How we started

Poonam McAllister, CIIB’s founder, has always had a passion for healing. As a young girl growing up in Mumbai, India, she was always drawn to the needs of others who were hurting in some way. She was told her hands had healing and she always dreamt of being a doctor - a pediatrician specifically.

God did have a plan for her but was not through being a medical doctor. Instead, God led her and affirmed her journey through admission in one of India’s best medical schools for physiotherapy - which is what physical therapy is called everywhere in the world except here in the US. 

As a physical therapist, she gets to spend time with the patients she cares for, and gets to know their stories while helping them with the problems they came in for. It is the joy and purpose of her life - to offer healing through God’s gifts given to her.

After completing her Physical Therapy training and working for a year at Children’s Orthopedic Hospital in Mumbai, she embarked on a great adventure. 

God had another detour. Instead of fulfilling her dream to teach in the physiotherapy school, she was led to take a traveling PT position overseas. Poonam came to the United States to be a traveling therapist. At the young age of 22, she found herself traveling all over northern Illinois to provide physical therapy to patients in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, schools, and in the homes of those too ill or disabled to travel.

She eventually decided to put down roots, so she settled in Normal and took a job with OSF’s Physical Therapy department. Over several years, Poonam honed her skills by working her way to head of the department. She had come quite a long way from the little girl who loved her trips to the crescent beach on Back Bay near downtown Mumbai.

But something was still missing…

In 2007, she founded CIIB so she could create a place to provide physical therapy that would treat the whole person, not just the body part. Fast forward to today, and CIIB is a well-known and beloved place of healing for the people of Bloomington-Normal and from miles around.