Nasrin Sultana Shila, IBA

I am an International Behavior Analyst (IBA) and an ABA Supervisor based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. When a child's programme is mine, I assess them, design it, train and supervise the therapists who carry it out, and evaluate the data to decide what changes next. The outcome is my responsibility rather than theirs. My work sits where applied behavior analysis, research, and teaching meet.

From 2021 to 2025 I worked at Inner Circle, a social enterprise of SAJIDA Foundation, providing Applied Behavior Analysis and Verbal Behavior therapy to children between 18 months and 13 years old, one-to-one, in groups, and online. Day to day that meant running ABLLS-based drills, keeping session data, writing progress reports, and reviewing where each child stood against their Individualized Education Plan. Since November 2025 I have been an ABA Supervisor at Tender Twig, where I assess clients, plan the programme each child follows, train and supervise the therapists who carry it out, and review their data to decide what changes. Having done the therapy myself for four years is what tells me what to look for when I watch a session.

I came to this work through psychology rather than through special education. I trained at the University of Dhaka, finishing second in my undergraduate class with a project on childhood musical training and abstract reasoning and first in my master's class with research on consumer decision making, both published as journal articles. My postgraduate degree is in industrial-organizational psychology. That sounds a long way from a child's therapy room. It is not. Both are applied behaviour science: you define the behaviour that matters, measure it honestly, change the conditions around it, and let the data say whether it worked. I certified in psychometrics with the Bangladesh Psychometric Society, Level A in 2020 and Level B in 2021, and moved into ABA the same year. Measurement is what carried across, and it is still the part of supervision I am strictest about.

In 2022 I joined a University of Dhaka Centennial Research Grant project as a Research Fellow, and that same year a paper of mine won first prize at the 2nd International Conference on Industrial Organisational Psychology. Alongside practice, I teach. I have taught French, Social Studies, and History to Grades 4 to 8, and I run online courses on emotional intelligence, resilience, and stress management. I have also written two books and translated seven more into Bangla, mostly for children, because good ideas should reach people in the language they actually think in.