About Us

ABA Connect was founded in 2013 as an early intervention, applied behavior analysis (ABA) service provider and learning center for children with autism.  We started serving the Austin community and expanded throughout Texas to include centers in Houston and Dallas.  Our centers offer both part-day and full-day options for children.  Additionally, we serve clients in other areas surrounding Austin through our home-based programming and telehealth services.

Our commitment is to provide evidence-based services that will enhance your child and your family’s quality of life. We provide applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy, using Natural Environment Teaching and Discrete Trial Training instructional methods, along with parent support services, to help you and your child accomplish behavioral goals.

We specialize in early intervention, from 1-14 years of age, because this enables us to focus our attention on the very specific needs of young children and families. The lives of children who are on the autism spectrum and their families can improve enormously with early, evidence-based intervention. Early intervention increases the opportunities for success.

If you are interested in finding out more about our ABA services, please contact us at 833-225-9393 or you can complete our Getting Started form .

Kirsten Brooks, BCBA

Kirsten has been a long-time supporter and advocate of the mental health community in Austin.  In 2007, she and her husband Mike opened the Austin Psychology and Assessment Center.  Through their work supporting individual, couples and family counselling, Kirsten noticed an ever growing need for ABA services in the area for children with Autism.  Through much research and many conversations with local physicians, it was clear Austin was severely lacking the providers needed to support the ongoing care and treatment of children in the area.

In 2013 Kirsten officially launched ABA Connect to help close the provider gap in the area.  Over the next several years ABA Connect would grow to support children all over Austin and the surrounding areas.  In 2020, ABA Connect took its first client in the Houston area.  Kirsten’s dedication to the kids we serve couldn’t have been more apparent than when she drove to the client’s house on their first day of services to welcome them to the ABA Connect family.

Since opening ABA Connect, Kirsten has gone on to become a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and currently acts as the Director of Clinical Operations.  Today ABA Connect is one of Austin’s largest locally owned and operated ABA providers.

Tim Plachta

Tim joined ABA Connect as a partner in 2018 and currently acts as the Director of Business Operations.  His dedication to working in the special needs community started as a middle school special education math teacher in 2007, but solidified when his second daughter was born with Down syndrome in 2010.

Since Ruby’s birth, Tim has gone on to either start or work with several companies focused on improving the lives of those in the special needs community.  He spent eight years owning and operating a financial planning practice that supported families with children with special needs, he cofounded a nonprofit with his wife Liz that has granted over $1,000,000 in college scholarships to adults with Down syndrome (www.rubysrainbow.org), and served as the Presiding Officer of the Texas ABLE advisory committee for two years to help develop and open ABLE accounts here in Texas (www.texasable.org).

Now Tim is now dedicated to ensuring that ABA Connect becomes Austin’s premier provider of ABA services and a place he’d be proud to take his own children to.