“My mission is to share the principles of Behavior Analysis to empower families and to help their children reach their full potential. Every child is unique. I take a personalized approach to ensure that the power of reinforcement is used only to enrich the lives of children while maintaining who they are as individuals.”
Highlighted New Service: Parent enrichment sessions and in-home behavior interventions
Alexandra Padilla is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst “BCBA” with over 6 years experience in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis. She specializes in providing behavior analytic and parent enrichment services to empower parents by supporting the entire family. She develops treatment plans as a team to ensure all learning and teaching opportunities embody individual family values.
Alexandra received a Bachelor’s Degree from San Diego State University and a Master’s Degree at Florida Institute of Technology in the field of Behavior Analysis. Before joining San Diego Behavior Solutions, Alexandra was a BCBA Supervisor at an ABA company. This role included a multitude of skills such as Functional Behavior Assessments, a variety of milestone/skills assessments, and parent interviews. She has experience creating individualized unique goals for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder , children with other social or behavioral challenges, and their parents to support treatment gains across the home and community environments. Across treatment Alexandra was able to support parents with implementing the same skills that were being taught during 1:1 sessions such as teaching replacement behaviors to increase functional communication and decrease maladaptive behaviors. Alexandra is available for parent appointments via telehealth or in the Carmel Valley office. She also is available for in-home appointments for direct assessment and intervention with children and their caregivers .
She lives in San Diego with her husband and their mini Australian Shepherd Winston. Alexandra enjoys spending her free time hiking, camping and finding every Alpine lake and hotspring she can with her family!
What Others Say About Us
I am a general pediatrician with a special interest in ADHD, spending about 20% of my clinical time caring for ADHD patients. I have known Dr Pontillo since 2005 and have an enormous respect for her clinical skills and insights. She is my “go to” psychologist for more complicated developmental issues and for diagnosis of subtle high functioning disabilities. Dr. Pontillo’s interest in her patients and her ability to clearly delineate developmental problems allows parents to move forward with establishing a treatment plan. She is an invaluable resource to the San Diego Pediatric community.
Dr. Pontillo is an exceptional, and one-of-a-kind child psychologist. I have referred many children of my patients to Dr. Pontillo and she has always given them the best care and attention. Referring a patient to another professional is a big responsibility. I always look for a colleague who is efficient, professional, experienced and one who is able to come up with a clear diagnosis. I keep referring to Dr. Pontillo because of her expertise, efficiency and especially her warm and caring personality that is extremely necessary when dealing with children. I very highly recommend Deborah Pontillo, Ph.D as a child diagnostician, developmental and behavioral specialist, and therapist.
I’ve been referring my patients to Dr. Pontillo for the past several years with the utmost confidence that she will care and understand their developmental needs. Dr. Pontillo always provided them with a balanced and age appropriate intervention to help not only the child but the family as a whole.