Photo courtesy of Oaklin Lane.
Bright lights, padded floors, a black trampoline and a square foam pit fill the occupational therapy (OT) gym at pediatric therapy clinic Oaklin Lane. The gym comes to life as a young girl cautiously walks across the padded floor and climbs onto a bolted swing while her therapist talks with her.
One-on-one care is at the core of Oaklin Lane and CEO Chris Callander’s mission to provide personalized, accessible therapy to children across North Dallas.
“I think I struggled with some conflicts or some ailments as a kid because I was different and I was set aside,” Callander said. “I also wanted to build a company that allowed therapists, assistants and techs to have jobs that they were proud of and that could last for their career.”
Born in Louisiana, Callander’s early childhood was shaped by a lack of resources he needed as the child of a Nicaraguan immigrant. His experience growing up without access to those resources would later influence his desire to help other children with special needs.
“I came from working parents, and I went to the Louisiana public school system and we didn’t have therapists, we didn’t have extra resources,” he said. “So if you struggled, you struggled.”
At the time, Callander spoke only Spanish after living in Managua, Nicaragua, from the ages of 4 to 8. When his family moved back to Louisiana, the language barrier became the beginning of his distrust in academic institutions.
“[My parents] just assumed that when I came back here, I would just learn English,” he said. “I was literally put in all English classes, but I was just put in a corner to work on different worksheets.”
He remembers thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why am I at this separate table?” as he watched 30 other students seated together in his classroom.
“I probably harnessed some negative feelings about school and teachers. [Since] school didn’t really provide much for me, I didn’t think I had to give much back,” he said.
As he grew up, his language barrier lasted for several years, making it difficult to make friends and socially integrate. But when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Callander and his family evacuated and were sent to Virginia.
“They sent people all over the place, and we got sent to Virginia,” he said. “They had therapists ask us if we were okay and at the time I didn’t appreciate it, but now looking back, I’m so grateful for that help and support and it kind of stuck in the back of my mind.”
Despite his early childhood experiences, Callander would put his trust in school one more time when he enrolled at Northern Virginia Community College in 2017. From 2017 to 2019, Callander completed the requirements to transfer to Georgetown University before eventually attending Harvard Business School, where he graduated with his MBA in 2025.
After years of resentment toward education and the instructors who were supposed to teach him how to navigate his feelings, he decided to create a solution to help children in North Dallas who might be experiencing some of the same insecurities he faced.
In 2025, Callander purchased Excel Pediatric Therapy, a therapy clinic in Rockwall, with the intention of opening as many clinics as possible. In May 2026, Callander opened Oaklin Lane’s first flagship location in Lake Highlands.
“We looked all around the Dallas area, and we just saw this really pleasant location smack in the middle of Dallas,” he said. “It just feels right and it feels like home.”
Located at 8610 Greenville Ave., Oaklin Lane’s 6,000-square-foot clinic is home to speech rooms, handwashing stations, a feeding room, a fine motor room, a parent conference room, a gym and more.
Chelsey Anderson, director of clinical operations, explained what the intake process looks like.
“We do birth until adulthood,” Anderson said. “We have babies that are just three days old, and then we have kiddos that are six months and 17 years old.”
Anderson explained that the clinic typically lets older patients decide if they want to receive help. If a 17-year-old comes in with their mom and it is apparent that the teenager does not want to be there, the clinic will have a conversation with the parents to look for alternative options.
The sensory room at Oaklin Lane. Photo courtesy of Oaklin Lane.
Oaklin Lane offers four services: occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and feeding and swallowing therapy. All therapy rooms come equipped with adaptive equipment used for children with different disabilities.
Most patients attend therapy twice a week, with occupational and physical therapy sessions lasting 45 minutes and speech therapy sessions lasting 30 minutes.
The clinic reevaluates patients every six months to determine whether they have met their goals and are ready to graduate from therapy. If additional support is needed, therapists create a new plan of care with updated goals based on the child’s progress. For children with developmental delays or underlying diagnoses such as autism, treatment may continue beyond six months.
“In our feeding room we like to keep tools like our cheese grater that has a sticky thing that goes on the bottom and holds it in place,” she said. “It doesn’t move when you’re grating it and also protects the hand.”
According to Anderson, the adaptive tool is necessary for children who do not have fine motor control. For some patients, a lack of fine motor skills is a lifelong reality, and the adaptive tools can help remind them that they can still be independent.
In addition to the various therapy rooms and exercises the clinic offers, Oaklin Lane has a nonclinical side called Academy Lane.
“[Academy Lane] offers a sort of extension of the services that we have here,” Anderson said. “So maybe a kiddo has already graduated from here because they’ve met all their goals but the parents want to continue working on certain skills. That’s where the parents can partner with Academy Lane.”
Academy Lane offers weekly, biweekly or monthly sessions to work on targeted skills. For example, Academy Lane provides classes focused on communication, handwriting and learning how to ride a bike, among other things.
“When parents come to us, a lot of times they’re pretty desperate and they’re pretty defeated, and what we want to be for them is not just the answer or the solution, but we want to be the resource,” Anderson said.
That desire to be a resource for families is rooted in Callander’s own childhood experiences. For him, Oaklin Lane represents more than a pediatric therapy clinic. It is an opportunity to give children the resources and support he said he lacked growing up.
“Those insecurities build, and those self-limiting beliefs build, and it really affects kids all the way through their childhood and into their adulthood,” he said. “And a lot of the kids that we work with at Oaklin Lane are kids that have developmental delays and I do feel like it’s come full circle and I’m doing everything I can to help that younger version of myself.”
