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| LAULRYN SAASSI GILLIAM, MS, LMFT, PhD (candidate) | |||||||||||
| Lauryn was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and graduated from Louisiana State University. She then went on to achieve a successful career in sales and marketing until she was diagnosed with primary infertility at the age of 35. With mid life worries, career burnout and the 3 year struggle to achieve a successful pregnancy she began searching for an alternate purpose for her life.
After much soul searching, she quit her job, started infertility treatments and enrolled in Nova Southeastern University in the Marriage and Family Therapy Master's Program and the Medical Family Therapy Certificate Program respectively. She graduated with her Master's in the summer of 2006 and during her stint in the program she took on a real passion for helping other women and couples who have been or are struggling with infertility. This includes struggles with conception, miscarriage, donor egg and donor egg recipient patients, as well as donor sperm and donor sperm recipient patients. She works with relationships, communication and sexual issues surrounding infertility as well as the stress related to infertility medical protocol. She also provides mental health evaluations deemed necessary for donors, donor recipients, or surrogates using the MMPI. Lauryn works with transition to motherhood through live birth, adoption and surrogacy or the decision to not have a child or to stop treatments. In addition she works with women who are required to be on bed rest, experiencing high risk pregnancies as well as premature births and the stress, anxiety and grief that some of these experiences can bring up for the patients and their partners. There are so many layers of emotions that come attached to a woman or couple who has been diagnosed with infertility. Likewise, when a mother feels her baby's health is at risk it can be quite traumatic and they would likely do anything to keep them safe; and learning how to manage the stress of being held to a strict or mandatory bed rest regimen can be quite hard on a patient emotionally for many different reasons. Lauryn enjoys helping both the medical staff and the patients to appreciate better each others role in the treatment protocols and best practices for working together for the best possible outcome as well as learning how to spend their time in the most productive fashion so that all are working together and not against one another. |
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| She is currently obtaining her Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy at Nova Southeastern University and expanding her business Integrapy, Inc. where she strives to bridge the gap between therapeutic and medical worlds through education of patients, staff and doctors about the benefits of stress reduction around medical treatments to promote the best possible outcome.
Because Lauryn understands that relationships are the driving force of successful businesses she also provides the unique service of a human systems consultant. As a systems consultant she works with businesses and/or medical offices on assessing the way interdepartmental communication effects productivity, improving relationships amongst multiple locations and how staff responsibilities within departments and between departments can impact the synergy of the overall business goal. Lauryn is particularly interested in how relating to work staff how their strengths are benefitting their bottomline and how to improve upon what’s already working. These assessments can lead to insight that may increase satisfaction within the company around HR issues, productivity issues as well as increase the bottom line through less employee turnover and less patient dropout rates. Lauryn has a particular interest in providing workshops to medical staff on how to best relate to their patient population to reduce work burnout, increase patient satisfaction and increase both positive patient outcomes and a better work experience. Lauryn is married to her husband Todd and their miracle Peyton Ashley after 3 difficult years trying to conceive and finally succeeding with the help of the doctors and supportive staff at IVF Reproductive associates through In Vitro Fertilization and 7 weeks of mandatory hospitalized bedrest and a premature birth. To download Lauryn's Bio (PDF) |
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