Lori Botolino, M.Ed.
25+ years in education
Professional Member, CHADD
Advanced training in ADHD, anxiety, OCD
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Integrative Nutrition
Lori Botolino is the founder of Plum & Ivy, a boutique practice specializing in executive functioning support for college students, emerging adults, and the families and professionals who support them.
With more than twenty-five years of experience in education, Lori has worked with individuals across the lifespan – from kindergarten through college – as well as adults, professionals, and organizations seeking specialized expertise in ADHD and executive functioning. This breadth of experience gives her a unique developmental perspective on how executive functioning challenges emerge, evolve, and influence success across academic, professional, and personal settings.
Over the course of her career, Lori has come to appreciate that executive functioning challenges rarely exist in isolation. ADHD frequently overlaps with learning differences, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other factors that influence how individuals learn, organize, regulate, and perform. Her work considers the whole person – not just a diagnosis – allowing support to be both individualized and deeply practical.
Executive functioning isn't a measure of intelligence— it's a set of skills that can be understood, strengthened, and developed.
Lori holds a Master's Degree in Education and has completed advanced training in ADHD, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), mindfulness-based stress reduction, and integrative nutrition. She is a professional member of CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder).
Known for her thoughtful, individualized approach, Lori partners closely with students, families, clinicians, and educational professionals to build practical systems that foster confidence, independence, and long-term success. Her students have gone on to thrive at colleges and universities across the country, including MIT, Georgetown, Northeastern, UPenn, and Boston University.
25+
Years of Experience
Hundreds
of Students Supported
Nationwide
Students at Colleges Across the U.S.
Again and again, I discovered that the issue wasn't intelligence, motivation, or effort—it was executive functioning.
Executive functioning sits at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and education. These are the skills that allow us to plan, organize, prioritize, initiate tasks, regulate attention, manage time, and follow through. When these skills are still developing, individuals often struggle to meet the increasing demands placed upon them—not because they lack ability, but because they haven't yet developed the systems needed to manage those demands consistently.
Nowhere is this more apparent than during the transition to college.
Students who have relied on the structure of home and high school suddenly find themselves responsible for managing complex academic expectations, competing priorities, independent living, and self-advocacy—all at the same time. It's often during this transition that the gap between potential and performance becomes most visible.
My work is about helping students close that gap.
Rather than focusing on deficits, I help students understand how they learn, recognize their strengths, and develop practical systems that support lasting independence. Through individualized partnership, ongoing stewardship, and thoughtful collaboration with families and other professionals, students build the confidence and executive functioning skills they need not only to succeed in college—but to carry those skills into the rest of their lives.
That transformation—watching students move from uncertainty to confidence, from overwhelm to independence—is what continues to inspire my work every day.
Why I Do This Work
Why is there sometimes such a wide gap between what capable students and adults are able to achieve and what they consistently demonstrate?
Throughout my career, one question has always fascinated me: