Panos Rekoutis (MA '00, PhD '10)
Congratulations to the recipient of the ninth annual Jim Hinojosa Distinguished Alumni Award, Panos Rekoutis, PhD, OTR/L.
We are pleased to announce the recipient of the 2025 Jim Hinojosa Alumni Award, Panos Rekoutis. The award, named in honor of the late Dr. Jim Hinojosa’s immense impact on the NYU Steinhardt Department of Occupational Therapy and the entire OT field, recognizes outstanding NYU OT alumni making significant contributions to the profession.
Panos has been working in the field of OT for almost 30 years, and his experience spans across 3 continents, having consulted internationally in Greece and India as well as working in the United States. We recently talked to Panos about his career, his time at NYU, and his advice for future OTs and OT students. Please read on for the full interview.
First, please can you tell us a little bit about your work and fields of expertise?
I like to say that I wear different professional hats every single day. Through my private practice (ReDiscoverKids, OT PLLC), I work with young children and teens with a variety of challenges, such as gross and fine motor coordination disorders, handwriting difficulties, sensory processing disorder, feeding disorders and/or learning difficulties, autism, and cerebral palsy. Wearing another hat, I serve as adjunct faculty for the Department of Occupational Therapy at NYU, which gives me the opportunity and the privilege of teaching graduate and post-graduate students. My last hat is as a researcher, engaging in research projects through the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. In recognition of my contributions to the profession, I received the NBCOT 2021 Clinical Impact Award.
And congratulations on your latest achievement: the Jim Hinojosa Alumni Award! What does receiving this award mean to you?
Receiving the award is a huge honor. The initial decision to enroll at NYU was because of Jim Hinojosa and Anne Mosey’s School of Thought, which guided the profession’s guidelines for practice. My wife, Katherine, and I wanted to learn from the ‘gurus’ of the profession. NYU became our home away from home for 4 years. Jim was such an inspiring and steady source of knowledge and guidance through both of my degrees, as the chair of the department at the time, as a course instructor, and also as the chair of my dissertation committee. I always looked forward to our advisory meetings because of the discussions we would have about the profession at large. He had such a unique perspective on the OT landscape, and being part of those intellectual exchanges felt like an invaluable privilege. To have my name associated with Jim’s through this award is an indescribable feeling of pride and accomplishment.
What inspired you to pursue occupational therapy as a profession, and what continues to inspire your work today?
I have often reflected on this question. I firmly believe that becoming an Occupational Therapist was a calling. When I started college in Greece, I qualified to enroll in OT school on the basis of test scores. In a sense, I kind of stumbled into OT and knew nothing about it. But I fell in love with OT while volunteering in a seven-day overnight camp with children and adolescents with developmental disabilities at the end of my freshman year. It was such an intense and uplifting experience that sealed the deal for me. The ability to contribute and have an empowering impact on a child’s life was, back then, and continues to be to this day, what drives me as a person and as an Occupational Therapist. Seeing the smile of success on a child’s face after they have completed something they felt was “too hard” for them is a priceless and unparalleled reward.
How has your career been developing post-graduation?
Receiving my Doctoral degree back in 2010 was a pivotal moment and a turning point. It signified the beginning of a new phase in my professional life when I created a structure that would allow me to perform all three elements that I love engaging in as an OT: client care, teaching, and research. Through my private practice (ReDiscoverKids, OT PLLC), I have been working directly with children and their families through school and home based treatment, and I am doing consultation work with several schools and preschools in the New York City area and in Connecticut. Never veering away from NYU, I have been teaching courses on Childhood Development, Pediatric Occupational Therapy, and Assessment and Evaluation Methods and Ethics. I am also actively mentoring 45+ therapists in my position as the Director of Clinical Services at Manhattan Children’s Center. And last—but not least—is my involvement with the Horatio Alger Association for Distinguished Americans as a member of their Research and Scholarship Selection Committee.
You have served as a Clinical Consultant on so many projects – including international ones. Can you tell us about a project that has had a lasting impact on you?
One of the fun and very interesting projects I was involved in was consulting in the design of the WADI HANIFA Sports and Recreation Activity District in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. My role was to provide insights in creating an “Inclusive Outdoors Environment.” Given the resources that were available it was very inspiring to collaborate with an interdisciplinary international team on concepts related to Connectivity, Accessibility, Safety, Environmental Friendliness–Compatibility, Gradation and Ease of Use, Leisure, Exploration, and Learning. I also had the opportunity to provide workshops on sensory processing and sensory diets in New Delhi in India to families and therapists with rather limited resources. Being able to problem solve with them and to come up with low cost alternatives for sensory equipment, toys, and different implements was deeply uplifting, as the project was centered around one of my core principles as an Occupational Therapist: “Provide Adaptations and Solutions Whenever and However Necessary.”
As an instructor, what do you consider your priorities in the classroom?
My main goal for teaching the Development and Pediatrics graduate-level courses was to make sure that the students were acquiring solid foundations—both theoretical and clinical—to prepare them for meaningful and productive fieldwork affiliations and then entry into professional practice. Woven into all the theory and labs were efforts to develop the students as early ‘Reflective Practitioners.’ With regard to teaching at the post-graduate level, everything is seen through this lens of the ‘Reflective Practitioner.’ The main goal and priority is to develop and enhance critical thinking pertaining to different aspects of practice, while nurturing a more holistic reasoning that considers the larger societal conditions and realities.
How did your own time at NYU Steinhardt prepare you for your career?
This will be such an emotional answer. The short version is: I would not be where I am today, both as a professional and as a person, without NYU. The post-professional Master’s program was the stepping stone to make the leap from Greece to the US. Because of NYU, I have now spent the second half of my life in the US. All of the experiences—my clinical courses training; the doctoral level courses; the teaching fellowships with Bernadette Mineo, Anita Perr, and briefly with Jim Hinojosa; the whole process of conducting the doctoral research project and the dissertation that came to life as a result—have directly and indirectly shaped my clinical approach and my way of thinking and investigating professional challenges and issues. I recently told my students in my Ethics class that my doctoral degree was a personal pursuit of Knowledge. Everything that I have learned as a student at NYU has supported me—in one way or another—every single day for the past 27 years.
Do you have any final thoughts for OT students and early career OTs?
Never stop pursuing additional learning! One thing I love about being an OT is that I learn something new every single day. Lean into your instructors, mentors, fieldwork coordinators, and supervisors for help and advice. Never fear to ask a question, no matter how simple or ‘Duh’ it may feel. Remember: Our call in life as OTs is to help others achieve meaning in their lives—why would we not do it readily and willingly for you, our professional students and future colleagues?
