Karen Chung

Why I finally built this

Karen Chung, Founder — Special Learning & ABAEthics.org

I've spent 16 years building Special Learning around one conviction: the gap between what ABA promises families and what it actually delivers comes down to the people — who trains them, who supervises them, and who owns the companies they work for.

For most of those 16 years, I watched two things happen at once. Families paid out of pocket, fought insurance, drove hours — and still couldn't answer the most basic question about a provider: who actually owns this place, and what do they care about? And at the same time, the clinicians who built ethical practices — the BCBAs who own their own shops, the parents who became providers because nobody served their own child well enough — kept getting harder to find, because they were busy doing the work instead of doing the marketing.

I'll be honest about the timing: I wanted to build this years ago. I've made more mistakes than I can count as an entrepreneur, and my intentions have always been pure, even when my execution falls short — but a directory like this needed something I didn't have until now: the ability to verify ownership at the source, at scale, for every provider in the country, and to keep it verified. Not self-reported. Not pay-to-play. Checked against registries and filings, with the source and date on every fact.

That's what ABAEthics.org is. 8,553 organizations across 12,250 locations. Who owns them — spelled out, "Private Equity Owner" in plain words, nonprofit, BCBA-owned, parent-owned. How they're staffed. What families say, and what the staff say, side by side, because a center families love but staff are fleeing is a center about to change. Every claim cited. Where we haven't verified something yet, we say so — a guess dressed as a fact helps no one, least of all a parent choosing care for their child.

Transparency creates accountability. That's the whole theory of this site, and it cuts every direction: ethical organizations attract and retain the best BCBAs, technicians — and parents. The providers doing this right have nothing to fear from daylight and everything to gain from it. The spotlight on our front page is earned by being rated, never bought — sponsorship exists and it is always labeled, but nobody can pay to change a score.

This is a Special Learning company, and it runs on the same conviction all of it runs on: every time a paywall closes on a parent who needs help, it gnaws at me — so the directory is free, the guides are free, the licensure lookups are free, and they always will be.

If you're a family: start with the search. If you're a clinician: check your next employer before you sign. If you own a practice you're proud of: claim your profile and get verified — I built the spotlight for you.

And if you have a thought about what this should become, tell me directly: kchung@special-learning.com. I read my own email.

— Karen

In Her Own Words

"I started working on ESBAP in 2018 because I saw a gap that nobody was filling. The BACB does important work governing individual practitioners — but organizations were operating without accountability. Eight years later, with 15 years of data from Special Learning and direct experience serving 28,000+ ABA professionals across 140+ countries, we are finally building the system I always envisioned. Individually, we are powerless. Collectively, we are strong."