About B&D We understand behavior. We’ve also led organizations
B&D Assessment and Consulting Services is a California coaching and consulting practice led by Vivian David-Nicolas, PsyD, and Kristina Grubbs, M.S., BCBA.
Who we are today
B&D is a client-centered coaching and consulting practice. We work with individuals and professionals, with leaders and executives, with organizations, and with schools and the people who staff them. We also continue the disability and person-centered work the practice was built on.
What connects all of it is a way of working rather than a market. Someone arrives with a problem they have already named. We take that name seriously, and then we look underneath it, because what people bring in is usually a symptom that finally grew loud enough to notice. Naming the real issue correctly changes the entire conversation about what to do next.
Why psychology and behavioral science change the work
Most coaching helps you set goals and make plans. Goals and plans are the easy part. The harder part, the part that decides whether anything actually changes, is behavior: why people do what they do, and what makes a new habit hold once the enthusiasm wears off.
That is the work we are trained for. Our backgrounds are in psychology and behavior analysis, disciplines whose subject is behavior itself. The principles travel, because people are people whether the setting is a boardroom, a clinic, a school, or a kitchen table. It is why we can move between an executive's calendar problem, a school team's exhaustion, and a family's planning meeting without changing method.
It is also why we are careful about what this is. Coaching and consulting are not psychotherapy or clinical treatment. Our work is forward looking, practical, and built to transfer. When what someone needs is clinical care, we say so.
How we work with people
From outside, and in confidence
Development days, in-house coaches, and conferences all live inside the system they are meant to improve, which is why the real issue rarely surfaces there. We work from outside it, and in confidence, which is usually the only way it does.
With the whole person, not the role
A leadership problem is rarely contained to leadership. We work with the person rather than the title, so progress carries across someone's work and the rest of their life.
From strength, not pressure
Lasting change grows from capability and motivation, not from shame. We connect what is already strong to what someone genuinely wants, which is what makes the change hold after the work ends.
Vivian David-Nicolas, PsyD
Doctor of Psychology · Coaching, leadership, and human performance
Vivian brings more than thirty years across psychology, leadership, and human performance. She holds a doctorate in psychology, and she has founded and led organizations in the United States and the Middle East — which means she has sat on the operator's side of the decisions she now helps other people make.
Her work spans individual and executive coaching, career and role transitions, leadership presence and resilience, and client-centered planning toward personal and professional goals.
Kristina Grubbs, M.S., BCBA
Board Certified Behavior Analyst · Executive coach · Healthcare operations leader
Kristina is a board certified behavior analyst, an executive coach, and a healthcare operations leader. She has spent more than twenty years leading multi-site operations, developing teams, and turning behavioral science into practical leadership systems that work in real organizational settings.
Her work spans leadership and executive coaching, leadership resilience and burnout prevention, psychological safety and team culture, and training and speaking.
We have run organizations, not only advised them
Between us we have founded organizations, led multi-site operations, built and developed teams, and carried accountability for the results. That matters for a specific reason: it changes what we recommend. We know the difference between a change that reads well in a report and a change a team can actually absorb in a quarter, and we would rather find the lightest change that frees the capability you already have than sell you a larger fix you do not need.
Where we come from
B&D began in disability and person-centered work: independent facilitation, person-centered planning, Self-Determination Program support, IEP and IPP consultation, and advocacy for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities and their families across California. That work continues, and we are glad it does.
It also shaped the practice. Person-centered planning taught us to start with what a person actually wants rather than with what a system has decided for them, to build from strengths rather than from deficits, and to treat self-direction as the point rather than as a pleasant side effect. Those are the same commitments we bring to an executive, a school team, or a company. The setting changed. The way of working did not.
Tell us what is going on
We will tell you plainly whether we are the right people for it.