Leonard Jeger, CEO and co-founder of BrightBridge ABA, knows well the hard road that parents of children with special needs walk every day.
Fifteen years ago, his firstborn son contracted bacterial meningitis the day after he was born, leaving him “extreme special needs, both medically as well as mentally.” He died at age 2.5. While painful, the experience imbued indelible lessons and truths about interaction with several parts of the American health care system.
“Having a special needs child is challenged enough; having to deal with bureaucracy and red tape and practical challenges is something that just seemed so unnecessary,” Jeger told Autism Business News. “It just didn’t seem like the general special needs services community was really working on streamlining that.”
His personal experiences still bears heavy influence on Jeger as he leads BrightBridge ABA, a company that he, his brother and a long-time friend founded earlier in the year.
Founded in January 2024, the company has booked its first patients in its first market, the Triad metro in North Carolina.
Jeger and his co-founder came to BrightBridge ABA as a second career. Each spent the last several years in very different fields. Jeger spent that last decade or so leading and managing a religions education nonprofit and was looking for a career; his brother, Steven Jeger, had been the CEO of the family-owned company Physician Dialysis which had had a major exit a few years ago and was looking for additional project; Michael Feld, Leonard Jeger’s friend, had exited a fintech company that he founded.
“Each of us brings something else to the table,” Jeger said. “Starting something in the special needs community was drawing me because of my life experience, and ABA was all we heard about.”
They quickly learned about the tremendous demand for services, the mismatch between supply and demand, its impact on families and the mixed record of private equity in the space.
Further, the company’s ownership structure from the outset — a structure that Jeger intends to keep in perpetuity — removes a vital structure that can misalign a corporation’s incentives and values.
So far, the three co-founders have covered the startup costs on their own and haven’t brought it on outside investment, making each co-founder and owner of the company. Such a structure, Jeger said, allows the company extraordinary latitude to pursue its various tactical and philosophical objectives.
“When you have to go back to a board of directors and you have to go back to a group of investors, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to make sure that you hit the metrics and the numbers are the way they like them,” Jeger said. “There’s a gap between the heart of the company and bringing that over to the boardroom table. There is no gap here.”
If ever there is a question about the right direction, it is “the same hand and the same pocket” at the end of the day that makes the decision, significantly lessening the pressure to make compromises.
On top of owning the company, the two Jegers and the Feld are executives handling the daily operations at BrightBridge ABA. Including the founders, the company has nine employees. Leonard Jeger is the CEO; Steven Jeger is the chief financial officer; and Michael Feld is the chief operating officer.
The co-founder spent a significant amount of time finding the right first market to launch. Ultimately, they fought off the inclination to acquire a company to jumpstart development. However, that may have meant potentially adopting a culture that they would then have to remake. They opted for a de novo approach to set up all aspects of the company in the way they wanted.
The decision to land in the Triad market was largely based on a balance of perceived need for services, payer rates for autism therapy (especially Medicaid) and location. Feld lives in New York, and Steven Jeger lives in Florida. Jeger said they felt that New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were oversaturated in terms of providers. They also considered Maryland, Virginia, Georgia and Florida.
However, some of these states had rates that didn’t provide much of a margin. Especially for an early-stage venture, it’s important that revenue margin allows some room for error.
“We knew that there would be some learning curves that would probably cost us money, and without that margin, it’s not going to be sustainable,” Jeger said.
Eventually, Jeger hopes to have BrightBridge ABA work with all payers. Already, the company can work with Medicaid and is contracted with several major commercial health plans. The provider also hopes to secure contracts with TRICARE to serve the large military family population in the state.
The company’s growth strategy is to first establish in-home services to create a foothold for the company and then open clinics to stake down its presence. That approach is planned to be repeated in other communities outside of the Triad and eventually the state. By around this time next year, Jeger hopes to see a BrightBridge ABA clinic open in the Triad metro and have in-home operations rolling in two other states. At the end of five years, the hope is to have established a presence in five states. Jeger didn’t specify which.
