Karissa Secora is a physician associate holding a Bachelor’s in Neuroscience, a Master’s of Physician Assistant Studies, and a Doctorate of Medical Sciences with emphasis in education, with eleven years of clinical experience in neurology, with nine of them focused specifically on headache medicine, where she holds the National Headache Foundation’s Added Qualification in Headache Medicine.

Her interest in neuroscience took root during her undergraduate studies, and was shaped further by watching a family member navigate a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and later by hearing neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor describe her own experience of stroke. Karissa entered neurology directly out of PA school, drawn to its complexity and the chance to make a direct difference for patients.

What she found instead was a gap: neurology is one of medicine’s most complex specialties, but nurse practitioners and physician assistants entering the field rarely receive a structured, specialty-specific path to learn it. Karissa spent her early career studying independently between patients and after clinic, piecing together what a formal program might have taught her directly.

That experience led her to build an outpatient neurology APP bootcamp at Barrow Neurological Institute, recruiting neurologists to teach, designing the curriculum, and reaching hundreds of clinicians from outside the organization. It was there she saw clearly: this need wasn’t hers alone.

Pathway to Neuro grew out of that realization. Karissa built it around a single, practical question: What does an APP actually need to know to walk into a neuro visit with confidence? The result is case-based, clinically grounded education designed specifically for NPs and PAs, built by someone who has done the work of learning neurology from the inside, and wants the next person to have an easier path than she did.