Meet Your Specialist
Dr. Carolyn van der Meulen, OTD, OTR/L, Cert VRS, CFVRS
Dr. van der Meulen is an occupational therapist, rehabilitation specialist, and founder of Ironclad Human Performance. She specializes in concussion rehabilitation, where she guides people in navigating recovery when symptoms affect how they think, move, work, exercise, and participate in everyday life. Her concussion rehabilitation practice serves the general population, not only first responders.
Dr. van der Meulen specializes in helping people with both straightforward and complex concussion recovery. She works with individuals across different stages of recovery, including those who continue to experience symptoms or difficulty returning to their usual activities. Her approach combines clinical assessment with individualized rehabilitation, using progressive strategies to address the factors contributing to reduced function and build tolerance for meaningful activities. She has worked with individuals from a wide range of backgrounds, including elite and high-level athletes, tactical professionals, workers in physically demanding occupations, and people seeking to return to the activities and roles that are most important in their daily lives.
Her clinical background spans orthopedic and neurological rehabilitation, chronic pain, return-to-work, concussion, vestibular and functional vision rehabilitation, and complex interdisciplinary care. She has experience working with individuals managing persistent pain, musculoskeletal injuries, neurological conditions, and other challenges that interfere with work, physical performance, and everyday life. Her rehabilitation philosophy is function-focused: rather than allowing a diagnosis or symptom to define what someone can do, she works with patients to identify what matters to them and develop strategies to move toward those goals.
Before founding Ironclad, Dr. van der Meulen served as Clinical Director of a CARF-accredited intensive outpatient brain injury rehabilitation program, leading an interdisciplinary team of physicians, neuropsychologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, and vocational rehabilitation professionals. She later served as Director of Clinical Development, where she developed evidence-based clinical protocols, education programs, and rehabilitation initiatives while building partnerships across healthcare and community organizations.
At Ironclad Human Performance, Dr. van der Meulen brings this clinical and program-development experience directly to concussion rehabilitation. Her goal is to provide practical, evidence-based rehabilitation that helps people understand their symptoms, rebuild capacity, and return to the activities that give their lives meaning.