Rebecca Bagdy

About Me

Rebecca Bagdy leads the continuing education program — the Academy — at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. She is committed to creating dynamic and engaging content for 10,000 healthcare practitioners annually.

The Academy’s wide-range of programming places particular emphasis on clinical applications within rehabilitation. Under her direction, the Academy has quadrupled its outreach and shares research breakthroughs and clinical expertise with practitioners across the globe, including therapists, nurses and physicians.

During Rebecca’s tenure, the Academy also has developed new organizational capabilities by creating digital content, and blended and online course delivery — as well as developing faculty in principles of adult continuing education.  Recently, the Academy shared research on how this new learning methodology has led to improved learner outcomes in continuing education at the national meetings of the American Occupational Therapy Association and the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association.

Rebecca joined Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (then Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago) in 2015, bringing extensive business strategy and operations experience, with a specialization in education. Among her prior positions, she was Vice President of Kaplan Nursing and Health Programs for Kaplan Higher Education.

Rebecca received a BA in History from Cornell University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.