Meet The New Managers Of The CARD Massachusetts Office

CARD is opening a new office in Massachusetts! Check out our new office! Meet the new office managers Ben Craighead & Stephanie Gunn.

Our story (Ben Craighead & Stephanie Gunn)

Stephanie and I met when we were twelve, in junior high and went to high school together as well. We were friends in high school but went to college in different states and didn’t really have any contact until after we graduated. A year or so after we graduated, we ran in to each other back in our hometown and started talking again. It didn’t take long to realize how much we had in common and for us to decide we should be together. We now have a 5-year-old son, named Jackson, who is an incredible kid. He’s smart, creative, empathetic, and funny. Of course he has his moments, but people always comment on how well behaved he is and how well he listens. We credit a good amount of this to our ABA background, the rest is just his personality.

About Me (Ben):

So I started with CARD 6 years ago as a therapist, completely out of the blue, with no experience in working with kids with kids with autism or any particular desire to do so before this job. I had turned down several jobs working with at-risk youth, which is what I thought I wanted to do, and went to this interview on a whim and started the next day. I worked in the Austin office as a therapist for 3 years before starting to supervise clients. When I started in Austin, we had 10 clients, and when I left we had 52. It was a fantastic place to work—so many great families and kids and a therapy staff that always went above and beyond. It’s definitely a place that I will miss, but I look forward to building something similar in Massachusetts.

About Stephanie:

Stephanie heard how much I loved this job and the kids, and wanted to be a part of this organization as well. At the time she was a nanny for a family with a child on the spectrum. She loved working with that family, and they recommended that she become an ABA therapist. She started at CARD soon after, and loved it. She immediately fell in love with her clients, and knew that this was the right field for her. She worked as a therapist and then a senior therapist for 2 years, and then she created a new position that allowed her to help out Austin’s Office Manager, and provide ongoing training to therapists in the field. She also started doing the initial training for the new therapists in Austin. With this position, she had a chance to work with almost all of the amazing clients and therapists that we had. She has so much respect for both groups and really enjoyed that role. Austin continued to grow, and funding sources changed, so it made sense for her to become fully administrative. And working in a CARD location that provides center-based therapy, she was still able to be around our kids, which is the best part of the job!

Future:

Now our jobs are taking us to Plymouth, Massachusetts and we couldn’t be more excited!