Founder and CEO, Special Learning, Inc.
"I poured my heart and soul into this business the minute I decided I had a new mission in life."
Karen Chung immigrated to the United States from South Korea in 1975. She was nine years old. Her family arrived with $500. Within weeks of landing in Chicago, Karen became the primary caregiver for her three younger siblings while her parents worked multiple jobs. She delivered newspapers at 4 AM. She worked through high school and contributed every dollar she earned to her family.
She earned a BS in Accounting from Northern Illinois University, passing the CPA exam on her first attempt and receiving the Elijah Watt Sells Award for exceptional performance. She went on to earn a Master of Management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She spent the next 20 years in investment banking and real estate, building a career most people would have stayed in.
Then she learned about autism. Specifically, she learned that over 95% of the world's autistic population had no access to Applied Behavior Analysis, the intervention with the strongest evidence base, not because it does not work, but because the professionals trained to deliver it simply did not exist where those families lived. In 2010, only 16,200 Board Certified Behavior Analysts existed worldwide. Karen left her career and founded Special Learning.
Since 2018, Karen has been documenting and fighting the influence of private equity in Applied Behavior Analysis. When PE firms acquire ABA companies, the financial incentives change. Cutting one BCBA position saves roughly $100,000 per year, which at a typical PE valuation multiple creates $1,000,000 in enterprise value. The incentive is to understaff. The result: industry-wide annual turnover between 77% and 103%, and only 42.6% of authorized ABA hours actually delivered to the children and families who need them.
Karen's response was not to write an op-ed and move on. She partnered with Dr. Jon Bailey, co-author of the BACB Ethics Code, and spent seven years building the data infrastructure to make provider ownership transparent. ESBAP is that infrastructure. When a family, a BCBA, or a funder can see who owns the company providing ABA services, accountability follows.
Search the ESBAP Provider DatabaseKaren is a Korean immigrant, a minority female founder, and she was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder in her 40s. She has disclosed this publicly because she believes diversity and inclusion are not corporate talking points. They are lived experience. Special Learning was built by someone who knows what it means to be underestimated, under-resourced, and determined to build something that matters anyway.