Leslie Whitaker ~ MA, CCC-SLP

Welcome to My Practice

I have been a speech-language pathologist since 2001. I started in the San Francisco Bay Area and expanded to Palm Beach County, Florida, in 2019. I currently serve children, teens, and young adults in Palm Beach County and conduct assessments and consultations in my San Francisco Bay Area office bi-monthly. I also offer teletherapy services to clients in Florida and California. In my years of professional experience, I have learned that speech and language deficits are often associated with other challenges including ADHD, anxiety and depression, behavioral issues, sensory-motor integration, and/or slow processing speed. Understanding these issues and their interplay with remediating speech and language is key to my success in helping my clients and their families. Over the years, I have worked with a variety of professionals including occupational therapists, psychotherapists, behavioral health specialists, and educators. I offer an approach to treating communication disorders that are influenced by these other disciplines. I look forward to working with your family.

Education

I hold a master’s degree in Communication Disorders with an emphasis on Reading Disorders from Appalachian State University.  I earned a national certificate of clinical competence (CCC) from the American Speech Hearing Association (ASHA) and I am licensed to practice in California and Florida.

I have advanced training in the following areas:

- Early language development (Hanen It Takes Two to Talk® Program)
- Motor speech disorders (PROMPT-Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets)
- Reading decoding and comprehension (Lindamood Bell LiPs and Visualizing and Verbalizing)
- Social Thinking® Mentorship with Michelle Garcia Winner at the Social Thinking Clinic in San Jose, CA 2011. You will find me in the Social Thinking® Directory of Clinical Trainees.

Professional Experience

I lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 years. I worked with clients ages 5 to 21 in public, charter, and private schools. I founded and directed Bay Area SpeechWorks, Inc., a private speech language pathology and occupational therapy clinic in Mill Valley, California. There my team and I assessed and treated children and families throughout the Bay Area between 2005 to 2019. We continue to evaluate and provide consultation services to schools and individuals throughout the Bay Area.

Personal Interests

In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my children, reading, and practicing yoga. I have been an avid yoga practitioner since 1998. I formerly taught Vinyasa flow based on the Mysore tradition. I am currently studying yoga in the Iyengar tradition. Most recently, I became a Guardian Ad Litem volunteer and work with children in the Palm Beach County Dependency Court System.

Affiliations