.  She has served as a supervisor for occupational therapy fieldwork students, mentored occupational therapy doctoral students completing their doctoral capstone projects in areas related to assistive technology, and mentored cohorts of students in assistive technology courses in creating user-centered product design for clients with disabilities.  She has been recruited to serve as a featured speaker for webinars discussing the use of assistive technology as a tool to achieve independence, and as a guest lecturer for Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology Course. 

Julie is passionate about working with adults and individuals with complex medical conditions to find creative solutions to maximize their independence despite physical and/or cognitive challenges.  While she continues to desire to work with individuals with complex medical conditions and neurological diseases, Julie has identified a critical need for expansion of occupational therapy services addressing technology access to the wider population as well, as she believes the emergence of mainstream technology offers an invaluable advantage in supporting adults to age gracefully in their homes for longer.  THRIVE was founded with the specific intent to expand services from the clinic to clients in their home environment. We focus on using a holistic and client-centered approach. We hope to optimize safety and independence, and to support individuals to thrive in their homes.