About Us

The Abilities Team started in March 2019 as The Speech Guy, Washington with only our founding couple, Kevin and Karlye Risdon. Kevin’s time was sold as a bilingual contract SLP. The intention was to continue to function essentially as a sole proprietorship. In a short time, other professionals and school districts inquired about benefiting from a co-op approach to contract services. We have grown into a small team of amazing speech pathologists and school psychologists. We are open to adding new team members from these and other fields. Employees benefit by gaining more income, benefits, and independence while schools are able to attain in-person services at a competitive cost.

Our Model:

We pay our team members day one near the top of the payscale with a few steps to arrive at the very top before they would be working for a district. This helps to attract talent, especially for districts in regions where attracting high demand professionals are difficult to recruit. We offer a large annual bonus. We pay for professional licensure and professional development, including travel, meals, and accommodations. Our intent is always to sign extended contracts with districts of at least two years.

Future Goals:

We intend to have a brick-and-mortar therapy clinic at some point in the future. Our focus on rural and remote schools has increased our awareness of the need for services in rural areas. We intend to start a nonprofit wing and take our services in the summer to rural areas of the developing world. We would like to work directly with children there as well as teach schools how to screen and provide interventions to children

Our Team

Taylor Martins

Taylor started with the Abilities Team in the 2020-2021 school year. Taylor graduated from Eastern Washington University's Communication Sciences and Disorders program. Taylor has a special interest in auditory processing disorders and AAC devices. She believes in the idea of bonding with rural communities and the resources they can provide, to build the best support for each student and their families. She is also very excited about supporting the Abilities Team's goal to offer our professional abilities to children in rural areas of the developing world. Taylor currently serves a single district in the greater Tri-Cities area.

Jolee Booker

Jolee is the epitome of a team player. She excels at leading teams through the synthesis of data to determine appropriate services for students with varying needs. Jolee continues to focus her professional growth on strengthening Social Emotional Learning (SEL) within schools, a high-needs area for students at all levels. She enjoys running social skills intervention groups to help kids grow and build upon their strengths. Jolee embraces school and family collaboration and believes strongly in early intervention services. She joins the ABILITIES TEAM beginning in the 2022-2023 school year.

Lana Labato

Lana is an enthusiastic professional who works in the greater Tri-Cities area. While Lana enjoys working with children of all ages, she has a special love for early intervention. Other professional passions include Alternative Augmentative Communication (AAC) and transdisciplinary collaboration including co-treatment, parent training, and team member collaboration. Lana is joining the team starting in the 2022-2023 school year.

Kevin Risdon

Kevin is an SLP with years of experience in a multitude of districts due to years of service as an itinerant SLP and special education director at the ESD. In addition to being a well-rounded bilingual SLP, Kevin enjoys working with intervention teams, systems building, and mentoring. Kevin works in the greater Wenatchee area.

As a co-founder of the Abilities Team, Kevin’s primary goal is to empower professionals to earn more while achieving their professional goals. This goal is reliant upon the second goal of growing available services to schools in all areas of the state. Special team interests that have led to future goals can be found on our About Us page.

Karlye Risdon

Karlye is a cofounder of the Abilities Team. She is an outstanding TK teacher in the Cascade School District (Leavenworth). She does many things behind the scenes and is in many ways the heart of our team.

Adriana Cardenas

Adriana joined the Abilities Team at the start of the 2021-2022 school year. She is a bilingual SLP working as a clinical fellow in the greater Mabton area. Adriana participated in and graduated from a Washington state cohort of Nova Southeastern University students in the MS Speech-Language Pathology program. Adrianna is a passionate well rounded professional with extensive teletherapy experience.