Taylor Sparks, M.A., BCBA, LBA
Taylor Sparks is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and the Chief Operating Officer for Sparks Behavioral Services. From Kalamazoo, Michigan she completed her undergraduate work with a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Kalamazoo College. While studying at K, she had the opportunity to play four years of varsity softball and study abroad in Madrid, Spain. She went on to get her master’s degree at Western Michigan University in Applied Behavior Analysis under Dr. Richard Malott. While working towards her master’s degree, Taylor initially provided direct therapy to individuals with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis, before moving into a supervisory role which included training and providing feedback to staff and writing behavior analytic programming and interventions. In addition to direct clinical work, during her time at WMU, Taylor completed two system analysis projects and co-coordinated the Midwest Behavior Analysis Job Fair. She also had the opportunity to teach Psychology 1400 and a Rat Lab course to undergraduate students.
Upon graduating in 2017 she started her career as a professional behavior analyst working with individuals with an ASD diagnosis ages 2-18. As a clinician, Taylor created behavior analytic programs to address specific skill deficits and individualized behavior reduction plans for target behaviors, graphing and analyzing results to guide future programming, training and providing feedback to direct-care staff, and creating and implementing parent training to maximize therapeutic benefit across environments.
Taylor lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan with her husband and two children. In her free time she enjoys running, reading, baking sourdough, and traveling. Her behavior analytic interests include improving the quality of lives of individuals and their families using behavior analysis, the dissemination of behavior analysis across all individuals, and addressing the issue of environmental sustainability and its relationship with human behavior.
