Dasha Kiper, author

Dasha Kiper is the Clinical Trainer at Renewal Memory Partners, where she works with community partners to provide training, supervision, and support for family caregivers. Previously she was clinical consulting director of support groups at The CaringKind (formerly 'The Alzheimer's Association').

Kiper was born in Russia, raised in San Francisco, and makes her home in New York. She first became a live-in caregiver as a graduate student at Columbia University where she received an MA in Clinical Psychology. For the past decade she has counseled caregivers, led support groups, and trained and supervised mental health professionals, as well as former caregivers, who now lead support groups.

Kiper’s 2023 book Travelers to Unimaginable Lands blends science and storytelling to illuminate the complex relationship between the mind of someone with dementia and the mind of the person caring for them. After getting her master’s degree in clinical psychology, Kiper became the live-in caregiver for a Holocaust survivor with Alzheimer’s disease. For a year, she endured the emotional strain of looking after a person whose condition disrupts the rules of time, order, and continuity. Inspired by her own experience and her work counseling caregivers in the subsequent decade, Kiper offers an entirely new way to understand the symbiotic relationship between patients and those tending to them. Her book is the first to examine how the workings of the “healthy” brain prevent us from adapting to and truly understanding the cognitively impaired one.