Not that long ago, Elizabeth Norton considered herself a steadfast, lifelong New Englander. She grew up in Campton, New Hampshire, graduated from Holderness School and Dartmouth College, and went on to earn a PhD from Tufts University and complete postdoctoral training at MIT. Among her favorite things, she lists New England mountains and the Red Sox. But when Northwestern University offered her a job as an assistant professor and research lab leader, she headed west, carrying with her some lessons learned during her days at Holderness.

“It’s about finding your people,” Norton says. “When I came to Northwestern and interviewed and met some of my colleagues for the first time, I thought, ‘These are going to be my people. We’re going to support each other and make each other better.’ It was the same thing at Holderness—I found people with whom I really connected. That has resulted in 23 years of friendship with people who make a huge difference in my life.”

Connecting with people –whether it’s through her research, teaching, or mentoring others—is at the core of Norton’s work. As part of her role as an assistant professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Norton is the principal investigator of Northwestern’s LEARN (Language, Education, and Reading Neurosciences) Lab, where her research focuses on understanding reading and language development, as well as learning and developmental disabilities, including dyslexia and autism. Norton has long been interested in both language and science, and her connections with Holderness School teachers in these subjects impacted the trajectory of her professional life.

“Norm Walker inspired confidence in me and pushed me to be better, and to take risks. Every time I write a scientific paper, a recommendation letter, almost anything—I hear him in my head,” she says. “My science teachers—Katie Gamble Marvin, Chris Little, and Paul Elkins—made sure to leave room in our lessons for questions and following our curiosity. They really laid the groundwork for me realizing that being able to ask and answer scientific questions was extremely satisfying. I really feel that all of these teachers had confidence in me before I had it in myself.”

At Dartmouth, Norton created her own major, “Language and Brain Development,” to be able to pursue both interests. A two-year stint of teaching at the Landmark School in Beverly, Massachusetts—for students with dyslexia or other language-based learning disabilities—further inspired her work.

“I had a classroom full of high school students who were all very bright and all had different strengths, but reading the textbook was really difficult for them,” she says. “Seeing these students being held back by their difficulties with reading and language, I decided I wanted to get my PhD. And I realized the way to approach this is to catch these challenges early. Early intervention matters. The brain is more plastic and malleable early in life.”

Now, Norton is leading three National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded studies at her lab, where the motto is “Do good science, and do good,” which Norton says means, “We try to do work that makes us all better people and helps improve things in the broader world.” That work focuses on ways to identify language and neurodevelopmental problems in children as young as toddlers and infants, using such tools as brain imaging and behavioral measures. Pre-Covid-19, her lab was also working to determine whether language assessments conducted by video chat were as effective as those done in-person. The findings were published as schools were shifting to remote instruction at the start of the pandemic, and Norton says, “A lot of researchers and speech pathologists who use these assessments have told me that this paper was very important to them.”

Norton feels strongly that access to information and early intervention services is critical. For this reason, she makes sure any journal article she publishes is freely accessible to the people who need it. She also works with grassroots parent- and teacher-led organizations, such as Decoding Dyslexia, to enact policy changes that may lead to early and accurate screening for dyslexia and other learning disorders. And she consults pro bono with area school districts to help set up screening for learning disabilities and to ensure educators have the best possible training in this area.

This, too, stems from her time at Holderness. Norton was a day student and said her family could not have afforded to send her to Holderness without financial aid. She credits admissions officers Peter Barnum and Heather Cameron with working with her family: “I think that so many students could benefit from a place like Holderness. I really give them a lot of credit for helping me be the person I am now.”

One of Norton’s favorite things about her work is mentoring, whether it’s undergrads, postdoctoral students, or the teenagers who participate in the summer program she established at Northwestern for high school students from diverse backgrounds to learn about neuroscience and research professions.

“I really love mentoring, and I think in part it comes from having good mentors, starting at Holderness. It was incredibly influential to me to have somebody who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, to see that they thought that I could do more and do better,” Norton says. “I have students in my lab who are first generation college students. To have the chance to show students that I believe in them, and that they can do more and do better—to help them feel that they belong and this is where they can do good work and do something that they feel confident in and feel good about doing—that’s really important to me. I’m trying to include a more diverse group of students who are very much underrepresented in science and try to understand the best that I can the challenges that they face. I really believe that we’re going to do the best science when we get the most diverse group of brains together and everyone can feel that their ideas are valued.”