Portia Iversen

Portia Iversen, an Emmy Award-winning art director, has been a vigorous proponent of autism research since her son Dov was diagnosed with the condition in 1994. Together with her husband, Jon Shestack, she established the Cure Autism Now Foundation (CAN), one of the largest nongovernmental funding resources for autism research worldwide.

The groundbreaking true story of two mothers, worlds apart, united in a struggle to connect with their autistic sons.

Emmy(r)-winning art director Portia Iversen's life was turned upside down when her son Dov was diagnosed with autism. But when she heard a miraculous story of a woman in India who had taught her own severely autistic son to communicate, she brought Soma and Tito Mukhopadhyay from Bangalore to America to help researchers better understand this amazing feat. Strange Son is the extraordinary account of two families who made astonishing discoveries about the nature of autism and redefined how the world can interact with those who suffer from the disorder.