We were lucky to catch up with Susana Riera recently and have shared our conversation below.

Susana, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

I always dreamt of owning my own private practice to support children of all abilities

Back in 2019 I was working at another practice while working towards to one day creating my own. In my free time, I would take courses, plan and build the foundation to what OAK Therapy (my practice) would be.

Then in 2020, once the pandemic hit. I found myself in a position of fear. My old practice asked me to stop seeing clients and go remote to working with children via teleheath. It was then when I realized, this is my moment to make OAK real.

Little by little I started growing my instagram community and working slowly into building a patient caseload. Mid 2020, I decided to go from full time to part time at the old practice and by the end of 2020 I decided it was time to go full time into OAK THERAPY

I started driving to people’s houses and schools until I had a stable enough caseload to create a home for Oak.

We are now approaching 2024 and Oak has a beautiful home and three clinicians working together to make it grow every month a little more!

Things I would done differently:
– It might sound cocky but nothing really. Every mistake helped us get here and even though the path is scary and more mistakes will be inevitably made. They will help us grow even more !

Susana, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a bilingual speech language pathologist (SLP) and I own a private practice called Oak Therapy.

I honestly never thought about becoming a SLP until my sophomore year in college. I was actually in the path to becoming a Dentist.

I always knew I wanted to be involved in the health sector specifically working with children but SLP did not cross my mind until I met Mariana.

I met Mariana when she was 15, she is my friend’s sister and when I met her something inside of my lit up.

She was (and still is) the happiest young women I had ever met. I couldn’t believe that a person that made me this happy could not communicate verbally.

had never seen or engaged with someone who was non-speaking. This was all very new to me….

So after meeting her, I went home and I started googling things like: “How can I help a non-speaking person communicate?”

Soon enough, I found myself digging and finding more resources and information and then within a few months after graduation, I was already applying to pursue a masters in speech language pathology.

My hope is to help more people like Mariana find their voice.

It is through play, movement, affect, connection and evidence-based learning that we have seen children find their unique and amazing voice.

Some of them find their voice verbally, others through alternate forms of communication (AAC).

No matter how their voice sounds or looks like. It is just the biggest joy to connect with a child and help them find the biggest super power of all, the power of communicating.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

Yes I would, no doubt about it

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

When I feel down/tired I imagine the best clinician or mentor I’ve met is watching me and that strives me to work better and better everyday. I believe that has been the most effective strategy to growing my practice. Working everyday as if the person/people I admire are watching

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.oak-therapy.com
• Instagram: @oaktherapy
• Facebook: Oak Therapy
• Linkedin: Susana Riera

Image Credits
Marianela Manzanilla @photomanzanilla https://instagram.com/photomanzanilla?igshid=NzZlODBkYWE4Ng==