06/07/2025
Rest in Peace to my Co-founded and dear friend Dr. Byron Law-Yone 💫
You brought so much life, laughter, connection and your famous attention getting whistle to our NEST community. You continue to have your presence with us at every OG NEST 💫gathering…
NEST Story:
Byron & I entered solo private practice around the same time in 2002.
After giving decades of service as an admitting doc to several hospital units, Byron found private practice somewhat isolating. One day we met up for lunch and talked about the transition from hospital work to private practice. We both felt out of contact with resources to better serve our clients. Byron said “Lets send out an email to all of our contacts in the field to set up a social gathering for networking that includes connection and keep it going by meeting up monthly. We agreed it’s a great way get to see our collegues and keep up with the available resources for our clients and their family memebers.” So we did and with the help of Phil Koreman, MD & Jelena Simpson NEST was born 💫
Within a few months Byron & I met up to discuss how to keep the group going… He said “I stayed up all night trying to think of a name for our group. I came up with a list of acronyms that could work for our group. NEST was the 2nd name on the list. He said, “It stands for network empowering stressed therapists!” We both started laughing 😂 I said “Thats it! Thats the name. “ He said “There are several other acronyms to go through, don’t you want to finish going over the list?” I said “No need. Thats the one!” Byron proceeded to tell me he worked hard on that list so I entertained him and when he was done reading all of them, we both agreed on NEST. I wish I had kept the list 📝
Rosemary Werner loved NEST and wanted NEST to expand to several locations.
She asked if she could help get groups started in Dallas and in Arizona. Byron and I gave Rosemary our blessing as long as the NEST groups continued to be open to ALL mental health professionals, including business deveoplment reps. We both depended on our reps to help us find resources and the best match for HLC for our clients.
Once NEST grew decided to trademark NEST. We wanted to keep it free and did not want anyone to make $$$ off of NEST… We soon realized that “stressed and therapist” came up so often in on-line searches that Byron said, “Lets change it to Network Empowering Smart Therapists. It works best for our trademark.” We agreed and processed the paperwork to get it done ✅

Byron I know you are thrilled NEST is still going. You were and still are the inspiration of getting us together every month for the past 21 years!
I will miss you until the day we meet again 💜
