The country's largest state ABA association completes a leadership transition amid workforce shortages, reimbursement pressure, and growing provider scrutiny.
Key Takeaways
- Leadership turnover at the field's most influential state association. The California Association for Behavior Analysis has named Shirli Driz as its next Executive Director, ending Matt McAlear's nearly 15-year tenure that began with his appointment as Board Consultant in 2012. The transition closes a board-managed search that began roughly 18 months ago.
- A transition framed as planned, not abrupt. Both the CalABA Board of Directors and McAlear describe the change as a deliberate handoff, with the board citing a consultant-guided search process and McAlear pointing to the demands of his role at FirstSteps for Kids as the driver of his timing.
- California's outsized market footprint raises the stakes. California accounted for 15% of all BCBA job postings nationwide in 2025 per the BACB's January 2026 Lightcast report, more than any other state, giving CalABA a policy and advocacy reach disproportionate to its size as a single-state organization.
- The incoming Executive Director inherits a packed agenda. Driz steps in as California behavior analysts continue to face workforce shortages, regional center reimbursement pressure, an unfinished decade-long legislative push for state licensure, and the broader private equity scrutiny reshaping ABA nationally.
The California Association for Behavior Analysis, the country's largest state-level ABA association by both membership and policy footprint, has named Shirli Driz as its next Executive Director. The appointment was announced this week by the CalABA Board of Directors and closes a search the board has described as “thorough” and “consultant-guided,” conducted over roughly the past 18 months.
The transition ends a long tenure for Matt McAlear, who has led CalABA since 2015 after serving as the organization's Board Consultant beginning in 2012. In an interview with Acuity Media Network, McAlear said the timing reflected both organizational readiness and his desire “to focus my energy on having just one full-time job for once.” He will remain engaged in California behavior analysis through his role as Chief Executive Officer of FirstSteps for Kids, a Los Angeles-area provider that has operated in the state since 2005.
“CalABA was never just a job for me, but a large part of my professional identity and a great source of pride,” McAlear told Acuity. He described the organization as “well-positioned for the future,” citing its policy advocacy footprint, growing membership, and what he called “exceptional volunteer leadership.”
CalABA's reach is unusually large for a state-level association. The organization has been a central voice in California's autism insurance mandate, in regional center contracting through the Department of Developmental Services, in commercial insurance coverage of ABA across the state, and in the unfinished legislative effort to establish state licensure for behavior analysts, which California has not enacted despite multiple attempts. Its annual conference draws thousands of attendees from across the western United States and beyond, and McAlear cited the conference's growth as a particular point of pride during his tenure.
That footprint matters because California is, by a meaningful margin, the largest ABA market in the United States. The Behavior Analyst Certification Board's January 2026 Lightcast report identified California as the source of 15% of all BCBA job postings in 2025, more than any other state. The state hosts a substantial concentration of board-certified behavior analysts, multi-state ABA provider organizations operating large California footprints, and a regulatory and reimbursement environment that other states often look to as a bellwether. (See Acuity's coverage of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board's January 2026 Lightcast report.)
That market position has also made California a focal point for the workforce shortage now reshaping the field. Roughly 81,566 board-certified behavior analysts were in the U.S. workforce as of January 2026 per the BACB, against demand the Lightcast analysis put well above credential supply, with California carrying a disproportionate share of unfilled positions and significant turnover among entry-level Registered Behavior Technician roles.
How the CalABA Board Ran the Executive Director Search
The CalABA Board described the search as conducted by an ad hoc committee that engaged a consultant and “interviewed a competitive field of qualified candidates” over roughly 18 months. The board declined to detail compensation specifics or to name the consulting firm engaged for the search, but framed the process as deliberate and methodical given the organization's footprint.
Asked by Acuity for detail on the search itself, McAlear declined to weigh in, deferring to the committee. “As I stepped back from that work over the last few months in particular, the Board and search committee have taken the reins, so I am not the best person to comment on the details of the search,” he said.
The full Board of Directors and search committee members were credited by the board for what it called “thoughtful strategic decision-making,” and were described as having identified Driz as the candidate best aligned with the association's needs going forward.
Shirli Driz's Background and Mandate at CalABA
CalABA's board described Driz as bringing “proven executive leadership in mission-driven organizations, expertise in nonprofit management and program development, and a strong track record of building strategic partnerships and securing financial sustainability.” The board emphasized her experience navigating organizational growth and championing inclusion, and said she will work closely with the board, members, partners, and the broader behavior analytic community.
Driz had not yet spoken publicly about her priorities for the organization as of publication. The board said it plans to introduce her more formally to the membership in the coming weeks and signaled that initial focus areas will likely include continuity of policy engagement, conference operations, and the association's licensure advocacy agenda.
The selection signals that CalABA's board prioritized executive nonprofit management experience over a clinical or provider background in this transition. McAlear, by contrast, came up through the field and remained an active ABA provider executive throughout his CalABA tenure. The shift mirrors a broader pattern in maturing state professional associations, which increasingly look to nonprofit executive leadership profiles as policy and operational complexity grow.
A Former CalABA President on the Leadership Transition
Sarah Trautman, a former President of CalABA who served on the board for roughly a decade and continued as a consultant to the organization for several years after, told Acuity she viewed McAlear's departure as a meaningful but expected inflection point. “Matt has been the steady hand at CalABA for a long time,” she said. “Fifteen years is a long run for any executive director, and his work on the conference and on legislative engagement is going to outlast him.”
In an interview with Acuity Media Network, Trautman acknowledged she has not been actively involved with CalABA for several years and gets most of her current information about the organization through public communications and her own network of California behavior analysts.
Trautman said the lengthy search was consistent with the operational challenges state ABA associations face when running executive transitions: a small full-time staff, a volunteer board with day jobs, and a need to balance continuity with the desire to bring in new leadership thinking. She noted that retaining institutional knowledge through the transition will matter, especially around CalABA's regional center and Medi-Cal relationships.
“I don't think you necessarily need a clinician in the Executive Director role,” Trautman, herself a BCBA, said.
She said the role demands public policy savvy and coalition-building above all, and pointed to California's still-unfinished work on behavior analyst licensure as the kind of multi-year, multi-stakeholder fight that benefits from sustained executive focus.
California's ABA Market: Workforce, Reimbursement, and Private Equity
Driz takes the reins at a moment of unusual complexity for behavior analysis in California. Insurance coverage has expanded substantially over the past decade, but reimbursement pressure has intensified, particularly in the Medi-Cal program and the regional center system. Regional centers, which contract with vendors to serve Californians with developmental disabilities through the Department of Developmental Services, have become a flashpoint as providers report rate stagnation against rising labor costs.
Workforce dynamics are equally complex. California has the highest absolute demand for BCBAs in the country, but the credential supply nationally has not kept pace with growth in covered lives. Wait times for assessment and start of services, RBT retention challenges, and concerns about the sustainability of in-home delivery models all surface repeatedly in California provider conversations.
Private equity ownership of ABA providers has also drawn increasing attention in California. Several of the state's largest provider organizations have traded between sponsors over the past several years, and a number of regional and multi-state platforms operating in California are under private equity sponsorship. The pattern has invited both regulatory scrutiny and litigation and broader policy debate about consolidation, quality, and access in autism services.
McAlear acknowledged those headwinds when Acuity asked him about the state of the field, while framing them as familiar challenges. “While the field continues to confront many of the same challenges it has for years, there is also a lot of important work being done by passionate behavior analysts to advance our science and ensure consumers have access to high quality services,” he said.
He also encouraged readers to “get involved with CalABA or their local state association,” a closing note that points to a recurring tension in the field: state associations like CalABA carry outsized policy weight, but participation rates among practicing behavior analysts vary widely, and questions about who effectively represents the field, raised most prominently in conversations about the local state association infrastructure, remain unresolved.
What to Watch as CalABA's Next Chapter Begins
Three threads will define the early Driz tenure. The first is whether CalABA preserves its outsized policy footprint as California's legislative calendar moves through another round of behavior analyst licensure debate, regional center reform conversations, and Medi-Cal coverage refinements. The second is whether the association's annual conference, the largest of its kind among state ABA associations, continues to grow in scale and influence. The third is how CalABA positions itself relative to national bodies and to multi-state provider organizations whose footprints now extend well beyond California.
For now, the board's framing is that the organization is on solid footing. “We are excited about what lies ahead under Shirli's leadership,” the board said in its announcement.
McAlear, for his part, told Acuity he is not leaving the field. “I'm also not riding into the sunset just yet and remain committed to supporting the field of ABA in California for years to come,” he said.
