Quiénes somos

Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Suresh Kotagal

Dr. Suresh Kotagal is an Emeritus Professor in the Departments of Neurology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA. He has also served as consultant in the Departments of Neurology, Pediatrics and the Center for Sleep Medicine at Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Kiran Maski

Kiran Maski, MD MPH is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and child neurologist and sleep medicine specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is an advocate for pediatric narcolepsy in promoting awareness of this condition among health care providers and schools.

Dr. Diego Mazzotti

Dr. Mazzotti is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Medical Informatics and in the Division of Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Dr. Emmanuel Mignot

Dr. Mignot discovered that human narcolepsy is caused by the autoimmune loss of ~20,000 hypothalamic neurons secreting the wake-promoting peptide hypocretin.

Dr. Anne Marie Morse

Dr. Anne Marie Morse is the Director of Child Neurology and Pediatric Sleep Medicine at Geisinger, Janet Weis Children’s Hospital and an associate professor the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine.

Dr. Indra Narang

Dr. Narang is the former Director of Sleep Medicine and a Paediatric Respirologist at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. She is a Senior Associate Scientist in Translational Medicine at the Research Institute.

Dr. Mohammad Nami

Mohammad Nami MD, PhD is the Director of the Brain, Cognition and Behavior Unit at the Dana Brain Health Institute and BrainHub Academy UAE

Dr. Thomas E. Scammell

Dr. Thomas Scammell received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he trained in internal medicine.

Dr. Murat Sincan

Murat Sincan, MD, FAMIA, is the director of health informatics for Flatiron Health and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Sanford School of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of South Dakota.

Executive Team

Lindsay Jesteadt, Ph.D

Co-Founder and CEO

Lindsay began her career in education, focusing on Compliance, Special Education Policies and Procedures in the State of Florida—work that challenged the current provisions of State Education for disadvantaged and under-represented children.

Lindsay Jesteadt, Ph.D—Co-Founder and CEO, began her career in education, focusing on Compliance, Special Education Policies and Procedures in the State of Florida—work that challenged the current provisions of State Education for disadvantaged and under-represented children. This led Lindsay to occupy roles in educational leadership, across several state school districts while representing parents and advocating for individual children with complex health, intellectual and behavioral needs.

In 2014, following the abrupt onset of Type 1 Narcolepsy in her 4-year-old son Noah, Lindsay’s life took on a new trajectory—one that merged her professional expertise and personal passion to help Noah and children like him. After independently identifying and securing Noah’s diagnosis but unable to find local treatment, the Jesteadt family traveled to Stanford Center for Narcolepsy Research California, where eight years, later Noah remains a patient of Prof. Emmanuel Mignot.

At this time, Lindsay began working ambitiously towards improving lives of children with narcolepsy, a role that crystalized formally as Director of Development for Wake Up Narcolepsy, where she served 4 years re-structuring and re-building the organization. Creating and implementing multiple narcolepsy programs, educational events and support services for the sleep community tapped into Lindsay’s organizational gifts and vision for a better future for all those who suffer with disordered sleep. Her commitment to the pediatric population and understanding of the parent/care-giver role has since played a pivotal role advising industry, patient advocacy organizations and supporting parents navigating the early years of childhood sleep disorders. She is called upon for her extensive research knowledge, her capacity to engage and contribute on both large-scale public platforms, one-on-one supportive roles, and her global knowledge base of therapeutic options, clinical trials, and trends in sleep research.

Widely respected for her acute eye for detail and capacity to engage with multiple stake-holders, Lindsay’s executive prowess and collaborative nature has been pivotal to the pioneering success of Sleep Consortium which she co-founded in 2021 having identified the critical need to accelerate sleep research through a global patient-centric data base.

She is published (peer reviewed) in both education and Central Disorders of Hypersomnolence and is the recipient of academic prizes—most recently honored with the 2022 TREND Citizen Science award for her dedication to the patient community and contribution to accelerating research in Sleep.

She holds a PhD an Ed.S and two M.Eds from Florida Atlantic University, further qualifications in educational leadership and to date maintains teaching at post-graduate level. She is also the Program Coordinator for the World Sleep Society and when not pioneering data collection through the work of Sleep Consortium, you can find her and her family Joe, Ella and Noah boating to the Bahamas.

Claire Wylds-Wright

Co-Founder and CXO

Claire has been advocating for individuals and families affected by narcolepsy for over a decade since her youngest daughter Mathilda contracted Type 1 Narcolepsy in 2010 at the age of three.

Claire Wylds-Wright, Grad Phys, SRP, MCSP, MFA—Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer (CXO), has been advocating for individuals and families affected by narcolepsy for over a decade since her youngest daughter Mathilda contracted Type 1 Narcolepsy in 2010 at the age of three.

Since late 2021, Wylds-Wright has served as the Chief Experience Officer of Sleep Consortium upon recognizing the need to revolutionize sleep research by leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on a patient-centric digital platform. It was her work with individuals and families across multiple rare and non-rare disease spaces experiencing narcolepsy symptoms while failing to secure a diagnosis and optimal treatment that resonated with her own journey—causing a radical re-thinking in current research methodology in Central Disorders of Hypersomnolence. Co-creating Sleep Consortium is a direct response to her desire to reduce diagnostic delays and accelerate life-changing therapies for people with sleep disorders across all ages and demographics. With first-hand experience of the detrimental impact of narcolepsy on children, parents, families and caregivers, her passion to de-burden patients is coupled with an acute sense of urgency, that life is too short not be lived fully and a belief that first-rate healthcare is a fundamental human right regardless of age, gender, geography, educational background, income, or identity status.

Born, raised and educated in England, Claire trained as a physical therapist at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, and practiced as a clinician in the British National Health Service and in private healthcare specializing in chronic pain management, community care, trauma, medico-legal representation and latterly senior management. In 2011 she moved her family from Bristol, England to the USA to secure expert care and treatment for Mathilda under Professor Emmanuel Mignot at Stanford Center for Narcolepsy research, California. Once Mathilda’s health stabilized, she began writing on narcolepsy and the impact of a pediatric diagnosis on the family unit–thereby, giving voice to children and their caregivers and exposing the under-recognized aspects of a pediatric sleep disorder diagnosis.

Her first book Waking Mathilda—A Memoir of Childhood Narcolepsy (published 2017, Palace Gate Press) won the International Reader’s Favorite 2017 Silver Medal and has also been optioned for a motion picture. Waking Mathilda is widely read and globally distributed as an educational tool throughout industry and has been featured in mainstream media, on national (US) radio and in the UK press.

Until 2021 she has held the position of Executive Director for Wake Up Narcolepsy bringing progressive redirection to educational and online support services (before and during Covid) and hosted the first narcolepsy podcast—Narcolepsy 360 with a global audience of over 80,000. It remains a body of work that demonstrates the complexities and nuances of narcolepsy and its significant inter-personal, professional, psychological and socio-economic impact.

Throughout her career, spanning advocacy, clinical work and executive experience, Wylds-Wright has interwoven her role as a primary caregiver, Key Opinion Leader, author, and sought-after-speaker to improve the lives of those that struggle with sleep/wake dysfunction—a fundamental purpose of her life. Her success is built on an innate ability to identify the inherent needs of both individuals and communities and take strategic decisions and risks to bring about connection by creating collaborative partnerships. This is central to her belief that meaningful and trusted relationships have the capacity to accelerate change for good. In pioneering the first ever interoperable sleep disorder data collection portal in partnership with RARE-X, she anticipates this new era of digital sleep research will empower patients, researchers, clinicians and industry and lead to key clinical discoveries that cross multiple disease spaces.

This year, Wylds-Wright has been awarded an MFA (prose) from the University of St. Andrews and the Citizen Scientist award by TREND—a US based social listening and acquisition research organization. She lives and works in Los Angeles and on a farm in rural Fife (Scotland) with her favorite people—Oliver, Liberty, Elliot, and Mathilda.