From speech pathology to UX writing at BetterHelp — Mary Sherrill on what it takes

Published: September 6, 2026

Mary Sherrill, SLP, worked as a speech-language pathologist for nine years — in public schools, private practice, and pediatric clinics in middle Tennessee — before she started asking: what do you do with the things you’re good at, when the setting where you learned them is also the one that wore you out?

She is now a UX Writer and Content Designer at BetterHelp, the online therapy platform, where she works on the therapist-facing side of the product.

An SLP works with one patient at a time. A content designer at a platform the size of BetterHelp works with thousands of therapists at once. It’s the thing Mary comes back to when she explains what drew her from a caseload to a product team.

Her transition here was measured in years, not months, and involved some genuinely creative income arrangements. In this interview she talks through what that looked like, what this role requires, and what she’d want someone to know before they started down the same road.

Nine years with children’s language

Where did you go to PT/OT/SLP/A school, and what year did you graduate?

Western Kentucky University, 2013

What did you do when you first finished school, and for how long?

My first job as an SLP was in a public school in a low-income neighborhood. It had specialized preschool programs for children with higher support needs. I was there for 3 years.

In what setting(s) did you work, and what types of patients did you treat?

I worked in schools, private practice, pediatric outpatient clinics, and in specialized therapeutic preschools. My primary focus was language and social communication, and hanging with the ASD population was where I found the most joy.

Most of my clients were preschool-age, but over my 9 year career, I had patients as young as 14 mo, and did some hospital shifts in the rehab wing with many elderly patients.

What did you enjoy about your early roles? What didn’t you enjoy?

I loved the people-work. I loved building connections with children, helping them find a door into the next level of shared understanding. I loved giving their parents a trusting relationship amidst the overwhelm.

However, when I was in grad school, I didn’t realize how extensive and soul-crushing the paperwork would be. I changed settings several times to try to find a place that would work for me.

Burnout, odd jobs, and building a portfolio from scratch

When and why did you decide to do something non-clinical?

I burned out hard. It was mostly the paperwork that no setting gives you appropriate time for… once I had a child, my patience for stress and paperwork creeping home with me dropped until it was totally gone.

To be fair, I did have managers trying to be helpful tell me that I was putting too much effort into my reports and that “no one will read this…” maybe I could have stuck it out if I believed that. But working mostly in early childhood, I felt like we were on the frontlines of identification, and knew that sometimes the record I left could also help with differential diagnosis years later.

What else have you done since then, prior to your current role?

During my career transition, I accepted small gigs in my chosen line of work for pennies so I could build a portfolio. I had left speech, so this meant I needed to make income somewhere else during part of this period. At one point I worked in the front office for an eye doctor I know. For several months at another time, I subbed at my daughter’s childcare center while also working on their website.

Did you get any certifications or training along the way to help you get into your current role?

I’m mostly self-taught from books and articles from reliable sources, but after that, I did take one great course from the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle (online) called Strategic Writing for User Experience. I would learn as much as you can before starting a course to make the most of your teacher’s ability to answer the questions you haven’t been able to answer on your own.

Did you read any books, take any courses, or do anything special overall to get you where you are today?

I mostly taught myself through books like “Content Design,” “Strategic Writing for UX,” and “Writing is Designing,” as well as articles (UX Content Collective is a great source). But without someone I could consistently ask questions to, I was afraid I might be leaving gaps in my foundation. I took a semester course at the School of Visual Concepts, Seattle (remote, evenings) called “Strategic Writing for User Experience” which I believe was originally taught by the author of the book with a similar title above, Torrey Podmajersky.

How have people reacted to you leaving patient care?

I don’t remember anyone giving me a hard time, but I often felt they might judge me. I took to either explaining my burnout or the ways in which I feel I’m still helping people today, or both. It’s still something I feel I need to explain indirectly.

What the job is and how she landed it

What are you doing these days?

I’m doing something called “content design” (also called “UX writing”). Just to be clear, this is not “content writing” or “UX design”, or writing about UX – sorry for the word salad, but this will help you know what to google.

It’s a specialty discipline under UX (“user experience”) that focuses on the information paths and wording that guide people as they use a website or app. So it’s not the longform stuff someone might have come there to read, but the in-context guidance that ensures they know what to do while they’re trying to log something in a tracking app, how to upload an image of a check to their bank’s app, or any other thing you might open a webpage or app to do.

I’m working at BetterHelp now, the therapy platform. I was hired to help make the therapist-facing side of the platform easier to use. I partner with UX designers, product managers, and clinical subject-matter experts.

Before this, I was a contractor at Huckleberry Labs, the baby-tracking app.

How long have you been in your current role?

I started at BetterHelp this past March.

Are you still treating patients, or are you solely non-clinical?

I’ve been solely non-clinical since I started doing this work in 2022.

How did you find your job? Did you apply or find it through a connection?

I heard about my most recent role through someone I had worked with before.

Did you do anything special to your resume and cover letter to land the job?

Yes, a custom resume and a custom portfolio using a slide deck (AKA a powerpoint) based on the job description and not using AI.

What was the interview like for the role?

Well, much of it was during an epic ice storm, during which my family was out of power for 12 days. We had to travel south and fortunately had somewhere to stay with my husband’s wonderful family.

There was a recruiter call, a hiring manager call, a take-home test, 3 one-on-one interviews with broader teammates, and then a case study presentation for a panel of 4.

What her days are like at BetterHelp

What’s a typical day or week in the life like for you? What types of tasks and responsibilities fill your time?

In the morning after I take our daughter to school, I look at the company Slack with my mug of coffee. Things that need action later, I mark as unread, to return to them once I’m caught up. I look over emails, but those are more likely to just be notifications from Figma and Jira. I check Figma for comments. Then I return to the action items for the day.

The kinds of things I might be doing on a given day:

• Meeting to discuss how a feature should work and its limitations with a product manager, UX designer, and developer
• Reviewing internal or secondary research, or partnering with our researcher
• Having a working session with a UX designer or subject-matter expert to figure out which information should be most prominent 
• Determining the messaging for the feature with a product manager and others
• Fine-tuning wording in the interface to increase clarity while keeping it as brief as it can be
• Coming back to the wording a 100th time (not really but maybe) given new feedback from legal, product managers, or engineering

What are some of the rewards of your role? What are the biggest challenges?

Rewards:

• Work/life balance is often but not always good in this field – depends on employer
• Helping people, especially when I feel personally connected to the mission, like at BetterHelp
• Language puzzles all day

Challenges:

• Aligning the team can be challenging at times
• I’m the expert in content design, but the final say belongs to non-content folks
• Just like in SLP, no one outside of your role actually understands what you do 😌

How did your clinical background prepare you for this role? Which skills transferred?

While you can never truly know someone else’s experience, I do think trying to understand the intention of people who can’t currently say what they need really helps you notice and be aware of the context that might be impacting them.

Using that skill to try to understand parts of our app that might be confusing, and of course listening to the experience of people who have actually used it, is invaluable. Finding where communication has broken down and then scaffolding understanding is still what I do today – the work just scales more now.

Here’s something I didn’t learn in clinical work though – storytelling. This is everything when you leave clinical. Learn how to do professional-style storytelling well in your resume, in your interviews, and in presentations, and it will be one of your most valuable skills. I didn’t even know what this was when I started, but it’s 100% necessary.

Unlike when I was an SLP, it’s not enough just to be a boss at what you do. You have to learn to be a boss at the job-getting skills as well.

Roughly speaking, how are the hours and pay compared to patient care?

Compared with settings where paperwork needs to come home, the hours are better. The pay is better than when I was an SLP now that I’m established. However, during my career transition there was about a 2-year period when it was not paying the bills. I was doing the work to create future opportunities by building my portfolio at that time, and the money was spotty and low. That was very, very hard.

Do you work remotely or onsite?

Remotely, with 1-2 work trips a year.

Does your organization hire PT, OT, or SLP professionals into non-clinical roles? If so, what type of roles?

Not in any specific way, but I think a background in our fields is very complementary for working at a place that is about any kind of well-being.

If you’ve learned a new field and are trying to break in, your background is an asset. You just need to learn to translate it into the mental framing of your new context.

Before you make this jump

What do you wish you would’ve known before going into this role?

I knew this because I did a lot of research, but anyone considering this field should know that the market for all tech and UX roles is rough right now… for the past few years. Don’t jump without a parachute that can hold you up for a couple of years. Do your research!

What type of person do you think would do well in your role?

A great communicator, very collaborative, not precious about your work because everyone who took high school English will have an opinion on it – and you often don’t have the final say. Loves language but knows how to be practical and flexible. Good with people. Ready to be always learning. Doesn’t need their finished work to be zingy – this is not usually that kind of writing.

What is a typical career path for someone in your role?

Progressing in craft/seniority and possibly people-leadership within the craft.

What would you recommend to someone who is considering going into a role like yours? Do you have any words of wisdom for the readers?

Yes! The job market for this is rough. It took me 2 years of unpredictable, often short-term contracts, usually at low pay before I got reliable work. If you decide to do a bootcamp, be careful. Some bootcamps are predatory. Find a respected program. Do it if you like a structured approach to learning. They can’t guarantee you a job even though some will claim they can.

This transition will be a financial hit in the short term, and the field can be volatile. If you decide to go for this career, make sure you have a different income that can support you for possibly a few years while you try to transition in. And come in ready to learn something new once you think you’ve got it figured out. Perpetually.

Most of all: do your research. On this or any route you consider. Don’t jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I’m very happy where I landed, but that’s me – it might not be something you would enjoy. My husband would hate this job. Find out what the worst things about it are. Find out what it has that you would dislike. Interview people who do it, ask on subreddits (“what stinks about this job?”).

Tech is very unpredictable, and the last few years have seen hundreds of thousands of tech layoffs… you have to do enough research to know what the drawbacks are, that it’s worth it to you, that you can do it, that you will want to keep doing it. Then, you can just keep on going with confidence until you get there.

What is next for you? What are your high-level career aspirations?

I really love strategic work. Content design is part of the design of the thing itself, and I want to be there early to ask the early questions that help us make sure we’re building the right thing, and the later questions to make sure we’re building the thing right.

I think higher individual contributor (IC) roles would be interesting and challenging. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m actively learning what’s next.

How nine years in speech therapy quietly prepared her

Mary Sherrill learned, in nine years of clinical work, to notice where language had stopped doing its job. Not just running drills or collecting language samples — reading the gap between what someone intended and what got through, then building the structure to close it. That’s a clinical training. It turns out it’s also a design training.

It’s also interesting to think about who she’s designing for: licensed clinicians. People who are themselves highly trained in communication. That’s a specialized user, and one her background gives her a direct way to understand.

She’s six months in and already thinking about how to get upstream — earlier into the process, before the wrong feature gets built. That impulse will feel familiar to any clinician who’s tried to get a referral before the crisis rather than after it.

What to read next

• UX Researcher for Meta — Kate Paolini — another SLP who took the same career turn toward UX, on the research side.
• User Experience Researcher — Bethany Riebock — another look at the research function within UX from someone who has worked in it for years.

More resources for your non-clinical career

If you’re finding your own way through the non-clinical transition, we’ve created these FREE resources to help you get your bearings.

• Our weekly jobs newsletter: 100+ fresh non-clinical job postings every week, plus new spotlights, our latest articles, and hiring partners recruiting straight from our community.
• Four Secrets to Landing a Fulfilling Non-Clinical Healthcare Job: our free mini-course, delivered to your inbox.
• Our free career quiz: 15 questions, and you’ll come out with a much clearer picture of which non-clinical sectors suit you.

If you’d rather follow a step-by-step roadmap than piece this together on your own, that’s exactly why we made Non-Clinical 101. It’s our course & community teaching rehab pros how to make the switch in half the time with twice the confidence.