How a Stutter and a Lisp Led to a Career Built on Finding My Voice - and Now, I Help Others Be Heard

There is something I don’t talk about often.

Growing up in Fort Lauderdale, I had a severe stutter, and a lisp so pronounced it was, as I once described it, “put-on-the-raincoat” time for those around me.

For eight years I attended weekly speech therapy. Nothing changed.

By high school, I’d had enough. I quit, sat myself down, and taught myself, through deliberate, disciplined practice, to speak. Slowly. Carefully. With intention.

Then my senior year, I took a class called Street Law and ended up on my school’s mock trial team. With my parents watching, I cross-examined a witness in the finals of a tri-county competition. She made a mistake on the stand. I went after her like a bulldog. She lost it.

I was stunned. It hadn’t been that long since I had struggled just to talk.

I knew right then — I wanted to be a lawyer.

That mock trial plaque still sits on my desk today. Some friends and colleagues may have also read more about this journey in a profile done by Super Lawyers in 2021.

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35 years of complex medical malpractice litigation taught me that the law is never purely about arguments. It is about people. It is about being heard.

Families carrying grief. Physicians with their reputations on the line. Parties on both sides of the table who need someone to slow down, listen carefully, and help them find a path forward.

And as a kid who had to fight to find his voice, I learned early on what that is like — something that no classroom can teach — what it truly means to need to be heard.

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Now I sit in a different chair.

As a Florida Supreme Court Certified Mediator focusing on complex medical malpractice and serious personal injury matters, I bring the experience of truly needing to be heard and that understanding to every session I conduct.

If you handle these matters in Florida and are looking for a mediator who knows what is truly at stake on both sides of the table, I welcome the opportunity to work with you.

Book me today at 407.493.0899 or on my Appointments page for your next mediation.