Natasha grew up in southern California and completed her undergraduate degree at UCLA with a Communication Studies major and a Spanish minor. Her original plan was to pursue a career in public relations within LA’s bustling entertainment industry, but after working in a pediatric therapy clinic her junior year, she fell in love with speech therapy instead. At that point, she decided to shift her focus to a graduate degree in the field, and she never looked back.  

After graduating from UCLA, she moved to Nashville for a Master of Science degree program in Speech-Language Pathology at Vanderbilt University.  During her 4 years in Tennessee, she gained experience in a variety of settings ranging from schools to skilled nursing to outpatient clinics to acute care, and she served a wide range of populations within each of those environments.  It was within these clinical experiences where her initial love of AAC started to develop, but it wasn’t until she began work at her most recent job in Kansas City that her passion in this specialty really took hold.

For the last 6 years, Natasha has worked at a private separate day school that serves students from 5-21 years of age with intensive behavioral and educational needs. Many of these students also benefit from access to a variety of communication modalities.  Within this setting, Natasha supported the creation of a series of AAC implementation systems and the development of educational programming for both staff and students.  She also worked to ensure that parents and students were educated and empowered to know their options for how to access communication systems, how to implement their use, and how to maintain them over time.  She appreciates the importance of elevating the voices of AAC users and supporting the communication partners who have relationships with them.  She is extremely excited to be joining the Forbes AAC team to support expanded access to communication tools to individuals throughout Missouri and Kansas!

In her free time, Natasha enjoys eating her way through Kansas City, attempting to grow vegetables in her backyard garden, adventuring to new places with her husband, and hanging out with her lovable rescue pup.