Program Leadership

Rachael Bradshaw graduated from the University of Cincinnati with her MS in Genetic Counseling in 2004. She has been working as a prenatal genetic counselor in St. Louis since her graduation, first at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) and later at Saint Louis University (SLU) School of Medicine. She is an Associate Professor at SLU and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at WUSM. During her early career as a general prenatal counselor, Rachael helped develop telehealth genetic counseling services and implemented up-to-date genetic diagnostic and screening protocols for the healthcare systems in which she worked. She has a passion for the field of Fetal Care and Intervention, and currently focuses her clinical work at the St. Louis Fetal Care Institute at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. She loves the interdisciplinary nature of caring for complex pregnancies. In partnership with a colleague, she has repeatedly secured grants to fund post-mortem genetic testing for families who experience fetal and neonatal losses, providing crucial answers to many families in the area.

Rachael is also passionate about education. She routinely provides education to medical students, residents, fellows, and attending physicians on a variety of topics related to prenatal genetics, fetal care, and other areas of expertise. She long held the goal of establishing and helping lead a genetic counseling graduate training program, and she is thrilled to serve as Program Director for the Program in Genetic Counseling at WUSM. Within the program she directs or co-directs Introduction to Genetic Counseling I & II, Advanced Genetic Counseling I & II, and Teratology. She is also primarily responsible for many program operations including those related to admissions and curriculum development.

Rachael is committed to issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as they relate both genetic counseling training and the profession. She is also dedicated to addressing racial health disparities. Since 2012 she has served as Co-Leader of the Fetal & Infant Mortality Review through the community organization, Generate Health, which is dedicated to achieving zero racial disparities in infant mortality in the St. Louis region. She has been the Co-Chair of the Education Committee of the Genetic Counselor Educators Association (GCEA) since 2022 and served on the GCEA DEI Selection Committee. She has also been an Accreditation Council for Genetic Counseling Program Review Committee member since 2015. Finally, Rachael is a 2020 graduate of WUSM’s Academic Medical Leadership Development Program for Physicians and Scientists.

In her spare time, Rachael enjoys living in the heart of St. Louis city with her husband and teenage son. She loves to cook with the ingredients her husband, a sustainable gardener, and her chickens provide. She also enjoys baking with her son, a budding amateur pastry chef. She loves reading, spending time with friends and family, biking, camping, watching escapist TV, and following her favorite content creators on YouTube.

• Introduction to Genetic Counseling I
• Introduction to Genetic Counseling II
• Advanced Genetic Counseling I         
• Advanced Genetic Counseling II        
• Teratology

Tomi Toler graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with her MS in Genetic Counseling in 2009 and from the University of Missouri-Columbia with her BA in 2007.

From 2009-2015, Tomi worked in Boston; first at Brigham & Women’s Hospital as a prenatal genetic counselor and then at Massachusetts General Hospital as a pediatric genetic counselor and Program Coordinator for the Down Syndrome Program. Since 2015, Tomi has worked at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (WUSM) as a pediatric and general genetics genetic counselor in the Division of Genetics & Genomic Medicine, serving as the Lead Genetic Counselor since 2018. Tomi was an Instructor in Pediatrics from 2019-2022 and was promoted to Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in 2022. During her time at WUSM, she has been involved in multiple research studies, including the Washington University in St. Louis Clinical Site of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, and teaching of residents and fellows in the Genetics Training Programs.

Tomi has a special interest in education in health care. Tomi was inducted as a 2023 member of the Academy of Educators at Washington University School of Medicine. She is currently on the Steering Committee for the Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education at Washington University Medical Campus (CIPE) and received her Master Interprofessional Educator certificate in May 2022.

Tomi is particularly passionate about helping genetic counseling students and early career genetic counselors develop their clinical skills. During her time in Boston, Tomi provided clinical supervision to many genetic counseling graduate students from the Brandeis and Boston University Genetic Counseling Programs. Since moving to St. Louis, she has supervised clinical rotations for several visiting students from multiple genetic counseling programs. She is very excited to be translating this experience and enthusiasm for clinical training to her role as the program’s Associate Director and Clinical Fieldwork Coordinator.

In addition to her interest in working with genetic counseling students, Tomi has an interest in promoting the genetic counseling profession both clinically and in research including public health genetics and genomics. Tomi has been and remains involved in national committees with both NSGC and ABGC.

Tomi enjoys living in St. Louis and visiting the zoo and other kid-friendly places with her son, Max.

• Introduction to Genetic Counseling I
• Introduction to Genetic Counseling II
• Advanced Genetic Counseling I         
• Advanced Genetic Counseling II        
• Clinical Genetics & Genomics I
• Clinical Genetics & Genomics II
• Clinical Rotations I
• Clinical Rotations II
• Clinical Rotations III

Erin Linnenbringer’s interest in genetic counseling research took flight while she was a Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award fellow in the Medical Genetics Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute. She went on to complete her MS in Genetic Counseling at Northwestern University in 2003 and started her career as a genetic counselor and research project manager for the Risk Evaluation and Education for Alzheimer’s Disease (REVEAL) study at Boston University. While at BU, Erin was involved in the development of their genetic counseling training program, serving as the inaugural coordinator and lead instructor for the Genetic Counseling Research Seminar Series.

Erin’s passion for research lead her to pursue a PhD in Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan where she continued to work on the REVEAL Study before transitioning to a predoctoral fellowship at the Population Studies Center. As part of this transition, Erin’s research focus shifted to explorations of how racially stratified social environments may “get under the skin” and shape disparities in breast cancer subtypes. While completing her dissertation, Erin received the Richard Janz Memorial Fund Award from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education and support from the Population Studies Center’s New Initiatives Fund.

Upon completion of her PhD in 2014, Erin joined the faculty of the Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine and she was promoted to an Associate Professor of Surgery in 2022. Her research explores the complex interplay among social, behavioral, and genetic factors, and their subsequent implications for population health and health disparities. Erin is also developing new lines of research that will examine the impact of emerging precision medicine & genetic counseling approaches on the health and well-being of medically underserved populations. She is thrilled to serve as Assistant Director and Research Coordinator for the program, and looks forward to involving genetic counseling students in her research. More information about Erin’s research activities can be found on her faculty website.

Erin is an active member of the NSGC having served in leadership positions for regional conferences and national short courses prior to obtaining her PhD. From 2016-2021, she served on the Jane Engelberg Memorial Fellowship Advisory Group which supports the professional development of genetic counselors and students via research grant funding. Reflecting her public health training and clinical interests, Erin is also a member of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science and the American Association for Cancer Research.  

In her free time, Erin enjoys running in Forest Park, baking cakes (but not cookies!), reading & discussing literary fiction, and in normal times, travelling with her husband and two children.

• Genetic Counseling Research Design & Ethics
• Research Project I
• Research Project II
• Research Project III

Marwan Shinawi completed his training in medical genetics and medical biochemical genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX in 2005. Marwan served as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor from 2005 through 2009. He then joined the Division of Genetics & Genomic Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in September 2009 as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and was promoted to an Associate Professor in 2012 and to a Full Professor in 2016.

Marwan is Board certified in Medical Genetics and Medical Biochemical Genetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics. He has interest in genomic medicine, disease gene discovery, metabolic disorders and skeletal dysplasia. Marwan played a leadership role in establishing several specialty clinics including the Skeletal Dysplasia, Exome Sequencing, and Cancer Predisposition Clinics.

He is the program director of the Combined Pediatrics Genetics Residency and Medical Biochemical Genetics Fellowship Programs at WUSM. He is heavily involved in didactic teaching at WUSM. He has a passion for teaching and training students, residents and fellows. He is excited to act as Medical Director for the Program in Genetic Counseling.

Marwan is a co-director of the Human Genomic Characterization Unit at Washington University Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC). Through the years, Marwan has expanded his experience to conduct basic and clinical human genetics research and established an extensive collaborative network with several scientists in the field of human genomics. His research focuses on clinical genomics and the application of exome and genome sequencing as well as microarray analysis for disease gene discovery of undiagnosed genetic syndromes. With his clinical and laboratory research experiences, he has been a primary author on many publications describing his discoveries.

His interests and hobbies include hiking, traveling, photography, cooking and baking. He is a chocolate, coffee & tea lover.

• Clinical Genetics & Genomics I
• Clinical Genetics & Genomics II