We were lucky to catch up with Annie Gunning recently and have shared our conversation below.

Annie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the best boss, mentor, or leader you’ve ever worked with.

The first boss was, and still is, the best I’ve ever had. She was not only supportive, encouraging, creative, and enthusiastic, but also a true mentor who made work fun and meaningful. Because she had a background similar to mine, she truly understood the importance of my role and our department’s mission — something I’ve realized is rare over the past 20+ years. That shared understanding made a huge difference in advancing our goals in the field. Beyond being a strong leader, she genuinely cared about each of us, taking the time to listen to my ideas, encourage my growth, and offer feedback that helped me become better in my career.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Certified Child Life Specialists (CCLS) are educated and clinically trained on the developmental impact of illness and injury. Because children process information from the world around them much differently than adults, they have distinct needs for managing the effects of stress and trauma. CCLS help infants, children, teens, and families cope with the stress and uncertainty of acute and chronic illness, injury, trauma, disability, loss, and bereavement. We are experts in child development and medical terminology. Child Life Specialists provide evidence-based, developmentally and psychologically appropriate interventions, including therapeutic play, preparation, and education for healthcare experiences to reduce fear, anxiety, and pain. Specialists empower children and strengthen their ability to cope with individual experiences and situations.

I have been a Certified Child Life Specialist since 2000. Over the past two decades, I worked across a spectrum of clinical settings before establishing my private practice. I have experience working in Rehabilitation, Pediatric Emergency Department, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), Pediatric Intensive Care, Hematology/Oncology, General Pediatric Surgery Unit, Radiology, and Adult ICUs—supporting children of adult patients. Over the course of my career, I have discovered a particular passion for supporting families through the grief and healing journey and have retained an additional certification as a Grief Counselor. I facilitate weekly children’s grief groups at KinderMourn, a local grief organization, as well as through their school outreach program. Collaborating with local and national organizations has become a large part of my work since building my private practice. I also provide virtual child life support to a global nonprofit organization, Hope for HIE.

Now in Child Life Private Practice-Empower Through Play
While Child Life Specialists have historically been associated with hospitals, I recognized the broader need for my services in diverse contexts and to fill the gaps in my community. Now in private practice, I have the opportunity to work with and support families individually and also through hospice programs, grief organizations, multiple local nonprofits, medical/grief camps, and schools. My goal is to minimize the immediate and long-term effects of stress, anxiety, and psychosocial trauma related to significant life experiences. I provide age-appropriate guidance and coping strategies that help children and teens better understand and process their emotions, while collaborating with families to develop personalized treatment plans that align with their goals and circumstances. I offer remote consultations and virtual visits, which enable families to engage in discussions and interventions from the comfort of their own homes. I primarily connect with and support families through in-home visits.

Supportive Services for children and families:
Living with an acute or chronic illness or injury
Those who are experiencing loss & grief
Those who have a caregiver/parent/sibling with an illness or health condition
With a new medical diagnosis of a family member
With upcoming medical/dental procedures, tests, surgeries, doctor visits, etc.
Coping with end-of-life
Those who have been hospitalized or have a family member in the hospital

Supportive Services include but are not limited to:
Therapeutic play interventions to promote positive processing
Medical play/teaching/education
Procedural/Surgical Preparation
Pre-Hospitalization Preparation
Legacy building
Grief Support
Sibling support
Parental education/coaching regarding healthcare experiences including diagnosis, loss, child development
Assistance to cope with school re-entry following diagnosis
Teaching coping skills

Have you ever had to pivot?

I have worked as a child life specialist throughout my entire career, spending the first 20 years in a clinical setting. Over time, I recognized a significant gap in services that could be filled by a child life specialist outside of the hospital environment. Although I knew I needed a change, leaving the familiarity of the hospital after two decades felt daunting.

However, the more I reflected and the more I listened to the experiences of patients and families, the more I realized the need for child life services in the community. One conversation in particular gave me the courage to take the first step: a family once told me, ‘You are meant to do more outside the walls of a hospital.’ Their words stayed with me and motivated me to begin exploring new opportunities.

While I was still working clinically, I started developing my practice, meeting with professionals, and doing research. Another pivotal moment came when I worked with a family preparing for their mother’s transition to hospice care. Afterward, the father said to me, ‘You have been so helpful. My kids will need more support—who will be there like you to help them?’ I couldn’t answer him fully at the time, but it became clear that expanding my services into the community was the right path.

Today, a major focus of my work is supporting children of adult patients and siblings—the non-patient family members—who often have significant emotional needs. Pivoting from hospital-based work to a community practice has been one of the most meaningful and important changes in my career.”**

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I’ve relied heavily on past professional and personal connections to grow my clientele. I proactively reached out to local nonprofits, gave presentations, sent emails, made cold calls, and visited professionals and organizations in person. I also networked with professionals in related fields, joined networking groups, and kept pushing until I built the connections needed to start a client base.

Through research, I identified local organizations that could benefit from my services. One key connection came through this research—I connected with an organization I had never heard of which had an available grant and needed a child life specialist. I connected with the right person at the right time and that became a turning point in establishing and growing my clientele.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.empowerthroughplay.com/
• Instagram: @anniegchildlife
• Facebook: Annie Sesti Gunning
• Linkedin: Annie Gunning, CCLS, GC-C