Sonja R. de Boer is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst-Doctoral (BCBA-D) and obtained her Ph.D. in 2005 in special education and psychology and research in education at the University of Kansas, with an emphasis on early intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). She has 30 years of experience working in early childhood special education, early intervention behavior intervention services, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), with students with disabilities, and specifically children with ASD. Sonja began her career in California, working with James Partington and Mark Sunberg at Behavior Analysts, Inc and STARRS School. She worked all around the Bay Area within the homes of families and school districts creating early intervention programs with an emphasis on verbal behavior for children with autism. She used the ABLLS assessment and trained in-home and school staff in early language development, behavior, social, academic, self-help and adaptive behavior development. She worked with Richard Simpson in Kansas at University or Kansas and in Seattle at the University of Washington Autism Center, expanding evidence-based Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) early intervention services to rural communities in Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Seattle and Alaska. Sonja worked in Australia as the Executive Director of the only school (K-6) in Australia providing evidence-based interventions based on the principles of ABA to children with autism. Sonja worked as an independent consultant, traveling and consulting and providing training around the U.S., Ireland, and Chile.

Sonja worked for ten months as a neutral fact finder on a team of four investigators in J.N. et al. v. Oregon Department of Education et al. United States District Court for the District of Oregon. The report was published June 30, 2022. She also subsequently testified before the Oregon State Senate regarding the findings. Sonja has also been called on to provide trainings to state education agencies or school districts in which the state department of justice or department of education has ordered a specific corrective action plan. She has also worked as an expert witness for individual cases for families or for schools in which different types of interventions or services or assessments for children with autism have been deemed unsatisfactory by one party within an IEP team.

Sonja is currently living and working Maine as a Special Education Director for a small island school, a Behavior Analyst Consultant for a school district in central Maine, a faculty member for Tufts University Medical Center in Child Psychiatry. She is the Vice President on the Board of Directors for the Maine Association for Behavior Analysis (AMeBA) and is the Chair of the Planning Committee for the Annual Richard L. Simpson Autism Conference which is a part of the Midwest Symposium for Leadership in Behavior Disorders (MSLBD). She also owns her own business and provides training, consultation and expert-witness services around the nation regarding interventions for children with ASD.

She is the author of the book Successful Inclusion Practices for Children with Autism: Creating a Complete, Effective, ASD Inclusion Program (currently being revised and updated for publication); Discrete Trial Training, 2nd edition (part of the How To Series on Autism Spectrum Disorders published by Pro-Ed); is one of the original co-authors of the seminal research in evidence-based interventions for children and youth with ASD - first edition of Autism Spectrum Disorders: Interventions and Treatments for Children and Youth written with Richard Simpson in 2005. And after two years of research, she and two of her colleagues, just published (July 2023) first book for educators on evidence-based interventions for children with ASD: An Educators’ Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorder: Interventions and Treatments: By Educators for Educators. And she wrote and published a series of seven articles in the Autism Advocate magazine titled Proactive and Preventative Behavior Intervention Strategies for Children with Autism.