Alice Bravo, PhD, BCBA-D, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Seattle Pacific University and a Research Associate with the University of Washington’s (UW) School Mental Health Assessment Research and Training Center. She earned her BA in Psychology from Scripps College, her MEd in Intellectual Disability/Autism: Early Childhood Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and her PhD in Special Education from the UW. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, Dr. Bravo worked as an early childhood special educator in the Part C early intervention system and as a behavior specialist providing remote and in-person home-, clinic-, and school-based services. Her research focuses on early social communication intervention for children with autism, and caregiver and paraprofessional training and coaching in evidence-based practices.

Jill Locke, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) and core faculty at the UW School Mental Health Assessment Research and Training Center and research affiliate at the Seattle Children’s Autism Center. Dr. Locke received her doctorate in Education from UCLA in 2010 and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. Her research focuses on the: 1) social functioning of children with autism; 2) identification and implementation of evidence-based practices for individuals with autism in real-world settings; and 3) factors that predict successful implementation of evidence-based practices in schools. She is currently the principal investigator of an NIMH K01 Career Development Award that uses mixed methods to examine the individual and organizational factors that predict successful implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices for children with autism in public schools. Most recently, Dr. Locke was the PI of a pilot grant to study the feasibility and acceptability of a peer-mentoring program, MOSSAIC, for college students with ASD and the co-PI of a pilot grant that launched the PREP for IT program focused on career development and employment for college students with ASD interested in IT. Her research has highlighted the importance of collaborating with community stakeholders such as public schools and the reality of working within the constraints of large, publicly funded systems, their timeline (e.g. school calendar year), and with their personnel.

Karen Bearss, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington (UW). She earned her B.S. in Psychology as well as her M.S. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Florida. Prior to joining the UW community, she served as an Associate Research Scientist at the School of Nursing and Child Study Center at Yale University and Assistant Professor at Emory University where her work focused on parenting interventions for children with disruptive behaviors, as well as the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based treatments into community mental health centers. At UW, she works at the Seattle Children’s Autism Center where she oversees the RUBI Parent Training Clinic while continuing to focus on developing, evaluating and implementing evidence-based parenting interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder.