About Me
I was born and raised in upstate NY, graduating from Queensbury High School, which is where I also met my husband. We now live in Lake Wylie, SC with our two boys, ages 2 and 5.
I graduated from Nazareth College in 2012 with a Bachelors Degree in Health Science and a minor in Psychology and Gerontology, and then again in 2014 with my Doctorate of Physical Therapy. After graduation, I moved to Rhode Island with my husband and took my first PT job in a private outpatient orthopedic office. I quickly grew as a therapist and took several continuing education courses to advance my manual skills and functional based treatment approach. After several years, I found myself feeling burnt out and no longer enjoying my days in the clinic and quickly realized I needed to advance my career. At that time, we decided to take a huge leap as a family and move closer to our families in the Carolinas, where I took a Clinic Director role for a corporate physical therapy company. In my new role I was highly successful in growing my clinics and continued to advance my leadership and business knowledge. However, in the summer of 2022, I realized I no longer enjoyed my corporate PT job, as I was working long hours and missing important family time. So, I decided to leave my corporate job and open LifeStrong Physical Therapy. This new chapter lets me better serve those in our community without the confines of insurance, corporate rules and policies as well as focus on the most important things; being happy, healthy, and there for my family.
I also founded LifeStrong PT to allow me to focus on treating the things I am most passionate about; Women's Health & Orthopedic/Sports Therapy.
My passion for athletics began when I was 8 years old in competitive swimming, and I was fortunate to swim competitively throughout college despite a shoulder injury in my early teen years, which is what first introduced me to Physical Therapy. After 16 years of early morning/late night swim practices, I retired from the sport. Following graduation, I found myself looking to continue being competitive, but I couldn’t commit to running or the globo gym style, which is when I found CrossFit. Finding the challenge, functional strength and competitive edge in this sport gave me back the passion in exercise I was missing since retiring from swimming. In 2016, when I found out I was pregnant, my OB insisted that I stop all CrossFit and “just walk,” but I knew that I could grow my baby and be able to work out the way I wanted in a safe and healthy manner. This was my first experience with the lack of knowledge and care women receive throughout their pregnancy. My second was my first day back to CrossFit after having my first son. After laboring for 36 hours, a grade II tear, not doing any kind of rehab and an “all clear” from my OB at 6 weeks, I walked into the gym that day with light blue leggings on and walked out with black ones. I remember the feeling of squatting and all of sudden a warm wet feeling on my legs. I remember thinking to myself I will never be able to do CrossFit again, and that I'd have to give up the happiness and passion that the sport gave me.
Instead, I used that feeling to fuel my passion for Women’s Health and treating prenatal and postpartum women. Now, as an internal pelvic floor therapist, I am hoping to break the stigma around “just walk” and the “all clear” at 6 weeks. I want to be able to empower women throughout their pregnancies, prepare for birth and recover afterwards in order to return to whatever their passions may be in a safe, progressive and healthy way.