Joanna Urli, MS

Erica Spiegel completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at Barnard College and her Master of Science in Genetic Counseling at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, graduating in 2006. She is certified by the American Board of Genetic Counseling. She has worked as a reproductive genetic counselor at Columbia since the start of her career, counseling patients for a wide range of prenatal and preconception indications and participating in a variety of clinical research studies utilizing emerging reproductive genetic technologies. She has a particular interest in improving understanding of the genetic causes of fetal anomalies as well as the patient's experience, adaptation, and decision-making around fetal diagnoses.

Dr. Ronald Wapner is the Director of Reproductive Genetics and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Prior to Columbia University, Dr. Wapner was a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Drexel University College of Medicine and taught at Thomas Jefferson University for 22 years where he also served as the Director of Maternal Fetal Medicine. Dr. Wapner is an internationally known physician and researcher specializing in reproductive genetics. He pioneered the development of chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and multi-fetal reduction. He has authored or co-authored over 450 publications and he has been an active investigator in the area of Maternal-Fetal Medicine (MFM).

Jessica Giordano, a New York native, completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at Boston College and her Master of Science in Human Genetics/Genetic Counseling at Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 2008. After graduation, Jessica worked in the public hospital system in the Bronx providing reproductive genetic counseling to patients at Jacobi Medical Center and North Central Bronx Hospital. She subsequently worked at Weill Cornell in reproductive genetic counseling for four years before joining Columbia's Department of Ob/Gyn in 2014. Jessica is an ABGC board-certified genetic counselor with a passion for reproductive genomic medicine, working in clinical, research, and industry-related settings. In her clinical work, she has witnessed how non-invasive aneuploidy screening, diagnostic testing via microarray, and pan-ethnic screening has transformed prenatal practice, making complex genetics test part of primary obstetrical practice. Recently, she successfully led Columbia’s fetal exome sequencing study published in Lancet, the stillbirth exome study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and is the primary manager for the NICHD multi-center study PrenatalSEQ, aiming to study the use of genomic sequencing in pregnancy to change post-natal management. In these research roles, she consents patients, curates variants, and assesses genotype-phenotype correlations with the goal of ultimately communicating results to patients to impact decision-making and clinical management. Additionally, Jessica has been integral to the recent development and launch of Columbia’s Genetic Counseling Graduate Program and currently serves as a course director and scholarly projector mentor to their graduate students.