Shelli Teshima spent her youth feeling held back by her stuttering, until she attended the Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research at the University of Alberta when she was seventeen. Shelli was so inspired by the treatment she received there, and the speech-language pathologists who helped her, that she was able to get her stuttering under control and then set out to become a speech-language pathologist herself.
In the article on the University of Alberta website, Shelli speaks about her early feelings of helplessness, and how hard she worked to reach her goals once she took control of her life. A VHS tape from twenty-two years ago depicts her struggles with speaking. Things have changed a lot for her since. Her stuttering is mostly under control these days, as she maintains her own schedule of practicing the techniques she learned years ago. In 2005 Shelli was the keynote speaker at the national CSA conference, and afterwards become the National Coordinator for the following five years. Today she is a busy mom and practicing therapist in Edmonton, Alberta where she lives with her husband Joe and their two young children.ISTAR is a self-funded, donor supported institute, and they are currently seeking donations to keep their program going.