Michelle Liddell

I've been in my field for going on 15 years now, and my journey started in a way I never expected. I was actually a pre-nursing major, working at a school district in a lower-income area, when I saw that a lot of teachers were struggling. I'm really passionate about helping teachers in their classrooms, and they all just kind of told me that they needed more help, specifically with the children with autism, because they didn't know what to do and they didn't get a lot of support from the school districts. A lot of the kids were being maltreated in the schools, and that's what really inspired me to dive into this career field, because I knew that there was a better way to work with these kids and I really just wanted to protect kids from being maltreated. I started out as a behavior interventionist aide at a school district, then moved toward a registered behavior technician at agencies all over LA and Orange County. Once I passed my board exam, I became a BCBA, and then from there, I moved up to the supervisory or director role about 4 years ago. I helped my old director actually start the ABA department at my current pediatric clinic, which previously just had occupational therapy, speech therapy, and physical therapy. I helped develop it over time, working with insurance, the trainings, all of the protocols. I was a key role in just the startup in general, and I've kept it going and grown it over the past 6 years in this specific community, which is north of Camp Pendleton, so we also service military families. It's an area that they don't get a lot of services, so I feel like we've really grown. Now I oversee the entire ABA department at my pediatric clinic, managing about 10 technicians, including those in their master's program as students preparing to become a BCBA role, and I also oversee a couple BCBAs who then oversee the therapists. My entire day looks like I do the scheduling and ensure that all the children are paired with their therapist accordingly, and if there's any call-outs, I'm actually going to be covering for them. I also do parent training and parent education throughout the day, meet with my team for training, and meet with the students individually to prepare them for their role. I just started developing social skills groups for the preteens and some of the younger kids who have a hard time making friendships, and I want to continue to grow that and continue to service this community and build parent connections.