Kristin began in corporate communications after graduation, learning how to craft and deliver training programs as well as create video content. After several years, she decided to pursue teaching and trained to be a Montessori Middle School teacher in Texas where she found struggling readers were given accommodations but no remediation. After earning an AMI Elementary Certification as well as Master's degree in Education and Maryland State Teaching Certificate, Kristin began teaching in elementary classrooms. It was there she had 4th and 5th grade students who couldn't read and knew that nothing in her training would help her to help them. Fortunately, she was able to consult with Elaine Smith and learn from a master dyslexia and reading specialist how to best help older children. In each case, given daily individualized classroom instruction, the children moved up to full fluency inside of a year. In 2014, Kristin completed her Dyslexia Specialist certification through Michigan Dyslexia Institute. She began tutoring children from 6-16 and her quest to understand the science of reading, the latest brain research, began.

Kristin has collaborated with Elaine over the last five years to create the Brain Friendly Reading approach. Now they are taking what they know is extremely effective in a private tutoring situation and applying it to whole group classroom instructed. Kristin leads the Spelling to Read Tutor Training program brining her years of classroom experience to the adult learning community, creating highly skilled tutors to serve the needs of Michigan's struggling readers. The complementary school program has been achieving remarkable results in classrooms where nothing has changed but the instructional practices around reading for grades K-5.