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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Advancing Autism Care Through Innovation and Engagement with Kelly Bozarth, CEO, Center for Social Dynamics 4-5-26
00:13:02
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and Becker Private Equity podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by Kelly Bozarth. Kelly's the CEO at the center for Social Dynamics. She's going to talk about what she does, the trend she's watching, where she's most focused, and a lot more. Kelly, can you take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us about the center for Social Dynamics?
- [00:24]
B
Great. Hello, Scott. Great to be with you today. I'm Kelly Bozarth, CEO for Center of Social Dynamics. My path into ABA is a bit unconventional. I actually started at the Walt Disney Company where I led multiple large scale operations. But regardless of the role at Disney, you know, the mission is always the same. To create an incredible guest experience for every single guest and to do that at scale, you know, the Disney magic, there is an art and a science behind it. And from Disney had the privilege to go into alternative education. And education is truly my first love and my passion, and to focus on children and adults who learn differently. I've always been deeply interested in how learning happens. How is it that humans learn that the brain absorbs information, what works to create learning and what doesn't. That turned out to be, while unconventional, a perfect pathway into csd because that's exactly what we do. We teach skills and behaviors to people who learn differently, people who are on the autism spectrum. And to do that, we design and curate learning experiences that engage and connect and personalize learning. We know that engagement drives outcomes. It's. It's key to good clinical outcomes. And so at csd, we often say that we want our clients to be as excited to come to an ABA session as they are to go to Disney. And that is a high and lofty goal, but it's one that we're out to create.
- [02:00]
A
Thank you. And how did you get into this area to begin with?
- [02:04]
B
Yeah. So, you know, I think like many people, ABA sort of found me. Some of the people that I worked with in alternative education introduced me to the CSD team. And the CSD team at the time was looking to elevate the way care is delivered. CSD is known for clinical quality, has been since the early days delivering high quality in person care. And after Covid, after the era of virtual learning, the idea was, how do we take what we know works virtually? Because virtual learning is expanding and growing. Could we create a model around ABA that is a better way to teach and learn? Could we merge the best of applied behavior and analyst with alternative education? At csd, we've created a virtual immersion program. And so this program is not just telehealth, it's not just going into zoom. When our clients come into our virtual immersion program, they meet their therapist one to one and they enter a themed environment. So Scott, if you love baseball and I love giraffes, when we come into our virtual environment, we are in that themed environment with our therapist. And all of the evidence based ABA practices, the way we teach skills in person, have been created into content and lessons that can be individualized to each client. The great part about virtual is we can use those evidence based practices and we can overlay them with gamification and surprise and the elements that make learning sticky online. In our virtual sessions, we even include virtual reality so our clients can practice the same skill across multiple settings and, and get, get really good at the skill so that that skill can generalize more naturally into real life. And that idea of curating learning experiences, blending modalities and making learning more sticky is what we're out to do. We call it. We want to increase the learning density of every single session. And the result of doing that is our clients will be in, in treatment, shorter periods of time, you know, they'll make progress faster. And we already know that our clients rate their virtual sessions as highly engaging and they, they look forward to session in bigger ways. So we're out to solve the big issues in the space to make access available anywhere. You know, any zip code in the US can have a, can have access to our virtual program and the learning can be high quality, the outcome can be better and the cost can be lower.
- [04:41]
A
Thank you so much. And talk about what are you most focused on and excited about this year? Kelly, where are you most focused and exc this year?
- [04:49]
B
Yeah, there's. This is probably one of the best years to be in the field of aba because the pace of technology and change is more rapid than we've ever seen. The way learners are engaging with content is changing. Kids and adults are both learning to engage with different types of learning tools, different types of gamification. And we study, we watch the trends outside of our space quite a bit, particularly alternative education trends. And we're seeing more ways that learning comes to the user. So if you have used any of the apps like Duolingo or Noom or Amazon, you see all the ways that learners are engaged with content. And we are looking at ways to take those learnings and apply them to our field. So one example is we just rolled out our Starship app. It's a caregiver app that allows Our caregivers access to ABA content 24 7. They can see content, they can read it, they can listen to podcasts, they can even track through, like a diary, what's happening in the home. So when they come to meet with their bcba, with their clinician, that session can be rich and full of real life content. And it's interesting because as we look to bring more of these learning technologies into our practice, we're seeing some real change. We have parents who regularly miss session who are now coming to session armed with real life, practical questions. The beauty of that is we know that when caregivers are involved, the children make better gains, they make faster progress. This creates just a virtuous cycle of care. The ability to bring those type of technologies into our sessions is really at a record high. That's one of the things we're most excited about in the year ahead.
- [06:42]
A
Thank you. And take us back. ABA Applied Behavioral Analysis. Just give us, you know, to those of us that are not in this space, give us the out what that means. What does Applied Behavioral Analysis mean? And where is the. What's the ideal student or person who uses or works with Applied Behavioral Analysis?
- [07:06]
B
Yeah, it's an important question because the demand for ABA is clearly growing. It is the most effective first line. It's considered the gold standard of care for those who are diagnosed with autism. And at the core, what we are doing is teaching skills and behaviors to those who think and learn differently. So in aba, we break down the different components, the different steps of a skill or behavior. Like, we might teach a child how to improve communication skills, how to make an introduction, and these. Across the autism spectrum, there really is not one type of a client. There are multiple types of clients across the spectrum. Some may have challenges with communication or with social skills or with living skills. There are some challenging behaviors that we're looking to shape and reduce the challenging behavior and replace with a safer behavior. And so our clinicians, who are the just the rock stars of our team, have the ability and the training to break down each skill into discrete steps and then to engage the learner to practice and learn those steps so that the behaviors and the outcomes can improve. And it's the science of shaping behavior, which borrows a lot from education and the science of learning so that we can make that learning stick and we can have strong outcomes. In the field of autism, like what I've learned, I'm relatively new to the space in the last three and a half years, you know, but I've had family members who have had all kinds of learning challenges which drew me to the space because when a child is diagnosed with autism, it is a, it's a shock to the family. Ecosystem disrupts, it changes, it creates stressors in the home. It can, it can introduce different types of relational stress and different types of stresses on well being. So our role is to come alongside families and to provide a structured plan to help improve not only the child's well being, but as a result, the ecosystem across the entire family.
- [09:20]
A
Thank you very, very much. And Kel, you've had this remarkable career from starting off at Deloitte and Audit to Disney World, to being president of a, you know, culinary institute, one of the, one of the best known in the world, to being president of another education company, now being CEO here. What advice would you give to emerging leaders trying to have impactful and great careers? Kelly?
- [09:48]
B
Yeah, you know, I've been fortunate to learn from some of the very best. And as I look across my career, I've, I've learned a few things that have really stuck with me and that I now view as non negotiables. And, and one is that culture. I mean it is, it is the number one role of the leader to create culture. You know, Drucker said it well, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And so I've learned to be very explicit in creating culture, to write down what our leadership principles are, what our service principles are and our values and to make them very plain to train to them. We use them when we interview, we use them when we promote. And promotions, I believe are one of those golden moments where if you're promoting people who embody the values, you fuel the culture in a positive way. And if you don't, then you don't really have values, you just have ideas. So culture is something we focus on, particularly in healthcare where we're doing such human centered work. The other one I would say is to adopt a leadership philosophy of people, service growth. That three legged stool has to be balanced, but it does have to start with people. So the role of a leader is to care for their team, to protect and develop their people. And so how we show up as leaders matters. Our energy, our clarity, the grittiness that we bring. We have to show up with that enthusiasm and purpose because it gets modeled and replicated across the organization. So we talk a lot about having healthy habits in our lives and our leadership, particularly with newer leaders. The one that I talk about a lot is getting off social media, scrolling Instagram at night is not a healthy habit to make us better leaders. It will rewire the brain to attend less and to look for more dopamine hits. So what will make us better leaders is to get out and talk to people, to go for walks, to spend time with our family. So taking care of ourselves as leaders, we teach, is not selfish, but a healthy way to promote a great culture. The third one, I would say is just to be an avid learner. I mean, to be a work enthusiast, to love what you do and learn as much as you can, particularly from the people who are the closest to the work. We have very structured ways at CSD to hear from our clinicians, to hear from our families. We have a neurodiversity board to make sure the way we're curating care and delivering it resonates well with our community. And we learn so much there. If we can all learn and act on those learnings, we engage the entire team in making things better every single day. And to me, that's one of the most enjoyable and important parts of leadership. I'm sort of a fan of leadership quotes, and one of my favorites has always been that the role of leaders is not to create followers, but to create more leaders. And. And that's how we shape a better future.
- [12:43]
A
Could not agree more. Kelly. What a pleasure to visit with you again. Kelly Bozarth, magnificent CEO of csd. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Amazing what you folks are doing. Thank you so much.
- [12:58]
B
My pleasure. Thank you, Scott.