Kayla Stetson | Director (2018-2022)

My name is Kayla Stetson and I am a Board Director for MoyaMoya Foundation Co. As a director, my responsibilities are to work together to raise awareness to the public about this Foundation and its missions, including bring forth ideas that will help make them possible.  

I hold a Bachelor of Arts Degree, in which I studied Communication Science and Disorders. With this education, I started my career as a Speech-Language Pathologist Assistant. During the day I spend a lot of time with children who have a variety of needs. Some who need help with pragmatics (how to socially interact with others), articulation (production of speech sounds), receptive (input: understanding of both words and gestures) and expressive language (output: how one expresses their wants and needs), as well as auditory processing (the way the brain processes auditory information). In which, I found out later that these skills can be lost (with a range of severity) when someone is diagnosed with MoyaMoya. 

Why I joined the MMFC: 

During my college studies I learned how strokes can affect people in different ways, but I was not aware of all the diseases that can cause strokes. In late 2016, I met Samantha Houle through her cousin, one of my good friends. From the day I met Samantha I could tell she was strong-willed and fearless. I soon learned that she had a rare disease called MoyaMoya; something I knew nothing about, nor ever heard of. 

As time went on, we had open conversations about what MoyaMoya was and what she had gone/ is going through. After one of Samantha’s surgeries she had mentioned that she was going to need speech therapy. I would ask her what she had done at therapy and she was always very open to share with me. Samantha really opened my eyes to a different aspect of speech therapy.  

Over time, I was amazed by how much her speech had improved in such a short amount of time. Forming that friendship with her encouraged me to learn more about MoyaMoya so that I could support her as well as the MoyaMoya community. Ever since then I’ve been a part of her journey as a friend and now as board member of the foundation.