Her Story
About Dr. Lauryn
Lauryn Gaston is an occupational therapist working at a memory care unit, where she assists geriatric patients with activities of daily living such as dressing, showering, and eating, as well as emotional regulation, grip strength, fine motor skills, and upper body strength for functional mobility. She recently passed her board exam after multiple attempts and began her first position in June. Gaston earned a bachelor's degree in pre-occupational therapy with a minor in psychology from West Chester University and a doctorate in occupational therapy from Howard University. She also completed a fellowship at Children's National Hospital to better understand individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities and holds a personal trainer certification from NASM. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated and received the Naomi B. Wright Award for achieving the highest Level 2 clinical fieldwork score in her class. In addition to her professional work, Gaston volunteers at Greater Zion Missionary Baptist Church, preparing and delivering meals to individuals experiencing homelessness in downtown Harrisburg. She attributes her success to God, her family, and her friends, and values honesty, courage, perseverance, and self-trust in both her work and personal life.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Dr. Lauryn
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success first and foremost to God. He has always done everything for me and showed me the way, but also my family and my friends. They have continuously encouraged me, and even when I felt down on myself feeling like I should stop studying they always just pushed me to continue to do what I needed to do so that I could be successful.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice would be to continue to learn and continue to ask questions. There's not a single point of time in your career that you can't learn something else, or you can't learn from other people, so just continue to ask questions and be open to learning.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't be intimidated. Continue to trust yourself, and trust your intuition, and know that you are in this field for whatever reason that you're doing it for, and continue to trust that, keep pushing and keep going, because the payout is really big. The influence, the impact is really big. It's hard work, but you really do have an impact on people's lives.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
A challenge is that as an African-American woman who is also young with a doctorate, sometimes we get overlooked for positions. In the occupational therapy field, there aren't a lot of African Americans, around 5%. An amazing opportunity is travel therapy, where you're able to travel from state to state to see different populations of people and treat those different people, while also having the freedom of traveling and seeing new places and new things and learning about different cultures.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
In my work and personal life, I feel like honesty is really important. I think courage is important as well. The ability to persevere and trust yourself.
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