Alison Steier, Ph.D.

Alison Steier, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and vice president of mental health services at Southwest Human Development. She is director of Southwest’s Harris Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Training Institute, the statewide toll-free Birth to Five Helpline and its “Fussy Baby” home visiting service as well as Arizona’s system of early childhood mental health consultation, known as Smart Support.

Dr. Steier earned her doctoral degree from George Mason University. She received advanced training in psychotherapy from Georgetown University, completed a pre-doctoral fellowship in clinical psychology at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital and was a visiting fellow at Boston’s Children’s Hospital. She holds a fellowship in infant mental health from Louisiana State University Medical Center and a postdoctoral degree in infant mental health from Tulane University Medical Center.

Dr. Steier is the founder and co-chair of The RAINE Group, a think tank comprised of national experts which works to advance practice, policy and research in the specialty of early childhood mental health consultation. She is a national trainer for the FAN Approach (Facilitating Attuned Interactions) and the Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants, Children and Families. She is a frequent presenter on topics related to infant mental health, both nationally and internationally, and has published in the areas of early childhood mental health consultation and young children’s attachments to special inanimate objects (“transitional objects”).