Dr. Mary Riddle (She/Her) received her bachelor’s degree in Theater Arts from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.  After 10 years as a professional musical theater performer, Mary returned to school and received her master’s and doctorate in Clinical Health Psychology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology.  She completed her pre-doctoral clinical internship at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health (of New York’s Psychoanalytic Institute).  She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Manhattan’s VA Hospital.

Mary and her husband, Dan, a former Broadway conductor, conceived 2 of their 3 children via IVF.  Mary was in graduate school at the time and knew after going through her own treatment that she would devote her professional career to helping others who were working to build their families.  After the birth of their 3rd child, Mary and her family moved to State College, PA where they lived for 16 years.  Mary worked as an Associate Teaching Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology and still holds a full-time academic appointment.  Currently, she teaches for Penn State’s World Campus, where she has authored a Senior Seminar in Reproductive Psychology.   During her years in State College, she also owned a private practice exclusively devoted to reproductive mental health.

Mary has conducted extensive research that has focused on topics related to infertility and family building, with an emphasis on the psychological assessment process in gestational surrogacy.  She has published in a number of leading medical journals including Fertility and Sterility, Human Fertility, Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology, Journal of Religion and Health, Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, and the Journal of Medical and Pediatric Oncology.  She also recently published 2 book chapters in Fertility Counseling, 2nd Edition (2023).

Other professional accomplishments were being selected by the American Psychological Association to attend the 2015-2016 Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology.  Mary is the past Chair of the Mental Health Professional Group of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and serves on the Editorial Board of Fertility and Sterility, the medical journal of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.  In both 2022 and 2023, Mary was named Star Reviewer for her work in Fertility and Sterility.

Mary and her family have lived in Southern California since 2021.  In her spare time, she loves spending time with her family, baking, singing in a church choir, and practicing on her guitar and banjo.