FOUNDER & CLINICAL DIRECTOR

Dr. Kari Sheward is the founder of Own Your Path and the designer of its coaching framework — a named, teachable method grounded in more than a decade leading autism clinical programs and in original academic scholarship on neurodivergent transition. Own Your Path coaches teens and young adults across the full arc of that transition: not only college readiness, but living independently, finding and holding a job, managing money and daily life, and building the self-advocacy skills that hold all of it together.

Kari began her career as a crisis therapist in mental health before moving into autism services, where she went on to serve as Clinical Director for multiple autism clinics across Central Indiana. She currently leads behavioral health and clinical services for a large Indiana-based disability services organization. That work gave her a close, sustained view of the gap so many families hit the moment a young person ages out of school-based support — the point at which structure disappears and the transition into college, employment, and independent living is hardest to navigate. Own Your Path exists to fill that gap.

Kari holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Ball State University and a Master of Science in Psychology, with a specialization in Applied Behavior Analysis, from Purdue Global, and she is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and Licensed Behavior Analyst (LBA). Her doctoral work at the University of Dayton, in the Leadership for Organizations program, examined how to prepare autistic students for the leap into college through self-advocacy, goal-setting, and support-system alignment. That research — paired with her clinical experience — is the evidence base beneath the Own Your Path coaching model.

She is also an active contributor to the academic literature on neurodivergent transition and inclusion, as a co-author of peer-reviewed and conference-presented research examining how neurodiversity is represented in adult education and the specific challenges neurodivergent students face as they move into college and adult life. She has presented to families on navigating the systems that shape this transition and has publicly advocated for evidence-based autism-services policy.

At Own Your Path, Kari leads the practice’s clinical standards, coaching framework, and coach training and certification — so that every client receives the same rigorous, individualized method no matter which coach they are matched with. Above all, her approach is shaped by a belief she returns to often: that real independence is something young people build for themselves, one week at a time, on their own terms and at their own pace — and that the adults around them grow best by learning when to step back and make room for it.