Why We Built Spark the Way We Did

I could not read until fourth grade. I was in speech therapy until sixth grade. I have an auditory processing disorder. I spent years in tutoring and executive functioning work. Not all of it worked. Some of it did nothing at all.

But eventually, slowly, things started clicking into place for me.

I tell you this because I am not someone who learned about neurodivergent experience from a textbook, or even from my professional experience. I have lived alongside it my entire life, in people I have loved, and in myself. I have seen what a diagnosis can unlock and what its absence can cost. I have a neurodivergent child of my own, who you may see at our clinic.

And I know exactly what made the difference for me. It was not the interventions that worked. It was not the ones that didn't. It was the people. The ones who loved me as I was and supported the parts of me that needed help. The ones who did not try to fix me. The ones who just stayed.

I became a speech-language pathologist because I wanted to be that for someone else.

What I found when I got there

What I found in many traditional therapy settings was not what I expected. I saw compliance treated as progress. I saw children pushed to perform normalcy at the cost of everything underneath it. I saw interventions built on a single foundational assumption: that the child in front of you is broken and needs to be corrected toward normal.

And I was not the only one noticing. Autistic adults have been telling us for years what compliance-based therapy felt like from the inside. The research has begun to catch up.

What I witnessed in those settings was not a clinical outcome. It was a loss. And it was a loss happening in the name of helping.

That is not what I came here to do.

Why Spark Started

I founded Spark Pediatric Therapy in 2023 with one thing clear in my mind: that is not how we would do things here.

Neurodivergent children do not need to be fixed. They need to be accepted, understood, and supported. They need clinicians who follow their lead, who see their differences as differences rather than deficits, and who measure success by the child's own growth, not by how closely they can approximate neurotypical norms.

That conviction is the foundation of everything at Spark. It is in how we design our sessions. It is in how we talk to families. It is in who we hire and how we train them. It is in what we celebrate and what we refuse to do.

We are trying to be the people who stay.

Why New Orleans

I first moved to New Orleans in 2009 and loved every second of it. I met my New Orleans born and bred husband here in 2011. This city got into my bones the way it does for people who stay long enough to really know it.

Life took us to Virginia for a few years, but New Orleans was always where we were coming back to. In August 2025 we made it official, returning with my husband, our three kids, and a very clear sense of purpose. Opening Spark here was never a business decision. It was a homecoming.

What we offer

Spark provides speech therapy, language therapy, feeding therapy, and myofunctional therapy, all grounded in a neurodiversity-affirming, play-based model that keeps the whole child and the whole family at the center. We serve families across New Orleans and the surrounding area from our Uptown location at 2620 Jena Street.

A little more about me

I earned my bachelor's degree from Tulane University and my Master's in Communication Disorders from LSU Health New Orleans. I am a certified member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and a three-time recipient of the ASHA Award for Continuing Education.

My advanced training includes PROMPT, DIRFloortime, Natural Language Acquisition, Myofunctional Therapy, Feed the Peds, and TOTS: Tethered Oral Tissues Specialty Training. These are not credentials I collected for a wall. They are frameworks I sought out because my families needed them and I wanted to be ready.

Outside of the clinic I am a wife and a mom of three, which means I understand in a very personal way what it feels like to want the absolute best for your child and to not always know how to get there. That is the family that walks through our door every day. I see them because I am one of them.

If this sounds like what you have been looking for

We would love to hear from you. Reach out directly to get started.

SOURCES

1. Marshall, S. (2025). Autistic experiences of applied behavior analysis: Toward improved autistic-centered supports. Journal of Social Issues. https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josi.70037

2. Kupferstein, H. et al. (2025). From harm to healing: Building the future of ABA with autistic voices. MDPI Social Sciences. https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/3/72