Meet our team
Our team bring a wide range of experiences, strengths and perspectives to their work.
From our Occupational Therapists to our Client Services team, we work together to support children and families, recognising that every family is different.
Sarah
Director & Principal Occupational Therapist
Sarah started Exceptional Kids because she wanted to create a place where children and families could be understood in the context of their whole lives, not simply through a list of skills to work on.
She has more than 20 years of experience as an OT and has a particular interest in children’s mental health, regulation, PDA and supporting parents. Her approach is grounded in curiosity: looking beyond what a child is doing to understand what might be happening underneath it.
Sarah is a big believer that therapy doesn’t happen in isolation. Parents know their children. Children have their own perspectives. And good therapy comes from bringing that knowledge together rather than the therapist arriving as the person with all the answers.
That philosophy has shaped Exceptional Kids as it has grown from Sarah on her own to the team it is today. She’s passionate about supporting the OTs around her to develop their own clinical reasoning, ask good questions and remain curious about the children and families they work alongside.
And despite being the person who started the whole thing, Sarah would probably be the first to tell you that she’s still learning too.
Anna
Occupational Therapist
If there’s a way to make something more organised, practical or useful, there’s a good chance Anna is already onto it.
Anna particularly loves working with children in their school environments, with handwriting and executive functioning among her areas of interest. She also enjoys creating practical supports like visual schedules and social stories that help children navigate their day.
She works across schools and the clinic and is one of those people who makes life easier for the rest of our team too, creating resources and therapy materials behind the scenes.
As a mum of three girls, Anna also understands that supporting a child happens in the middle of real family life, with all the moving parts that come with it.
Mim
Occupational Therapist
Mim brings a lot of energy to Exceptional Kids, which might be one reason she connects so beautifully with energetic kids themselves.
She has a particular soft spot for children with ADHD and loves working in school environments. For Mim, the relationship comes first: getting alongside a child, understanding what makes them tick and helping them feel supported rather than trying to squeeze them into a particular mould.
She’s warm, enthusiastic and extremely organised.
How organised? Our board game cupboard is alphabetised.
We feel that tells you quite a lot about Mim.
Michelle
Occupational Therapist
Michelle came to Exceptional Kids with a whole lot of experience behind her, having worked across rehabilitation, acute care, oncology and palliative care before moving into paediatrics.
These days, you’ll often find Michelle deep in assessment and reporting. She completes Functional Capacity Assessments and is also part of the team supporting Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) assessments, including pre-assessment appointments and comprehensive reports.
One of Michelle’s strengths is that she never forgets that there is a real person and real family behind the paperwork.
As a parent of neurodivergent children herself, she understands some of the complexity that can sit behind family life and values creating space for people to be honest about how things actually are, not how they think they’re supposed to be.
Steph
Occupational Therapist
After more than 20 years as an OT, Steph still loves noticing the small moments.
A moment of connection. A child trying something new. A tiny shift that might not look significant from the outside but can become an important building block over time.
Steph particularly loves working with younger children and their families through child-led, play-based therapy. She has completed extensive DIR/Floortime training in the United States and brings experience from Autism Queensland and the Mater Children’s Hospital.
She’s also passionate about supporting the grown-ups around a child, with a strong interest in mindfulness and caregiver wellbeing.
For Steph, therapy isn’t about arriving with a predetermined plan for a child to fit into. It’s about children, parents and therapists working together with curiosity about what might genuinely help this particular child and family.
Jaime
Occupational Therapist
Jaime has a particular soft spot for preteens and teenagers, that stage where young people are beginning to work out who they are, what matters to them and where they fit in the world.
She often finds herself in the valuable space between a young person and their parents: creating somewhere safe for teens to talk while helping families problem-solve in ways that respect everyone’s perspective.
And sometimes the best conversations happen over a board game.
Games and cards regularly make their way into Jaime’s sessions, creating opportunities for connection without making talking itself feel like another demand.
Jaime also loves group work and coordinates our ongoing groups, including play, homeschool, Dungeons & Dragons and girls groups.
She’s not one for rigid session plans. Jaime enjoys following a child’s lead, thinking on her feet and working with what matters most for them that day.
Jasmyn
Occupational Therapist
Jasmyn first came to Exceptional Kids as a final-year OT student.
Bravely, she asked Sarah if she could stay, and the rest is history.
With a background in psychology as well as occupational therapy, Jasmyn is particularly interested in the intersection between mental health, neuroscience and everyday life.
She loves working with PDA children and families, parent coaching, and preteens and teenagers. Building a relationship where a young person feels able to be themselves matters enormously to her particularly when they’re used to adults telling them what they should be doing.
You’ll also find Jasmyn working in schools, where she enjoys talking with teachers and families and understanding what’s happening for a child in their everyday environment.
Jasmyn’s approach centres the child and meets them where they are. Rather than trying to change the child to fit the task, she looks at what can change in the task or environment instead.
Nic
Client Services Team
Nic has been part of Exceptional Kids for five years, in fact, she was Sarah’s very first employee.
In that time, she’s become one of those people who seems to know how everything works. She knows our team, understands their different strengths and is often the person helping families work out what their next step might be.
Nic loves the people side of her role. She’ll happily spend time on the phone listening to what’s happening for a family, answering questions and helping them navigate their way into the clinic.
And after five years, Exceptional Kids has become an important part of Nic’s life outside work too. As a mum herself, she says being surrounded by the team, families and conversations at EK has shaped the way she thinks about parenting.
Ask her what makes Exceptional Kids special, though, and she doesn’t hesitate:
“Obviously, it’s the people.”
Fiona
Client Services Team
Fiona knows that picking up the phone and asking for help with your child isn’t always an easy thing to do.
That’s why she wants families to feel safe, heard and supported from their very first interaction with Exceptional Kids.
Before joining the team, Fiona spent more than 25 years working with children, families and health professionals as an audiologist, including in complex developmental settings. She’s seen just how much it matters when families feel listened to and understand what happens next.
These days, she brings all of that experience to our Client Services team, helping families navigate the practical side of getting started while making the process feel a little less overwhelming.
For Fiona, it’s about making sure there’s a warm, respectful human being at the other end of that first contact.