{"id":117967,"date":"2023-11-06T10:26:23","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T16:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/?p=117967"},"modified":"2024-01-18T10:15:22","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T16:15:22","slug":"robbie-el-fattal-applied-behavior-analysis-distinguished-alumni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/psychology\/robbie-el-fattal-applied-behavior-analysis-distinguished-alumni\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Robbie El Fattal: Transforming lives through applied behavior analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

With three businesses, five children, and three academic degrees, Robbie El Fattal, Ph.D., knows how to work hard. Now he\u2019s working to ensure that his impact on the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) continues.<\/p>\n

Dr. El Fattal, a 2020 graduate of the Ph.D. Behavior Analysis program<\/a> at The Chicago School, has been working in applied behavior analysis for more than 20 years. He began his career through teaching, coaching, and program development before stepping into entrepreneurship as the founder of three different organizations for children with autism.<\/p>\n

Dr. El Fattal credits The Chicago School with helping him improve his critical thinking and leadership skills. \u201cThe start of my career taught me to be critical and embrace rigor and opportunity with the right mindset,\u201d Dr. El Fattal says. \u201cWhen The Chicago School came around, I was ready. The program was informative to my work and made me a better executive and people-leader and opened up new opportunities for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. El Fattal grew interested in working with children with autism after volunteering in high school. Despite the emergence of the field of behavior analysis at the time, there was a lack of providers. After high school, he started working with Autism Partnership<\/a>, a leading provider of autism therapy services, starting as a behavior tech in the classroom.<\/p>\n

By the time Dr. El Fattal worked up to overseeing the Autism Society of America (ASA) program (after earning his BCBA, master\u2019s degree, and teaching credentials) he realized he wanted to impact children more directly. Dr. El Fattal and his wife, Katie, started their first company, Patterns Behavioral Services, to provide ABA therapy to individuals with autism while focusing on clinical excellence.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy 2015, we had 120 patients and more than 100 staff members,\u201d Dr. El Fattal says. \u201cThe differentiator for us was our clinical training. We had incredible training and mentorship for so many years and brought that same level of excellence to our practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that point, Dr. El Fattal and his family moved from California to Austin, Texas, to start a second company, Cultivate Behavioral Health & Education<\/a>. \u201cWithin two or three years, we had gone from opening our first center to having multiple centers,\u201d Dr. El Fattal says. \u201cIt gave us an opportunity to combine what we learned from our time in California with our clinical excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another reason for the family\u2019s move to Texas was Dr. El Fattal\u2019s desire to apply to graduate programs. While he didn\u2019t start his graduate studies at The Chicago School, he continued them there because of the flexibility and executive-level focus of its program. That allowed him to balance his schoolwork, his leadership responsibilities at Cultivate, and his family duties.<\/p>\n

Dr. El Fattal speaks highly of how The Chicago School challenged him to further his thinking and leadership. He recalls working with his dissertation chair Amanda Mahoney, Ph.D<\/a>. on his thesis and how she pushed him to find the root of a problem, something he still does today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re an executive and you get ideas, you don\u2019t always have an open mind. You have a team, so you can execute it,\u201d Dr. El Fattal says. \u201cI remember talking to Dr. Mahoney about this. I wanted to do my project on performance management. She kept encouraging me to focus on finding the greater context, to go back and consider: Where does behavior management fit into this larger paradigm? Now when I have a problem, I try to find the root and understand the context. Much of that academic rigor has helped me as an executive to be more creative and a better problem-solver.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from The Chicago School, he founded his third company, Maraca Learning<\/a>. Maraca is a clinician-led organization engaging the most skillful talent in the ABA field. Dr. El Fattal says the main difference between his current and past work is that now he\u2019s focused on the dissemination of research and training, and the intersection between the two.<\/p>\n

While he has shifted from being hands-on work with children to focusing on building systems and empowering clinicians, he is proud to help current and future clinicians achieve the best outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job more than ever is to build systems that help clinicians do their job and to empower them to be their best selves,\u201d Dr. El Fattal says. \u201cI get to coach the team and build an environment for them to flourish.”<\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With three businesses, five children, and three academic degrees, Robbie El Fattal, Ph.D., knows how to work hard. Now he\u2019s working to ensure that his impact on the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA) continues. Dr. El Fattal, a 2020 graduate of the Ph.D. Behavior Analysis program at The Chicago School, has been working in applied behavior analysis for more than 20 years. He began his career through teaching, coaching, and program development before stepping into entrepreneurship as the founder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":117969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,113],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1036],"class_list":["post-117967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-magazine","category-psychology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDr. Robbie El Fattal: Transforming lives through applied behavior analysis - Insight Digital Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Robbie El Fattal, Ph.D., has combined foundational training with doctoral research to be a leader in the behavior analysis field.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/psychology\/robbie-el-fattal-applied-behavior-analysis-distinguished-alumni\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dr. Robbie El Fattal: Transforming lives through applied behavior analysis - 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