Alyssa Ciarrocchi did not arrive at her current career through a straight line. She spent eight years teaching in New Jersey secondary schools, earning credentials in special education and learning disabilities along the way, before making a deliberate move into Applied Behavior Analysis. By 2021, she had earned her Board Certified Behavior Analyst credential — one of the more demanding certifications in behavioral health. Today she works with children and families in home-based settings across New Jersey, where the environment is less controlled than a classroom but the stakes, she has said, feel just as high.
Ciarrocchi was born and raised in southern New Jersey. She attended Rowan University on an education track, graduated with honors, and kept building her academic foundation with a master’s degree and multiple specialized certifications over the following decade. She now lives in Hammonton with her husband and two children. She has run two marathons and holds a New Jersey Real Estate certification. Her career is a study in deliberate, sustained progression.
A Conversation with Alyssa Ciarrocchi on Success
How do you define success?
Success is really about happiness, and I think people sometimes forget that. We only get one life. Whether success means being surrounded by family and friends, building something financially, or finding work that feels meaningful, it all comes back to whether a person is genuinely happy. A person is only as successful as how happy they are. That belief shapes the way I work and the way I try to live.
Was there a turning point in your career that clarified what you were working toward?
Leaving the classroom was the turning point. I had been teaching for years and I was good at it, but I knew there was more I wanted to understand about how children learn and how behavior works. Moving into behavioral analysis meant starting over in a real sense. I was an RBT before I was a BCBA. I was the person doing the direct work in someone’s home, not running it. That experience was essential. I don’t think you can supervise something you haven’t done yourself.
What qualities do you think are non-negotiable for success in behavioral analysis?
Compassion, first and always. You cannot enter someone’s home and try to help their child without genuinely placing yourself in the family’s perspective. Nothing about this work is fast. Families have often been through a lot before a BCBA shows up. If you can’t slow down and understand where they are, you won’t get anywhere. The clinical knowledge is necessary, but the relationship is the foundation.
How do you think about failure?
I think about it as information. In this field, if a plan isn’t working, that tells you something. It doesn’t mean the child has failed or the family has failed. It means the approach needs to be reconsidered. I try to bring that same thinking to my own decisions. If something didn’t go the way I expected, I want to understand why before I move forward.
What habits have been most important to your professional development?
Keeping at it when it isn’t comfortable. I went back to school multiple times after I was already working. Each certification meant balancing coursework with a full-time job. Running two marathons is maybe the clearest example of how I approach things I care about: you put the work in, you don’t skip the hard parts, and eventually you finish. The professional development piece is the same.
How do you balance the personal and professional?
It’s something I think about a lot. I’m a mother, and being present for my kids is important to me in the same way that being present for the families I work with is important. Both require that you actually show up. My mom is my model for that. She is who I aspire to be as a person, as a friend, and as a mother. That’s a high standard, and I try to hold myself to it.
What advice would you give to someone entering behavioral analysis from a teaching background?
Trust what you already know, but be willing to unlearn how you’ve always applied it. Teaching and behavioral analysis overlap, but they’re not the same. In a classroom you have structure and a group. In a home, you have a family in their own environment and a child who needs something specific. Your instincts about people will serve you. Your lesson-plan thinking has to give way to something more flexible.
What does long-term success look like to you?
It looks like being someone my children are proud of. It looks like families feeling genuinely supported, not just clinically managed. And it looks like having built a body of work that reflects who I actually am, not just the credentials I’ve earned. The credentials are the proof of the work. But the work itself has to mean something.