Yaz Aboul is Animate Behavior’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. He has worked in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis since 2005. Originally starting his career in Organizational Behavior and Performance Management, he quickly found his passion in providing interventions to at-risk youths and with populations with severe and challenging behavior while working at secondary schools, group homes, and psychiatric facilities.
Yaz earned a B.S. in Psychology from Florida State University with a minor in Business and a certification in Performance Management. He then received an M.S. in Applied Behavior Analysis from Florida State University while studying under his mentor, Dr. Jon Bailey.
Yaz has gained a wide breadth of experience in ABA through his work across a variety of settings. He has served as a consultant and valued contributor to public and secondary schools, special education programs, as well as clinics, psychiatric institutions, and group home programs. Yaz has served as a behavior specialist, therapist and BCBA in numerous in-home and in-school ABA programs in both California and Florida.
Throughout his career, Yaz has had the opportunity to work with populations ranging from young age children to adults. He has provided high-quality clinical interventions to people with varying functional levels and emotional and developmental disabilities. Clinically, Yaz specializes in the reduction of severe and challenging behavior while emphasizing the teaching and use of functional replacement behaviors. He focuses on parent training, verbal behavior and the upholding of the highest possible degree of ethics.
In 2011, Yaz partook in a successful two-year task force dedicated to the reduction of high levels of restraint and seclusion in public school settings. He served on multiple IAT teams, advised on Response To Intervention (RTI) behavior programs, and designed and implemented Performance Management systems for businesses, schools, and psychiatric facilities.
With over a decade of experience in ABA and rising to regional director level positions, Yaz saw the clear and ever-present need for higher clinical quality, better training and supervision, strict ethical practices and use of new technology within the field of ABA. It was this motivation and shared vision that led him and fellow BCBA co-founder Alex Lorenzo to bring Animate Behavior to life.
Above all, Yaz is committed to improving people’s lives via cultivating high caliber, ethical clinicians at Animate Behavior. His reaching experience in designing, implementing and supervising clinical interventions and clinicians themselves, coupled with his multi-faceted background in ABA and OBM position him to make this commitment a reality.
Yaz currently resides in Oakland, California where he enjoys cycling, hiking and exploring the greater bay area.
Click here to reach Yaz to speak about interventions that can bring out the vibrancy of your loved ones with autism.