Jacqueline Holland is a speech-language pathologist who has dedicated the last 15 years of her career to working with young children with communication and language processing disorders. From a young age, Ms. Holland’s parents instilled in her a sense of the value of education, and she knew that she would eventually pursue a career working with children. Her interest in speech pathology as a discipline was inspired by her sister, Tracy, who has special needs and worked with a variety of educational and occupational specialists as a young child. An outstanding student, Ms. Holland received an academic scholarship to attend Texas Christian University, where she made the dean’s list and was nominated to the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. She graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in speech language pathology in 2005 and pursued postgraduate education at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders at the University of Texas at Dallas, maintaining a 4.0 GPA and graduating summa cum laude in 2007.
Ms. Holland has spent the majority of her career working in K-5 school settings, providing intervention and testing services to students. She began her career as a member of staff for the Frisco Independent School District and worked as a speech language pathologist for the Northside Independent School District before accepting her current role. For the last year, she has worked with staff and students as a speech language pathologist at Highland Park Independent School District. Throughout her career, Ms. Holland has worked with children aged 3 to 12 on a variety of diagnostic and treatment processes for speech and language development disorders, including articulation difficulties, receptive and expressive language, pragmatic language skills, and voice therapy for stuttering and related disorders. She is passionate about working with children, particularly with children diagnosed as nonverbal, and takes pride in the ability to help them develop the communication skills necessary for success.
Ms. Holland’s professional philosophy encourages whole-family involvement in the speech therapy process, and she attempts to empower parents, siblings, and caregivers to support students to the best of their ability and to extend the speech development process into other areas of students’ lives. She hopes to build on her current work in the coming years by branching into clinical research and developing a more robust, evidence-based practice that will allow her to support children with a broader range of communication disorders. Ms. Holland attributes her success to her professional and academic mentors, as well as the school districts that she has worked with, for challenging her to develop her professional skills to the highest possible level.
Ms. Holland continues to find strength in the support of her family, who sparked her early interest in her field, and have continued to encourage and inspire her throughout her professional life. A lifelong learner, she looks forward to pursuing additional continuing education and future opportunities to work with and learn from other professionals in the field. She is an active member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and was affiliated with Alpha Lambda Delta and the Golden Key International Honor Society as a student. Outside her work in the classroom, Ms. Holland is enthusiastic about community involvement and is a regular volunteer with the Junior League of San Antonio, Texas, in addition to philanthropic efforts benefiting children and youth, community development and education.
