Daniel Kwak, MS, BCBA was invited to serve on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Board for the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI). The mission of the board is to foster and develop an inclusive, equitable, and just environment for all individuals and groups within the science and practice of behavior analysis and beyond.
During his three-year term, Kwak will work to implement practices that support and respect diversity of identity and experience, evaluate the impact of ABAI’s DEI initiatives, provide recommendations, and more. As a PhD student on the board, Kwak hopes to address issues that extend across many areas of need and increase diversity within the ABA field at all levels of certification.
"I was honored and very excited to hear the news," said Kwak. "Because I am still a PhD student and there are well-established individuals serving on the board, I did initially question whether I deserved to be part of the board. But I do believe that my values and efforts to incorporate DEI across many areas of my work will hopefully benefit the DEI board. I hope that I can make a small contribution."
The purpose of Kwak's dissertation is to develop a tool that will be used to culturally adapt behavioral training and interventions and to evaluate culturally responsive behavioral parent training intervention. With this research, he hopes empower behavior analysts to take an individualized approach to considering the values and cultures of the families who have children with behavioral challenges.
Kwak also recently won the 2022 Scholarly Contributions to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Paper Competition (Student Category) for his systematic review that focused on cultural responsiveness in service provision.