(Editor’s note: ExitEvent’s Laura Baverman provides the third in a series of profiles on the first four women to be mentored by SOAR, a new Triangle area organization to help female entrepreneurs raise capital and grow their companies. In this story, as part of the news partnership between WRAL TechWire and ExitEvent, she visits with Melissa DeRosier, a clinical psychologist, gamer, author and CEO.)

DURHAM, N.C. – Melissa DeRosier is a clinical psychologist who moonlights as a gamer, an author and a CEO.

DeRosier fits no stereotype. That’s because she’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish a single mission – to change the lives of kids with mental, social and behavioral issues. The work of her 75 clinical researchers, game and software developers and designers at the Cary-based 3C Institute, the $30 million she’s raised in federal research grants and two authored books are all rallied around that cause.

Now, she’ll apply her passion in a new way as founder and chief scientific officer of Adaptive Health Systems, a startup she’s spinning out of the Institute to bring to market its research-based web games and curricula.

With the help of SOAR, she’ll learn valuable skills about marketing and sales and how to structure the new company. But most of all, she believes the organization will help her raise the investment dollars required to get these games on the screens of families and teachers around the world.

“She was very intriguing to us,” says Lauren Whitehurst, one of two SOAR mentors helping DeRosier. “She’s clearly already running an interesting business. And her product has the advantage in that it’s a highly researched game and only she has that research capability.”

The full story can be read online at ExitEvent.