About Katherine Schoenthal Kar, EdM, BCBA, LBA
Kate Kar (she/her) has been supporting children and adults in home, school, community, and center-based settings in the greater New York area for over 15 years. Ms. Kar received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, and her Master of Education degree in Applied Educational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York. An interest in assessment was sparked by a variety of teaching assistantships during and after graduate school, where Ms. Kar provided hands-on training to aspiring school psychologists and special education teachers related to administering cognitive, achievement, neuropsychological, personality, and projective measures, to utilizing clinical interview and observation formats, and to applying non-standardized assessment procedures with populations that are under-represented in current research.
Ms. Kar’s work with the autism community over time led her to the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which utilizes assessments along with various methods of data collection to understand and then impact human behavior. She decided to continue her education at CUNY Hunter College, receiving an Advanced Certificate in ABA and subsequently becoming a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and a Licensed Behavior Analyst (LBA) in New York State. Ms. Kar’s enthusiasm for training practitioners carries over to this field, where she has extensive experience creating and presenting live and virtual professional development series on ABA-related topics, especially natural environment teaching (NET), to educators, administrators, and related service clinicians.
Ms. Kar joined Dr. Robokos’ practice as a testing technician in 2019, where she supports with providing comprehensive assessments of clients’ strengths and needs, as well as Autism-specific assessments including the ADOS-2. Ms. Kar also offers neurodiversity-affirming coaching for clients and caregivers, approaching neurodivergence as its own potential to be nurtured rather than as a flaw that needs fixing. Outside the practice, Ms. Kar is a school psychologist and BCBA/LBA with Early Childhood Associates and Bank Street College of Education’s Family Center, where she guides families through the evaluation and eligibility processes within the Department of Education’s Committee on Preschool Special Education (CPSE).
Originally from nearby South Jersey, Ms. Kar was granted residence at International House upon moving to New York City for graduate school, where her smaller community quickly grew to include friends and colleagues from around the world. This sparked a passion for travel and volunteering that took her, her late husband, and their backpacks to more than 30 countries across six continents. Ms. Kar has also traversed the city over the years for client visits (and just for fun), having stopped at 94% of MTA subway stations and counting. In her spare time, you might find her exploring the city’s parks with her dog, Chewbacca, a mini-goldendoodle who likes making surprise guest appearances during Zoom sessions.
Ms. Kar’s years of clinical, behavioral, and educational experience, combined with her experiences living around the city and around the world, inform an approach to assessment, coaching, and collaboration that is data-driven and empirical, but also sensitive to individual, community, and cultural elements. She is passionate about using this holistic lens to demystify the evaluation and intervention processes so that solutions are accessible and effective for anyone and under any circumstances.
