Accelerate with Amber
Leadership with heart. Science with purpose. Growth that actually matters.
Join Amber Nelms, M.A., BCBA, Founder & CEO of Triangle ABA, for powerful conversations with clinicians, founders, and mission-driven leaders who are building people-first organizations in behavioral health, ABA and beyond.
This podcast explores what it really takes to grow: in leadership, in neuroscience-informed practice, and in building businesses that prioritize both outcomes and humanity.
If you're scaling a practice, leading a team, or shaping the future of behavioral health or ABA, you’ll find insight, strategy, and real-world wisdom here.
Because meaningful impact isn’t accidental, it’s built.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amber-nelms-m-a-bcba-54400170/
Accelerate with Amber
Chelsea McAdams – Chief Operations Officer, Connections Behavior Planning & Intervention (CBPI, LLC)
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What does it take to go from direct care provider to executive leadership in ABA?
In this episode of Accelerate with Amber, Amber Nelms sits down with Chelsea McAdams, COO of Connections Behavior Planning & Intervention, to unpack her journey through the field of applied behavior analysis - from discovering the science almost by accident to leading operations at a growing, clinician-owned organization.
Chelsea shares how curiosity about human behavior shaped her career, the realities of balancing motherhood with pursuing her BCBA, and what it actually looks like to scale an ABA organization without sacrificing quality. The conversation dives into leadership development, organizational behavior management (OBM), and how ABA principles extend far beyond clinical work into business, culture, and operations.
They also explore the future of technology in ABA, including gaps in current systems and how AI and digital tools could reshape learning, communication, and service delivery.
If you're a BCBA, clinic owner, or aspiring leader in behavioral health, this episode offers a practical and honest look at what growth in this field really requires.
Well, today's guest is Chelsea McAdams. And I'm so excited to have you on Accelerate with Amber today. We have been so lucky to be able to meet so many badasses in the field. And you look like another one. You're obviously a certified behavior analyst and the chief operations officer at Connections Behavior Planning and Intervention with over a decade of clinical experience in schools and home settings. And you have grown direct service providing to all the way up to being an exec leader. So that's exciting. You have that experience. Well, I would love to get started with what got you started in this industry to start with, Chelsea. Tell me about that journey for you.
Chelsea McAdamsFor sure. Well, thank you for having me on. I was excited to get to know you as well, Amber, and coming here. And I appreciate that. I sometimes I feel like the badass out there. Not a lot of us are able to get to where we get to. So that's exciting for all of us. To be honest, like back in the day, I had a cousin and a friend who were BTs in the world in different places. And they told me stories. And I was like, wow, that seems interesting. And I always had this desire to know why people do what they do, right? Like I think a lot of us as humans think that way, but no one really knows around behaviorism in the way that we do in ABA. And so I fell into it in that type of a way. And I started working when I moved out to Washington. So I have been all over the place. I'm originally from New Jersey, and then I lived in Arizona, and then Hawaii and Key West and Mississippi, and then here. So I've seen a lot of our country and a lot of different cultures and a lot of different individuals out there. And once I got over to Washington and came into this field, I started realizing how much it just clicked with me. And what the science comes across as to me is like somewhat common sense in a way, and a really optimistic view of our society in a way, to say, imagine if we could all focus on the positive things versus more of the negative things, right? So I fell into the field, honestly. And then after I had my first child, my only child, I got into doing my master's and then getting my supervision and going through all the things under the sun that we all do with that.
Amber NelmsThank you for sharing that. Not everybody always talks about that. I think it's important for a lot of people that are students and wanting to become behavior. It looks like that for some people. Some people don't ever even go back to get their master's. You're like, oh, I'm already a mom. Like, could I actually handle that? No, you can. I went back to school and got my master's, being a mom with two kids, and my son was on the spectrum. So a lot of things are possible. And so thanks for sharing that part of the background too.
Chelsea McAdamsAbsolutely. Yeah, I think some of the older BCPAs like us, right? We had to go through that waiting period with the test and everything. And then at the same time juggling life, right? And be like, did I pass? Did I not? Okay, your kid, dinner.
Amber NelmsOh, that was so stressful. Oh silly. So you pass your exam and then you're like, all right, how many kids did you take on your first year? That's a random question, but I'm always curious.
Chelsea McAdamsYeah. I mean, I was lucky, but you know, I was in the company that I'm in right now. So connections. Oh, you've been with them the whole time? The whole time. So I came in to them in 2014 as a BT and I told the owners right in the interviewer, I said, in six months, I'm gonna be a program manager, and then I'm gonna become the BCBA. So these are the things that need to happen. And in six months, I did become the program manager. I took on as an assistant, right? I took on a client that was in our clinic we just opened, a client in our home service line, and then a client in our school service line. So I got to see all different settings right there. And then by the time I was sitting for my exam, obtaining the credentials, I was more fully into our school service line at that point. And I still had some of our home clients. And I think my caseload was probably, gosh, I don't know, it was around maybe eight, give or take. I think most of the time it was a fluctuation between six to eight. It's really the nice thing about this organization that I work at with the owners who are clinical BCBAs themselves.
Amber NelmsThat's fantastic. So you guys are a hundred percent clinician-owned?
Chelsea McAdamsMm-hmm. Yeah.
Amber NelmsGood. Oh, I'd love to meet the owners as well. That's great. I'm glad to hear that. I don't know if you saw that. That's a really big thing for me. I'm really passionate about clinician-owned ABA companies and there being people asking more questions about where they work. So I'm also putting together a list of that so I can know who the people are across the nation. That's fantastic.
Chelsea McAdamsYou know, I mean, we've had our bumps, obviously, as most clinics out there do, but I think having the heart of the clinicians really driving the organization and so many people to where they are right now with them. Like, I mean, I am its own little success story coming in as a BT and now becoming your COO, right? So it's like there are so many different opportunities that can happen. But when thinking around our caseloads in general, right? We always strive for more of a quality versus like let's just focus on the billables, let's just focus on contract fulfillment world, right? Like we are a business at the end of the day, but you're not going to have a business if you don't have quality outcomes. So the name of the game, you're always trying to think how do we balance quality and cost at the same time? That's the mantra to say how do we make sure that we don't dip one side or the other in order to remain sustainable and high quality standards. Okay. How many clinics do you guys have? We have one clinic at the moment. We did have three, but COVID really hit us.
Amber NelmsOh man, that must have been very challenging.
Chelsea McAdamsYeah. And it really was just more so around the individuals where you had more clientele wanting to stay in their homes, which makes sense. And then you had staff who did not want to go into homes. So they wanted to go into a clinic. So you had two competing factors that took place. It was quite interesting. And with us being in Washington, where it was kind of like ground zero when it all took place for COVID. And our clinic was actually a mile away from the assisted living home where everything kind of started. So it was really close to home for us. But yeah, we have a clinic in our quote unquote south region at the moment, and we're looking at possible opening again for another one in our north region now coming up.
Amber NelmsAwesome. Well, what were some of the factors that you had to consider as moving from being a BCBA to also an effective CEO?
Chelsea McAdamsYeah. So during my time in about 2017, 2018, I came across organizational behavior management. And I went forward with FIT to get their OBM certification. And during that time, that's when it kind of really opened up my brain a lot to say, like, oh, ABA is for everywhere. It can be for so many things, right? And realizing as well at the end of the day, behavior is everywhere. So looking at an organization and saying all of this is also behavior, right? That the lot of the skills that we learn as BCBAs and understanding the concepts and principles around applied behavior analysis is so supportive to becoming an executive, to becoming a leader in an organization as well. So I started to develop a purely consultation line for the organization at that time. And in 2018, I became the director of consultation in regards to our organization. So I started looking more into like project management and all these other factors, where again, the way that my brain works is I started looking at everything within the framework of ABA. So looking at a staff member to be able to have a specific behavior taking place. It's like I was doing a mini FBA in my brain all the time. It's, oh, let me go look at what your teaching instructions are, let me look at this, let me look at that, and really understand how I can support these individuals to moving towards these expectations that we need. In 21 is when the opportunity arose for us to look at looking at developing a C-suite in the organization. We had a lot of different directors of different types of areas, but the owners were realizing at a point that we needed a central leadership world. So I threw my hat in the ring for the COO. And I think obviously the owners trusted me and understood that I could figure this out and I could know what I was doing. But it was a huge learning curve over the first year and a half to truly understand the ins and outs of the operations of an organization that is dealing with insurance funding, school funding, state funding, and going through all of those fun pieces.
Amber NelmsUnderstandable. What do you think in the ABA industry is being under leveraged from a technology standpoint? What system or technology do you think needs to be there?
Chelsea McAdamsYou know, there's so many new kinds of software and platforms that come out like on an annual basis. A lot of them have focus on whether it's your like billing and scheduling side or it's looking at your client management side, but there's not one perfect thing out there. And I think one of the things that's maybe emerging more is being able to cross over the field of technology with ABA. I mean, if we think around how obvious it is for a lot of our clientele that we work with, right? They are very enthused by technology. And if we could figure out all the different types of utilizations with it to say, how can this help with learning? How can this help with social skills? How can this help with communication? During COVID, I was trying to put together an online game social skills group to where we're focusing on games that individuals like out there, right? So talking about World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons, Minecraft, because in those areas, I think there's a lot of potential in regards to us being able to support those different types of skills with individuals out there. And if you go further from that, because I'm a person who just believes that ABA is for everybody everywhere all the time, you go further into the adult side of town and thinking around how technology can be used for adults as well. And those who are just getting diagnosed in this world, a lot of them are going into figuring out, oh, okay, how do I use my phone now as my support system? How do I use AI in that way? I think AI is going to be an interesting concept as we keep moving forward in this world.
Amber NelmsVery true. Hey, I have a question specifically for you. What CRM are you using right now?
Chelsea McAdamsSo we kind of have two platforms. So we have a system that is called, I think they got bought out now where they're called Insora. They used to be called NPA Code Metro, and that's really your billing and scheduling and like staff management system, whereas Catalyst, which is also part of InSora now, what Data Finch Catalyst, that is your data collection system. So both of these two systems together like interact, but we've been using these systems since 2014, 2015.
Amber NelmsSo what is in Sora? Because that sounds kind of more like an EMR.
Chelsea McAdamsYeah, Insora is some organization that bought these two pieces, these two entities. So I'm not sure as their whole organization on like what their whole company looks at, but they might just be like a health tech company. But when thinking around the utilization that we have of them, it's NPA or Insora Code Metro, they change their name every couple years. In there, you have all of our opportunity for having our clients' information in there, right? Having our scheduling in there, parent portal is in there, going through all those pieces along with catalysts, which gives us your data side. And families and school districts are able to access that as well and getting into it. Very cool. Always looking for new platforms though, because you know it's one of those.
Amber NelmsThat's one thing I'm working on right now. So it's good to know what. And so I'm just asking some questions to understand where people are at and how they're thinking through all the pieces that help you scale an organization. And clinician owned companies are where my heart is at, but we have to have the right tools to do it. Well, it's been so fun spending time with you. Thank you, Chelsea, for your time. Yeah, totally.
