My Story
One of the perks of my field is the opportunity to work with people from all over the world. So far, I have worked with clients from at least these countries: Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Germany, Netherlands, S. Korea, India, Pakistan, Guinea, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mali, Israel, Somalia, Sudan, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mexico, Sri Lanka, England. My interest in different parts of the world was really spurred when I went away from home for the first time at age 16 to be an exchange student on the American Field Service program. I was placed with a family in India, where I lived and attended local school, and liked the experience so much that I continued to study language at University and was able to return to India to study for a year on a language grant. On my return to the U.S. at the end of that year, I traveled in many Asian countries.
Another perk is the opportunity to help people improve their communication skills. This can be life-changing, whether it is a college graduate student running for election and having to give speeches, a teenager learning how to use a graphic organizer to write a coherent paragraph, or a preschooler learning how to produce clear speech or verbalize needs and wants. With young children, my goals include empowering parents to facilitate their child’s speech and/or language; parents can be the most powerful agents of change when they are given tools and coaching.
Another perk is the opportunity to help people improve their communication skills. This can be life-changing, whether it is a college graduate student running for election and having to give speeches, a teenager learning how to use a graphic organizer to write a coherent paragraph, or a preschooler learning how to produce clear speech or verbalize needs and wants. With young children, my goals include empowering parents to facilitate their child’s speech and/or language; parents can be the most powerful agents of change when they are given tools and coaching.
Before becoming a speech-language pathologist, I worked as a classical violinist, performing, teaching, and as a full-time symphony musician. I have a master’s degree in violin performance from The University of Michigan. I came upon the field of communication disorders quite by chance, watching a PBS documentary about a young child who had received one of the early cochlear implants. The program showed the child having her first experiences of sound, and was so touching and compelling that I went to the computer that very night and began learning about the field of communication disorders. Soon, I had enrolled in an introductory class at a local college, and it wasn’t long until I was hooked. I then spent a year commuting 160 miles daily to UT Austin to take all the prerequisite classes to qualify for grad school. When I received my acceptance and a research assistantship to The University of Iowa, the #1 ranked program in speech-language, my husband and I left our jobs and moved to Iowa City. The day I started grad school there was the same day our kitchen ended up in a big dumpster on the driveway, but that’s another story. Without question, going through the program at Iowa is the hardest thing I have ever done, especially when I was a beginning clinician and felt personally lost: I was no longer a musician, but not yet a speech therapist. Most of my 11 classmates were the age of my son, but after being wary of me for the first couple of months, they decided I was ok and we became good friends who remain in touch ten years later. Quite a difficult transition, but I’m glad to report that speech therapy is every bit as fascinating and rewarding as I had imagined it might be!
DEGREES/CERTIFICATIONS
- Certification in Lidcombe Treatment for Stuttering, 2014
- Speech Pathology License, State of Michigan 2013-present
- CCC-SLP, American Speech-Hearing Association, 2007-present
- Speech Pathology License, Iowa Board of Health 2006-2010
- M.A with thesis in Speech Pathology and Audiology, The University of Iowa, 2006
CLINICAL INTERESTS
- Stuttering, Language: all ages;
- Speech sounds: preschool and early elementary
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
- American Speech-Hearing Association (ASHA)
- ASHA Special Interest Group #4 (Fluency and Fluency Disorders)
- Ann Arbor chapter of National Stuttering Association Adult Support Group
- The Stuttering Foundation
CLINICAL EXPERIENCE
Private Practice
2010-present preschool, adolescent, and adult fluency
Ann Arbor Public Schools
2012-2018 Ann Arbor Preschool and Family Center
2010-2012 Forsythe Middle School
_Grant Wood Area Education Agency (Iowa City)
Early childhood, elementary, middle school 2006-2010
Private Practice
2010-present preschool, adolescent, and adult fluency
Ann Arbor Public Schools
2012-2018 Ann Arbor Preschool and Family Center
2010-2012 Forsythe Middle School
_Grant Wood Area Education Agency (Iowa City)
Early childhood, elementary, middle school 2006-2010