Jillian, a developmental psychologist, has dedicated her career to serving neurodiverse communities and advocating for childhood service disparities. As an associate professor of psychology, she utilizes her research in early intervention contexts to improve services for children with developmental differences worldwide.

After earning her Bachelor of Arts in psychology from UT, she pursued her studies in developmental science at The University of Alabama where she earned her Master of Arts in psychology and Doctorate of Philosophy in psychology. During her graduate studies, she worked in a toddler autism clinic and also served as the lead graduate assistant on a research project that trained urban and rural pediatric clinics on screening for autism. For her dissertation, she implemented a parent - mediated intervention for autistic toddlers and their caregivers and investigated the importance of caregivers’ scaffolding techniques during play.

After graduating in 2013, she has implemented parent-mediated interventions and educational trainings throughout the world. Her specialty areas are developmental psychology and quantitative methods, and her research interests are neurodiversity, childhood developmental differences, impacts of caregiver involvement, and efficacious early intervention methods. She is devoted to raising awareness about child development, educating communities about children's developmental differences/conditions, and implementing early interventions for children with developmental differences in her local community (San Antonio, Texas) and globally. She implements parent-mediated interventions to empower the caregivers and train them to use empirically-supported techniques while longitudinally measuring improvements in their children's skills (e.g., language, play). She currently serves infants through middle-aged children with varying developmental differences (e.g., autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome) and their families who come from various backgrounds.