Kari A. Leifheit, PT

Kari Leifheit, PT, has been a physical therapist at Shriners Children's Twin Cities since 2001. She is a native of Wisconsin (Go Packers!) and graduate of University of Wisconsin (Go Badgers!). She knew she wanted to be a physical therapist since middle school and found her place in life working with children.

Kari enjoys working with all patients and diagnoses. She has a great deal of experience working with kids with cerebral palsy, developmental delays and autism. She is conscious of the needs of patients and their families, and works hard to create realistic home exercise programs for each of her patients. Kari especially enjoys working with and learning from families from different cultures. She finds it important to try and learn a word or two from patients whose first language is not English. The kids get to be the teachers!

Kari participates in many Shriners Children's Twin Cities activities outside of being a physical therapist. She helps at prom and loves to participate in the Breakfast with Santa event as elf Kari. Kari has participated in screening clinics throughout the Midwest and loves seeing the communities where our kids come from. She has lectured at elementary schools on disability awareness and at high school engineering classes about prostheses.

When not hanging out at work, Kari lives in Saint Paul with her family and menagerie of pets. In the summer, her family raises monarch caterpillars and butterflies to release. She likes to camp, work in the garden and read.