Kelsey Thompson, PhD, CCC-SLP is a mom, speech language pathologist, and researcher. She specializes in early childhood feeding development and is passionate about supporting families through the introduction to solids and beyond.

Kelsey received her doctorate in speech and hearing sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2023 and earned her undergraduate and master’s degree from Northeastern University’s accelerated speech language pathology program in 2015. Kelsey has worked clinically as a speech language pathologist for eight years, primarily in private practice and early intervention. Through her clinical work Kelsey has gained experience working with children with a variety of diagnoses, including Down syndrome, autism, childhood apraxia of speech, cerebral palsy, PFD, ARFID, prematurity, and other genetic disorders. Kelsey has also worked with children with expressive and receptive language delays, articulation/phonology disorders, and executive functioning difficulties. Throughout her time providing speech, language, and feeding therapy, Kelsey most enjoyed connecting with families and supporting them through their individual journey.

Kelsey’s value of families and caregivers is central to her research as well, and has only been further emphasized through her own parenting experience. As a result, Kelsey’s research focuses on how to best support families on their feeding journey, starting at the transition to solid foods. Knowing how to approach the introduction to solids in a way that supports their long-term development can be overwhelming, particularly if your child has additional support needs. Kelsey’s research aims to develop and evaluate resources that can help make that process a little easier, while still keeping it individualized and feasible for the child and family/caregivers (and truly evidence based!) Currently, Kelsey is pursuing this goal through a postdoctoral research position with the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her full CV can be found here.