Kristie Gatto, MA, CCC-SLP, COM® received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. She has worked as a speech-language pathologist in the public and private school systems, skilled nursing, rehabilitation and children’s hospitals, and in private practice. In 2004, Ms. Gatto became the co-owner of a private practice in Northwest Houston and began her journey in treating children with pediatric feeding disorders. After years of searching for answers in traditional feeding approaches, she underwent training in the field of Orofacial Myology and became the first certified orofacial myologist in the city of Houston in 2011. Ms. Gatto is currently the owner of The Speech and Language Connection, which has two offices in the greater Houston area and employs 18 speech-language pathologists with various specialties.
For roughly twenty years, she has focused her clinical skills on treating patients with issues in feeding, dysphagia, deglutition, oral sensory aversion, orofacial myology, and swallowing- related disorders, as well as articulation, phonological processing, apraxia, and associated concerns related to sleep related breathing disorders.
Financial: Kristie Gatto is the author of three books Understanding the Orofacial Complex: The Evolution of Dysfunction (Outskirts Press, 2016), Understanding the Orofacial Complex – Muscle Manual (Outskirts Press, 2014), and Sam the Super Chewer, Eats (Mindstir Media, 2016) for which she receives royalty payments. She is the owner and a treating clinician with The Speech and Language Connection in Houston, as well as an instructor for the International Association of Orofacial Myology for which she is paid.
Non-financial: Kristie Gatto is a current Board of Directors member of the Oral Motor Institute and on the Editorial review board for the Dental Sleep Practice Magazine. She is a member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and a past president of the International Association of Orofacial Myology. Additionally, she has served as a Board of Directors member for the American Academy of Private Practitioners in Speech Pathology and Audiology and a member of the Community Advisory Board at the University of Houston.