Brittany Lovelace Kolodziej

From helping out with the children’s ministry at her church to raising her own daughter, Brittany Lovelace Kolodziej has always felt that working with children was her calling. Now, as a registered behavior technician working with children with autism, Kolodziej has found the perfect place to merge her passion and her career.

Kolodziej graduated from Dublin High School in 2007, and went to Tarleton. She ended up getting married and leaving school early to move to Pleasanton with her husband Marty. In 2013 she had her daughter, and for the next few years she stayed home to take care of her.

She worked as a part-time teacher at a local daycare and started her own cake decorating business, called Kolodziej Cakes, which she ran out of her apartment.

In 2017, she went back to school at Texas A&M San Antonio, and in 2019 earned her bachelors of science in child development. As she started looking for jobs, she saw many openings for working with children with special needs.

“When I graduated, I had never even thought about working with kids with special needs,” she said. “It’s kind of intimidating if you haven’t done it before. But there were so many registered behavior technician jobs around when I was looking for a job. I just applied to them.”

One job in particular caught her eye, at a clinic called Cultivate Behavioral Health and Education that worked with children with autism.

“When I went in and found out what the company was about — that they really cared about the child and looked at the child and the whole family and what was best for everyone — and saw the compassion that they had for the most vulnerable population, I was like, ‘Okay, I think I can do this,’” she said.

Kolodziej took a job as a registered behavior technician, and started working with autistic children using a type of therapy called Applied Behavior Analysis. “I have three clients right now, and each one of them has an individualized treatment plan,” she said. “A lot of it is teaching functional communication, coping skills, and social behaviors.”

Kolodziej enjoys seeing her students progress. I love seeing when it just clicks,” she said. “It’s like seeing your teaching come to fruition and the child learning and growing. And I love seeing their progression from when you first start with them until now. One of my clients I’ve been with for over a year, and when he first started he could say five words clearly so a stranger could understand. Now he’s up to 20. It’s the little things like that, where you’re both putting in so much effort and finally one day the stars align, and it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is what we do.’”

This year, Kolodziej was accepted to Arizona State University’s online masters program in Applied Behavior Analysis. When she graduates, she will be a board-certified behavior analyst. “Instead of just implementing all of our programs, I’ll also be creating the programs and making the graphs and looking at the data and seeing if our intervention is working, or seeing what adjustments need to be made,” she said.

She plans to stay at her current clinic for now, but eventually would like to work with a school. “I’d love to be a behavior consultant within the school districts, because all children can benefit from Applied Behavior Analysis with emphasis on the whole child perspective,” she said. “I feel like it shouldn’t just be strictly used for children with autism, even though that’s what the science was founded in.”

Wherever she ends up, Kolodziej hopes to be able to help children who are at risk of falling through the cracks. “I think my greatest source of inspiration has been helping the kids who get left behind, through no fault of their own,” she said. “Kids need someone to be there for them even when they make mistakes and to not hold it against them, and just to sit with them in those hard situations and let them know that they are good. All kids are good, but I come across a lot of kids who don’t really think that. If you don’t think that you’re good, then you’re not going to make good choices.”

When she’s not working, Kolodziej enjoys spending time with her friends and family. She and her husband Marty and eight-year-old daughter Quinn live in San Antonio. Her parents, Tresa and Pete Anderson, still live in Dublin.

Throughout her life, Kolodziej has made decisions that felt right for her at the time. “The challenge has been accepting that everyone just does things on their own time,” she said. “Obviously, I would have loved to graduate earlier, and have all of this figured out sooner. But just accepting that that was a time in my life where I needed to figure out who I was as a person and what I stood for and what I wanted to do, and then make decisions based on that solid foundation.”

Kolodziej’s advice to Dublin graduates is to take the time to get to know themselves. “Figure out who you are and what you want to do, outside of other influences,” she said. “And don’t be afraid to fail. I mean, I’ve failed multiple times. But you know, you just keep on going until you get it right.”

Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.