An interview with Peggy Halliday, MEd, BCBA

An Interview with Peggy Halliday, MEd, BCBA, Professional Advisory Board Member
Conducted by Yash Gupta (Extern) and Adriane Miliotis, MA, BCBA
Association for Science in Autism Treatment

We were thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with Peggy Halliday, M.Ed., BCBA, long time supporter of ASAT, current Professional Advisory Board member, and former member of the Board of Directors. With over 20 years of experience working in the field of autism treatment, Peggy recounts her journey from stay-at-home mom to BCBA and shares with us how both ASAT and its Executive Director, Dr. David Celiberti, influenced her career.

Yash and Adriane: Please share some details about your career path and how you became involved in autism treatment, and where your passion for this work was sparked.

Peggy Halliday, MEd, BCBA Professional Advisory Board Member

Peggy: It really came about through luck and good timing. Many years ago, when I was just out of college, I had an interesting job in northern Arizona working with individuals with a variety of physical and developmental challenges. My job was to help them reintegrate into communities after spending years in large institutions. Some of the individuals I connected with most closely were those on the autism spectrum. Fast forward many years – I became a stay at home mom with four children. In 1998, I moved with my husband and then school-age kids to Charlottesville, Virginia. This is where the luck came in. I was trying my hand at substitute teaching in the public schools. While subbing in a self-contained autism class in an elementary school, I heard about the Virginia Institute of Autism (VIA), a fairly new and, at the time, very innovative private program using the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). Several of the students I was working with attended VIA half days and the public school staff raved about the progress they were making; I was intrigued. VIA was only a few years old at this time and had been founded by two sets of parents who were seeking the most effective, science-based treatment for their children with autism. I contacted VIA to learn more. The founders and teachers there were determined to learn as much as they could about how to effectively serve this population. I accepted an instructor job and my new career began.

Yash and Adriane: What an interesting sequence of events! Once you found your way to VIA, what led you to pursue certification in behavior analysis?

Peggy: Once I was working at VIA, I, along with everyone else working there, read everything I could get my hands on about ABA and autism. Although the field of ABA was not new, interest in it was growing, especially in the area of teaching students with autism. It was difficult to find good resources though, especially to counteract the dozens of new fads that kept coming along. Once ASAT launched the inaugural issue of their newsletter in Spring of 1999, ASAT became my go-to resource.

The Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) was just getting off the ground and behavior analysts were able to become board certified for the first time. Because my colleagues and I at VIA didn’t have the expertise we needed, we looked for help from leaders in the field. We were lucky enough to convince Dr. David Celiberti and Dr. Peter Gerhard (both prominent experts in the field of ABA) to work with us, helping train our growing staff and doing program consultation with our students. Our programming got better and better but no one on staff was a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA). I clearly remember sitting at dinner with David and Peter during one of their consultation visits, when seemingly out of the blue David asked, “Well, who is going to become a BCBA?” It was a terrifying and intriguing idea. I was working full time, had 4 school age kids, and had only a bachelor’s degree, not the master’s degree I would need. I was in my 40s and had no desire to go back to school. But it became pretty clear that if I wanted to advance or even stay in the field I needed to pursue board certification. So with gentle but insistent prodding from David, I dove in. I first earned certification as a Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analyst (BCaBA), the bachelor’s degree level certification, and then immediately began working on a master’s degree and the additional courses and requirements I needed for my BCBA. David was my mentor and an excellent role model, and while it was a genuine pleasure working with him, he was a hard task master. But I found the work suited me. It was incredibly rewarding because the more knowledgeable I became the more gains my students made.

Yash and Adriane: We are so glad that you and David found each other. At VIA, what were some of the most rewarding or challenging aspects of your job?

Peggy: Because the field of ABA was growing, and funding for ABA services overall was increasing, VIA’s program grew quickly. I had the opportunity to work in a number of different settings as we changed from a strictly center-based school, to add a variety of other services, including home-based programming, supportive programming and consultation in public schools, and an outreach program. There was also a real interest from parents and educators throughout the state of Virginia for training workshops about autism and ABA. My colleagues and I developed a number of community teaching and training workshops and presented them both at VIA and throughout the state. These were well attended and introduced many people to this field. I had always enjoyed working directly with students, but sharing my knowledge with parents and professionals so that there could be a continuity of services for students was perhaps the most rewarding aspect of my job. In addition, during my first years in the field, only students lucky enough to attend a program like VIA were given access to evidence-based intervention. When I started working with different public school districts to help the teachers develop quality behavioral programming in their public school settings, I saw access expand to many, many more students, which was incredibly exciting. By offering BCBA supervision to some of the teachers in these schools, I was also able to encourage them to help keep these behavioral programs going after my consultation ended.

As far as challenges, I’m sure my challenges were the same as those of most people who went into the field in the early days: having to sell the need for ABA services for individual students to their IEP teams; fighting for costly services that I knew would make all the difference in a student’s success when other team members weren’t so sure about that; and working to make programs in the public schools better for larger numbers of students with ASD.

Yash and Adriane: That sounds very inspirational and seems that you worked for a great organization! What are some lessons learned over the course of your career about working with families and professionals from other disciplines?

Peggy:I learned that the best way for a student to achieve his or her potential is to have a team of parents and professionals working together. I loved collaborating with families. My goal when I set up home programs was to enable parents, siblings, and any other family members willing to participate to be on the same page, in order to provide consistency to their kids across people and places. So starting out, if the family members did not understand how behavior was shaped by events before and after it, the child’s progress was negatively affected. Therefore, it was my responsibility to provide clear training. I worked very hard to understand and respect the parents’ goals for their children. If I pushed for goals the parents were not on board with, I would have a hard or impossible time achieving those goals. If the parents pushed for goals I thought were currently unrealistic, I listened and tried to find a compromise.

Working with professionals from other disciplines such as speech therapy or occupational therapy enabled me to be a better teacher because I started out not knowing much at all about those disciplines. As my colleagues helped me understand more about speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy, I could help them incorporate behavioral principles into those disciplines to improve their students’ overall education. I was very fortunate when I consulted in public schools because all members of the interdisciplinary teams attended basic ABA training led by me, so they had at least a cursory understanding of behavior principles. Fortunately, professionals from other disciplines almost never pushed for strategies that did not have science to back them up. On the rare occasion when they did, we would have lively and sometimes heated discussions, but I was always very clear about what I could and could not support.

One of my favorite roles throughout my career was meeting with parents of newly diagnosed children. For a time, VIA had an agreement with the director of the University of Virginia’s autism clinic. When she gave parents a new diagnosis for their child, I would meet with them for an hour or two to help them sort through what this meant and next steps. I could not have done this without being able to rely on ASAT and all its resources. Being able to steer parents to good, factual reading materials and resources and make recommendations for educational practices was critical. Most parents were feeling lost and confused and didn’t know where to turn. Even with the information I shared, wait lists for good programs were long, and public schools sometimes did not support the educational practices that parents learned were essential for their children. The resources from ASAT not only taught them how to advocate for their children, but also taught them what to advocate for!

Yash and Adriane: The skills you learned at VIA working with children with autism and their families were certainly a natural fit for ASAT and we were fortunate to have you! You served on the Board of Directors from 2010 through 2020. Can you share a bit about your initial decision to get involved with ASAT?

Peggy: I was involved with ASAT, in one sense, from the time I entered the field because I relied on the organization’s resources. I was lucky to meet Dr. Celiberti early on and he has always been ASAT’s best cheerleader. He is also perhaps the most effective volunteer recruiter I have ever met. Sometime before I was asked to be a member of ASAT’s Board of Directors, I found myself volunteering to respond to emails sent to info@asatonline.org. I am still helping with that effort to this day. Because some email inquiries needed to be referred to board members, I got to know some of the parents and professionals who served on the board. I observed that it was a working board, and a hard working one at that. When I was invited to join the Board of Directors I was honored. It was a very busy time in my life both professionally and personally. However, ASAT had become very important to me. I wanted to volunteer my time and energy to an organization I believed was providing an essential service. I emphatically supported ASAT’s mission for both practical and philosophical reasons.

Yash and Adriane: We appreciate your decision to join and your contributions, both past and present. We were thrilled when you decided to remain involved even post retirement as a member of our Professional Advisory Board. What led you to continue to support ASAT?

Peggy: It was a tough decision to leave the board. I really appreciate and respect the other members I worked with throughout my tenure on the board. But in 2019, I retired from my work with VIA and moved with my husband from Virginia to Tucson, Arizona. I thought it was time to seek out new volunteer opportunities in my new town. But I wasn’t yet ready to give up ASAT completely. It is a challenge to find organizations that are aligned with my own principles and beliefs and ASAT is certainly that. So, when I was asked to remain on the Advisory Board, I of course said, “Yes.” I still enjoy answering inquiries sent to ASAT’s email and I am comfortable doing some limited fundraising for ASAT. I enjoy keeping up with ASAT’s new initiatives. Among new friends, I have already run into a number of parents and grandparents of children on the autism spectrum and it pleases me to be able to share ASAT’s resources with them. Some things never change!

Yash and Adriane: Thank you so much, Peggy. We are so honored to be a part of an organization that also played such an integral role in influencing your career. Your work at VIA providing safe and effective autism treatment and training others in the public schools to do the same has surely left a lasting legacy. Although you are no longer working in the field, we are pleased that you continue to rely on ASAT and its resources and thank you for your ongoing support in so many important ways!

Citation for this article:

Gupta, Y., & Miliotis, A. (2022). An interview with Peggy Halliday, MEd, BCBA, Professional Advisory Board Member, Science in Autism Treatment, 19(6).

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