Our Team
Hello! Music City Peds is a small private practice, founded in Fall of 2016 by Caitlin Rissler, who started practicing in the developmental-behavioral pediatric specialty in early 2013. Ankith Donthi was recruited to join in 2022 due to his excellent training and dedication to this field. As pediatric nurse practitioners with a shared passion for helping clients and families live more fulfilling lives and staying up-to-date with evidence-based research, Caitlin and Ankith make a great clinical team and often collaborate to enhance client outcomes. Our providers see clients by appointment and offer both telemedicine and in-person appointments, depending upon date, time, client preference, and clinical need. Our clinic coordinator, Willa White, supports our practice in both administrative and clinical ways, by scheduling clients, collecting necessary paperwork, triaging phone messages, and much more. As a team, we are dedicated to offering a refreshingly positive experience to our clients. Learn more about each of our team members below!
Caitlin Rissler
RN, MSN, CPNP-PC
Caitlin is a Nashville native and is honored to serve the greater Nashville area through her pediatric practice. She is a mother of 3, a coffee connoisseur (just kidding – ANY coffee will do!), Preds fan (It’s all your fault!), Vandy fan (Anchor Down!). She enjoys the outdoors, especially in the fall, hiking and jogging. Highlights at Music City Peds have included building relationships with clients, hosting Summer Jam Sessions and camps in the summer, winning the March Madness championship belt in 2019, and pranking her colleagues.
Caitlin is a developmental-behavioral nurse practitioner who specializes in caring for children and adolescents with developmental, learning, behavioral, or mental health concerns.
Her expertise stemmed from a passion for autism spectrum disorders and evolved, through education and experience, to encompass other diagnoses such as ADHD, anxiety, sensory processing disorder, and many others. She also possesses the unique ability to piece together symptoms that do not fit into a clear-cut diagnostic category, and she addresses the complexities of the individual rather than isolated concerns.
She understands the importance of creating personalized treatment plans and values collaboration with parents, schools, and other providers involved in the client’s care.
Caitlin’s clinical style is personable, empathetic, direct, and thorough.
Ankith Donthi
Nurse Practitioner
After his undergraduate studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, Ankith received his Masters of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University. He taught special education for high school and preschool for a year in Nashville which fueled his passion for working with kids and teens with developmental-behavioral-mental health needs. Ankith earned his Masters in Nursing from Vanderbilt where he also completed the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) program. He trained at both the Center for Child Development at Vanderbilt and the Meharry Medical College developmental clinic.
Ankith is originally from NC but has been in and out of Nashville since 2016. He loves traveling and exploring new vegetarian cuisines with his wife and Hungarian Shepherd, Hero. He enjoys hiking and biking, barista-ing (yay!), reading sci-fi or fantasy fiction, and cheering on UNC basketball. His guilty pleasure is grabbing Indian take-out on his way home from every road trip!
Ankith is a developmental-behavioral pediatric nurse practitioner who is dedicated to addressing the unique needs of clients with developmental or intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, and challenges in mood, behavior, learning, or social skills.
His services include diagnostic assessments, medication management, treatment planning, and education. He uses a caring and collaborative approach, including parents and children in the decision-making process.Â
Ankith’s clinical style values patient-centered and evidence-based care, and he is driven to provide culturally-sensitive, LGBTQ-inclusive, empathetic, and holistic care.Â
Willa White
Clinic Coordinator
Willa White is our invaluable clinic coordinator who works diligently on both clinical and administrative tasks to ensure that our clinic responds efficiently to client requests and provides exceptional care. Her efficiency, commitment to following through with tasks, organization, direct communication, consistency with implementation of policies, and genuine concern for clients’ needs are just some of her strengths that benefit our practice. Even though Willa works part-time, she checks and responds to messages each weekday and demonstrates incredible productivity with the time she dedicates to our practice. We are very appreciative of all she does for Music City Peds!
