Ms. Karissa

OTD, OTR/L

Pediatric Occupational 

and Feeding Therapist

Karissa is an enthusiastic occupational therapist who loves working with children and their families. Karissa is originally from Texas, and her path toward working with kids began long before her clinical training, through years as a swim instructor at Rebecca's Swim Academy teaching children ages one through twelve, as a piano teacher offering individualized instruction that supported attention and motor coordination, and as a childcare provider at Pathways Child Development Center. Those early years of meeting children in playful, individualized ways grew into a calling for occupational therapy. 

Karissa's clinical training has spanned school-based occupational therapy at Arrington Elementary School in Tennessee, where she supported sensory processing, fine motor development, self-regulation, and classroom participation while contributing to IEP goals and staff education on sensory strategies, and adult neurological rehabilitation at the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific in Honolulu, where she built her interdisciplinary collaboration and occupation-based intervention skills. 

Karissa's capstone project at the Tennessee Baptist Children's Home developed caregiver education materials and an evidence-based guidebook supporting sensory regulation and daily routines for children with trauma-related and neurodevelopmental needs, deepening her interest in trauma-informed care. Karissa brings a warm, trauma-informed, family-centered approach to every child she works with, and believes that the most lasting growth comes from the small, daily moments where care and consistency meet.

Doctorate of Occupational Therapy

Belmont University, Nashville, TN

Bachelor of Science in Allied Health

Texas A&M University, College Station, TX