“Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
T
hese wise words, spoken by Steve
Jobs at a Stanford University
graduation ceremony in 2005,
were something I could relate
to as a 26 year old, fairly
new graduate and soon to be pedorthics
professional. Like most people who listen or
read Jobs’ speech, we discovered and learned
that his successful career did not entail
his graduating from college, (he spent the
majority of his early 20's sleeping on friends’
couches), but how he spent his time studying
his real interests and passion for typography.
The life lessons and the point he was trying
to stress and teach that day to all college
graduates and people everywhere was to be
successful in life as a professional you must
continue to always do what you love.
significant experience evaluating running gait. I remembered what
my friend had told me about pedorthics, and began research this
profession. As I learned more and its place within the world of
healthcare, I knew I wanted to be pedorthist. However, the more
I learned and studied, the more I began to observe some major
flaws in how we as a profession handle the care and process of
fabricating and treating with foot orthotic devices.
As an avid runner, I had acquired my own experience wearing
custom made foot orthoses, and was not quite satisfied with
the final outcome. Having to wait 3-4 months alone was very
discouraging when my running season only lasted 3 months. It
became a vicious cycle – each time I would experience discomfort
for another month, get new shoes, and adjust to the new foreign
object in my shoes right in the middle of my competition season.
If an orthoses didn’t work, I was forced to wait another 2-3 weeks
to have them adjusted. This experience and thought stuck out
in my mind when I decided on how I wanted to pursue my
pedorthic career.
In the spring of 2008, I started in the pedorthic profession. Two
and a half years prior to this a friend of mine who had returned
from college introduced me to the world of pedorthics. As most of
us who enter this profession, we stumble on it by accident or are
looking for a change in our chosen career path, even life. For me,
I was going to school for a degree that I would, eventually find out
was not for me and decided to transition out of it. After graduating with a college degree in exercise science, and
becoming a Certified Pedorthist, I started pursuing my business
adventure. Considering I was still ‘young’ and not wanting to take
on an abundance of debt, I looked into developing an alternative
business model. My mobile business started out as house calls
from the back of my Honda CR-V, taking slipper casts, and
bringing them back to my "lab" that was housed on the back of
my rented condo balcony. No heat, in the middle winter, was a
challenge, but necessary. My fabrication lab changed locations
several times before actually becoming what it is today – the only
fully mobile fabricating foot orthoses practice in the United States.
During my not so voluntary break from my degree, I decided to
move to Northern Virginia and pursue the idea of starting my
own business. I knew I wanted a business in healthcare and had While the traditional brick and mortar business model has worked
for many years for the majority of the pedorthic profession, it is
out dated. It is time for pedorthists to quite literally think outside
Current Pedorthics
March/April 2013
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