Speakers: Jenna Arturi, BCBA at Bierman Autism Centers. Taylor Bucchanio, Clinical Director at Bierman Autism Centers. Lauren Kryzak, Regional Clinical Director at Bierman Autism Centers. Catherine Lark, Diagnostician at Bierman Autism Centers
Taylor Bucchanio: One of my favorite things about Bierman is how supportive our overall environment is not just in a single location that you work in, but across the entire company when I first started, I was a brand new BCBA. I was extremely nervous to take on a full caseload and just see what that life would be like. But from the second, I walked in the door, I had all the support I needed. I was paired with an amazing Clinical Director that was able to guide me and teach me how to program for these kiddos, but it doesn't stop there. Even when you graduate from CiT and you start to become more independent, there's always resources at your disposal. You have your Clinical Director, you have the other BCBAs in your location that you can constantly collaborate with. And that's one of the biggest benefits of working in a clinic setting. And then you have all these other people across all of the other locations. The Clinical Training Team is amazing and they're always helping you grow and develop and learn more and push yourself on top of that though. You pretty much always have mentors surrounding you to help you and guide you. I feel like I've been particularly lucky to work here because I've had opportunities left and right. I was really excited to be able to grow my skill set in a Senior BA role and then a Clinical Director role. But it doesn't stop at your clinical skills. I think I've learned a lot as a manager and a leader over time and it's just been really nice to have that mentorship directly to just help you and guide you in the right direction. I think one of the great things about Bierman is that it's not just people telling you what to do or how to react to a situation, but it's people helping you decide how to react to a situation or what's best for your team. And that really is gonna give you those lifelong skills as a Clinician, a Manager, a leader in an overall support system. At the end of the day, we are a lot of leaders creating new leaders and that's pretty much the greatest thing you can do for a company to help expand. And it's just been a really supportive environment for me to grow in. But I think for a lot of my peers as well.
Jenna Arturi: The system we have here ranging from so much support between our Technicians, the Behavior Analysts, Clinical Directors, Regional Clinical Directors, I have received support here that I haven't been able to access. previously. I was in home and then I was in a school and the access that I had to my directors was via email or by phone and usually I only spoke to them once every two weeks and going from that experience to coming here and being able to access my Clinical Director pretty much every time I walked into our clinical staff room, it's incredible being able to have a question. Have it be answered, Have her support me being able to turn to my staff at any point in the day and say, Hey, how's it going with this? How do you feel about this? I'm thinking of changing this or turning to my fellow Behavior Analysts that are in the same room as me being like, hey, I'm really struggling with this program. I see you did it too. How did you feel about it? How did you work through it? Being able to have that support system and having the answer to any question I could think of. at the drop of a hat is an incredible way that has helped me learn more than I had ever imagined being able to support me through more difficult programming changes. Or when I just didn't know where to go with the program. I have learned so much and watched other people do so many incredible things in their teaching and, showing me so many make-it- betters that I wouldn't have ever even thought of and being able to engage with their kids in so many wonderful ways. Not only is it incredible to see so many people doing that all day long, but being able to learn from it and use it in my own practice as well. I believe it has taught me so much and taught me so many things that I will take throughout the rest of my career. Thank you.
Lauren Kryzak: Something that I think differentiates Bierman from other companies. And one of the main reasons that I began working here almost two years ago was Bierman's ability to help support me and my professional growth and goals as a research practitioner. It was always really important to me that I continue to expand my knowledge in Behavior Analysis and my ability to practice Behavior Analysis, but also that I continue to come into contact with the literature and research in the field doing research myself, which is always really critical in my own professional goals and development. So, when interviewing with Bierman for a role, I was super excited to learn about the infrastructure and supports that are available to expand the researcher side of my professional interests. So, Bierman has an Institutional Review Board which reviews research protocols for our company. So if you are a master's student interested in doing research for your thesis or have graduated and are interested in participating in research. If you are interested in poster presentations at conferences, either local statewide national conferences. The company has not only the Institutional Review Board which allows us to actually conduct that research, but many PhDs on staff who are able to help support, develop that design and methodology as well as help execute the protocols and analyze the data and come up with you know, meaningful outcomes. Hopefully that your research shows several of our colleagues at Bierman have submitted and published research. So we have experienced practitioners in that field as well. So it just opportunity for me to come on board and work with other people who can support my interest in research and conducting research. And then again, also help me learn and expand that area. So that was always the researcher portion of my professional development and growth and then the other side was the practitioner. So again, Bierman has a clinical training team made up of seasoned BCBAs as well as PhD level BCBAs. people have, who have worked in the field of behavior now for quite a long time, as well as those who worked their way through the Bierman system. and got promoted and demonstrated strong competencies and implementation of Behavior Analysis to be part of this Clinical Training Team that helps to support our company's growth and development. So, you know, coming into a company where they valued that development of Clinical Training and then also the implementation to help support our staff at the Behavior Analyst level, the CiT, or the Clinician-in-Training level, the Clinical Director role, the Regional Director role. So all of us have an opportunity to learn, grow and become better practitioners so that we can help maximize the outcomes for our clients and our staff that we are in turn helping to support. So those are two really big factors that influence my decision to come to work with the and has really contributed to my job satisfaction over the past two years.
Catherine Lark: I cannot say enough positive things about Bierman's leadership team. There are so many talented um individuals at Bierman that really have done a very intensive job of developing training programs across the entire board. There is so much focus on positive professional growth for every individual that walks through Bierman, whether it's at the BT level, Lead Therapist, BA, Clinical Director, Regional Clinical Director, everybody is always growing and improving and in a very supportive manner which really helps us all to be the very best that we can be each day for our kids.
