The Understood Blog

Expertise: speech/language development and disorders, executive functioning, learning disabilities, culturally sensitive assessments and intervention practices, bilingual (Spanish) Michelle Lassiter, MA, CCC-SLP, is a bilingual speech-language pathologist with 24 years’ experience in hospital acute care, rehabilitation, and outpatient settings as well as within the school system. In the schools, she oversaw the case management of IEPs, collaborating with parents to ensure that their children had the most appropriate services. Michelle also provided direct services to preschoolers with speech and language delays and disorders, supervised graduate speech pathology students, and supported and mentored other SLPs in creating culturally sensitive speech-language assessments and intervention treatment plans for ELL and bilingual students. She developed strategies to encourage participation from immigrant parents throughout the IEP process. Michelle brings both professional and personal experience to Understood as the parent of a young adult with learning and thinking differences. Her experiences eventually led to her own diagnosis of ADHD as an adult. Michelle earned her BA and MA in speech-language pathology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.