Alumni

Determined to help her autistic son communicate, Jody Smith came to Valencia College with a purpose

by Linda Shrieves

When Jody Smith watched as her 18-month-old son began losing his ability to speak, she took him to doctors.

But when he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, sensory processing disorder, ADD and “language regression,” her world was rocked.

“I was terrified and felt lost,” she says. “I wanted to help him, especially with his speech, but I lacked knowledge and skill.”

After getting him into therapy “and watching him work so hard in this world that is not made for him,” Smith decided to enroll at Valencia College -- so she could learn how to help him by becoming a speech pathologist. 

And, over the past four years, Smith has excelled both in the classroom and outside it, earning a 4.0 GPA and recognition in the college’s Honors College. Now, she has another accolade: She has been named the Valencia College Summer/Fall 2025 Distinguished Graduate by the Valencia College Alumni Association.

Of course, her journey wasn’t always easy. 
When she first enrolled at Valencia, she was nervous. She was 39 years old, and it had been 20 years since she’d been in school.  “I was afraid,” she recalls. “I was a lot older than so many of my classmates. And my brain doesn’t work the same way it did when I was 20. The memorization is so hard; it requires lot more studying -- a lot more than I would have done in my 20s. But I will say that every step has been worth it.”

A Performer At Heart

Originally from a small town in western Pennsylvania, Smith’s family moved to Sarasota when she was 4 years old. There, she began taking ballet lessons and by age 11, was in a young dancers’ troupe affiliated with the Sarasota Ballet.  Although health issues sidelined her a lot during middle school, she joined a performing arts high school in Sarasota and performed with the Sarasota Ballet – a path that ultimately led her to a prestigious summer institute at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts. 

After her summer in the Berkshires, Smith was preparing to head to Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania when she began having second thoughts. Worried about how she’d handle the student loan debt on a dancer’s pay, Smith instead returned home to Sarasota and pondered her future.

A friend suggested she audition at Walt Disney World as a dancer, and Smith was hired immediately.  Though she performed many roles in the entertainment division over the years, she jumped at the opportunity to perform at Tokyo Disneyland. During her year-long stint there, she learned two things: How to speak Japanese, and how much she appreciated massage therapy.

When she returned to Orlando a year later, Smith decided to get out of the theme park business and study to become a massage therapist. In 2006, she earned her license and has been working at resort hotels since that time. 

The beauty of massage therapy as a career, she discovered, was that it provided her with a flexible schedule, which became vitally important after she gave birth to her son, Iggy. That flexibility became even more important after he was diagnosed, and she needed to take him to multiple appointments and be on call for emergencies.

 

Jody Smith (right) with her professor and mentor, Rebecca Toole.

Yet, Smith wanted to do more – not just for Iggy, but for other kids like him who are nonspeaking. 

“If I could do anything to help my son, it would be to help him communicate,” she says. “That’s the piece I want to get to. I want him to be able to communicate more effectively. Just because we don’t hear his voice doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one.”

Today, she shuttles Iggy, now 9 years old, to 40 hours of therapy each week. She works as a massage therapist at a local resort hotel, and she volunteers to help other parents of autistic kids.

At Valencia, she was determined to absorb as much as she could – even as an online student. She made it a point to reach out to her professors and instructors for feedback and to learn more. Her first semester, she emailed English professor Rebecca Toole repeatedly, asking for feedback. Throughout the semester, she worked on a story about her relationship with her grandmother, which was published in the college literary magazine and won multiple awards. “That piece exemplifies what defines Jody’s writing: emotional resonance, unflinching honesty and a deep humanity that moves readers,” says Toole.

Based on their conversations and the strength of her classwork, Toole recommended that Smith join Valencia’s Seneff Honors College. There, despite being a fully online student, Smith thrived, completing a number of honors projects – including a research paper that she presented at a national honors conference, in which she researched the adaptability of the workforce environment for autistic adults in Central Florida. Along the way, Smith also interviewed Dr. Temple Grandin, a renowned animal behavior researcher who is also autistic. 

For Smith, this new chapter in her life is giving her the chance to soar to new heights, says her former instructor and now mentor Toole, “lifting others, advocating for inclusion, and modeling for her peers what it means to live with purpose.” 

What’s next for Smith? After graduating from Valencia College in December, Smith plans to enroll in the University of Florida’s online program to study speech pathology, starting classes in fall 2026. 

Of course, if she had one wish, it would be that she could stay right here.

“I wish Valencia offered more bachelor’s degree programs,” says Smith, laughing, “because I’d be here forever.”