Sonja R. de Boer Director of Special Education and Behavior Analyst, ME
Sonja R. de Boer is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst-Doctoral (BCBA-D) and obtained her Ph.D. in special education and psychology and research in education at the University of Kansas, with an emphasis on early intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Richard Simpson was her advisor through her doctorate program. She has approximately 30 years of experience working in early childhood special education, early intervention services, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), with students with disabilities, and specifically children with ASD. For children with ASD, she has designed and supervised in-home intervention programs (ages 0-10), preschool programs (ages 3-6; both intensive ABA and inclusive preschools), as well as elementary school educational and behavioral programs (ages 5-12).
For more than half of her career, she has focused on serving students with ASD and their families and educators in rural communities. She is currently a faculty member for Tufts University Medical Center in Child Psychiatry and provides training and consultation around the nation regarding interventions for children with ASD. Besides the United States, she has worked with professionals, universities, non-profit organizations and families with children with ASD and other disabilities in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Russia, Nigeria, China, Chile, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. She is the author of the book Successful Inclusion Practices for Children with Autism: Creating a Complete, Effective, ASD Inclusion Program (currently being revised and updated for publication); Discrete Trial Training, 2nd edition (part of the How To Series on Autism Spectrum Disorders); and is one of the original co-authors of the first edition of Autism Spectrum Disorders: Interventions and Treatments for Children and Youth written with Richard Simpson in 2005.