Yaksha graduated with an honours degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, S.A. in 2012 where she studied a dual degree, namely Audiology and Speech & Language Therapy. Her undergraduate training exposed her to working with a variety of ages, health and development needs, strategies, environments, and socio-economic backgrounds. She was exposed to a broad range of specialities in both fields, receiving training from highly specialised professionals in their fields.

Hereafter, she served a year of community service in a rural location, where she worked in both fields covering sectors in neuro- rehabilitation, psychiatry, paediatric intervention, geriatric care, neonatal wards, and palliative care. Here, she was faced with limited resources and complex cases loads, which gave her the opportunity to enhance skills of critical thinking, leadership, multi-disciplinary team work and evidence-based practice.

She then worked in a tertiary hospital, which was the largest of its kind, specialised in neurodiverse populations in rural communities. She also filled the role of head of department. Her passion for paediatric neuro-development was afforded the opportunity here to work with enhancing quality of life for individuals, families and communities. The challenges faced felt at times insurmountable, but with team work and persistence, she was able to contribute to comprehensive service development that really did make a difference.

She then left South Africa to work in the U.K. Being new to the country, the way of life, and having to understand the model of health service provision was an immense but adventurous task. She worked for 5 years in independent audiology and SLT practices.

She then went onto taking a full-time role as a community specialist SLT. Here she worked predominantly in SEN and dysphagia, and also partook in service development.

She became passionate about how communication and connection to the world was a fundamental to human life.  

With over a decade of experience, her passion has brought her to founding, Happy S.L.O.T.H. A.H.P. , where she is actively working in SLT and Audiology. She believes that as long as values, ethics, human connection, and thirst for learning exist, one can always make a difference to those whom they have the honour of working with!