Dr. Lynn Neff (formerly O'Brien) began her teaching career with students with learning disabilities in 1969. In 1973, she established Specific Diagnostics, an educational consulting center, in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area. Through testing thousands of students, preschoolers through adults, Dr. Neff observed that very few seemed to know how to learn. This provided the catalyst for writing and publishing the SOS, Strengthening of Skills program for students in grades 5 through college. Currently, SOS is distributed by an agency of the U.S. Department of Education,  Research for Better Schools (www.rbs.org) and is used in over 10,000 schools internationally. Dr. Neff has presented workshops for schools, and various state and national organizations throughout the country, not only on the SOS program, but on topics such as memory, learning styles, learning disabilities, attention deficit and psychoeducational testing. She currently consults with Sylvan Learning Centers (www.educate.com) and various independent schools in the Northern Neck area of Virginia.

Dr. Neff's undergraduate and masters degrees are in special education, with an emphasis on learning disabilities. Her doctoral dissertation focused on children, television and intelligence. She has served as the educational consultant to the National Association of Broadcasters.

Lynn has published several articles and appeared frequently on television programs including a PBS special presentation of "Critical Issues in American Education." She has written and appeared in a program on learning styles, produced by the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Her expertise includes testing; she has designed tests and devised testing programs spanning a variety of ages, from a preschool program at the Smithsonian Institution to a learning disabilities diagnostic screening at the college level.