I’m a Speech Pathologist from Sydney, NSW, and I’ve spent my career working in paediatric private practice alongside Occupational Therapists and Psychologists.

I started my career as a very traditional, tabletop therapist. I had the visual schedules, the flashcards, and the homework books. I liked speech sound intervention because it felt safe and structured. Alternative communication, working with non-speaking clients and what we used to call ‘challenging behaviours’ (a phrase I’d like to banish from my vocabulary) felt much more intimidating.

But my sessions felt dull. I was spending so much of my energy asking children to follow arbitrary rules and complete drill-based tasks. I wasn’t enjoying it, and I’m sure they weren’t either. The problem was, I didn’t know there was another way.

Then I discovered DIR Floortime and began working closely with Occupational Therapists to better understand sensory processing and development. It was a game changer. I had a framework that made sense of what I had started to realise intuitively: play and connection are at the heart of meaningful intervention.

The areas that once scared me became the parts of Speech Pathology I loved most. I began to challenge the idea that speech therapy had to look like sitting at a table, and discovered just how much more engaging and meaningful therapy could be.

I invested several years in DIR training and am now a DIR Floortime Expert Training Leader. Once I realised therapy could look so different from what I had learned at university, I loved telling everyone about it!

That passion naturally led me into mentoring. As a senior clinician, I’ve loved supporting therapists to step into the areas they’ve put in the ‘too hard’ basket, build their confidence and, most importantly, find more joy in their sessions.

A career highlight was creating and leading a Speech Pathology department within an Occupational Therapy clinic. I had the opportunity to build a team around a holistic approach to therapy. One that looked beyond isolated skills and moved away from the rigid, tabletop model I had started with.

Today, I continue to work clinically, but I spend much of my time doing what I love most: mentoring Speech Pathologists.

I love connecting with clinicians, helping them think differently about their practice, and supporting them to become the kind of therapist they want to be. Because I know firsthand that the areas that feel the most daunting at the beginning of your career can become the parts of your work you love the most.