The How to ABA Podcast

The BCBA field can be very demanding, especially when you’re first starting out. If you’re not managing your time properly or creating healthy boundaries, you can easily find yourself heading towards burnout. Fortunately, there are plenty of steps you can take to ease the overwhelm so that you have the energy to do your job well and make the most of your downtime. Learning how to say “no” is an im...

Summer Mingo is the cofounder of South Georgia Behavior Associates. She started her career in marketing and PR and realized she was uninspired by it. Someone close to her received ABA services when they were younger, and she decided to pursue a profession where she knew she could have a positive impact on her community. Summer’s practice focuses on building systems and environments around a family...

Early childhood intervention specialist and BCBA Lisa Cvetnich work with children from birth to age 3. After finishing her undergraduate education, she began working in a preschool program for children with emotional and behavioral disorders. Lisa then obtained a master’s degree in early childhood/special education and got her ABA certification in 2016. Her advice for teachers who are just startin...

Vidya Banerjee is the mother of an autistic teenager. At 18 months, she noticed her son was no longer hitting his milestones and experiencing some behavior regression. During a visit to the US, Vidya’s mother-in-law suggested that they seek out information on autism. Although it would take about a year to get an official diagnosis, Vidya and her husband learned all that they could. Her advice to p...

One of the challenges we can face as BCBAs is a difference in culture between us and the families we work with. We can also sometimes encounter language barriers. Ashley Cabral is a BCBA from Massachusetts who works at an in-home agency, primarily with Portuguese-speaking clients. As a bilingual BCBA, she’s able to help her families navigate through a new diagnosis in the language they know best....

Dayna Parker is the Director of ABA at Peak Behavioral Health, a multidisciplinary clinic in Oklahoma. Her journey is inspiring and relatable to those of us in the field who know things don’t always come easy. Starting out in elementary education, she later changed her major to special education after getting an opportunity to work with an autistic boy from her church. Dayna then went on to pursue...

In today’s episode of How To ABA, we’re talking to Jaime Santana, owner of Santana Behavioural Services. We were so excited to chat with him because he knows so much about caring for adults. We talk about how important it is to focus on these services since most of what’s available are geared towards children. We discuss the need for a shift in focus from generalized instruction towards skills tra...

Today we are talking with Farrah Benson, a BCBA and preschool teacher, from her classroom in South Carolina. Farrah has a lot to share about the importance of ABA in the classroom and what she and teachers like her can do to make that happen. Embedding ABA into the classroom is all about blending it into daily activities. Farrah gives us some great examples of how she does this in her day to day....

Today, we are talking with a guest, Katerina “Kat” Savino. As a BCBA working in a multidisciplinary clinic and as a mentor to future BCBA’s with Simmons University, Kat has a lot of advice and insight to share. Her background started very similar to Shira’s, moving into ABA from Special Education, she notes how impactful that background has been on her career as a BCBA. As a former Special Educati...

We’re back, and we are highlighting How to ABA’s other half, Shira. Shira is sharing what brought her to the field of ABA and the journey of creating How to ABA, as well as advice for fresh BCBA’s. I (Shira) started off on a not so straight path in my career. I was very interested in working with kids and early interventions, but the options out there just weren't for me. After leaving a phys...

Welcome to the second episode of How to ABA! Today, we start off with a spotlight on Shayna, and we hear a little bit about her background and start in ABA, where she is now, as well as some practical tips she has for new BCBAs.  I (Shayna) have been a BCBA since 2005 but I’ve been working in the field of ABA since 1997. After graduating in 1997 with a degree in psychology, I wasn’t sure what I wa...

Hello and welcome! We are Shira and Shayna and we are so excited to bring you our first podcast episode of How to ABA ! We are both BCBAs with over twenty years of experience, and as you can imagine, we have created and gathered so many resources in that time. We want to share them with you! That’s why we are here, and that’s why we created this podcast. If you are new to the world of ABA, are loo...