Why I Built FriendshipABA: Bringing Science, Friendship, and Community Together

My path to founding FriendshipABA did not begin in a clinic.

It began in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I spent two years working with teenage boys and young adults who had grown up in the Chabad Orthodox Jewish community but no longer fit comfortably within its traditional educational system.

Many had dropped out of school. Some were struggling at home or engaging in serious, high-risk behaviors. I arrived after rabbinical school expecting to serve as a counselor and mentor. Instead, those young men became some of my first teachers.

I began to see how easily a struggling student could be described as unmotivated, defiant, or simply unwilling to succeed. But when I got to know them, the story was almost always more complicated. Many had spent years feeling unsuccessful at school or experiencing pain and loneliness at home. Some had stopped believing that the adults around them understood them. Their behavior did not develop in a vacuum.

The program was built around strong relationships. The young men needed boundaries and accountability, but they also needed adults who knew them, believed in them unconditionally, and were willing to remain present through difficult periods.

I saw young people change when they experienced that combination.

That experience left me with a lasting conviction: relationships can change the direction of a person’s life.

It also left me with a question.

Could We Make Success More Reliable?

I knew that I wanted to work in education, but I did not only want to inspire students occasionally. I wanted to understand how to build educational environments that consistently helped children learn and grow.

A mentor encouraged me to study with Dr. R. Douglas Greer at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work applied the science of behavior to one of education’s most important questions: How can we design schools and classrooms in which teaching reliably produces learning?

That question drew me to applied behavior analysis.

ABA gave me a way to look beyond good intentions. It taught me to define what we hoped a student would learn, study the conditions affecting that learning, measure whether our teaching was working, and change our approach when it was not.

Over the next several years, I earned four New York State teaching certifications, two master’s degrees, and a PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis and Special Education from Teachers College. At the same time, I spent five years teaching children in preschool and elementary classrooms in New York and New Jersey and conducting behavioral research. My professional background when I arrived in Cleveland combined special education, behavioral science, rabbinical training, youth development, and community building.

But my time at Columbia taught me something deeper than how to teach an individual skill.

The best teaching does not merely produce a correct response. It changes what a child is able—and increasingly motivated—to do. A child should not only learn how to read, communicate, play, or participate. When possible, we should help the child discover that reading, communicating, playing, learning, and connecting with others are themselves worthwhile.

That became one half of the vision that would eventually become FriendshipABA.

Discovering the Educational Power of Friendship

In 2021, my wife, Chana, and I moved with our family to Cleveland. I had expected to continue working primarily in education and behavioral research.

Then I met Rabbi Yossi Marozov, the executive director of Friendship Circle of Cleveland.

Friendship Circle was built around a deceptively simple idea: bring children with disabilities, teenage volunteers, families, and the larger community together through genuine friendship and shared experiences.

I initially joined the organization as Director of Youth Engagement. Public coverage at the time described the position as an opportunity to combine the different parts of my background—ABA and special education, rabbinic and community work, youth development, and even music.

My work with the teenagers forced me to think differently about education.

Teenagers need structure, expectations, and limits. But they are also in a formative period in which they need to feel that they are trusted, needed, and capable of contributing something important.

At Friendship Circle, teenagers were not only attending programs designed for them. They were helping create meaningful experiences for children and families. They were learning responsibility because other people were relying on them.

At the same time, we had to confront a real tension. Community programs naturally depend on groups, volunteers, activities, and shared expectations. Some children could participate within that model with minimal assistance. Other children needed much more individualized support.

The children who needed us most were sometimes the ones for whom it was hardest to design a safe, successful experience.

As I took on the role of Program Director in 2023, that tension became increasingly important to me. How could we preserve the warmth, friendship, leadership, and community participation that made Friendship Circle special while developing the professional capacity to serve children with more significant behavioral, communication, educational, or adaptive needs?

The Summer That Changed the Question

By the summer of 2024, I wanted Friendship Circle to serve children more consistently throughout the summer—a period when many families lose the routines and supports available during the school year.

But we encountered the same limitation again.

We could create wonderful camps and social programs. Yet some of the children who needed the greatest degree of support could not benefit fully without individualized staffing, clinical planning, and more intensive teaching.

I began asking a different question.

Not simply, “How can we create another program?”

But:

How can we build the capacity to serve the children who need us most?

The answer required more than adding activities. We needed trained behavior technicians, BCBA supervision, individualized assessments, measurable treatment plans, parent collaboration, school partnerships, and systems capable of delivering consistent care.

In 2024, Friendship Circle opened a new division for Educational and Therapy Services, with me serving as its program director and authorized official. We then began building the infrastructure that would allow us to provide deeper educational and therapeutic services.

In September 2025, I moved into this work full-time as the founder and director of FriendshipABA.

Bringing the Two Lessons Together

FriendshipABA brings together the two central lessons of my professional life.

From my earliest work with struggling teenagers, I learned that people change through relationships with others who know them, believe in them, and remain committed to them.

From Columbia, I learned that care and good intentions are not enough. We also need a science of teaching: careful assessment, clear goals, thoughtful instruction, consistent measurement, and the humility to change what we are doing when it is not working.

From Friendship Circle, I learned what becomes possible when the whole community is involved—when children are not only recipients of services, but members of a community in which they can form friendships, develop interests, lead, perform, contribute, and be known for their strengths.

I saw this vividly through projects such as the Friendship Circle Band. Young people with and without disabilities did not simply attend an “inclusive activity.” They created music together, performed publicly, developed confidence, and discovered identities as musicians, bandmates, and leaders. One participant who had never viewed himself as a musician went home after stepping in for a performance and proudly told his mother, “Mom, I’m a drummer.”

That is the kind of growth I want FriendshipABA to make possible.

Our purpose is not simply to help children complete programs during therapy. We want to help children communicate more effectively, build independence, participate in school and family life, develop interests, form relationships, and experience themselves as capable people with something meaningful to contribute.

What We Are Building

FriendshipABA is still growing.

We are building clinical systems, training staff, partnering with families and schools, and learning how to combine individualized ABA treatment with authentic opportunities for friendship and community participation. Today, our team provides assessments, skill-development treatment, behavior support, parent training, and social programming in clinic, school, home, and community settings.

We will not always get everything right on the first attempt. Building a strong organization requires the same approach that effective teaching requires: establish a meaningful goal, carefully study what is happening, learn from the results, and keep improving.

This blog will be part of that process.

I hope to share what we are learning about ABA, education, friendship, parenting, organizational growth, staff development, and the work of building services that are both clinically rigorous and deeply human.

FriendshipABA began because I came to believe that families should not have to choose between excellent clinical care and a community in which their child is genuinely known and valued.

Children need effective teaching.

They need relationships.

They need opportunities to experience success, joy, independence, and belonging.

And when science, friendship, and community come together, we can help each child build not only more skills, but a fuller life.