Kelly Ann Pena

Biography

Kelly Ann Peña is a speech-language pathologist specializing in brain injury and cognitive-communication, as well as a clinical educator and health professions education researcher. Before joining Pitt, Peña served as assistant clinic director for Rutgers University’s Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology program and practiced at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, NYU Rusk Rehabilitation and Weill Cornell Medicine. Her clinical experiences across pediatric and adult medical settings continue to shape her teaching and scholarship.

At Pitt, Peña teaches in the Speech-Language Pathology program and develops simulation-based learning experiences, standardized patient encounters and clinical reasoning curricula. Her scholarship examines how learners develop critical thinking and clinical reasoning, including the often-hidden cognitive work involved in making decisions under real-world conditions. She is particularly interested in how cognitive load, access and contextual factors affect learning and care, and in using simulation, cognitive task analysis and thoughtfully designed AI tools to make reasoning more visible, accessible and teachable. As a bilingual English-Spanish clinician and educator, Peña also considers how language, culture and lived context shape clinical decision-making and person-centered care.