In this episode, we’re honored to welcome Dr. Ana Dueñas, Assistant Professor of Special Education at San Diego State University and Verified Course Sequence Coordinator for their BCBA program. Identifying as transferisa — having grown up crossing the border daily between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego — Dr. Duenos brings a deeply personal and culturally informed perspective to her work. Her teaching and research focus on Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) and how to culturally adapt them to meet the needs of diverse communities. She shares her path to this work, the challenges of embedding NDBI content into traditional ABA course sequences, and her leadership in co‑founding the ABAI NDBI Special Interest Group (SIG) — a collaborative space to support instructors, practitioners, and researchers interested in integrating NDBI into practice.

In this episode, Dr. Jamie is joined by Jillian Schneider for a thoughtful conversation about Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) and why truly effective support must extend across the entire lifespan—not just early childhood. Jillian shares her professional journey into the field of ABA, which began unexpectedly while completing a research-focused master’s program. She reflects on why naturalistic teaching resonated so deeply with her from the start, describing it as creative, meaningful, and relationship-centered rather than rigid or purely clinical. After more than a decade working with young children, Jillian transitioned fully into teen and adult services in 2023—a shift that profoundly reshaped how she thinks about early intervention.

In this episode, I’m joined by Will Martin, BCBA, ESDM‑certified therapist, and apprentice trainer, who leads Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) implementation at SOAR Autism Center. With over a decade of experience in behavior analysis, Will shares how SOAR is weaving Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) into the fabric of their community‑based autism centers in Colorado and Arizona — and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. SOAR’s model is grounded in a developmentally focused, naturalistic ABA approach, with ESDM at its core. Will also shares his personal journey to NDBIs — from thinking all ABA was play‑based as an undergraduate, to discovering the developmental power of NDBIs through Project ImPACT, and receiving high-quality ESDM training at Vanderbilt.