My Story

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 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 families from at least these countries: Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Germany, Netherlands, S. Korea, India, Pakistan, Guinea, 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. 
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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
CLINICAL EXPERIENCE 
Private Practice
2010-present preschool, adolescent, and adult fluency

Ann Arbor Public Schools
2012-present 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 
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