Ellen McCarty is a mindfulness and education specialist who serves academic outliers: students in special education and gifted programs. Her programs are recommended by Stanford Medicine's Early Support Program for Autism (ESPA) and sponsored by Opening Doors PTA and families throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. A former senior mindfulness instructor and program manager of in-school programs for Mindful Schools, she offers mindfulness meditation training for students in special education and general education as well as academic tutoring and social skills training. She completed her mindfulness meditation training in Southeast Asia, training with Buddhist masters in remote forest monasteries between 1998-2000 and received permission from a Vipassana master to teach mindfulness meditation. She has 25 years of personal meditation practice and more than a decade of experience teaching mindfulness to families with special needs.