40 Under Forty 2020: Kayla C. Daly MA, MT-BC, LMHC
Photo: Matthew Wright
Kayla C. Daly
- Title: Owner, clinical director & professor
- Company: Worcester Center for Expressive Therapies
- Residence: Natick
- Birthplace: Worcester
- Colleges: Lesley University, Temple University
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Kayla Daly founded WCET in 2013, delivering therapeutic services through art, music, and counseling to all ages and cognitive levels. The organization has carried out more than 20 local contracts, including providing 16 therapeutic groups for the Mercy Centre in Worcester. Daly runs the program Healthy Minds for Healthy Lives in conjunction with Rainbow Early Childhood Development Center, which provides programming to children ages 6-13.
In 2017, WCET organized and sponsored the Real Deal Music and Arts Festival, first of its kind for Central Massachusetts. Outside of WCET, Daly is working towards her Ph.D. in clinical music therapy at Temple University. She does all this while teaching at Lesley University in Cambridge. Daly serves on the New England Regional American Music Therapy Association board, volunteers at Saint Vincent’s Cancer and Wellness Center, and performs at nonprofits fundraising events. In 2013, she published “A Day at the Fair,” an album of original children’s songs written for therapy. Daly has published five articles in academic magazines and presented 11 times at national and regional conferences. She won Women in Action’s Small Business and Entrepreneur Award in 2018.
What did you take for granted pre-pandemic? I had a hard time slowing down pre-pandemic, but now with my clinical work, teaching, and my own school work being remote, it’s even harder to stop working.
If you gave a keynote graduation speech, what would you say? Get out of your own way. Naysayers will always push their negativity onto you. You don’t need to add another person to that group. For the women who are accustomed to being told, “You won’t be able to make it work”, or “You don’t know what you’re doing”, those statements say more about the person saying them, than about you.
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