CertifyndABA and Dr. Paul "Paulie" Gavoni have been working together informally for months, trading ideas about what actually makes an ABA workplace worth staying at. That relationship is now official. Dr. Gavoni has joined CertifyndABA as the platform's ambassador, lending his voice and over two decades of behavior science expertise to a mission he already believes in: helping behavior analysts, RBTs, and BCBAs find employers who treat them well.
The partnership brings together two forces pointed at the same problem from different angles. CertifyndABA built a transparency-first platform where ABA professionals can see real information about an employer before they apply. Dr. Gavoni has spent over two decades teaching organizations how to apply behavior science to their own management, so the people doing the work actually stick around. Together, the goal is simple: fewer ABA professionals burning out and leaving the field, and more employers building workplaces worth staying at.
Who Is Dr. Paul Gavoni
Dr. Gavoni is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling co-author, with titles including Deliberate Coaching, Quick Wins!, and Positional Authority Ain't Leadership. He is the founder of Heart & Science International, a training and consulting firm built around applying behavior science to leadership and organizational performance. He also co-founded The Behavioral Toolbox alongside a small group of behavior analysts and educators, and he hosts the Heart & Science of Leadership Podcast.
For over two decades, Dr. Gavoni has held roles that span both the clinical and the corporate side of behavior analysis, including school administrator, district behavior analyst, clinical coordinator, and vice president of organizational leadership. He is a regular keynote speaker on topics like adaptive leadership and what he calls "positional authority," the idea that a title alone does not make someone a leader. His work has been featured on Fox News and in outlets including SPARK Magazine and Operants Magazine.
Long before any of that, Dr. Gavoni built a career in the ring. He started boxing in South Florida in 1992 and won the Florida Golden Gloves Heavyweight Title in 1998. Fighters and fans know him as "Coach Paulie Gloves," a cornerman who has worked with amateur boxers and professional fighters from Ultimate Fighting Championship and more. It is not a side note to his behavior science career; it is the same discipline applied to a different arena. Dr. Gavoni has spent his life studying what makes performance change under pressure, whether that pressure comes from a bell ringing in a boxing ring or a staffing crisis in a school district.
"Paul has been an irreplaceable coach and head cornerman for many fighters, ranging from amateur boxers to stars from the Ultimate Fighting Championship."— Brett White, DC, MHSc
Why This Partnership Matters
The ABA industry has a retention problem, and it is not a secret to anyone running a company in the space. Tim Saumier, CertifyndABA co-founder and a recruiter who has spent years placing behavioral health professionals, put it plainly in a 2022 interview with Behavioral Health Business: "We've watched salaries elevate over the last 10 years." He went on to describe the cycle that follows: "What happens when salaries elevate? People jump ship, they tend to move on." Saumier called the resulting spiral of rising pay and rising turnover a "ticking timebomb" for the autism therapy industry, a pattern of companies overpaying to backfill roles instead of building workplaces people want to stay in.
Organizational Behavior Management, or OBM, is the branch of behavior science built to fix exactly that kind of problem. Instead of treating turnover as an unavoidable cost of doing business, OBM applies the same principles ABA professionals use with clients to the systems, incentives, and management practices inside a company itself. That is the discipline Dr. Gavoni has built his career around, and it is also the thesis behind CertifyndABA's platform: ABA companies that apply behavior science to their own management build workplaces where RBTs, BCBAs, and behavior therapists grow and thrive, and those are the companies CertifyndABA's transparency-first approach is designed to reward.
"Paulie has been telling companies the same thing recruiters like me have been watching happen for years: you cannot pay your way out of a bad workplace. We are thrilled to make this partnership official and put his voice behind what we are building."— Tim Saumier, Co-Founder, CertifyndABA
What's Next
As CertifyndABA's ambassador, Dr. Gavoni will bring his voice and content directly to the CertifyndABA community, sharing the same behavior science principles he has spent over two decades teaching organizations and applying to human performance everywhere from the classroom to the boardroom to the corner of a boxing ring. The goal is straightforward: give ABA professionals and the companies that employ them a shared, credible source for what actually works when it comes to building workplaces people do not want to leave.
"All meaningful outcomes are driven by behavior. CertifyndABA is building a platform that rewards the companies actually willing to do that work, and I am glad to make my role with them official."— Dr. Paul "Paulie" Gavoni
For CertifyndABA, the informal conversations with Dr. Gavoni are what shaped a lot of the platform's thinking in the first place. Making the partnership official is a chance to bring that thinking to a wider audience of ABA professionals and the employers who want to keep them.
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