Meet our Orthotist
Tara Barreiro is the owner of Stride and is a Canadian Board Certified Orthotist with more than 20 years’ experience in the field. In addition to her work with adults, Tara has a keen interest in paediatric orthotic care. She enjoys working closely with care teams at the IWK, and pursuing opportunities to further her expertise in this area. Focusing on patient goals and developing meaningful working relationships are key to her practice.
Passion
Tara grew up in Halifax with a passion for playing sports and dedicated most of her free hours to getting better at them. Most affectionately, Tara pursued soccer and most therapeutically, running. Having a career in a field that combines movement, anatomy and physics with building stuff is her dream job. Helping others to improve their independence, mobility and long term health makes it even more over the top super cool. After 20 years, she continues to love it.
Experience
A graduate of the Kinesiology program at Dalhousie University, Tara completed the two year postgraduate clinical program in orthotics and prosthetics at George Brown College in Toronto. She completed her two year residency in orthotics at the NS Rehabilitation Centre, followed by 15 successful years as a clinician. As an Orthotist in Nova Scotia’s public sector Tara has worked with a wide variety of patients, and care teams in acute, rehabilitation and outpatient settings. The best part of this has always been the people she’s met and cared for along the way. It is this experience, and the dream to walk to work, that gave Tara the drive to open Stride in January of 2023.
Life outside of Stride
Tara now lives in Dartmouth with her mostly fantastic and always supportive husband, her two amazing sons and two super cute dogs (you may run into Indi or Auggie at the clinic). When she is not working or out with the dogs, Tara loves being a super fan of her boys as they aspire to greatness in lacrosse and football.