Michelle started her career over 10 years ago working in Early Intervention for Early Steps, a government funded program that provides children speech and language services from birth to 3 years old. Since then, she has worked in various rehab settings in some of the nation’s largest and highly recognized hospitals across South Florida, treating adults with cognitive and communication deficits. She has mentored and supervised students and new clinicians along the way, always trying to find ways to leave her mark in the industry. She is a certified vital stimulation therapy provider for patients with swallowing disorders and is trained in Interactive Metronome (a program proven to improve cognition, attention, focus, memory, speech/language, executive functioning, comprehension, as well as motor and sensory skills.)Michelle has also established new community support groups for adults who suffer from Aphasia (an expressive language disorder typically associated with brain injury and stroke patients), and assisted in creating new protocols to integrate speech therapy with the Head and Neck Cancer population on a system wide hospital level. Some of her passion projects include special accreditations in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) setting, Traumatic Brain Injury specialization courses, and now the world of teletherapy. Prior to pursuing speech therapy she was an instructional designer in charge of building online web courses at Florida International University. Through teletherapy, she has been able to combine her experience with technology and her passion for treating patients to provide a safe and comfortable platform to help others with improving their cognitive linguistic abilities.
Michelle Santorio MS CCC-SLP
