Finding Her Voice: Old Michaelian Lillian Krikheli on Speech Pathology, Research and the Stage

For Lillian Krikheli (OM 2011), the connection between her time at St Michael's and her career is more than coincidental. As a speech pathologist, she works with voices every day. As a St Michael's student, she found hers on the stage. 

Lillian was a fixture of the performing arts program during her years at the School, taking part in choir and musicals throughout. She credits that experience with building more than confidence. Performing under pressure alongside a large group of peers, she says, taught her to problem-solve in real time when something went wrong without letting the audience know, a skill she now draws on daily in clinical settings when speaking with doctors, nurses and specialists. 

Lillian's career path was not a straight line. She entered university drawn to language and voice work, initially expecting to work with children, before a placement working with adults redirected her focus. She has since worked across a range of settings, including with professional voice users such as actors, singers and auctioneers, helping them recover from vocal injury. 

Today, Lillian's work spans two interconnected roles. Clinically, she works with people living with progressive neurological conditions, including Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease, supporting them with symptoms such as saliva and secretion management. She describes this work as most rewarding when it restores dignity, allowing people to socialise and take part in community life without fear of judgement. 

Alongside her clinical work, Lillian lectures in speech pathology at La Trobe University, where she also researches swallowing and secretion management disorders. She recently received a funding grant through FightMND to develop a secretion and saliva assessment tool, aimed at better understanding secretion issues in people living with motor neurone disease and informing future treatments. 
 
Reflecting on her broader experience at St Michael's, Lillian points to the consistency of care shown by teachers as what stood out most, both at the time and on recent visits back to the School. She describes recognising the same depth of compassion and attentiveness in staff today that she experienced as a student, even as the campus itself has evolved considerably. For Lillian, that continuity of culture matters more than any physical change to the grounds. 

Lillian's connection to St Michael's has continued well beyond graduation. She still sings with the School's Old Michaelian Community Choir, a link back to the stage where her career, in many ways, first began.