Meet Lauren Baker,
MS CCC-SLP

The Before

Two years ago, Lauren Baker was working a school-based SLP position with a caseload of over 80 students. Limited support. Constant pushback from administration and teachers. The kind of environment where you know you have more to give your clients, but the system won't let you.

But the school job wasn't enough to pay the bills. So Lauren was also bartending. Coaching lacrosse. Picking up PRN shifts at a children's hospital. Four jobs — just to make ends meet.

There was a stretch where she worked 132 days straight without a single day off.

She left her school position because she knew she had more to give. There was only so much she could do with a caseload of 80+, a lack of support, and buy-in from administration that never came. She wanted to provide the services she knew she could provide. She wanted to become the clinician she knew she could become. She wanted to serve families more individually — on her own terms.

The Leap

Lauren started Baker Speech Therapy in August 2024. She had no financial backing. No business partner. No safety net. She moved states, living paycheck to paycheck while building the practice from scratch.

To keep the lights on during those first months, she took a job as a university graduate supervisor. She was still working multiple roles — but this time, she was building something that was hers.

Within two months, she dropped the supervisor job. The practice was sustaining itself.

No one funded this. No one co-signed. Lauren did this entirely on her own — with no financial support from anyone.

The After

Today — less than two years after seeing her first private client — Lauren runs Baker Speech Therapy as a multi-state, multi-location practice. Two locations across Westchester, New York and Chicago, Illinois. A brick-and-mortar clinic she secured within 18 months of opening. Over 50 families served. Five contractors on her team.

She went from juggling four jobs and 132 days without a break to earning over six figures doing work she loves, in a practice she owns, on a timeline she controls.