Katie Martinez

If you’ve overheard an interesting accent in our Townsville clinic, you’d be right – Katie, one of our wonderful Speech Pathologists, recently made the move from the USA to Australia to join the SpeechEase team. How cool is that? 

Katie and her family come from Nevada – a place where she learned a lot and cemented her love for helping kids with reading, literacy, and language. Her first career was actually in Primary School Education! During this time, Katie worked in a school as a second-grade teacher for 6 years. Soon after her daughter was born, she discovered an interest in speech and language development that led her to speak with a Speech Pathologist working at another school and the rest is history. 

In Katie’s words, choosing to go back to school to pursue a career in Speech Pathology was one of the best decisions she’s ever made – she absolutely LOVES her job! One of her most memorable speechie moments was helping a young boy named Jake who couldn’t pronounce “j” or “k” – he was very hard to understand, even for his family. The day he clearly said, “My name is Jake” for the first time was a really powerful moment for Jake, his family, and Katie! 

When she’s not in the clinic, you’ll find Katie seeking out new walking, hiking, and camping spots. She loves the great outdoors! In fact, Katie is also an avid gardener and is currently relearning about how plants and growing cycles work in tropical Townsville (if you’ve got any tips, she’s all ears!).