Respect the Redirect: Ianessa Humbert’s Journey to Autonomy in SLP

Jeanette Benigas1h 2min

Jeanette Benigas

00:00

Before we begin today's episode, I wanted to pop in and say that Preston and I had some pre show chatter that lasted about 17 minutes involving the changes that just happened in Michigan and ashes public comment before those changes were made, because the pre show chatter was 17 minutes long, we decided to cut that out and make it its own bonus episode, which you will be able to find later this week. Enjoy today's episode. Hey, fixers. I'm Dr Jeanette benigas, the owner of fix SLP, a grassroots advocacy firm here to challenge the status quo in speech language pathology by driving real change from insurance regulations to removing barriers that prevent full autonomy like the CCC, this podcast is your space to learn, engage and take action in the field of speech language pathology. We don't wait for change. We make it so let's fix SLP!

Jeanette Benigas

01:18

Today, we have a special week here, my friend, friend of the movement, she's been on before, Ianessa Humbert, Dr. Ianessa Humbert has been through quite the journey over the last few years from really important and I say it, I'm saying it because it. I'm very familiar with her work, a PhD in academia, doing very important work, ASHA fellow, CCC holder state license, the whole thing to having to make some decisions about what she was doing with her career and her life. Already she was thinking about it. Then certainly ASHA made some decisions that propelled her to redirect her life a little bit more. And she says something in the conversation we had with her that is, respect to the redirect. I wrote it down. I loved that. She said, respect the redirect. You know, she was redirected a little bit faster than she thought she was going to be. And now she is a Maryland Licensed speech language pathologist with a brand new business that's going to flip dysphasia treatment on its head. But what we're going to talk to her about today is the process that she went through to get her license and not reinstate. She did not reinstate her license that she held before she had to go through the process as a brand new applicant. And she'll explain why, how that happened without the CCC. And something that I forgot to bring up as we were talking to her is that she did this in the state of Maryland, where Asha is located, where you think maybe they might have the most power and influence, and they did kind of try to put her through the ringer, but,

Preston Lewis

03:02

and I'm, I told her, we're going to do this, and I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm promising it. Right now, I want to see photos of this clinic. That's the thing, is that, and she's, she nails it so perfectly, which is, it's hard in business right now. It's hard to push for our wages. The rehab companies are just eating our lunch. Case loads are high public school. We all know those issues. It's so great to see that entrepreneurial spirit of somebody who said, You know what, I'm not going to keep in this group think any longer. I am going to take a turn, as she says, and go after and build something new and exciting. And yeah, you know, some people may get rubbed wrong from it, but she's succeeding, and not just financially, but with patient outcomes that are incredible. So that's the thing is that it's, it's okay to ask, Do I have to keep doing things the way I've always done them? And for her, I mean, the turn was kind of thrown right in her face, but wow, is she ever leaping forward.

Jeanette Benigas

04:03

Yeah, all right. Well, then, without further ado, here is our conversation with Ian ESA. Hey everybody, welcome back. It's Jeanette. I realized last week I forgot to introduce Preston. So we have Preston here, my my partner in crime, and then we have a awesome guest today we have my friend and colleague, Ianessa Humbert ianessa has an amazing story, and I just will preface by saying we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for Ianessa and she probably I've mentioned this to her sort of before, but Ens is going to talk about some things that she endured today, and it was during that time that I watched what was going on in the field, and really thought, man, we need organized advocacy. We really need a place to run advocacy through, especially when it comes to healthcare topics in SLP, because her friends were. Doing a bang up job, posting her story all over the internet. But it just I was like, this, could this could be even more effective if there was a central place that already existed with a website for petitions and things like that, and oh my gosh, look what we did a couple weeks ago. So you know, that led to my med SLP advocate account where I said I was going to do all the things we're doing now. It was beyond my wildest dreams that we would ever be doing those things for the full profession and really doing them effectively by, you know, draft legislation and changing regulation, and, you know, all the things we've accomplished over the last year. So Ianessa, thank you for the inspiration for fixed. SLP, who knew it would be this? But yeah, I'm excited to dig in. So do you want to tell us a little bit bit about who you are and what you do?

Ianessa Humbert

05:50

Sure. So I'm Ianessa Humbert. I'm a world renowned swallowologist that will make sense later. I got my master's, bachelor's in PhD, all the things in speech pathology. I've been in this field since the late 90s, and so I did the whole academia thing on faculty at Hopkins School of Medicine, University of Florida, University of Iowa, studying the heck out of swallowing disorders, giving talks in 20 different countries, almost every state, almost 400 invited talks, just being swallowologist extraordinaire, as well as CO founding the swallowing Training Education portal, step community with my co founder, Rinke verandani Desai, and we now have over 40,000 SLP enrollments there who are taking our taking step to learn more about swallowing. It is licensed in over 50 University speech pathology departments, and it's now used for training in other countries. It kind of just grew on its own, and was amazing at that time, I decided just before covid that I was going to leave academia. This other company was doing really well. I was feeling innovative, and then I was hit with an interesting hmm, shall we call it? It's not a suit. What are they called? It is? What's it called? When ASHA says we might strip your license because you've been a bad girl?

Jeanette Benigas

07:15

An ethics complaint.

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