Meet Dr. Michele Kehrer, PT, DPT

Dr. Michele is originally from Wisconsin and started Balance Chicago in 2006 to help people that did not have success with other treatments for their dizziness and help people get back to their lives. As a lifelong athlete herself, Michele discovered her calling and began on her career path as a result of sustaining a serious sports-related injury in high school. She was always interested in owning her own business and this temporarily took a back seat to her undergraduate education. She changed her major immediately entering college and graduated from Western Illinois University with a degree in Athletic Training, Sports Medicine, and Physical Education.

Upon graduation, she chose to work in an outpatient physical therapy setting. She loved the diversity of clients and the fast-paced nature of her job. She would work any athletic event that she could find to keep up with her on-field experience.

After a while, she settled into serving as the athletic trainer at a clinic specializing in sports and vestibular rehabilitation while simultaneously serving as the athletic trainer for the Highland Park High School LaCrosse team. Here she merged her love for working with athletes and found vestibular rehabilitation and this felt like the best of all worlds. She played a key role in developing the protocols and equipment used by the few specialists working with neurological dizziness and balance disorders today.

A few years into this dual role, she was inspired by her work with NASA to return for her Doctorate in Physical Therapy at the University of Illinois – Chicago. She was in the first Doctoral class. That posed its own set of challenges. Not one to back down from a challenge, she worked through school with the sole intention to start her clinic. Helping people overcome difficulties and illness drives her to always be improving. Her success rates, contributions, and ongoing innovations in this emerging field have built her reputation throughout the medical community.

She has been an adjunct professor at Northwestern University and has taught her Vestibular Rehabilitation course around the country. She has been profiled and quoted in a number of publications.