Making a difference in someone’s life is the reason Kristin Ellis studied speech pathology.

Ellis’ younger brother had a speech impediment. As a child, she wanted to make his life easier, so she often spoke for him.

When he went to school, he began seeing a speech therapist, and although he was improving, his grades still suffered. That’s when the speech therapist suggested that they find out if there was something else causing a problem, such as a reading disability, learning disability, or a processing issue.

“She really, really pushed for it,” Ellis said.

It took a couple years, but they finally discovered he has dyslexia.

“After they found that, he was successful the whole rest of his educational career,” Ellis said. “He went to college and now he’s a successful electrical engineer.”

Her brother’s experience and the dedication of that speech therapist inspired Ellis, and she wanted to be able to do that for someone, too.

“I get to do that a lot now. I get to advocate for my clients and what they need,” she said “I really love that aspect of what I do.”

A Lehighton native, Ellis studied speech and language pathology at East Stroudsburg University and earned a bachelors and master’s degree. She then began her career in Philadelphia, which inspired her to want to bring all she learned on the job back home to Lehighton.

“I kind of set my mind on it that I was going to make it happen. I didn’t know how, but I was going to make it happen,” she said.

Ellis moved back to the area three years ago, began her business a year later, and traveled to clients to provide speech therapy.

Now, she see clients in Carbon, Northampton, Lehigh, Monroe, Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, and is often referred to clients by school districts.

“Everyone is calling me, but there’s not enough hours in the day to help everybody,” she said.

Ellis decided to open an office in Lehighton.

Time2Talk Therapy Services LLC officially opened its doors on June 1 with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Carbon Chamber and Economic Development Corp. It is located at 521 Bridge St. in Lehighton, which Ellis said is the former Ed’s Appliances.

“I was spending so much time driving I could see two to three more people a day if I were brick and mortar,” she said.

It took a while to find the right location because the other sites just didn’t quite fit what she had in mind. Ellis wanted something with a large space, open and child friendly for a sensory room.

“I walked in and I just knew,” she said. “It was set up the right way.”

A sensory room can help people with limited communication skills develop the senses. It’s therapy through play, Ellis said. The tools can be used for therapy for children on the autism spectrum, as well as those who are not.

“We don’t have anything like that in any clinic space around here,” she said.

At Time2Talk, Ellis works with a variety of disorders. Some people are nonverbal, others may be hard to understand, and some may have difficulty understanding language directions. Some of the conditions she provides therapy for include:

• Articulation disorders - this is when a person has trouble saying certain speech sounds.

• Phonological disorders - this occurs when a common speech sound mistake of early childhood continues past the age that it should have stopped.

• Apraxia - this is a motor speech disorder that makes it hard for the person to speak.

• Dysarthria - this occurs when the muscles that help a person to make speech are weak. It can caused slurred or slowed speech. The weakness could be from a stroke or traumatic brain injury.

• Stuttering

• Voice therapy for people who talk extensively for their work.

• Cognitive therapy for people with dementia and memory difficulties.

In addition to the new office, Ellis is excited to offer a summer camp for nonverbal children this summer. The program is being sponsored by a couple school districts and is an extension of the school year, Ellis said. With the help of three additional therapists, the children will intensively use tablets to communicate.

“Sometimes it’s hard when you’re the only person using a communication device in your school,” Ellis said. “A lot of people think that since they have a learning disability or they have cerebral palsy they don’t feel that way. Yes, they do.”

The summer camp gives these children an opportunity to be with other children who are all using a tablet as a communication device. They get to see that they are not the only one who needs one, Ellis said. They get to see other children doing the same thing they are doing and learning what they are learning.

“We thrive off of people. We thrive off of social interaction,” Ellis said.

The camp will run for four weeks, and the children will meet for 2 to 3 hours Monday through Thursday. Parents and siblings are also welcome to attend.

“It’s so important that the parents know how to implement and use the devices, too,” she said.

For more information about the therapy services, go to the website is http://t2ttherapy.com/.