Highlighted New Service: In-home behavior interventions
Nicolette is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) who has over 6 years of experience in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis. She utilizes behavior analytic techniques to support children, parents and families to make meaningful changes and reach their family goals.
Nicolette received a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Grand Canyon University and a Master’s Degree in Professional Behavior Analysis from Florida Institute of Technology. She possesses prior experience providing behavior analytic services to children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Nicolette created personalized goals to support challenging behaviors as well as to increase skill acquisition across social, language, executive functioning and cognition domains. To foster the family unit as a whole, parent interviews were conducted alongside teaching parents to implement behavioral techniques in the home and community settings. Goal progress was also monitored by Nicolette using a variety of assessments to measure developmental milestones and skills. Nicolette 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.
Nicolette lives with her husband and one-eyed pup Tori in San Diego. In her free time she loves to dance, try new food, be at the beach and travel!
What Others Say About Us
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.
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.