Fay­ola K J Fras­er

A tes­ta­ment to re­silience, per­se­ver­ance, and tenac­i­ty, Danielle Reid’s jour­ney has been a con­tin­u­ous pur­suit of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al growth. Raised with a strong Chris­t­ian foun­da­tion, her par­ents im­bued in her val­ues that con­tin­ue to be fun­da­men­tal.

From a young age, Reid de­vel­oped her own per­son­al re­la­tion­ship with God, in­still­ing in her a sig­nif­i­cant sense of pur­pose, which would lat­er serve as an an­chor through­out the great chal­lenges in her ca­reer and per­son­al life.

Reid’s aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney was not lin­ear or tra­di­tion­al. Af­ter at­tend­ing mul­ti­ple sec­ondary schools, in­clud­ing El Do­ra­do Sec­ondary, North Gate Col­lege, and St George’s Col­lege, she pur­sued Busi­ness Man­age­ment Stud­ies at the School of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence (SBCS) in Trinidad.

As the end of her un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree ap­proached, her fam­i­ly made the de­ci­sion to mi­grate to Cana­da. Thus, Reid re­lo­cat­ed to British Co­lum­bia, sit­u­at­ed on the far west­ern side of Cana­da, far re­moved from the usu­al haunts that vis­i­tors to Cana­da fre­quent, mak­ing it a unique tran­si­tion for her.

Up­on set­tling in Van­cou­ver, she made a sig­nif­i­cant shift in her ca­reer path, piv­ot­ing to the study of Psy­chol­o­gy in­stead of Busi­ness Man­age­ment. Re­count­ing that “my at­ti­tude to school wasn’t very good at that time,” she re­calls not feel­ing in­vest­ed in her course of study, and sim­ply go­ing through the mo­tions to en­able the com­ple­tion of stud­ies.

How­ev­er, in her fi­nal se­mes­ter study­ing Psy­chol­o­gy, she be­gan work­ing part-time with a boy with autism, which in­tro­duced her to the field of Ap­plied Be­hav­iour Analy­sis (ABA). A defin­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that changed the tra­jec­to­ry of her life, so­lid­i­fy­ing her in­ter­est in and ded­i­ca­tion to the field, oc­curred dur­ing a dif­fi­cult episode when the boy she was work­ing with had a melt­down.

In that mo­ment, Reid re­alised that “I had the pa­tience, strength and abil­i­ty to guide him in work­ing through his emo­tions,” and was able to ac­knowl­edge that it was a unique abil­i­ty that not every­one pos­sessed. She be­gan to find a new­found joy in the field, and a sig­nif­i­cant sense of pur­pose in a ca­reer where she could add val­ue to her clients’ day-to-day lives.

Al­though it was not the ca­reer she had ini­tial­ly en­vi­sioned, Reid felt a strong call­ing to con­tin­ue in the field and de­cid­ed to stick with it.

Her jour­ney in ABA be­gan with pri­vate work and even­tu­al­ly ex­pand­ed to clin­i­cal set­tings, where she worked as a Be­hav­iour­al In­ter­ven­tion­ist (BI). As her pas­sion for the field grew, Reid pur­sued ad­vanced stud­ies in Dis­abil­i­ty and ABA and aimed to fur­ther her ex­per­tise to be­come a Board-Cer­ti­fied Be­hav­iour An­a­lyst.

This process, how­ev­er, was not with­out its chal­lenges. “I didn’t know it at the time,” she says, “but there weren’t any oth­er Black board-cer­ti­fied be­hav­iour an­a­lysts in the province at the time, and I en­coun­tered quite a bit of sys­temic racism in my pur­suit of that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Feel­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly ex­clud­ed from op­por­tu­ni­ties by the or­gan­i­sa­tion she worked for, Reid re­calls that for the practicum as­pect, she was not al­lowed to get the nec­es­sary hours to be able to write the ex­am, and when the time pe­ri­od for her practicum was run­ning out, while every­one else had got­ten the hours they need­ed, the pro­gramme end­ed abrupt­ly and she was un­able to se­cure hers.

De­spite those set­backs, Reid per­se­vered. She moved on from that or­gan­i­sa­tion and even­tu­al­ly found a su­per­vi­sor who would guide her to­wards be­com­ing cer­ti­fied. She then en­rolled in a Mas­ter’s pro­gramme, where she com­plet­ed her MSc in Ap­plied Be­hav­iour Analy­sis and Autism. While en­gaged in this course of study, she en­coun­tered sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­ers with­in the aca­d­e­m­ic en­vi­ron­ment. Reid ex­celled in her stud­ies and was praised by her pro­fes­sors for her aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, but her ap­pli­ca­tion to work in the re­search as­pect of her field to “help in mov­ing the field for­ward” was re­peat­ed­ly ig­nored by the Dean in charge of the re­search pro­gramme.

De­spite her strong aca­d­e­m­ic record, she was side­lined and de­nied ac­cess, leav­ing her dis­heart­ened in that pur­suit. Even­tu­al­ly, Reid fo­cused on com­plet­ing her de­gree, and af­ter com­plet­ing the nec­es­sary hours she ob­tained her board cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as a be­hav­iour an­a­lyst. De­scrib­ing it as “a huge, mon­u­men­tal achieve­ment, which I was su­per thrilled about,” she was able to fi­nal­ly prac­tise ful­ly cer­ti­fied in the field.

Reid be­came the first Black board-cer­ti­fied be­hav­iour an­a­lyst in the en­tire province of British Co­lum­bia. An achieve­ment which she was not ini­tial­ly aware of, she even­tu­al­ly shared her jour­ney of be­com­ing on a pod­cast, which was “an em­pow­er­ing and heal­ing mo­ment” al­low­ing her to re­flect on the pur­suit of a long-nur­tured pas­sion, mak­ing her feel that all the chal­lenges she had to over­come were worth­while.

Reid soon dis­cov­ered that se­cur­ing sta­ble em­ploy­ment, de­spite the high de­mand for her ex­per­tise, re­mained a chal­lenge, but her dream po­si­tion even­tu­al­ly ma­te­ri­alised when she was hired by a provin­cial pro­gramme serv­ing all school dis­tricts in British Co­lum­bia.

In this role, she trav­elled to re­mote ar­eas of the province, work­ing with schools that had lim­it­ed re­sources. Reid’s work was to en­sure that ap­pro­pri­ate pro­grammes were in place to fos­ter in­clu­sion for stu­dents with Autism. She helped train teach­ers and staff in “trau­ma-in­formed prac­tices and ef­fec­tive strate­gies, vi­tal to help autis­tic stu­dents learn in the right way, so that they are be­ing ap­pro­pri­ate­ly chal­lenged.”

De­scrib­ing this work as “en­rich­ing,” she was able to hone her skills in teach­ing, ma­te­r­i­al de­vel­op­ment, and pro­to­col cre­ation, all while tai­lor­ing the sci­ence of be­hav­iour to meet the needs of di­verse learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments, “mak­ing sure that every­one felt suf­fi­cient­ly sup­port­ed.”

Reid’s life took an un­ex­pect­ed turn in Feb­ru­ary 2024. While re­turn­ing home from work, she was rear-end­ed at a stop­light in a car ac­ci­dent that ini­tial­ly seemed in­con­se­quen­tial but ul­ti­mate­ly caused her sig­nif­i­cant cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal im­pair­ments.

Reid be­gan to ex­pe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant mo­bil­i­ty is­sues, speech dif­fi­cul­ties, and cog­ni­tive pro­cess­ing de­lays along with pro­found im­pacts on her men­tal and emo­tion­al health, forc­ing her to slow down in ways she nev­er an­tic­i­pat­ed. Com­pound­ing this, the dis­trict in charge of her pro­gramme un­der­went bud­get cuts, and as a re­sult, she was laid off. Reid then had to un­der­go fi­nan­cial stress as she was forced to man­age her com­mit­ments to see­ing var­i­ous phys­i­cal ther­a­pists, oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pists and men­tal health ther­a­pists to aid in her re­cov­ery.

Find­ing so­lace in

Psalm 23 ... she used

mu­sic to find her way

Dur­ing these emo­tion­al­ly tolling set­backs, Reid found strength in un­ex­pect­ed places. “At home, iso­lat­ed in my four walls, an op­por­tu­ni­ty arose for me to record a song I wrote 20 years ago.” The song’s lyrics, which once seemed dis­tant, now res­onat­ed with her on a much deep­er lev­el and be­came a source of en­cour­age­ment in the chal­leng­ing sea­son of her life.

Find­ing so­lace in Psalm 23, which speaks of God’s guid­ance and com­fort in times of hard­ship, she used mu­sic, her foun­da­tion­al val­ues and faith to nav­i­gate her cir­cum­stances.

“It be­came a very sober­ing time in my life,” Reid says, “and my per­spec­tive has shift­ed.” She now un­der­stands more pro­found­ly the strug­gles of the peo­ple she has served, par­tic­u­lar­ly as she strug­gles to en­gage in what were once sim­pler cog­ni­tive process­es.

Just as in­di­vid­u­als with autism of­ten face in­vis­i­ble dis­abil­i­ties that af­fect every as­pect of their lives, Reid has come to re­alise that her own dis­abil­i­ty is not al­ways vis­i­ble to oth­ers, which is a new-found chal­lenge. This new un­der­stand­ing has fos­tered an even deep­er well of em­pa­thy in her and re­newed her de­sire to ad­vo­cate for and serve peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. “All of this will on­ly fu­el my fu­ture,” she says, and once she is able to re­turn to work, she plans to con­tin­ue her work to make in­sti­tu­tions and or­gan­i­sa­tions more in­clu­sive, cre­at­ing strate­gies, pro­grammes and poli­cies that bet­ter ac­com­mo­date “peo­ple who ex­pe­ri­ence the world dif­fer­ent­ly.”

Reid’s mes­sage to young women in health sec­tors is to pur­sue lead­er­ship roles and not feel lim­it­ed in their ed­u­ca­tion. Com­ment­ing that “al­though many women are in­volved in car­ing pro­fes­sions, the top po­si­tions of­ten re­main male-dom­i­nat­ed,” she urges young women to aim high­er, to pur­sue fur­ther stud­ies, and to find ways to give back to their fields at the top lev­el.

“I have learnt from all the changes and chal­lenges that noth­ing is se­cure,” Reid says, imag­in­ing her fu­ture, “I thought that a cor­po­rate job was se­cure, but it wasn’t.” She has de­cid­ed that her next step is to work in­de­pen­dent­ly and pur­sue her own jour­ney to fu­el mean­ing­ful change in her com­mu­ni­ty. “I’m go­ing to step out in faith, I have big ideas to meet needs that aren’t cur­rent­ly be­ing met,” she says, so­lid­i­fy­ing her com­mit­ment to blaz­ing a trail in the field of Be­hav­iour Sci­ence.