Christopher Barnett

CEO of ABA Centers - Leadership Excellence in Specialised Therapy Services

Profile

Christopher Barnett is the Founder and CEO of ABA Centers.

ABA Centers is a vertically integrated behavioural healthcare organisation that provides applied behaviour analysis (ABA) therapy services to children of all ages with autism spectrum disorder through a play-based approach rooted in positive reinforcement through a tech-centric model. The company is disrupting the autism care industry by demolishing wait times traditionally experienced by those in search of a diagnosis or treatment.

Interview

You have mentioned in the past that your career in autism care was established in part because of the inadequate treatment received by your daughter, whose autism was not correctly diagnosed when she was young. Can you share more about this and how it ultimately led you to founding ABA Centers?

My wife, Julie, and I have five amazing daughters and we suspected that one of our older girls might be on the autism spectrum, but she had been assessed previously and was simply diagnosed with speech and language issues. We later received the correct diagnosis that our daughter was, in fact, on the spectrum. She spent years dealing with a misdiagnosis and missing out on the proper treatment that she desperately needed.

I was able to see what was available in the space for autism care from a parent’s perspective. The lack of services available was infuriating and the long waiting lists that families were experiencing were just unacceptable. So, I set out to design autism care that would genuinely strive to make a difference in the lives of families when those families need it the most and that is exactly what ABA Centers is doing.

How did you incorporate your experience and lessons learned from your previous ventures while establishing ABA Centers?

I learned that sometimes failure is out of your control, so you can’t be afraid to fail.

I was in real estate earlier in my career, then in 2008 the market crashed. I knew what I was doing; I identified the right projects, I built the right team, I knew how to manage for maximum efficiency, and I made a lot of really good, right decisions. But it still all disappeared overnight. And what I learned is that no matter how smart you are or how hard you work, there are influences beyond your control that have the potential to derail your plans.

While these unforeseeable circumstances were out of my hands, the failure of these projects was still mine. But my failures have taught me more than my successes. If you’re paying attention when you make a mistake, you learn from it, and you turn that failure into the foundation on which to launch your next venture. I draw from my past learnings to forge the best path forward.

In your opinion, what mindset is needed to succeed in the healthcare sector?

When working in healthcare, you have to align yourself with something bigger than yourself. For me, that something is all of the children across the United States that are languishing on waitlists for autism diagnosis and treatment. For me, that something is providing hope to families in what is usually an unexpected and exasperating situation.

The mission is everything. As I sit here at this point in my career and I look at what motivates me to work at the level that I do, it’s the mission. There are children desperately needing care and parents who just want to help their kids, and I won’t rest until every child has the opportunity to get the autism care that they deserve.

In October 2022, you donated $1 million to Temple University for the creation of a new autism lab. Can you tell us more about this and your other charitable activities?

I am a passionate supporter of my alma mater, Temple University. I sit on the university’s College of Public Health Board of Visitors and that $1 million donation to develop the ABA Centers of America Autism Lab will allow the school to conduct autism research, offer diagnostic services, train students to become clinicians to meet the needs of the autistic community and to make a difference for the general public.

With the rate of autism in children seeming to increase each year, it’s important that the autism care workforce continue to strengthen in numbers. I am committed to making sure that individuals who would like to pursue a career in autism care have a path and the support that they need to achieve the certificates, degrees and experience necessary to become high-caliber clinicians.

My wife and I also personally endowed Temple’s ‘Cherry Pantry’, which combats hunger within the university community by supplying nutritious emergency food and equal treatment to all who visit the pantry.

During the course of your work to date, what achievements have you marked that you are most proud of having accomplished?

I become prouder of what we are accomplishing at ABA Centers as each day passes. At the time of this interview, we have already doubled the number of children that we are serving, year to date. Those children aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet to us – they are children that have learned to brush their teeth on their own, they are children that no longer shrink away from hugs or high-fives, and they are parents and caregivers that get to hear their child say ‘I love you’ for the first time. Every day, we are working to provide children with the tools to better navigate their autism journey and set themselves up to lead robust and fulfilling lives.

Can you share anything about your development plans for ABA Centers in the final months of 2023 and beyond?

For the remainder of 2023, ABA Centers is charging forward with its expansion plans. We are currently providing autism care in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Florida. By the end of the year, we will also be serving Pennsylvania, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. Our company is in hypergrowth mode and we have our eyes set on the West Coast, so our advancement across the United States will continue into and throughout 2024.

We are also continuing to leverage and build out a robust and astute team of technology and artificial intelligence experts at our offices in both the US and Medellin, Colombia. We are eager to explore emerging technologies and how they might amplify the efficiency and effectiveness of autism care that kids receive, so that more children can get the care that they need – quickly.

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