Stride Autism Centers named Emily Patrizi its chief operating officer.
The Trumpet Behavioral Health vet plans to focus on precision and operational rigor to continue to evolve Stride’s mission, Patrizi told Autism Therapy Business. She is tasked with overseeing center operations, human resources, technology and data and supporting clinical initiatives.
Chicago-based Stride Autism Centers provides applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy for children ages 2 to 6 with autism through one-on-one and group sessions from 20 centers across Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The provider serves about 250 full-time equivalent patients daily.
Stride is growing rapidly throughout the Midwest. The company opened seven new locations and expanded into a new state within one year – without any outside investment.
KKR-backed autism therapy provider Bluesprig acquired Patrizi’s former employer, Trumpet Behavioral Health, in 2023. Patrizi spent 13 years at Trumpet Behavioral Health in several roles, including chief operating officer and senior vice president of operations.
BHB caught up with Patrizi as she was traveling from center to center to discuss her top priorities for Stride, her approach to operational efficiency and the challenges facing the autism therapy industry.
Highlights from the conversation are below, edited for length and clarity.
BHB: What are your top priorities for your first year as COO?
Patrizi: At a very high level, positioning Stride to continue to evolve an already great thing, to scale systems and maintain the same culture and quality of care that has been established over the years. Further structuring and standardizing some of the core business central functions and coordinating with other leaders to inform our clinical operations and the experience of each of our families and team members.
I really geek out on the ability to optimize efficiencies and make it easier for people to do the right thing, to ensure the best possible experience for those we serve. There’s this lens that I look at the world with, always thinking about how we can continue to evolve as an organization and how we can invest in our people and systems. And how can we continue to shift and shape in a way that we get better every day, because ultimately, our role and responsibility is to serve our communities.
How will you leverage your past experience in this position?
Taking my experience as a clinician and an operator really helps me to understand the unique challenges that a lot of our teams and families face. I will work to structure systems and processes in a way that meets them where they are, no matter where they are, and take a compassionate approach to walking with them, recognizing the vulnerability of our population and the complexity of navigating services.
What would you like your lasting impact to be at Stride?
It has nothing to do with me. It’s really, ‘How can I best position the organization and everyone in it to be successful.’
I think of that as creating a framework and systems that make it easier for all of those people to do the right thing and do right by our people. I believe very heavily on the importance of integrating clinical operations in what I think of as operational rigor. I love the term, and the way I think about it is this: Intentional, coordinated precision to optimize efficiencies that inform the experience of those we serve. Given the vulnerability of our population and the importance of access to care, I can think of nothing more important than to be precise and rigorous in how we structure and manage our operations, our business and ensure high-quality access to care.
Are there any specific challenges you have identified in the autism therapy space that you anticipate Stride needing to overcome in the next few years?
Our industry and our field have grown so rapidly within a short period of time. I’m always looking at licensure, credentialing standards, reimbursement rates, payer requirements, anything that could potentially become a barrier in our current service model.
The broader trends that I watch are the variations in the labor market, just given that that’s so central to our ability to serve others.
