BCBA-Owned. Clinically Led. Accountable to Families, Not Investors.
The short answer: Believing is Achieving is independently owned by Mariah Biscan, M.A., BCBA — a Board Certified Behavior Analyst with over a decade of clinical experience. There is no parent company, no investor group, and no corporate board. The person who owns this practice is the person clinically accountable for your child's care. You can verify our registration under NPI 1548043524.
Why ownership determines the care you get
In ABA, the owner sets the incentives, and the incentives shape every clinical decision — how many hours get recommended, how many families each BCBA supervises, how much training staff receive, whether therapy happens in your home or in a building the company had to pay for.
When a behavior analyst owns the practice, those decisions get made through a clinical lens, because the owner is the one who has to sit across from you and defend them.
Who owns Believing is Achieving
Mariah Biscan spent over a decade as a BCBA and served as Clinical Director for a well-known ABA organization across Chicagoland. She saw firsthand how large, clinic-based models work from the inside — and how often decisions were driven by growth and revenue rather than what was best for families.
She founded Believing is Achieving to do it differently: in-home only, no waitlists, no inflated hour recommendations, and families involved in choosing their own therapist. Her stated goal is to build the best, not the biggest — and she has been explicit that she will remain an in-home-only provider even though it is less profitable than opening clinics.
Our leadership is clinical all the way down
Mariah Biscan, M.A., BCBA
Founder & BCBA. 10+ years as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. Former Clinical Director.
Angela Pajcini, BCBA
Director of Service Quality and Compliance. M.A. in Psychology, post-master's certification in Applied Behavior Analysis. Former Director of ABA Services.
Michael Zagurski, LBS1
Director of Operations. Former special education teacher in the Naperville school district, still working directly with children today.
Three leaders. Three clinical and educational backgrounds. Zero finance backgrounds. As our team puts it: "None of us come from business or finance — we're simply people who've dedicated our careers to supporting children and families."
What this means for your family, concretely
- Hour recommendations are based on your child's needs and your family's capacity — never on what insurance will allow.
- Your BCBA has a caseload sized for real supervision, not for throughput.
- Your intake call is with the owner, not a sales representative.
- If something isn't working, the person who can change it will take your call.
- We will never quietly shift your child into a clinic model for convenience or profit.
Questions worth asking any ABA provider
- Who owns this company?
- Is the owner a BCBA?
- Is there a parent company or investor group?
- How many hours will you recommend, and how did you arrive at that number?
- Who supervises my child's program, and how many families do they oversee?
- Will I have the same therapist consistently? Can I meet them before we start?