Meet Amber, one of the co-founders of Hope Comprehensive! Amber is a Speech-Language Pathologist who brings nearly 20 years of experience in the medical and early intervention settings to the local community, with specialties in infant and pediatric feeding and traumatic brain injury. Over the past six years, her passion for learning and teaching has found its home at Hope. When she’s not in the clinic spilling coffee on her laptop, you can usually find her dancing salsa with the love of her life, cooking, or scouring travel websites with her kids to find the next best place to earn that passport stamp.

Meet Megan! As long as Megan Sprague can remember she has been focused on inclusion and teaching. This passion led her to get her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Arizona in Family Studies and Human Development with a minor in counseling in Special Education. She then went on to fall in love with autism and behavior analysis and attended the University of North Texas to obtain her Master’s degree in Behavior Analysis. Megan has been a BCBA since 2009 and is proud to have influenced growth in many children, families, and staff in the process. Megan’s passion has grown to include building a program that keeps the heart in all services, allows parents and staff to feel supported and part of each client’s progress. She is proud to influence the growth of others towards their goals of becoming BCBAs and further helping the clients we serve. Megan is extremely proud of the team and program being built that provides top quality behavior analytic services, trains clinical staff with client led priorities and out of the box thinking, and is expanding to serve so many in Southern California. When not geeking out over her standard celeration charts, Megan is spending time with her husband and two small children in Temecula, crocheting, and is rarely found without a cup of coffee to keep it all going. She looks forward to helping anyone navigate their services or learn more about ABA.

Meet Phil! Phil co-founded Hope in 2014 with Amber and helps lead the strategic development, hr, and finance areas of the company. Phil can’t help but see endless opportunities to help people and create value and likes to treat life like a never-ending quest to learn, enjoy, and help others around him. After traveling around the world as a Coast Guard officer he pursued a MBA at University of Oregon and met both his future wife and business partner. He previously lived in Kenya building EcoZoom, a consumer products company selling energy efficient stoves and solar lights throughout the developing world. These days his adventures involve finding new hiking paths and playgrounds with his precocious toddler son and wife.

Meet Sara! Sara deLeon, Psy.D., helps children and their families as a licensed psychologist. Practicing since 2004, Sara has a unique approach to assessing children and their families in a compassionate and respectful manner. She currently dedicates her career to supporting the families as they navigate assessments and resources in the autism community.

Meet Apoorva! Apoorva Deshpande is an Occupational Therapist at Hope Comprehensive Center for Development. She completed her Master’s degree from USC’s Chan Division of Occupational Therapy. She has always been passionate about sensory integration and has 3+ years of work experience working with kids with special needs. Apoorva looks forward to helping people, particularly children, to live life to the best of their abilities and help them reach their goals.

Meet Leah! Leah Kohl M.S. CCC-SLP is a Speech Language Pathologist and a new addition to the Hope Speech team. Leah is originally from Pennsylvania where she attended Penn State University for her undergraduate degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders and then moved to Maryland to pursue her master’s degree in Speech Language Pathology at Loyola University. Leah has had the privilege of working in various clinical and medical settings as an SLP, and is always eager to learn about new research. Leah loves hiking, cooking, being an aunt, singing, and most of all, spending time with her husband and family.